Played demo. By the way the igdb date is wrong, the demo came out on August while the full game launches in September.

There are 3 routes in the demo and you can categorize them as good, neutral, and bad respectively. Each of them is written by a different person, which fits the concept as the characters are diverse and a single person wouldn't be able to cover the spectrum of experiences necessary for a good depiction (not like it achieves this always, who the fuck says "abuela"), but it's a mess in execution as it makes the writing wholly inconsistent. I felt a huge whiplash as I went from the one I liked to the story I felt was the worst because the gap between quality was stounding (even the ost took a nosedive, for some reason!).

As a visual novel, I'm confused at its structure. What I thought was me choosing how I wanted to date was actually... who I was making decisions for. Try as you might to decipher who these characters are when your only guidelines are terrible, terrible items like "your angle AND your devil", "calling people slurs in PVP isn't very gamer of you", and "bitches say they love poetry and then go after emotionally unavailable men, sis you're worried about the wrong Dickinson!". Once chosen, you go on a date and choose some options like twice. The decisions felt very insignificant, they probably dictate the ending but they don't feel important in the moment or in retrospect, so I'm not sure why not just omit them in the first place.
Surprisingly, the dialogue itself wasn't as meme-y as the presentation let off. These is no Neon White and it's not even close. If anything, the third route you can play felt overly out of touch, with the PC only now discovering people use "we" as a singular (she is only 27). There's a huge disconnect between the presentation and marketing, of which the latter is mostly the twitter account making memes about their own game (if you check the "meme" section of their own site, there's only a single post LOL)

It's hard to parse closing thoughts on a demo, so I'll say this: its not as good as I hoped but not as bad as I thought. I'll probably check out the full release because I gravitate towards games people (losers) hate over being "SJW" like a moth to a flame. Did you know I like Steven Universe?

Like what do you say about this that a white Youtuber didn't say in 2012.

It is an odyssey of transitioning from child to adult. It is a vibe machine. The combat sucks. The combat rules. The encounter rates are too high. The police brutality scene still sends shivers up my spine from context alone. The character name music nails how odd and bizarre your journey will be. You can dump all your money into a house just for the reveal that it is literally missing two walls. Poo feels his limbs and eyes torn out of his body to experience a spiritual deprivation of senses so he becomes a little stronger. Ness' dad is a near non-existent figure in his life, only calling him to have emotionally distant conversations and petty cash deposits while he presumably is fucking bitches and generally getting buck nasty in Reno.

There are hundreds of momentary scenes in the game that will have you delighted, intrigued, confused, and mortified. Those moments are what Earthbound is to me. The life of these kids trying to make it in this fucked up world.

Like, it's Earthbound. It's hype around the player experience is real. It's glazing is overglazed but it's worth biting in even if. You got people everywhere whose hearts and souls have been sucked out of their body from being cynical on Twitter for too long saying "this game is overrated" "an annoying Youtuber I don't like LOVES this game it must be trash" THAT'S HOW YOU KNOW THIS SHIT IS GOOD. How long can something be this relevant to conversation. How long can the experience be this shitted on by contrarians -- if it wasn't worth checking out? Objectively bad things die very quickly in the consciousness of the masses for one reason or another. There are reasons people talk about this game nearly 30 years later.

Don't buy into the hate or overglazing. This is a great, flawed video game with issues that are far surpassed by what you'll get out of it. Which is having the game make you feel every human emotion in sometimes very clever ways. It's only when you do a bunch of stuff and then get a moment to look back is when you'll realize: it's all about the journey itself.

btw There are modded versions of the game that lower the encounter rate and increase xp so you're not grinding like crazy to just make it past a bullshit miniboss.