The art is solid and the story exists, but it is the gameplay that really makes me give it such a low review. You will constantly have to go talk to every single NPC in the entire game over and over to try progress the game.
There's no form of hint or quest system either so if you somehow managed to miss or forget what to do you'll just have to go talk to everyone again and hope you manage to figure out what to do. Maybe you'll occasionally get to talk to an NPC and they'll repeat what to do but more often than not they go right back to their generic dialogue and you'll just have to play a big game of trial and error. Closest you'll get is getting to see which NPCs have scenes as a reward for beating the game, if you manage to find the right NPCs to talk to for managing that. There are even a few scenes/events that are locked to only beating the game that you might think are required for the main story.
Just play the first Sonia game instead. That at least gives you some sort of indication on where to go and manages to have more variety in the scenes despite being a smaller game.
There's no form of hint or quest system either so if you somehow managed to miss or forget what to do you'll just have to go talk to everyone again and hope you manage to figure out what to do. Maybe you'll occasionally get to talk to an NPC and they'll repeat what to do but more often than not they go right back to their generic dialogue and you'll just have to play a big game of trial and error. Closest you'll get is getting to see which NPCs have scenes as a reward for beating the game, if you manage to find the right NPCs to talk to for managing that. There are even a few scenes/events that are locked to only beating the game that you might think are required for the main story.
Just play the first Sonia game instead. That at least gives you some sort of indication on where to go and manages to have more variety in the scenes despite being a smaller game.