I will be focusing on the technical aspects of the game to remain impartial and fully objective.
This game demo, in terms of concept, is decent. It is a mix between SMT's school life and Hitman's stealth kills.
In terms of mechanics, it is at the bare minimum of what is expected. Line-of-sight, apprehension mechanics, personality differences, etc. It has some plus points here, like some enviromental kills, the club mechanic, etc. Nothing that would blow you out of the water, though.
In terms of optimisation and gameplay, it is obsolescent.
Optimisation:
Without going into too much detail, I have an Intel I7, GeForce GTX 1660 Ti. I have overclocked it with assistance from friends with stable results countless times to optimise it for games such as Witcher 3, Fallout 4, Skyrim, Oblivion and Rust. I have done this in order to support the over 120+ mods I have mostly on Bethesda Games, and I have always managed to reach a fluid 144fps, the limit of my screen's resolution, without issue. My computer would overheat slightly, but otherwise it is stable and within my comfortable means.
This DEMO has reached similar temperatures, and reduced my fps to, AT MOST, 60.
Perhaps it is because of my lack of attention to cooling for my system, but in terms of Optimisation, this game is absolutely obsolete. The fact that this demo suffers from framedrops to the lowest I've ever seen of 20fps when I can run the buggiest of Bethesda games with mods filled to the brim from both Loverslab and Nexus with minimal drop and still staying at 144fps, is unacceptable.
Gameplay:
This is the SOLE reason I put a second star. There is content in this game in the terms of Easter Eggs and gameplay characteristics that warrant enough to be given a second star.
However, and I would like this to be a primary point for gameplay, the gameplay that is relevant to the actual gameplay of removing their rivals is very, very little. And when I mean little, I mean that it is the least entertaining part of the game.
It is bug filled with NPC coding that jerks out of the immersion countless times. The clipping for the NPCs, the assets such as the lockers, they are, at least in my opinion, unsatisfactory for a game with such a long development time.
Summary:
It is an unoptimised, buggy, computer-bricking, uninspired, content-lacking and ultimately suspicious Demo that was in development for six years. The future developments of this game should be held in extreme scrutiny, assuming if there is any.
From this point forward, I will be stating things that would be irrelevant to the technical aspects of the game, but still relevant to the summarised development cycle of this Demo in order to inform others about the context. It will not consist of the developer or of the controversy, but solely on my personal enjoyment of the game.
Non-objective Take:
It is a DEMO for the FIRST RIVAL after SIX YEARS of development, with 7-8 RIVALS PLANNED. The future expectations of this game is suspicious, due to the lack of optimisation despite the massive amount of time developing the game. It is a tremendously disgusting disappointment that I could not bring myself to continue to play after the first 10 minutes.
Two stars is honestly too generous for such a suspiciously underdeveloped Demo that was supposedly in development for 6 f-ing years.