Huge, complex, and bizarre. There’s almost no way to describe this experience adequately, other than to say I know this story will stick with me for a long, long time. Takes the idea of a haunted house and goes absolutely wild with it.

I’m still reeling from the whole thing, honestly. It’s so structured and intentional and deep and broad and bleak and hopeful and strange. Equal parts gorgeous and goofy, sacred, profane, and stupidly mundane, All at once. Somehow.

The illustrations weren’t always to my personal taste, occasionally they even felt at odds with the text (Giselle CGs in particular) but that’s neither here nor there. The story itself is certainly art, well and truly. A slow, meticulous build that eventually grabbed me by the throat and would not let go. Pretty spectacular. Plus the soundtrack is like an alternate universe Dead Can Dance album, and some of the tracks haunted me for DAYS.

The text does occasionally get too long-winded for its own good. A bit of editing to shave down some meandering plot threads and verbal redundancies might have helped with the relentless-feeling read time, especially considering the already spiraling, recursive nature of the story. Furthermore, the translation (or the original text, hard to say) took a lot of liberties with weirdly casual speech for a “period” piece. But honestly, the lack of historical realism isn’t particularly important to the story’s themes, and if anything the inconsistency serves to elevate the sense of surreal displaced weirdness that permeates the entire novel. It doesn’t actually take place in any of those times, after all. So…Ignore everything I just wrote. It’s gonna take me a while to absorb and process this whole journey.

Edit: the prequel/sequel stories were not nearly as good, and ranged from incredibly boring to coffee shop AU, so your mileage may vary on that. I personally didn’t see the point: at worst I felt they cheapened the main story somewhat. My five stars are exclusively for the original game, not all the much weaker fluff they padded this special edition with.

this is a masterpiece. period this is the most beautifully sweet and most heartbreakingly sad visual novel ive ever read in my entire life and a story i will probably think about for decades and decades to come everything in this is crafted wonderfully not a single flaw in character design story music atmosphere writing not a single aspect left undeveloped for an epopee expanding through 3 different ages. i dont usually make heartfelt reviews but this is an incredible experience unlike anything else ive read and probably will ever read. and also i need a refund for the 5kg of tissue paper ive used