I had to get this off my chest. Firstly, I've been a long term fan and player of the game, so it's not that I turned up from hibernation to unload my negativity. I do read the theories and the responses from the devs about the game but 2 years and 19 episodes in an adult VN, there are some glaring issues I couldn't miss.
- Story -- Let's start with the elephant in the room itself, the story. It started with a great yet simple premise of an MC trying to find his footing with his surrogate family, with which sparks that began a while ago start to rekindle with the intensity of a bonfire. Over time, we were introduced to a larger, supporting cast and importantly, a mystery person who may or may not have been seen by a barista as the computer from which the email was sent was in the cafe. While this was interesting when it appeared when the episodes were in single digits, for me at least, it has lost all the suspense to the point that I hardly care. The key of a great suspense plot is to constantly feed the viewer/reader/player into it and all the characters would have a minor plot to play in the big picture. Even till end of Ep19, we're nowhere near to any solid leads but we go from one bombshell in one update to a cluster of them in another, with the main plot getting convoluted.
This is reflected in the dev's delays as the technical backend of so many characters and so many choices leads to a plethora of combinations, that it becomes intractable and infeasible. I believe this was because of lack of vision of what the end should have been for this game. It has got to the point that no matter how you "win", as a player who played 20+ episodes, you won't be satisfied as the devs seem to show a fatigue of plot progression.
- Choices -- Stemming from the point above, too many choices for anyone's liking and as a player, hard to determine the impact of a choice because in my view, the more choices you have per character interaction, the impact of that choice diminishes like a temperature cooling Newton curve. Why not have more choices with OG characters/characters that influence the main plot rather than every random character that pops up every 2-3 update? Wouldn't that make the dev's workload manageable and keep long-lasting players like me happy?
- Considerations -- The above critique may sound harsh but if I remember correctly, Cheeky became a father, there were couple of instances the staff was reduced and Covid hit. These are beyond anyone's realm of control and because the team have kept the lines of communications wide open like a German Autobahn, players like me have been loyal. Even with these considerations, I believe some oversight and end point of a game with multiple endings is the very least loyal players like us deserve. With that I think the team have got their work cut out. I've deliberately avoided mentioning any character names, as I'm sure I'll be pounced on by hardcore character fans for being biased.
I hope acewinz and CheekyGimp take my points in the right spirit and address it to some extent. Looking fwd for Ep20. Cheers!
