Whatever your first impression is, that the art is gorgeous, that the subject matter is alarming, or that the story is not as grandiose as other AliceSoft games I highly recommend giving Dohna Dohna an honest chance. It had had many surprisingly thoughtful moments, and I have the sense that the authors cared about what they were writing.

The cyberpunk elements are light, but the theme addresses certain niches within the genre (eg. the commodification of human life) in a stand-out way. What most holds it back is that due to a strained development history, certain plot threads weren't fully developed. But this is a character driven game over a plot driven game, and the character writing is still top notch.

Also, the localization is amazing. I've talked to Shiravune's loc producer, and he has such a deep understanding of this work and made some perfect choices. It's extremely faithful and preserves meaning of subtle details.

The game gets better with each playthrough, you'll notice more and more small things that foreshadow or call back to certain developments, and things take on new meaning. It's pretty meticulous and I constantly notice new character details!

It's one of the most polished eroge ever, in the UI, the gameplay flow, and overall design. On a first playthrough, the difficulty is just right IMO. The music is full of bangers in a variety of EDM genres. It's relaxing (despite being emotionally challenging at times) and a great 'white noise' game.

Those coming for a fun cyberpunk-lite rebel romp with vanilla H will find it, but those coming for something darker will also find it, and a player is free to choose to what degree they engage with that content. NSFW can also be turned off if you want, but...

I'd recommend a playthrough where you don't raise any heroine's feeling level at all until first getting their bad ends in the second half. It changes their Feeling events in such a way that shows its true morally salient character as a game about this type of violence. Some of it is surprisingly gentle and left me speechless. Even though these scenes are difficult to access, I encourage people to read them before making final judgments.

Violent scenes in this game are usually written from the perspective of the victim and focus on their emotional experiences, which is probably the most important thing to keep in mind. Some things, for example, an instance where a character was written as basically dissociating, and an abuser was written in a realistic way, gave me pause. Characters struggle with a lot of authentic PTSD related emotions that I was personally able to recognize, and they are told compassionate and healing things.

FWIW, the moral argument is not that 'its not that bad because there are worse people doing worse things', and certainly not that 'SV is okay.' instead, it presents a cycle of violence and raises questions about the factors which perpetuate it and why someone would be capable of such a thing. The one clear thing it does is condemn abuse, but it leaves the reader to ponder it's events and the meaning of them

They aren't ALL perfect, and it IS ero... but genuine effort was made (that didn't have to be), and I really appreciated it. In fiction, a reader can explore their emotions about these topics in a safe and controlled way to ask themselves tough questions. Stories are one way obfuscated issues like abuse can be brought to light. The medium does not effect the value of that message, and I also think that a whole work can be both serious and enjoyable, and that the two are not mutually exclusive.

The explicit scenes highlight the discrepancy between the abusers selfish, lustful acts of domination and degradation and the victims experience of extreme trauma, the lack of empathy that makes something healthy, safe, loving rather than violent. These scenes are contrasted pretty expressly with the consensual scenes.

The heroines own trauma usually directly calls into question the type of abuse their clan is involved in through Kuma, and he tries to show them compassion while at the same time ruining the lives of others, and its a compelling point of conflict.

Both sides of the game work together perfectly when all of the content is experienced, so don't skip it! It's my favorite work of fiction ever, it genuinely suprised me, and i will never forget it.

If you're interested in what I touched on, I wrote this essay that elaborates on it:
https://fuwanovel.net/2023/08/why-dohna-dohna-matters/

Look, maybe this will make me come off as someone who can't take a joke or is taking this too seriously, but people talking about Ben Esposito's writing in Neon White reminded me of this game so I'm just going to say my piece.

I find it absurd that Arcane Kids pride themselves in being this super transgressive, subversive, "fuck you and everyone else" type group, and yet what they come up with here are jokes that Newgrounds cartoons and gamer webcomics have been making since the 2000's. Like, this is the target that needs to finally be taken down a peg, Sonic fans? Why does Bubsy Visits the James Turrell Retrospective feel more understanding of what Bubsy is than this feels understanding of what Sonic is? To be fair, the game does add a layer of surreal-ness and intentional discomfort to these jokes through it's interactivity and presentation, and that does make it a notch above like, Arin Hanson yelling at Big the Cat or whatever. But these jokes are just so immediately tired in my opinion, it's like making a game centered around Chuck Norris. And also, this complaint may sound silly to some, but like I said earlier, I never feel any actual care towards the Sonic series in this game. Bubsy 3D certainly was mean-spirited in a way, but this game just feels spiteful the whole time, and again, not in ways that are all that original.

The Arcane Kids manifesto insists to some extent to not take anything they do that seriously, and their games do feel like they mock the idea of trying to do so. So in that sense, I might be totally in the wrong for making these complaints. Maybe I'm even the exact kind of sucker they're making fun of. But just because a work of art markets itself as transgressive doesn't mean it can't also just be bad. Those t-shirts of Sonic smoking weed and it says "Chronic the Hemphog" on it offer more incisive commentary than this.

Like a lot of people, I really loved the first two Paper Mario games, and didn't care for the rest.

FINALLY, I can stop saying the first two were the only good ones.

I really enjoyed The Origami King! I loved that the combat became puzzles instead of grinding. I thought that losing Exp was going to be an issue, but after this, I wouldn't want them to go back to how it used to be. In terms of gameplay mechanics, this is my favorite Paper Mario game.

The downside of TOK is that the characters and world still don't quite hit those early highs. Olivia is without doubt my favorite character in the franchise, but I do still miss the variety of The Thousand-Year Door. The handful of partners are nice here, but with the exception of Olivia, they're very temporary. The levels/areas are great here too, but TTYD's shadow looms large in this respect as well. The same goes for bosses. The craft supplies angle is fun, but I'm not going to look back fondly on a boss fight against a tray of colored pencils.

The game is absolutely hilarious, and the writing is the best in the series. You can tell a game's dialogue is stellar when you don't find yourself skipping through it. Instead of mashing A, I was making sure I didn't miss a single word of it. The localization team really outdid themselves here!

All in all, I'd say this is a huge step in the right direction for the series, but that recent interview about the team not being allowed to make new variations on characters completely boggles my mind. If they could get the variety of Toads and Koopas from TTYD and the gameplay of TOK, that would be my dream Paper Mario game.

It took me about 35 hours to 100% Paper Mario: The Origami King, and I felt it was just the right length. If anything, I would say it felt a bit brief, but that's better than dragging on too long.