There’s a line that stands out to me where Barret refers to the ‘Gilded Saucer’, emphasising how the bright lights and supreme extravagance of the Gold Saucer serve as a distraction, a veneer for the true ugliness of the world and the ugliness and exploitation beneath the surface. This ought to be what the game is about, but it feels more like the whole game experience has become its own gold saucer, each region like another ‘square’ full of amusements and distractions.

I must admit I had a hell of a lot of fun with this game. It kept me playing for weeks, about 150 hours, with plenty more postgame challenges and tedium left over. The game is bloated as hell with filler and busywork, but also packed with fun mini games and delightful combat. Aside from some tweaks like more aggressive AI for party members or range and jumping attacks for everyone, I don’t have any issue with the combat and it kept me coming back for more.

The main story doesn’t match up to that though, so the overall package is frankly disappointing and frustrating. Despite much speculation and hints from the creators at something big and meaningful, it doesn’t follow through. All the narrative weight goes into plot and driving to the next big spectacle, rather than saying something or really focusing on the characters. Characters are sometimes reduced to love interests, magical plot devices and comic relief in their vastly expanded, stretched out journey. So many opportunities to dig into their feelings and connections are wasted in favour of brief feel good moments and affection gauges going up. Sephiroth no longer feels at all unnerving or threatening. Big lore dumps are added in attempt to add history to the game’s world but I find they lack flavour.

When they’re not competing for ‘best girl’ the leads do feel engaging. It’s clear they have their own relationships not just the one they each have with Cloud, so it’s a bit sad not to see more of that, which could’ve been a better use of the side quests and even the various times the party splits up in main story chapters.

The game suggests some great positive influences from other titles like Yakuza series and even western RPGs. It’s also got some bad habits from them too like some annoying cinematic button presses which don’t provide the emotional weight intended.

Having said all that I really appreciate the scale of this game and the effort and love poured into it; it certainly shows more than other recent entries to the franchise. I hope the same level of passion and fun can go into an original story for the next mainline FF or even a separate IP. The final chapter seems divisive but I actually found some intrigue in it. In recent years the multiverse concept has quickly moved en vogue to cliche but there’s actually a few crumbs of excitement for me there. Maybe they can pull it off, maybe we’ll never learn.

Very well made when it comes to presentation and content but this game doesn't respect it's players time. The basic level design is more difficult than doing 100% completion of the entire original trilogy. Completely mean and sadistic level design. The new characters are fun and interesting to play as but it adds insult to injury when after beating their segments of a level you end up repeating the rest of the previous crash level you just struggled with. I refuse to ever 100% this game, the bonus requisites are way too high.

Another entry from my List of the Thirty-Five Best Games I Played in 2023, now available à la carte:

On Chrono Cross (Or — "How I Developed a Palate for Poison")

My grandmother doesn’t live in Vermont anymore. A couple years ago, she and I went back there together and rented a place to relive those days. Naturally, the rental had some similarities to her old place. We drove around, taking in familiar sights, waiting for the rest of the family to join us. I fired up Chrono Cross for the first time one evening, and promptly came down with a case of water poisoning.

If I believed in omens, I’d take that as a bad one. I touched a game about a character who finds himself in an eerie facsimile of home, itself the strange and twisted sequel of a beloved favorite, and it left me hurling into a toilet. The water supply we’d been drawing from was unfit for human consumption. I spent the recovery period with Chrono Trigger and Dragon Quest V on DS, beneath the more familiar ceiling of a family friend’s house. I’d later start writing a non-review about how I didn’t have to play Chrono Cross, eschewing the pretense of being some aspiring member of the Backloggd “videogame intelligentsia.” I don’t need “cred,” right??

Well.

I played Chrono Trigger again in 2023 at least twice, depending on how you define a “playthrough”. The first was because I’d just finished Final Fantasy X and wanted to make some unfair comparisons. The second was because I was three-fourths of the way through Chrono Cross and…wanted to make some unfair comparisons. Even in the thick of it, I was avoiding the inevitable.

So…About the Game

Cross makes every effort possible to be anything but a clean, obedient sequel to its father. And you know what? Good. Trigger’s development was predicated on originality, and should likewise be followed up with another adventurous convention-breaker. The “Chrono Trigger 2” advocated by the likes of Johnny Millennium doesn’t appeal to me; lightning doesn’t strike twice. Still, Cross is Trigger’s opposite even in ways it really shouldn’t be.

