Completed Sacha's route. I usually go for the 100%, but I can't make myself replay this one.
Positives:
- Generally wholesome and pleasant art style, aesthetics, and atmosphere.
- The backgrounds are pretty, particularly the apartment interiors. Was a big fan of the home your protagonist has with the fairy lights and the details like their collection of souvenir mugs.
- The variety in dogs is cool, with four to choose from, each of a different breed, personality, boosted stat, and backstory.
Neutral:
- The main focus is on the dog care rather than the romance for sure, so YMMV on whether that's a good or bad thing. I'm personally playing dating sims for the relationships and characters rather than the 'management sim'-esque aspect this has, so it wasn't the way I'd have preferred.
- The humour reminded me of Dream Daddy. Whether that's a plus or minus is subjective. For me, it was a minus; that kind of relentless, in-your-face goofiness that gets overplayed fast and makes it hard to take the game's attempts at heavier subject matter seriously.
Negatives:
- Why. Why. Why. Why isn't there a 'skip read text' button? Not only is that a mainstay feature of visual novels for a reason, I'd go as far as to say it's an essential one. The lack of one is the major reason behind why I'm not continuing with the other routes - I am absolutely not sitting here manually clicking through the entire story over again for the minute-long scenes you get with specific characters every so often.
- Dog events happen way too often. Like, within the span of about twenty seconds, I had to continuously stop progressing the story to comfort my cowering dog, then to pull it back from running away, then to pull it back from digging in the ground, then to pick up its poop. Begging you to let me read the damn dialogue.
- Continuing from the above, the randomised factor of when dog events trigger completely messes with the dating sim/emotional story beat aspect of the game. You'll be having your first kiss with your love interest or discussing their childhood trauma and your dog will be farting and taking shits that you have to stop to pick up. Is it funny to mention when you're not actively having it happen to you? Yes. Does it completely ruin it? Yes.
- Typos and spelling mistakes littered throughout the game; not frequently at all, but I noticed a fair few like "and" instead of "a", "through" instead of "throw", etc.
- When you're texting characters on your phone, the text speed of your replies is agonisingly slow and non-adjustable. With the main dialogue speed being adjustable in the settings menu, I don't know why this wasn't also affected by that toggle; no one wants to sit there and watch responses get typed out at less than one word per second for a whole conversation.
- Randomly tone shifts from cute slice-of-life in a utopia-esque town where everything is perfect to you getting violently robbed and knocked unconscious in the street out of nowhere. Huh? Huh???? Pick a vibe.
- The first scene on the bus leads you to think that the game is fully voice-acted, but as soon as the intro's over it shifts into only random noises and catchphrases being said out loud. They're incredibly repetitive and sometimes out-of-place, so I ended up just turning voice acting off.
Another negative point that is exclusive to Sacha's route is the handling of the trans themes. During his route, you meet his roommate who mentions Sacha's transition in front of you, and then the entire game grinds to a halt to force you to have a discussion about it. It was already obvious to me that Sacha was trans and I didn't really feel the need to question him about what his roommate meant by 'transition', because... I knew what he meant. So when given the dialogue options "Transition?" and something unrelated, I went with the unrelated one to progress the conversation, only for it to loop back around and force me to pick "Transition?" anyway. Sacha then acts shocked because "I thought you knew!" (I did), you ask him if his roommate was allowed to disclose that, and then all three of you sit down to have a PSA meeting about how you should never out someone without their consent but that it was okay for the roommate to do it in this instance because he had pre-received permission and Sacha isn't stealth but that in any other circumstance this would be bad and you should learn from this information. Later, you're also forced to confront Sacha's transphobic family and discuss his gender there too.
Throughout all of this, there is no option to say that you/your character is also transgender, despite the fact that you can choose a gender-nonconforming appearance and use they/them pronouns. You just have to stand there asking what a "transition" is like an idiot and have these characters explain surface-level facts about being trans to you.
I understand why it was put there - as a way to educate cis people - but it was clumsy and ground the whole game to a halt, and when you already know these things, it feels incredibly patronising to have to get 'taught' them by this game, especially with the sort of "You should never ever give away anyone's personal information without their permission!" tone it uses like you're a child at an internet safety lecture.
