...whelp time to write this review again from scratch since I accidentally hit "esc". (Thanks F95)
To summarize, it's a nice 5 star worthy sandbox visual novel that lets the player set their own pacing for the story and who they wanna pursue first.
I only deduct a star due to 2 main gripes (with a minor third one) that have to do with how the endings work, the first few H-scenes with Shizuku and Ayano, and one relatively random scene that got bizarrely dark.
I'll talk openly about the h-scenes and other aspects of the game and put my thoughts on the various endings in a separate section. Though I will say, this game makes all the endings VERY accessible, it has very few branching choices, and the ones it does have it almost always gives you the option or ability to go right back to where you made your decision, and lets you get credit for choosing every option without making you replay the same events over and over.
First, lets talk about why this game has a "rape" tag.
It's not really dark, just something that they did to try and justify each character having sex scenes at roughly the same point in their routes.
Ayano's happens automatically because she gets curious about the main character and drugs him with sleeping pills (Which also happens a second time later in her route). Shizuku's only triggers when you start the first H-event in her route, and basically is a soft blackmail scene where she talks about recording what Ayano did in the only automatic H-scene in the game.
Neither of them are written with a dark or overly mean-spirited tone, all three events are things that the male MC would probably have consented to anyways, and yes it does make it slightly harder to warm up to the characters because it's out of place, but it's very much "we need an excuse for these sex scenes, and all these characters are too socially awkward to admit how they feel this early on". I understand if that's a deal breaker for some, by all means, if this isn't for you, and you have specific sensitivities around the topics of drugs, blackmail or assault, then either don't play this, or make your own judgement about if you're okay with getting past those scenes to get to the rest of the game, as it's basically glossed over and hardly actually plays a role or changes anything in the main plot.
The minor scene I have complaints about as well for causing a tonal clash is one of Shizuko's special events after clearing her main route, where it basically just describes a graphic case of a kid killing their own parents, that Shizuko investigated back in the day, it ties into nothing except for saying that Shizuko is a hard worker. Which I feel like could've been done WITHOUT drawing attention to a murder plot and her having a picture of the family looking happy before everything went down. Maybe it's a reference to one of the dev teams previous games? But if so, it's a very distracting reference, and I'm just making a hypothesis on why it was included with that.
Next I'll talk about issues with the ending, before I give my final thoughts.
All that to say, I REALLY hope that something more comes from this game, because it feels....like it has something here, but either because of time, or money, or some other third thing, that it just doesn't QUITE execute on it fully.
Don't get me wrong, for what it is, it's damn good, if you want a go at your own pace light-hearted harem rom-com, with a little bit of gameplay, this is it.
But I feel like it has the potential to be much more if it were willing to take more risks and got a sequel or something, the gameplay is basic but leaves room for improvement, the characters are straight forward but likable (setting aside some hiccups), and honestly the art and music sometimes goes WAY harder than it needs to for no particular reason.
As it is, it's a nice little game to play and read over a weekend.
But I hope there will be more.