With the exception of its original PSX audiovisual presentation, some of the most colorful and lush I’ve ever experienced, just about every one of its ideas is noncommittal and indecisive. Monsters appear on the overworld again, but you won’t find anything as deliberately paced as Trigger’s level design to elevate this from the status of "mild convenience." The conceit of its combat system is worth exploring – characters deal physical damage to build spell charges — but the deluge of party members and fully customizable spell slots amounts to a game that would’ve been impossible to balance. Level-ups are only granted during boss fights, and the gains acquired in normal battles aren’t worth the effort, so the whole thing snaps in half not 50% of the way through. It isn’t measured to account for the fact that you can take down just about everything with an onslaught of physical attacks by the midgame.

Then again, if the combat had been as challenging as the story is bizarre, I don’t know that I would’ve stuck around all the way to the end. Maybe I wouldn’t have been as gung-ho about swapping party members around and collecting them like Pokémon. Amid its spectacle and ambition, the wonder of sailing the seas and crossing dimensions, I left most events unsure of what to think, positive or negative. It wasn’t ambivalence, exactly.

SPOILERS AHEAD

It’s like this: Fairly early on, you’re given an infamous decision. One of the major protagonists, Kid, is dying of a magically-inflicted illness, and the only antidote is Hydra Humour. If you agree to go after it, you’ll find that it can only be extracted from the Guardian of the Marshes, and its death would mean the deterioration of the ecosystem which relies upon it. The dwarves and all other life in this biome would be put at risk. I weighed my options. I decided to reload a save and refuse the quest. Kid wouldn’t want her life to come at the cost of hundreds, if not thousands of others. So I start down the opposite path…

…Only to find that, in this route, a squad of human soldiers kills the hydra anyway, leaving the dwarves to flee their uninhabitable home to lead a genocidal attack on the fairies’ island to claim it for themselves. Jesus. The dwarves’ manic strangeness did little to downplay how chilling the result of my little coin flip was.

After an effort to defend the few remaining fairies and keep the dwarves at bay — leaving the survivors to process the turmoil of their new reality — after all that…it turns out that Kid is fine. She got over the illness by herself, offscreen.

For as many words as it goes on to spew, no moment of my Chrono Cross playthrough spoke louder than this one. Chrono Trigger’s party was faced with a choice — allow Lavos to erupt from the planet and drive everything to the brink of extinction, or risk everything to prevent the apocalypse. It’s a thousand years away, these three characters can live out the rest of their days comfortably and never have to concern themselves with it. They’re shown an End of Time, proof that the universe won’t last regardless of what they do, and still decide to fight on behalf of the world. It’s worth trying, if only to preserve a few more precious seconds of life for their descendants and their home.

Chrono Cross (eventually) reveals that their meddling allowed Lavos to become an even more devastating monster. We can defeat it, but who can say that won’t result in an even more cataclysmic fate? Because he lives and breathes, Serge’s timeline is worse off. It’s hard to tell whether that’s lore nonsense, self-flagellation on the game’s part, or genuine philosophizing. It wouldn’t be alone in that. As a chronic “downer,” I can’t help wondering if there’s no way to survive in the modern world without directly or indirectly participating in human suffering.

Maybe Writer/Director Masato Kato couldn’t either. He seems bent on reminding the player that they are but a speck in a cosmic puzzle, and there’s no defiant “so what?” answer to that problem. Even the thing we’ve been led to accomplish isn’t revealed until seconds before the finale of this forty hour game (and that's NOT a joke). You can’t see the credits without recognizing that it’s an unfortunate victim of mismanagement and a little too much Evangelion, but that doesn’t mean it fails to resonate. I don't think there’s another game that so thoroughly captures the existential confusion of being alive.

As I stated in my Kazooie review, I replayed the game two times back in September of 2023. With Kazooie, that doesn't seem too crazy because it's about half the length of Tooie. However, I also replayed this game twice as well. And with it being twice as long, or maybe even longer for some people, as Kazooie? Seems a bit nuts right? Well, I really went Banjo crazy that month because after beating both games once, I couldn't stop thinking about them which led to me replaying them again right away. The thing is, that whole time I couldn't stop thinking about playing them again...I was thinking about Tooie pretty much. I don't know what happened to me because I went from thinking this game was just decent and definitely worse than Kazooie, to thinking it was amazing and super addicting and better than Kazooie overall. After replaying both games yet again, do I still think this? Probably, tho it's a bit complicated.

