Ok, have played the freely available eps 1-5 in one go.
The previous game from this team, Double Homework, was --quite rightly-- criticized for forcing the player down railroaded plot with dragged out unnecessary drama fueled entirely by MC acting repeatedly like a literal moron, not taking any input from the player, and utter failure to communicate until it no longer mattered. The devs said they've learnt valuable lessons from it.
So, it's rather disappointing to see this game also forcing the player down railroaded plot fueled entirely by MC acting repeatedly like a literal moron, not taking any input from the player, and utter failure to communicate until it no longer matters. Whatever valuable lessons were supposedly learned it doesn't seem they stuck.
Still, the overall plot is engaging enough to make me want to see where it goes despite the shortcomings. Who knows, unlikely as it is, maybe this time around they'll actually get addressed; it's not too late for it yet.
On a sidenote, you're probably doing yourself a disservice with that
The previous game from this team, Double Homework, was --quite rightly-- criticized for forcing the player down railroaded plot with dragged out unnecessary drama fueled entirely by MC acting repeatedly like a literal moron, not taking any input from the player, and utter failure to communicate until it no longer mattered. The devs said they've learnt valuable lessons from it.
So, it's rather disappointing to see this game also forcing the player down railroaded plot fueled entirely by MC acting repeatedly like a literal moron, not taking any input from the player, and utter failure to communicate until it no longer matters. Whatever valuable lessons were supposedly learned it doesn't seem they stuck.
Still, the overall plot is engaging enough to make me want to see where it goes despite the shortcomings. Who knows, unlikely as it is, maybe this time around they'll actually get addressed; it's not too late for it yet.
On a sidenote, you're probably doing yourself a disservice with that
sandbox tag. It seems entirely superfluous as the game isn't actually a sandbox -- the only thing which makes it pretend to be one is the ui mechanic of "click map icon to be presented with list of choices which mandatory story snippet you want to see next"... which could be easily and naturally streamlined to just automatically present the player with a list of choices which mandatory story snippet they want to see next, without unnecessary clicking on the map icon. This would make the game appear and work like a normal and basic VN it actually is.
