Don't you just hate it when a game railroads you into doing a certain thing to progress on it and then proceeds to try to make you feel bad as if you ever had any say on the matter? It's basically what Totono does in its attempt at deconstructing romance VNs, and it didn't click with me at all. Maybe it's aimed at people who self-insert into the protagonists of the VNs they play or something, but as someone who sees himself as merely an observer through the protagonist's point of view, I didn't feel bad for "cheating" on Miyuki with Aoi after promising I'll be faithful to her, because as far as I was concerned, the one who promised to be faithful to her was that route's version of Shinichi, and the one who went with Aoi never made any promises to Miyuki.

Even if I were to examine my actions as the player, all I did was just follow the path the game was setting up for me and then experimenting with the choices in the second playthrough. Should I feel guilty about that? And most importantly, should I feel sympathetic towards fucking Miyuki? Sure, I may have "cheated" on her, but she literally murders Shinichi, Aoi and even the cat who had nothing to do with any of this without any sort of remorse. She also attemps to gaslight me throughout the rest of the game, she manipulates and negatively affects the lives of everyone else for her own benefit, she's plainly a selfish cunt. I assumed Miyuki was the villain of the game much like Monika was in DDLC, but unlike Monika, Miyuki never takes responsibility for her actions, all she does is blame other people for the shit she pulls off and feels like the writers actually agree with that reasoning, even the ending was unsatisfying as hell because Aoi who hasn't really done anything wrong suffers the biggest consequence by disappearing from the game and everyone's memories, while it's heavily implied that Miyuki and Shinichi will get a happy ending together eventually.

What made me curious to check Totono out was the fact that VN weebs kept talking about how it's the "good version" of DDLC, some even accusing DDLC of ripping this off and shit. Obviously that made me create high expectations, since I liked the concept of DDLC but felt it could have been more fleshed out, but I felt especially let down in this case because DDLC arguably does the whole meta twist thing better than Totono by being more immersive with the files, the random glitches and that kind of stuff, it also has a better antagonist character that the game actually treats as such. Totono was probably the most disappointing VN I've played in a while, and while I wouldn't say it's necessarily bad, it has a handful of interesting moments and ideas, but they're misused for the most part.

(This was just really written to gather my thoughts after completing it, so it might be a bit rough but thank you regardless for taking a peek)

Take should take life one step at a time, because if you overthink everything, it'll become impossible to move forward. However that isn't to say you shouldn't give your actions any thought because, of course, your actions hold weight, and that weight will pile up without you realising. That ratio between both of these is something unique to everyone.

To fit in with others may require you to embrace others over your own self, forgoing your thoughts and risking losing yourself. And, to solely embrace one's purpose over others is equivalent to an obsessive loop of minimal thought and only feeling. In both cases life is streamlined when led without a lead. However if a lead were discovered, they must bear the weight.

Unironically shifted the way I viewed the medium. It's effective use of metafiction really surprised me with the story engaging myself more than other games in the genre. It's especially impressive given its original release in 2013 making it a predecessor to the popular modern meta-narrative genre.