If you played Kazooie prior, the first thing you'll notice with Tooie is just how much Banjo and Kazooie's moveset has improved. The roll attack lasts longer, is more mobile and has a nice visual of Kazooie shielding Banjo. The normal attack you perform by standing still, which before was a simple claw move by Banjo, is now replaced by a more effective stationary rat-a-tat rap. The swimming is now WAY better naturally and doesn't require you to hold the R button for it to be good. In fact I don't think the R button does anything when swimming lol. You can now flip-flap directly out of a talon trot. When you do a beak buster, you can now move forward while you're doing rather than staying in place. This change can actually lead to some exploits you can perform too which is rad. These along with some non move-set changes like how whenever you speed up the text it makes the characters talk faster and doesn't pitch up their voices (which was an issue I had forgot to mention in Kazooie), the camera is slower but smoother to use and is overall an improvement, Banjo's backpack animates now when he walks and something about it is incredibly satisfying to me idk why, and the biggest thing is now notes don't get reset when you die (for a reason I'll get into later). All of these improvements drastically enhance the basic gameplay and I honestly miss a ton of these whenever I go back to Kazooie.

That's all fine and dandy, but how about new moves? Well, Tooie's got you covered because it's got like double the amount of moves in Kazooie. The biggest addition is the split-up mechanic. Now you can play as Banjo and Kazooie separately which makes for some clever puzzles. Each singular character gets their own specific moves and while Kazooie's are generally really fun, Banjo's are mostly situational. Kazooie's consist of moves that aren't as context-specific like the ability to glide on her own, her own backflip that's better than the normal one, and the ability to hatch eggs which gets used quite a bit. Banjo's however, besides the first one that lets him pick up and move objects which can lead to some fun puzzles, aren't used that much. He has an ability that let's him recover HP which is nice but only gets used a couple times overall and isn't as helpful as you think because lives aren't an issue anymore. I actually forgot to say they don't exist anymore and it's actually better to die sometimes because it respawns you at the last split-ip bad/beginning of the world which can work in your favor. But anyways, his other two abilities which let him go in dangerous liquids and the other let's him go in his backpack like a burlap sack to cross dangerous obstacles, just aren't used much and are incredibly situational. They all feel pretty samey too unlike Kazooie's, so overall I'd say Kazooie had the better new moves overall. This isn't even getting into all the new moves they both got together. There's 4 new egg types: Fire, Grenade, Ice and Clockwork. All have various uses and are fun additions. There are two new shoes, the claw clamber boots and the springy step shoes. The springy step shoes feel a little derivative because of the jump pads but they're still cool. The claw clamber boots however let you walk on designated parts of walls and it's awesome. There's the bill drill which is also kind of situational but is super satisfying to use. You can now fire eggs in first-person, which can be a little tricky at first with the N64 joystick but is also fun. Because of this, the game also added egg shooting in the air and water when going in first-person mode. The first-person shooting also leads into this FPS mode where you use Kazooie as a gun, certainly riding on the success of Goldeneye, and they can be super fun as well. All of these additions, plus the split-up stuff just really add to their whole move set and makes traversing through worlds a ton of fun.

Speaking of the worlds in this game, they're overall a lot bigger than Kazooie's. The first couple are kinda comparable in size to the first game's but by the time you get to Terrydactyland, they become just massive in size. You'd think this would be super annoying compared to Kazooie, but the game added warp pads that can warp you all over the level. These are the reason I never found the game tedious, if the game didn't have them or if they were awful like DK 64's warps, then the game would be way worse than it is. Anyways, the world's are much bigger in size and there's a lot more things you can do in each world. Though, overall there are less collectables because notes are now in bundles of 5 and 20. So overall the game has less of a focus on tons of collectables like the notes and more of a focus on the jiggys themselves. Jiggy's require way more steps than they did in Kazooie and this turns a lot of people off of the game. A bit understandable but the game is clearly trying to be more of a slower paced adventure platformer rather than Kazooie's brisk pace. I like both approaches but when it comes to Tooie's unique world themes like a run-down amusement park, a dinosaur world and a combined fire and ice world, I definitely prefer just how creative Tooie gets.

