This review contains spoilers
I played this game all the way through together with a friend, and I was immediately interested because of how extremely bleak the scenario depicted here is. I am a huge fan of so-called "Feel Bad" media. Things that only focus on one thing, and one thing only, which is to make you feel as bad as possible. Good examples are LISA: The Painful (in my opinion), movies like Lilja 4-ever and Requiem for a Dream, and music like Swans' "Public Castration is a Good Idea". So for that reason I wanted to continue, because I wanted to feel this classic feel-bad sort of catharsis that I usually experience from the best of these films or games. And when I had played through the entire thing, I thought it was good, but not as good as I had expected. So I ended up giving it a 7.
That was before I experienced the two other endings. These two completely change everything to be completely honest. I never thought a piece of media would be able to make me feel such horror and joy combined at the same time. If I were to describe the story in one expression, it would be "horrifying beauty". This is probably the first review I have done that warrants a spoiler warning, so from now there be spoilers. I loved the final ending especially, the one where Fuminori and Saya win, because what that ending symbolized to me was the fact that despite the lovecraftian concept of a creature (Saya) whose entire purpose is to hijack the main species of a planet to essentially rule it, what the ending actually shows is that love trumps everything. Now, the planet did end up hijacked anyways, because this is Saya no Uta, and a completely happy ending would be sort of out of place, but Saya did that out of love for Fuminori, not because of her biological urges. She did it as a final gift to him, a way to slowly make the world feel beautiful and normal again. But at the same time, it is absolutely horrifying, because what this ending means is that the entire rest of the world's population will feel a similar agony to what Yoh experienced when she was converted by Saya. But it was this duality that made the ending feel so complete to me, probably leaning more to the beautiful side. Because Saya no Uta tells us that the world is a highly subjective place, where your world view can change everything. To someone who wants to eat something quickly, McDonald's may seem like a nice place to go, but to someone else, supporting McDonald's is to exploit people who are being worked to the bone there. That discussion is an insanely complex one that can be boiled down to a difference of opinion in my opinion. Saya no Uta takes a very extreme approach to this, but shows through this that no matter what world view you have, you can find joy and happiness, even if it happens on top of the suffering of someone else. Not really a message that one should take to heart in that extreme of a way in my opinion, but it's an interesting and beautiful thought that this game presents.
That was before I experienced the two other endings. These two completely change everything to be completely honest. I never thought a piece of media would be able to make me feel such horror and joy combined at the same time. If I were to describe the story in one expression, it would be "horrifying beauty". This is probably the first review I have done that warrants a spoiler warning, so from now there be spoilers. I loved the final ending especially, the one where Fuminori and Saya win, because what that ending symbolized to me was the fact that despite the lovecraftian concept of a creature (Saya) whose entire purpose is to hijack the main species of a planet to essentially rule it, what the ending actually shows is that love trumps everything. Now, the planet did end up hijacked anyways, because this is Saya no Uta, and a completely happy ending would be sort of out of place, but Saya did that out of love for Fuminori, not because of her biological urges. She did it as a final gift to him, a way to slowly make the world feel beautiful and normal again. But at the same time, it is absolutely horrifying, because what this ending means is that the entire rest of the world's population will feel a similar agony to what Yoh experienced when she was converted by Saya. But it was this duality that made the ending feel so complete to me, probably leaning more to the beautiful side. Because Saya no Uta tells us that the world is a highly subjective place, where your world view can change everything. To someone who wants to eat something quickly, McDonald's may seem like a nice place to go, but to someone else, supporting McDonald's is to exploit people who are being worked to the bone there. That discussion is an insanely complex one that can be boiled down to a difference of opinion in my opinion. Saya no Uta takes a very extreme approach to this, but shows through this that no matter what world view you have, you can find joy and happiness, even if it happens on top of the suffering of someone else. Not really a message that one should take to heart in that extreme of a way in my opinion, but it's an interesting and beautiful thought that this game presents.