I can't really give this a star rating, but it was kind of my entire childhood. Like, I had a genuine addiction to this game. Every second I was allowed on the computer I was on Habbo.

I can't pinpoint how old I was when I started playing - my older niece let me take over her account, so it says it was made in 2006, but I was probably around 8 or 9 when I started playing which would be 2008-2009ish. The way Habbo felt back then is indescribable. It was small, cozy, pre-UK/US hotel merge so everyone kind of knew everyone when it came to the active players. I'd go into a public room and have people saying hi to me because they recognised me from the forums. It was genuinely such a warm and friendly and welcoming atmosphere.

It kind of started going downhill after the merge, but it took a while. I remember people protesting the merge because we didn't want the stinky Americans in the same hotel as us, and that shit was absolutely reciprocated - I remember going into a room and having two Americans ask me which country I was from, and when I said the UK they banned me. Shit was real back then. With the additions of VIP club on top of Habbo Club, the change in the interface and font/text bubbles, the updates, it all grew more shallow and corporate over the years, and it lost that homely feeling it had.

I've tried to go back to it a few times, but it's a completely different website now. Impossible to navigate, completely dead and inactive, features closed off behind paywalls. It's a shame, because I'd love to re-experience classic Habbo again with an active userbase.

But still, I was there for "the pool is closed", I was there for "bacon hair", I was there for Cozzie Change and Falling Furni, I was there for the casinos filled with thrones and dragons, I was there for the structured careers, I was there for the introduction of pets(!), I was there for the forum games and "Rags to Riches" stories and parkour mazes.

It'll always be special to me, even if I can never recapture it.

Oh, and this game taught me what "cum" was, because I tried to say "cum here" as a kid and it censored me so I looked it up. Classic.

GRAPHICS: Good quality by visual novel standards. The CG quality can vary slightly but never dips into anything less than good, and there are some genuinely beautiful moments (revenants dissolving into petals comes to mind).
CHARACTERS: There's a good variety of options here, and almost every character has some sort of backstory reveal or twist that connects them to the broader plot, which I really enjoyed. I went into it assuming that Isora would be my favourite, but I was actually pleasantly surprised by how much I loved all of the major characters -- Toa isn't far behind Isora, I loved Yua, and even Hino's route, a pretty typical 'childhood best friends to lovers' dynamic that usually struggles to hook me as much, was super endearing.
DIALOGUE: Well-written and engaging - I didn't notice any typos or errors in the translation that I can recall.
PLOT: This was genuinely very good. It felt like every time I thought the twists were over with and I knew everything, some other big and well-done revelation occurred. I went into it vaguely suspecting certain things (namely who the harmless revenant was), and I figured others out immediately (A-TO's identity), but there was so much here that sincerely surprised me in the best way. It all came together pretty well, and most of it felt well-earned and cleverly hinted at rather than out of the blue.
GAMEPLAY: It's a visual novel, so not much here. Read the text, click along, make occasional decisions that alter the route you're on and the ending you get.
MULTIPLAYER: N/A.

Favourite Male Character: Isora
Favourite Female Character: Yua
First Character I Liked: Isora
Favourite Character Design: A-TO
Favourite Scene: [Redacted] dissolving after the A-TO concert in one ending
Least Favourite Character: Yasu

Someone else's review said "Words are sometimes not enough to describe something" and frankly I concur.

This game was rough. I like to push my limits a little with visual novels sometimes, so I saw everyone talking about how fucked up this one gets and figured I'd give it a shot. I got all the endings, and one of them was so genuinely depressing and bleak that I immediately rushed through every other outcome so I could palate cleanse my brain and forget about that one. It's been a few years since I played it, and so normally I'd replay it again to refresh my memory before reviewing, but I can't bring myself to get through this one again - it's definitely a 'play it once and then put it down forever' kind of experience.

There were some scenes I had to physically look away from and just mash skip until it was over (I'm thinking specifically of one moment where one of them has to hammer a nail through the other one's hand), and I was so incredibly not a fan of the enema scene, but at least there's a handy 'no visuals please' button for that one.

I found the psychological elements of this one really interesting, the question of whether physical trauma vs. psychological trauma is worse and which one you'd choose to go through if given the option (though I do think it would have been more engaging to get to make those decisions yourself). You can get some pretty varied endings, and I found it interesting to see how earlier scenes and the dynamic between the two main characters changes subtly depending on the 'route' you're on.