I mentioned how Jiggy's take longer to get because more steps are involved, and that's partly because of Mumbo Jumbo and Humba Wumba. In this game, Humba is the one that transforms you and Mumbo is actually a playable character. It greatly depends on the world but overall, I think this is a fun change. Mumbo has a very basic moveset compared to BK but his whole deal is using his magic on specific Mumbo pads. This is incredibly situational ofc and depending on the world it can be a bit tedious, but it can also lead to some interesting puzzles where you have to switch back and forth between BK and Mumbo. Same thing with Humba, sometimes you actually have to switch between Mumbo and then the Humba transformation. Mostly in the later levels do they make these portions kinda puzzling. In terms of everything new they added, this is probably the weakest addition just because it can lead to some tedium, I'll admit that, however I personally never had much of an issue with it tho I also have the whole game memorized at this point so take that as you will.

Besides all that, one of my absolute favorite additions was the fact a lot of the world's are interconnected. Early on, you'll help this mayan cat character out in recovering this idol. Well, you obtain it from this caveman in a weird looking cave and bring it back to him. That's strange though, you're in a world called Mayahem Temple and you just saw a caveman. What gives? Well it turns out, you just entered Terrydactyland when you did that, the aformentioned dinosaur world. This happens a lot in this game where you'll briefly cross over from one world into another or even unlock paths to directly travel between each one. The most memorable one is where you have to feed a different tribe of (good) cavemen this time, and to do so, you unlock a shortcut between Terrydactyland and WitchyWorld. You pick up some burgers from this one character, use the claw clamber boots you get from Grunty Industries and walk along the wall to feed them. All these working parts and interconnectivity just make the world feel alive and I love it.

I mentioned how you had to get the claw clamber boots from Grunty Industries, which is world 6, and use them for a jiggy in Terrydactyland which is world 5. Banjo Kazooie did this exact same thing only once, where you had to backtrack with an ability from another world. Tooie does this way more often and because of that and the interconnectivity of the world, it kind of feels like a 3D metroidvania at points which is awesome. Anyways, people seem to have an issue with backtracking in this game and I don't get it. The more complex jiggy's I understand, but the backtracking is not required as there's enough jiggy's in the game for you to beat the final boss. And even then, there really aren't that many backtracking jiggy's in general. Maybe like 12 or 13 of the 90 jiggy's require backtracking I think? Either way I think that complaint is majorly overblown and is not an issue at all to me, again the Mumbo and Humba stuff I can understand but backtracking to old levels with future abilities? Never even crossed my mind as an issue.

Something else this game added was a boss for every world and they're all really fun. Some are better than others, Lord Woo Fak Fak for example is probably the worst, but I really like how almost every single one of them are large in scope. They really feel menacing even if some of them are pathetically easy.

The game is also way funnier and a lot more cynical in general which I dig. Kazooie was both of these things as well but Tooie cranks it up to the max. The game literally starts off with Bottles dying and Kazooie going "well, he wasnt the most popular character anyways". The game is just full of this tongue-in cheese cynicism. The cast of side characters is not only WAY larger, they're more distinct and memorable just because the dialogue is so much better. There's literally an immigration joke when BK have to help some actual aliens, it's amazing. I think this, plus the interconnected worlds and more unique world themes, are THE main things I like over Kazooie. That plus the improved move set ofc.
The OST is again wondeful just like the first game, but instead of being upbeat, catchy tunes..Grant went for a more atmospheric darker ost this time around. Because worlds are much larger and take more time to beat, I think this change is for the better since the music track won't get old at all. Some of my favorite songs were Grunty Industries, Weldar's Theme and Mr Patch's Theme.

Yes I know two of those are from Grunty Industries. I honestly don't get the hate at all for that world. Something like Terrydactyland I can get, even if I still like it, because it's a massive world with empty space in a lot of it. However, Grunty Industries is a complex, zelda dungeon-like world and it's amazingly designed. I guess if you went into Tooie expecting it to just be like Kazooie, you'd hate it however it's very fun to explore and again super well-designed. It's not even that easy to get lost imo, it's a multi-layered world with distinct set-pieces rather than a super large open world. Sorry for the rant, I just don't get Grunty Industries hate lol. Something I did end up feeling a tiny bit sour on this time around was Hailfire Peaks. I still really like that world, and think the theming is awesome. However the fire side is a little too big for its bridges I will admit and the lag gets really bad sometimes there. The game can get laggy throughout portions of the game, which is only a thing on the N64 version, but there especially it's pretty bad.

