I just finished both the normal and bad endings of this game, and despite my completionist instincts, I have no intention on trying to get the true ending.
I really, really wanted to like this game: the soundtrack was good, I found the characters interesting, and the way the environment changed slowly over time was cool. I also liked the way information/backstory was revealed (though I was often frustrated when Kyle wasn't picking up on clues nearly as fast as I was ;p).
Being able to save pretty much everywhere was a godsend, I don't get why more games don't let you do this. It means I can play for as long (or short) as I want/am able, I have a better shot of remembering what I was doing should I quit and come back later, and if I
can't save somewhere (like a few scenes in this game) it's extra spooky!
So, why I wasn't a fan of the game...
Gameplay
First,
the pacing. I like slow builds when they help ramp up the tension and you never know what's going to happen next or if something is going to be deadly (the answer is usually yes). The first half of this game is s l o w though. I get what the intent was, to set up a routine that can later be disrupted, but it dragged on far too long to hold my interest.
Without getting too spoilery, the first half of the game is composed of 3 "cycles", each one meant to be more horror-y than the last. The first one is pretty standard dating sim stuff, then the second one things start taking a turn for the worse, and by the third one it's pretty clear that something is deeply wrong.
For me, the problem was what felt like Act 1 of the game was taking way too long. This is a horror game, the majority of it should be horror. I don't feel like doing three hours of dull fetch quests that don't really add anything to the story in the same environments when I know there's murder and demons right around the corner.
Even the title cards took forever to load in and out. They're lovely to look at, but when I've seen "Day X, insert-time-here" for the 10th time, waiting a good 10-15 seconds to get back to the game is frustrating. Same with game over screens. There are quite a few ways to die, please don't punish me further by forcing me to wait a full minute to load the game again, especially if I have to backtrack to get where I was.
A feature like the option to skip the post-death hints in the second half would have been nice for all the title cards/game over screens. Saves me and other impatient players a lot of quitting/reloading the game.
The other issue was
a lack of clarity when it came to exploration. As the player, you're given many opportunities to explore the environment multiple times in an in-game day. As far as I can tell though, the majority of that exploration leads to nothing of interest. I'm not inclined to travel the whole map, triple-checking every interact-able object 9 or so times per cycle. I'm certain I missed some things because I got sick of running around and finding nothing.
You should only let the player run around looking for something if there's something to find. Please don't let me waste half an hour checking every locker and talking to every person on the first three days only to miss something important later because I finally said "screw this" and stopped looking.
It kind of ties in to the earlier mentioned pacing issue - when I know things are moving slowly and I want to get past the inciting action, I'm discouraged from spending too much time in one area/part of the game. I think reducing the amount of times you have to roleplay the boring parts of school would be beneficial (eg. after talking with Randy in the mornings, just skip to lunch, then to the end of the day, letting the player explore primarily after school. Some sort of way to guide them to roughly where they'll find the Story Stuff would be good too, though I admit I'm not sure how one would integrate that smoothly).
That being said, things go much better in the second half of the game. The puzzles were tricky at times, but solvable, and boy howdy did I feel smart when I figured some of them out. I got stuck a couple of times, primarily because I had missed a change in the environment, but that's my visual impairment's fault, not the developer's. ;) I love sequential puzzles like this game had because it makes it much easier to tell when you've missed something.
Story
This game is story driven, meaning that the characters, plot, and overarching themes/messages are very important when evaluating its quality.
From the perspective of narrative pacing, other than the gruelling beginning, things go well. The environment holds a lot of little details that help enrich the story, and the direct link between solving puzzles and learning more backstory was very good at encouraging me to keep playing despite my frustrations.
The characters are interesting, if a bit simple in some ways, but you're able to sympathize with almost all of them and their motives follow a mostly understandable logic.
Brooke and Dolores' aunt can burn in hell though, no patience for that kind of nonsense.
Kyle was sometimes a bit... dense, but it didn't impact gameplay so I don't particularly care. It was an endearing annoyance, in a way.
That being said, there's something I felt really important to address. Spoilers ahead:
Dolores took me by surprise. Not a problem in of itself, and I likely missed some things in the beginning that might have made it clearer that there was another player involved in this story. But I found the way her narrative played out quite insensitive in some regards.
It's clear that Dolores' story is meant to be sympathetic, and it is - but her repeated insistence that Kyle was just as involved as the three girls is laughable and makes her seem completely off the deep end rather than someone who's been badly hurt and is looking for revenge. He wasn't involved beyond the girls choosing to use him as bait for Dolores - he has nothing to atone for beyond ignorance about a peer's struggles.
It's hard to sympathize with someone who's projecting her problems so hard on someone who really doesn't deserve it and makes her seem entitled. No matter your situation, no one has to return your feelings.
I would have found Dolores more compelling as an antagonist if her focus was on the people who actually did hurt her - the girl who asked to copy her homework, the guys who trashed her books, even the people who ignored her in the halls/ran into her and didn't help her up, etc. (And of course Neela, Maggie and Brooke, but the focus was Definitely There for them.) Kyle would then be a witness, and how he/the player responds to what he learns would then affect the ending.
Another thing that bothered me - "Roth" is a Jewish name. Dolores says her family is a) very rich, and b) earned that wealth through a pact with a demon that involves blood sacrifices, particularly of other people. She accuses Kyle of being partly responsible for her death despite him not being involved by any reasonable means. Ancient Hebrew is used alongside Latin as a spooky occult language. Even at the end of the game the magic symbol Kyle is trapped in is a star of David, not a pentagram (though that seems to be an issue with rpgmaker's assets in general, so I'm not faulting you for that part).
These all play into antisemitic (discriminatory/prejudiced towards Jewish people) tropes. The idea that all Jews are wealthy, that their wealth is unearned (the demon pact), and something called blood libel - the idea that Jews sacrifice the blood of others, usually Christian children, as part of a religious ritual to gain power. One could argue that her focus on telling Kyle her story in detail and insisting that she's in the right and that he hurt her is similar to how people make claims that Jews exaggerate or weaponize stories about our oppression to garner sympathy from others.
Just for future reference, please avoid connecting Jewish culture with blood sacrifice, or blood magic of any kind, as well as the other things I mentioned above.
Overall, I found the game interesting, but at many times too frustrating to really immerse myself in properly. However, even within the game itself you see a distinct improvement in flow and pacing, and I don't doubt that the developer has improved since this game should they have kept working on games. It's definitely not the worst game I've played, and I ultimately enjoyed it.
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