Positives:
- Generally wholesome and pleasant art style, aesthetics, and atmosphere.
- The backgrounds are pretty, particularly the apartment interiors. Was a big fan of the home your protagonist has with the fairy lights and the details like their collection of souvenir mugs.
- The variety in dogs is cool, with four to choose from, each of a different breed, personality, boosted stat, and backstory.
Neutral:
- The main focus is on the dog care rather than the romance for sure, so YMMV on whether that's a good or bad thing. I'm personally playing dating sims for the relationships and characters rather than the 'management sim'-esque aspect this has, so it wasn't the way I'd have preferred.
- The humour reminded me of Dream Daddy. Whether that's a plus or minus is subjective. For me, it was a minus; that kind of relentless, in-your-face goofiness that gets overplayed fast and makes it hard to take the game's attempts at heavier subject matter seriously.
Negatives:
- Why. Why. Why. Why isn't there a 'skip read text' button? Not only is that a mainstay feature of visual novels for a reason, I'd go as far as to say it's an essential one. The lack of one is the major reason behind why I'm not continuing with the other routes - I am absolutely not sitting here manually clicking through the entire story over again for the minute-long scenes you get with specific characters every so often.
- Dog events happen way too often. Like, within the span of about twenty seconds, I had to continuously stop progressing the story to comfort my cowering dog, then to pull it back from running away, then to pull it back from digging in the ground, then to pick up its poop. Begging you to let me read the damn dialogue.
- Continuing from the above, the randomised factor of when dog events trigger completely messes with the dating sim/emotional story beat aspect of the game. You'll be having your first kiss with your love interest or discussing their childhood trauma and your dog will be farting and taking shits that you have to stop to pick up. Is it funny to mention when you're not actively having it happen to you? Yes. Does it completely ruin it? Yes.
- Typos and spelling mistakes littered throughout the game; not frequently at all, but I noticed a fair few like "and" instead of "a", "through" instead of "throw", etc.
- When you're texting characters on your phone, the text speed of your replies is agonisingly slow and non-adjustable. With the main dialogue speed being adjustable in the settings menu, I don't know why this wasn't also affected by that toggle; no one wants to sit there and watch responses get typed out at less than one word per second for a whole conversation.
- Randomly tone shifts from cute slice-of-life in a utopia-esque town where everything is perfect to you getting violently robbed and knocked unconscious in the street out of nowhere. Huh? Huh???? Pick a vibe.
- The first scene on the bus leads you to think that the game is fully voice-acted, but as soon as the intro's over it shifts into only random noises and catchphrases being said out loud. They're incredibly repetitive and sometimes out-of-place, so I ended up just turning voice acting off.
Another negative point that is exclusive to Sacha's route is the handling of the trans themes. During his route, you meet his roommate who mentions Sacha's transition in front of you, and then the entire game grinds to a halt to force you to have a discussion about it. It was already obvious to me that Sacha was trans and I didn't really feel the need to question him about what his roommate meant by 'transition', because... I knew what he meant. So when given the dialogue options "Transition?" and something unrelated, I went with the unrelated one to progress the conversation, only for it to loop back around and force me to pick "Transition?" anyway. Sacha then acts shocked because "I thought you knew!" (I did), you ask him if his roommate was allowed to disclose that, and then all three of you sit down to have a PSA meeting about how you should never out someone without their consent but that it was okay for the roommate to do it in this instance because he had pre-received permission and Sacha isn't stealth but that in any other circumstance this would be bad and you should learn from this information. Later, you're also forced to confront Sacha's transphobic family and discuss his gender there too.
Throughout all of this, there is no option to say that you/your character is also transgender, despite the fact that you can choose a gender-nonconforming appearance and use they/them pronouns. You just have to stand there asking what a "transition" is like an idiot and have these characters explain surface-level facts about being trans to you.
I understand why it was put there - as a way to educate cis people - but it was clumsy and ground the whole game to a halt, and when you already know these things, it feels incredibly patronising to have to get 'taught' them by this game, especially with the sort of "You should never ever give away anyone's personal information without their permission!" tone it uses like you're a child at an internet safety lecture.
kaeruk
1 month ago