Sidenote: this is my 500th review what the hell

This was a lot better than the first one. The visuals are fantastic. This game looks incredible and even the few animated scenes are great. Such awesome twisted and surreal visuals, really carried the game for me. The main character is also incredibly cute, and all of her expressions combined with the surprisingly good and funny writing come together to make a really likeable character. The music/sound design is also great. Unfortunately, I dont think I could give this game higher than a 4/5 simply because I didnt get it. None of the endings clear anything up and outside of mental health issues, I really couldn't tell you what the game is trying to say. I dont really like open endings and this game kinda feels like its the "story is what you make of it" type deal, but that just doesnt do anything for me. Thankfully the dialogue and presentation is just so strong, and even if the endings arent very clear they can range from interesting to seriously quite unnerving. While I feel like the game could of conveyed its message better, it was a great time overall

Achievement Completion - 100%
Time Played - 3 hours 18 minutes
Nancymeter - 81/100
Game Completion #42 of 2022
April Completion #11

5 FUCKING YEARS WHERE THE FUCK IS SAIN FIRE EMBLEM YOU FRAUDSSSSS

Edit: Greatest game of all time I'm afraid.......

Edit 2: THEY FUCKING ADDED MARK FIRE EMBLEM THIS GAME IS SO BALLSY ITS PEAKKKK

“As we go about our lives, we touch people, we see people, and interact with them; and in doing so we feel many things. Sometimes we make others happy, sometimes we hurt them, we sympathize, and we disagree. In the midst of this, we learn that people’s thoughts and feelings are not a one-way street.” - Kazuki Takahashi, creator of Yu-Gi-Oh!

I’ll be upfront, writing a review for this game is one of the hardest things I’ve ever attempted to do as a writer. Writing about this game has left me stuck in a place where I don’t know how well I can properly express it. Originally, I was planning on doing a massive overview of every aspect that the game had to offer. I wanted to go over its art direction, the character designs, the fantastic soundtrack, its unique and innovative gameplay systems, and its masterful storytelling and character work. In fact, I have multiple google docs of my attempt to do that, and I’m still really proud of what I wrote there. The point of the matter is that I wanted to do something that could do my favorite game of all time justice, something that would put everything else I’ve written on this site to shame. But once the time came to get down everything I could about the story, words… failed me. This isn’t the first time I’ve run into this issue, I’ve tried to write a massive review of Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony, another game I hold incredibly close to my heart, and the sheer scope of that was something that collapsed on me. But this felt different, what I was trying to write just felt off about it. It’s only now that it feels like I realized what was truly going wrong with my writing for this game. It didn’t feel like I was writing to express my passion for the game like I wanted to, it felt like I was writing to prove myself. To prove that I can keep up with friends around me that were able to write longform pieces just as well as, if not better than me. To prove that the game had so many masterful elements to it, and that people around me who were tearing it down or underwhelmed more than I expected were missing what made it truly special. That line of thinking sort of put me in a rut of writing in general, which just piled on a number of things going on in my life that were putting me in a really rough spot emotionally. After seeing a couple of conversations of people having similar struggles writing about their favorite games, it helped me realize that I wasn’t really seeing what I should’ve been doing, just writing about what the game really means to me.

In a way, exploring this game set me on my own emotional journey, sort of like everyone else running through those weeks in Shibuya, enduring things that would encourage them to close themselves off, doubt themselves, do what comes naturally. In that sense, more than anything else I could write about in some 10+ page paper, the most important thing I can say about my relationship with TWEWY is that I can see a piece of myself in all of the main characters. In Shiki, I can see my struggles with constantly comparing myself to my peers and a lack of faith in who I really am. In Beat, I can see some of my own self-destructive tendencies and my own failure of being someone those closest to me can look up to. Even in Joshua, I can see how I allow myself to justify and feed into some intrusive thoughts and flawed outlooks I have in life. Trying to analyze everyone in this is like staring into shards of a mirror with a reflection that stares more deeply back at me as I put the pieces together. And at the center of it, the piece that shows the clearest reflection of me… is Neku.

On the surface, Neku is… a total dick. He’s pretty rude, closes himself off from everyone, and looks down upon the very idea of opening up. I think a lot of people interpret this at the surface level, as him being an asshole who goes through an arc of not being an asshole. However, that’s not the Neku I really see, and especially not the part I see in myself. Beyond his intense snark and attitude, I don’t see someone who’s disgusted by the idea of becoming friends and getting close to people, I see someone who’s scared of opening up to others and the risks that entails. Putting yourself out there is a pretty scary prospect, it makes you more vulnerable to people who don’t have that kind of respect for you, who want to use you for their own gain, or potentially leaving you empty if they’re gone. What he says to Shiki after the climax of day 4 doesn’t feel like him trying to make a “gotcha!” moment out of a tragic situation, he’s letting out a good chunk of his insecurities in the only way he really knows how. I wouldn’t say I’ve struggled with that quite to the degree that Neku seems to, but it’s an aspect I pretty deeply resonate with.

From the way I’ve been writing about this so far, you might think that the main piece that makes it connect with me is that they go through a lot of the same struggles that I do. While that’s definitely a part of it, what I think makes it truly special is seeing the light that enters their lives as they do take the chance to open up and put themselves out there. When Neku notices that something’s up with Shiki and allows her to open up about everything she’s been holding in, it really hits him. It gives him the revelation that all of this fear and anxiety he keeps bottled up, it’s something that all sorts of people go through. Experiencing that kind of realization for himself is the big thing that really sets him on this path of growth, that makes him really learn to care about everyone around him, despite a prevalent week 2 character’s efforts to drive him back into his old mindset. Seeing him break out of his hardened shell and connect with others, most notably with how he applies what he learned when talking to Beat, it’s… beautiful. It’s beautiful to see how much he’s grown through his interactions with others, especially with how human everyone in this game feels. Even games I’ve played before and after that try similar things don’t strike that chord with me quite as much because of how real TWEWY’s interactions feel.

I frequently wonder if I would ever really be in the same place that I am now without the people closest to me, especially those I’ve met online that have made me really come to understand some of my values and introduced me to wonderful experiences that I’ll treasure forever. I feel like the brightest parts of my current life come from how I was able to put myself out there and form connections and couldn’t have otherwise. If seeing those pieces of myself running around in that city for those few weeks showed me anything, it’s that people aren’t as simple as what you see on the surface, and the way to look beyond that is to expand your world.