I enjoyed meeting the characters and the art! I I definitely was thinking about how I want to build my own dating skills. The characters feel genuine and so does the reflection of community!

However, the game sort of lacks what I consider typically visual novel/dating structure ( you don't play one character the whole time or really make very many choices), and I don't think the game provides enough framing on how it's structuring these little dates.
I think if you go in knowing that they are bunch of little date episodes you may still have a great time though!

https://medium.com/@pr0thean/lets-talk-about-validate-struggling-singles-in-you-area-2022-2d513821aad4

TLTR: Ultimately, I hesitate to recommend this game anyway. Writing is annoying, and embarrassing, with only one or two characters that have an authentic three-dimensional route it markets itself as. There are too many problems on the technical side, it’s just too hard to ignore. But, I do implore you to support the devs in any capacity. No matter how I feel about this game, the devs set out to make something different, and new, and for people who are in groups, who the gaming industry typically ignores. It’s admirable, and I will always sing praises to them for it. First games are always rough, and sometimes you can never get them right, but they deserve the support for trying something new and hopefully getting it right next time, once more of the episodes are released. In my interactions with this game, I will continue to support them as much as I can.

last case is a banger but sadly mid overall... as stated in my review of the first game, I played the first 1-3 cases of all of the games in the original trilogy when I got the collection on my ipad when i was like 14 (since it let you jump between all of them for some reason?), but never finished any of them since i got stuck on investigation sections due to playing it so intermittently. i dropped this one at big top which is completely understandable

overall it's not bad but case 1 is the most forgettable thing ever, case 2 is neat but mostly just because you get to see maya's hometown, case 3 is just as miserable as everyone says it is lol, and case 4 is like clearly by a wide margin the best thing here...

my issues with these are still at their loudest in the investigation sections which involve a lot of wandering back and forth between locations and tripping flags, made most prominent by how clunky navigation is in these earlier titles. it's a nitpick but it's a pretty consistent one, and in this game psyche locks make the investigation sections take up much more of the time than they do in the first game, which is a bit of a bummer. still excited for trials and tribulations though! it's the one out of the original trilogy that i'm still the most blind on (only played the first case) and its status as a bit of a fan favorite does have me more hopeful than i was going into this (which has the status of "the one with franziska von karma" and "has big top in it")