One more thing before I mention the endgame and close out the review, is Canary Mary. Canary Mary has methods that make her very doable but she's still easily the worst part of the game and the only part I straight up dislike and dread doing. Her first button mashing races in Glittergulch Mine are perfectly fine. Her races in Cloud CuckooLand tho are insane. If you aren't doing the pause trick, idk how it's humenaly possible to win without using a turbo controller or something. The 2nd race isn't as bad because you can stay near her until the very end and then button mash to hell to pass her right before she can catch up. These races are easily doable with the right methods but the fact you have to do them this way, it just stinks man. But luckily this is only for 100% and only a tiny portion of the actual game so it's not the worst thing in the world.

I talked about a lot of improvements this game has over Kazooie. If there's one thing Kazooie destroys Tooie on however, it's the quiz section and final boss. Gone is the charming board game aesthetic of Kazooie, now you have a typical game show-esque quiz game where you have to answer enough questions to beat Grunty's sisters. It's not bad but it pales in comparison to Kazooie's version as it's less charming and even has less question types. Yeah, I won't miss the Gruntilda specific questions but no sound/music quizzes? That's kinda lame. Again, it's not bad and is only disappointing when compared to Kazooie. The final boss is also not nearly as good as Kazooie's. Is the Hag 1 harder? Most definitely but it's not as memorable as the Gruntilda fight from Kazooie and isn't as fun. It's a solid fight overall but compared to Kazooie's, just a bit lackluster.

So do I like Tooie more than Kazooie? In many ways, hell yes. It improves on many things like the duo's moveset, the writing is way funnier and the interconnectivity between worlds felt like a logical step to take after Kazooie. It may have the weaker end boss and quiz show, it's definitely and easier game to replay/100% and the Canary Mary rematch race is the worst thing between both games, however I'm still feeling like I may like this just slightly more than Kazooie just because of how ambitious and fun it is. It's kinda like Mario Galaxy 1 and 2 where each game has is own strengths over the other and it's just hard to choose what's better. Either way, it's still a 10/10 like the first game and one of my favorite games ever now. Easily in my top 3 N64 games, alongside the first game and Majora's Mask of course. Either way, if you see people saying you shouldn't play this game after you've beaten Kazooie. Don't listen to them, give this a try and you might fall become infatuated with it like I have.

This Banjo double feature was fun but I reckon it's time to play some Kirby again. Stay tuned for a Dreamland 2 review coming soon!

The combat and enemies and openworld are on the basic side, but Travis himself, and the game's immense charm and style, addicting gameplay loop, witty writing, damn solid music and unique and fun boss fights (except Speed Buster lmao) outweigh the previously mentioned negatives by tenfold.

So in short; It's Suda51, what can I say? That guy's an enigma on the level of Hideo Kojima or Yoko Taro, and all of his unique ideologies and worldviews certainly carry over here, and that makes the game and the experience of playing it unlike any other.

The story may be a bit of a whatever excuse plot (fog king? more like fog "doesn't connect the future" king), Kino and Nene are just Reyn and Sharla reskins, but hey, we get to see more of Shulk and Melia, a peek at a post-XC1 final boss world, and we finally get to explore the cut content of Bionis Shoulder that has actually been refurbished since its unused debut, and it's more of the same Xenoblade 1 combat we all know and love, so that's awesome

WE MEASURE FIND TREASURE PONSPECTORS TIL WE DIE

The thing about playing this after other Fallouts is that you easily notice certain flaws; the map having little places to explore, skills like hacking and repair relying on rolls meaning you don't have to level them up and can just re-attempt infinitely, etc. But what you get in exchange is genuinely one of the hardest atmospheres I've seen in any game period, it is such an extreme feeling of desolation and loneliness even for Fallout standards, combined with the story and timer giving you anxiety just for existing. It's an imperfect but really unique experience and I'm glad I finally played it.

My first introduction to Banjo Kazooie was in the E3 2019 Nintendo Direct when he was revealed for Smash. I had no idea who this character was or what the series was about, I just knew that a LOT of people were happy they made it, and I couldn't understand why. But having finally played the game I now understand the tears of the people that flow from the lack of this series in the modern day, they are now my tears as well.

