My main gripe for games like this is that there is absolutely NO NEED for maps to be this big and for directions to be so vague. Occasionally the game text will explicitly tell you "go to classroom 3-b" or something like that; and that's fine, because even though you have no idea what the layout of the school is (because it's a fictional school that you've never been in before) at least there should be some pattern to find that classroom, and thankfully you can figure out that pattern quickly enough to only make it slightly irritating.
But then you get prompts like "well I guess I can't help but look everywhere for them" or "he was bullied by people who are in a higher grade than him" which is the most absolutely bullshit prompt for a storyline - it tells you nothing about where you should go and serves only to pad out the gameplay time to force you to run around the map trying to read the author's mind. If you don't have anything of value to add to the dialogue, then just skip that portion of the game or story, it's not fun to spend 5-10 minutes running around oversized maps to find the next railroaded section of the story; which brings me to my next point:
This is barely a game. Honestly it could have just been a visual novel, the only real gameplay involved in this are the combats which can hardly be considered fun gameplay. You either will destroy the enemy or they will destroy you (depending on if you find the powerup required for the fight). And how do you find the powerup? You guessed it: more running around large maps searching for an unknown item. At any given moment the only things that you can do during a chapter is: try to find the next step of the story, kill rats (which you can only do once per chapter) to gain levels, or run around the map trying to find a bonus item that will make the fight for the chapter possible to win. And you might be thinking "well that's three options, that's decent", and I guess if that's all you're looking for, great... but the rat combat basically boils down to mashing the confirm key until you die because there's no strategy involved in the combat (she has the option to attack, do a slightly stronger attack that costs energy, do a different slightly stronger attack that costs energy, or defend).
Now there are some good parts to the game; the art is decent, there don't seem to be any bugs, and the translation is way better than the average MTL. However, I will point out again that the good aspects of the game simply make it a visual novel with extra steps. If you cut out the bad parts of the game, it is a decent visual novel; if you leave the bad parts in, it's a clunky and time consuming game for mediocre payoff.
TLDR:
Cut out the fluff and this game could be a 3.5 or 4 out of 5. As it stands I felt i was being generous with the 2 simply because I didn't encounter any bugs and the art wasn't bad
But then you get prompts like "well I guess I can't help but look everywhere for them" or "he was bullied by people who are in a higher grade than him" which is the most absolutely bullshit prompt for a storyline - it tells you nothing about where you should go and serves only to pad out the gameplay time to force you to run around the map trying to read the author's mind. If you don't have anything of value to add to the dialogue, then just skip that portion of the game or story, it's not fun to spend 5-10 minutes running around oversized maps to find the next railroaded section of the story; which brings me to my next point:
This is barely a game. Honestly it could have just been a visual novel, the only real gameplay involved in this are the combats which can hardly be considered fun gameplay. You either will destroy the enemy or they will destroy you (depending on if you find the powerup required for the fight). And how do you find the powerup? You guessed it: more running around large maps searching for an unknown item. At any given moment the only things that you can do during a chapter is: try to find the next step of the story, kill rats (which you can only do once per chapter) to gain levels, or run around the map trying to find a bonus item that will make the fight for the chapter possible to win. And you might be thinking "well that's three options, that's decent", and I guess if that's all you're looking for, great... but the rat combat basically boils down to mashing the confirm key until you die because there's no strategy involved in the combat (she has the option to attack, do a slightly stronger attack that costs energy, do a different slightly stronger attack that costs energy, or defend).
Now there are some good parts to the game; the art is decent, there don't seem to be any bugs, and the translation is way better than the average MTL. However, I will point out again that the good aspects of the game simply make it a visual novel with extra steps. If you cut out the bad parts of the game, it is a decent visual novel; if you leave the bad parts in, it's a clunky and time consuming game for mediocre payoff.
TLDR:
Cut out the fluff and this game could be a 3.5 or 4 out of 5. As it stands I felt i was being generous with the 2 simply because I didn't encounter any bugs and the art wasn't bad