I don't think I can put a star rating on this one. I kind of like it, I kind of hate it, I still think about it often, I never want to play it again.

Can't quite rate it higher purely because of how short it is without much replay value, but this is a fun one with friends. The more people you're playing with, the more chaos and shouting will ensue. I'm a very laid-back and non-competitive gamer, so it's always funny to watch my friends have absolute meltdowns over this while I peacefully observe.

The problem with it is that once you've gotten through the game once (which will take you less than 2 hours, possibly even closer to 1), there's not much left. I think this game could've REALLY benefitted from Workshop integration and player-made levels, I was pretty surprised to discover that wasn't a thing. You get some element of freshness when you find completely different friends to go through it with, but you'll always know the solutions and it's just not as fun once you do.

Still, it's only $5, so I won't argue it's not worth it.

GRAPHICS: They're fine. It was a low-budget 2014 video game, so it's nothing mind-blowing, but they're not bad at all IMO. I actually really like how the animatronics look; they give off a fitting air of being aged and a little gross, and their texture is good.
CHARACTERS: Seeing as the lore hasn't quite kicked in in this game yet, the characters are pretty much a non-entity aside from the handful of animatronics coming to get you, and they don't really have personalities to speak of. Not much to say here.
GAMEPLAY: I personally find the gameplay of FNAF 1 pretty tedious and repetitive, but that's probably down to the fact that I don't personally find it scary -- I'm more a fan of this series for the lore and connections between games than I am the gameplay loop itself. It's a decent challenge to keep everything out without running out of power if you like that sort of thing.
MULTIPLAYER: None.

Not much use in my usual style of review here since it's no longer playable, so to sum it up:

It was pretty fun to dip into every now and then and play with friends. I would get burnt out after a couple hours of playing so I could never do it more intensively, but I enjoyed it casually. It sucks that it's no longer playable and I frankly can't comprehend the decision to do the 'sequel' this way at all, but so it goes I guess. Lucio was great, graphics were sleek, the diversity in character ethnicities etc. was refreshing, and I liked the medal system post-game.

Was getting sick of the fact that most of the Overwatch women had the same fuckin' face by the end of it though. How the same company that can come up with both Roadhog and Torbjorn can't break out of their copy-pasted skinny hourglass girls I have no clue.

Favourite Male Character: Lucio
Favourite Female Character: Symmetra, Pharah
First Character I Liked: Mercy
Favourite OST: Numbani
Favourite Character Design: Symmetra
Favourite Scene: N/A
Least Favourite Character: None

Before you all fall prey to consecutive heart attacks, this is getting a high rating for this singular episode completely in isolation. I thought it had potential, had some interesting elements (Huggy Wuggy leaving blood behind on the pipe comes to mind), the vent chase genuinely had me on the edge of my seat, and the glimpses of HW after he first moves but before said chase were pretty delightfully spooky.

That said, it's all downhill from there. The shitty developers, the NFTs, the dishonest prices, the downtick in quality in Episode 2, the seeming abandonment of continuing the game, the blatant merchandise begging, the scamming children, the controversy behind the scenes, the fact it's pretty much just Bendy but in brighter colours... Episode 1 was a blip of curiosity in a sea of what would turn out to be complete sludge.

It's alright for what it is. It's too short and fast-moving for you to develop any kind of emotional investment or connection with the characters, but it does have some interesting ideas - the game revolving around a location rather than a character, each story tying into one another in some way, the potential callbacks to Season 1 (such as the possibility of running into Carley or Doug's body in Russell's story), the glimpse at different points in the post-apocalyptic timeline including the very first moments of the breakout, etc.

However, I'd go as far as to say the DLC was sold on false pretenses - I recall TellTale promoting it by claiming your choices would heavily impact Season 2, and that the characters' stories would serve as prologues to pivotal people in the sequel. This is really only true for a single character (who happened to be my least favourite), and even then the effects are utterly irrelevant. The rest pop up for a second each in one episode of Season 2, if they're lucky they get a throwaway line of useless dialogue for the sake of it, and then they disappear forever.

It does have some neat protagonists, though, and it does pretty well at making each story feel unique and distinct in tone and concept. My personal favourites to play through were probably Vince's and Russell's, though Wyatt's dynamic with Eddie really brought his up.