The gameplay in Banjo Kazooie is simply phenomenal. The titular duo's moveset is extremely varied and gives you everything you need to master the game with. It never really felt like I hit a wall because of it, if there was a puzzle to solve I was always certain that I had what I needed to solve it at my disposal and the game rewarded me for that. On top of that the platforming is pure joy, the perfect mix of challenge and fun. And then there's just the collectathon structure this game employs to an excellent degree. In any other 3D platformer I would feel content just to get the objectives required to beat the game, but because collecting things in Banjo Kazooie is just so damn satisfying I found myself collecting everything. 100% completing this game not only felt really satisfying but it also felt like the intended way to play the game and enhanced the experience ten times more than it would have been if I just did the bare minimum required.

The other main thing I want to talk about here is the game's presentation. Despite being an N64 game I feel like Banjo Kazooie has held up incredibly well. The game's visual style, world, tone, and sound design are all just so damn charming. There's so much to love here, from all the charming characters and the funny dialogue between them, to the oddly kinda edgy sense of humor the game has (at least for an E rated game) like when they said Gruntilda does a striptease or when Kazooie heavily implied she was gonna shove a key up someone's ass, just jokes that I laughed a lot at because I had no idea how they got away with them. The worlds here are very unique and interesting as well. There are of course some stinkers (looking at you Bubblegloop Swamp) but for the most parts these environments are just interesting and fun in concept and a blast to actually explore yourself. They take basic level themes and add the game's charm to them to make some truly great levels that are some of the best I've ever played in a platformer.

Overall, Banjo Kazooie is a classic game that's well loved for a reason. The game's charm, pristine level design, and incredibly fun gameplay cycle kept me engaged and addicted the whole way through and turned me into a fan of this character and this series that I priorly couldn't care less about.

They did it. They made it. Poyo Poyo. A bastard child, much like its brethren Doctor Robotik Lean Bean Machean, yes my dyslexic ass is smashing records tonight. But... That's it, it is Poyo Poyo and there is nothing more to its meat. I tought the Kirby series was allergic to low quality products, yet here we are. That's the part where Kirby smoked that hooka indubitably cuz you seein how much lip he's givin them?? That is not the poyo I raised. He's callin them cunts and everythin 😭 we finally got the American Kirby from all those US box arts. May God bless us all he is yappin kinda E for everyone.

So, pretty much everything I say about Super Puyo Puyo would apply to this (as of yet, have not said anything about Super Puyo Puyo). They're scared half to death of giving us cutesy stuff so they'd rather reskin it for overseas audience with Kirby... I'm probably not the only one having trouble with the logic. Putting so much ressources into a lost cause when the solution is RIGHT THERE. I do admit the... forest background... is better than some minerals? Hank would kill me for this. This cabrón called an avalanche on all of them or what, that sounds like an hardcore term for such a calming experience OH MY GOLLY I'M BEING BURIED ALIVE IN SLIME

The gang is all here. I don't always recognize their names through the Super Nintendo Entertainment System sound chip, and for us zoomers this is gonna sound a whole lot like the Wii Remote yapping in Smash Bros. Brawl. They should have replaced the colors while they were at it, where's the pink slime? Despite all its faults, this game still remains a cult abomination, a stain in Kirby's rapper career. What says a lot about me is that, much like not knowing I could crouch in RE4 to avoid attacks, I did not know I could see the next bundle of slime to fall. Rest in power brain 👑👑👊 wowie, I wish an actually unique Kirby game with Tetris-like elements happens to fall on my laps soon. Kid named Star Stacker:

(Played this a while back, but forgot to log it.)

One of my friends really loves Class of '09, so I bought it sometime ago on a Steam Sale for cheap to try it out and played a bunch of routes, but the novelty wore off rather quickly and it got boring real fast. The humor was too over the top for my liking and the writing felt like it became generic satire early on, not to mention the same jokes were repeated over and over across several routes and it's lazy. Especially the pedophilia jokes were recycled way too much and I feel like a lot of swearing was thrown into the writing just to make it feel more mature and edgy, but it comes off as needlessly corny. Maybe I'm just not the target audience.

As I only played two routes, I don't have much to add in regards to content, except that I enjoyed the voice acting for the most part - especially Nicole's voice direction is very well done. Still, there are better visual novels out there, and funnier ones too. Class of '09 might be worth looking into if you're a fan of this very specific type of humor, else I wouldn't bother with it at all.