I keep thinking I'm going to organize my thoughts and publish a comprehensive review, but I keep having other things to do. So...
Let's roll through this as we'd see things in game. First up: Character creation. I'm sure this seemed like a good idea, and maybe there is something to it. But you've also made it straight forward in that we are playing Billy, not ourselves. That makes character creation feel weird to me. Like choosing stats for Master Chief in Halo weird. I'm also at a loss to evaluate the RPG system we're using in the game. I guess servicable, but really shallow.
Enter the main gameplay loop. Go places, talk to people, do things. Time passes. The first important thing to do: Get your grades up, dumbass. No problem, I guess I'll go to school and pay attention in class. Horrible idea. Unless the point was to have this take a while and make sure that we don't graduate in our first summertime. Once you realize that studying and getting tutored are much better than attending class the player is fine, but I can't help but feel like this just doesn't flow well.
With task one accomplished we get a few new to-do items. We'll likely get a job at some point to earn money, because swiping it from the girls results in a metric crap ton of busy work keeping their trust/favor high. We'll talk about that / a little later on. With some money on hand, we need to get some Initiative Influence together so that we have the right to obtain the second power that we can now afford. The influence system could probably also stand to be looked at.
And while that is happening we also need to get the Justice League together. Wow. The story part of this story driven game is really trying hard not to go anywhere. I'm sure no one likes to be railroaded into things, but dropping the player into the middle of the ocean without so much as a floatie is a bit of an over-correction. This is another moment where once the path is found it's not actually difficult, but the path has no real road signs and mostly lets you wander around blind.
Now that the JL is together we get to do missions. The missions come at us randomly, so we suddenly need to be competent at everything. Or use some foreknowledge to choose the right member to mitigate the rolls. What is with the skill checks? Am I just that unlucky? I'm still zoning out in classes even with 5 skill, 5 attribute. At least a third of the time. The rolls I think I'll fail, I make. The rolls I expect to make, I fail. More wasted time repeating tasks.
Finally something interesting happens with the Pixie. Except that I get completely dominated, no pun intended, despite being an absolute monster stat wise. Like maxed out skills, attributes, and all the powers because I kept botching missions for the JL so I had plenty of time to acquire them all. This superhero thing is going to be a hard gig, no pun intended, if this is how poorly I perform when it counts. Get your mind out of the gutter!
And that pretty much takes us through what we have. You get rewarded with graduation, but that's not only behind the story event, it's also time-locked to a specific date. And once Pixie is taken care of, nothing else really happens except we spin our wheels waiting to graduate. Yes, I glossed over all the boobs. And the reprogramming of the entire school into a den of depravity. Because it doesn't actually make Billy more powerful or give him more tools. And if it isn't helping Billy overcome challenges, then it's just there to waste the player's time. If it were a reward for advancing the story, or more integral to the story we have, I'd have more to say about it. Right now it feels more like an awkward commentary on how chasing tail just wastes time.
And I guess now is a good time to address the / from long ago. Using multiple words to refer to a stat becomes confusing to the player. Probably even more so to non-native speakers. Pick a name for the stat and
always refer to it that way.