It's 100% skippable without missing anything, but if you have the Definitive Edition and it's included anyway, it's worth giving it a shot for the sake of it.

Favourite Male Character: Vince
Favourite Female Character: Stephanie
First Character I Liked: Vince
Favourite Character Design: Vince
Favourite Moment: I thought the shootout with Russell and Nate vs. the diner inhabitants was pretty fun
Least Favourite Character: Bonnie

Considering I've always preferred fantasy to sci-fi and real-time combat to turn-based, you'd think I'd be a Genshin person more than a Star Rail person, but now that I've played this going back to Genshin means I'm spending my entire time thinking Man, I wish this was more like Star Rail.

The QoL improvements are genuinely and massively appreciated - off the top of my head, the dailies are so much faster to get through and have actual mini storylines rather than just "Go here and kill 10 hilichurls", you got more Trailblaze Power right off the bat than you ever did Resin (AND this just recently updated to be even more and to give you a reserve amount so you don't have to deplete it daily), you get far more free currency for events and missions (going back to Genshin makes this discrepancy very obvious, I'm usually pulling teeth to get 20 primogems at the end of a longass questline vs. Star Rail where I'm getting 60 jades for every part of one), grinding is so much easier because you can get exactly the material you need from everywhere whenever you want unlike Genshin's "this domain is only open on Wednesdays and you might get some random other item instead" shtick, the pity is much more generous and the Standard banner lets you manually choose a character you want after a certain number of pulls, etc.

On top of that, you can absolutely play this completely free with the characters you get from the beginning. The characters you get for free just from the early storyline are the Trailblazer (Physical damage, later optional Fire support/shield), March (Ice shield), Dan Heng (Wind DPS), Natasha (Physical healer), Asta (Fire buff support), Qingque (Quantum damage), Yukong (Imaginary damage/support), Serval (Electric damage), and Herta (Ice damage). On top of that, so far off the top of my head events have freely given you Sushang (Physical damage) as well as additional instances of Yukong and Qingque.

I've been playing for several months now, and Trailblazer and March are still absolutely mainstays in my team and very rarely leave it. They've carried me through most fights. Asta is also my go-to Fire element despite me having pulled several others by now, and Dan Heng was always in my team until recently too. I still use Yukong pretty regularly. You can absolutely build a core team of purely F2P characters and get through the current storyline just fine.

I personally don't play daily anymore, I don't feel pressured to grind for currencies unless there's a specific upcoming character I want to pull for, and I don't feel a need to grind for levelling/ascension resources unless I have a particular goal in mind for a character which only takes a few days to complete, if that. This helps me avoid burnout so I'd recommend doing the same if you're prone to that.

I'd agree with other people who say the Jarilo VI/Belobog storyline is more engaging than the Xianxhou one so far - when I was playing through Belobog I found myself actively and constantly wanting to play to progress the story, while with Xianxhou I'm enjoying it but I can easily go weeks without feeling the urge to continue - but I still like the writing and the storyline so far.

The characters are varied and pretty engaging, and the game still being relatively new means it hasn't yet fallen into the Genshin trap of a ton of the new characters looking the same as pre-existing ones because they're just recycling the same generic cute girl designs. My personal favourite characters so far are Sampo and his hilarious mischief (and I really hope some of the theories about him are right because that'd be fascinating), Gepard and his sense of duty, Welt and his witty intelligence, Blade and his mental struggle, and Luocha and the mysteries he got goin' on. I actually also really enjoy the main character, Caelus/Stelle - both their design and colour scheme, and their personality. They're not a silent protagonist like Genshin's Aether/Lumine, and I love that - they have some genuinely hilarious dialogue and moments.

I honestly look forward to seeing where this story is going.

Shoutout to the music, too - the Belobog final boss fight theme is now on repeat in the Astral Express.

Favourite Male Character: Blade, Sampo, Welt, Gepard
Favourite Female Character: March 7th
First Character I Liked: Dan Heng
Favourite Character Design: Tingyun
Favourite OST: Wildfire, Take the Journey
Favourite Scene: Trailblazer running up the statue to confront Cocolia with everyone contributing with individual skills/weapons
Least Favourite Character: Of the playable characters, I find Yanqing pretty bland and Hook grating (though I don't outright dislike either of them)