Wow. WOW. I'm kind of blown away by how good this game is. Not to say that it was a masterpiece or anything, but I've played The Author and while the art and renders in that game were excellent, the narrative and the writing fell flat for me. I had thought about how great that game could have been if it had good writing, and this game fulfilled that wish and delivered hard. Like, seriously, I don't want to harp too much on this point but is the writer the same person? Because they improved massively.
First off the writing, which was the biggest standout to me in this game. It's very polished and very smooth; the tone is mature and the narration is restrained. Valentine is an adult and despite his childish playfulness sometimes, it is very apparent that the story, being told from his POV, is being told in an adult and serious way. The cast of characters have all been well-developed enough and fleshed out to varying degrees, and they all have engaging backstories that indicate some sort of trauma or pain that they're dealing with.
The theme of trauma being the overarching motif that connect these people both on an interpersonal level and on a narrative level, is carefully handled. I can tell that the dev is being cautious and is maintaining a high degree of respect when approaching such a delicate topic. That shows in the restrained manner that each character, especially Valentine's trauma, is being explored. It's slow and piecemeal progress, not rushed out and cheapened to score easy emotional tearjerk points, and I respect that. That's not to say that it necessarily needs to be slow for slow's sake, but I feel like it hasn't been a problem so far and we are making real progress.
I also like that Valentine is created to be an obviously handsome-as-hell womanizer and that the dev moved away from not revealing the MC's face to help with being a self-insert because 1. It's a front and revealing what's beneath has provided good characterization, and 2. It was very effectively used to help with the suspension of disbelief in the face of so many beautiful women coming on to him. Most people, myself included, love a good self-insert. But that often falls flat narratively speaking because I'm an average dude it's much tougher to explain why the normal expectation would be reversed and the average dude is being clamoured after by decidedly non-average girls. Valentine is a fully established character with a backstory that is at the forefront of the plot. It might be a slight sacrifice in terms of self-insertion, but the visuals flow much smoother and open up a lot more, and I can fully devote myself to enjoying his story.
Speaking of the visuals, this game nails almost everything. The renders are gorgeous as are all of the character models, male or female (fellas, is it gay to think that Alistair is hotter than half the love interests?). I especially love how well the expressions and finer emotions of the characters are conveyed through image alone with no need for additional explanation. The beauty of a visual novel is that the picture can tell you all you need to know without anything being explicitly told, and this game does very well on that front.
My only complaints, and one of them more pressing, is the lack of music or other sounds. The addition of sound tracks would add so much to the immersion and presentation of this game, which already looks extremely good. The game has had no lack of well-developed emotional moments and the right track in those scenes would elevate the effect substantially. The only other thing I could say that needs more work is the animation, which is quite rigid and doesn't integrate smoothly into the transitions at all, but I've never cared too much for animations to begin with so that doesn't bother me much.
Every update so far has also included a large amount of content, so I'm really looking forward to the continued development of this game.
