Somehow, Voltage made this, and it's delightful. It had me laughing through my tears more than once.
I was surprised by the overall quality of even if TEMPEST, and that was even before really getting into the story.
The developers don't allow the game to be boring for even a moment through the main story (OK, maybe a moment in one of the later routes). The game played me, and I loved it. I felt like I was on a rollercoaster the whole way through (I did feel the ride slow down in the last bits, though). It doesn't shy away from tragedy. I don't think I've ever been so invested in the successes and failures/losses of a character as I have been in Anastasia's. Anastasia is a fantastic protagonist (and ~gorgeous~). I genuinely really like the other main characters too. UGH just let them be happy.
I liked the romance OK, but I would say it's not one of this game's greatest strengths. I love romance, but it's not really what I was here for. The game didn't need it, basically.

The character sprites, and especially their facial expressions, are superb. So many great, freaky expressions. The CGs are generally really good too.
The logic in the trials isn't anything very challenging, but I still thought they were fun. If playing without a walkthrough, the investigations preceding the trials might take some trial and error (pun not intended).
I think the route structure is clever, for a game with multiple paths and love interests.
I enjoyed watching even the plot twists that I predicted play out.
I feel that even many games that I like don't mind wasting my time, but such is not the case for even if TEMPEST (aside from the poor Skip function, which I'll mention shortly).

I enjoyed this so much that these issues don't really touch it, but I will note them anyway (along with more praise, naturally).
Background noise tracks of crowd chatter and such generally either loop very poorly, or last all of five seconds before ceasing, which can be distracting. The sound in the game is otherwise great. The music is fantastic. I wish I could buy the soundtrack! The instrumentation is gorgeous (and they are legitimate instruments played by legitimate artists where applicable — not synthesized as is common in other games. The emotion and flavor of these sounds are very real).
The voice work is super. The game is fully voiced, with the exception of the protagonist, which is such a shame for a character with this much of a personality. And it's disappointing that such a strong character as Anastasia lacks character portraits. These two would be the things I was most disappointed about.
The translation is quite good. There are more than a few typos here and there. The sort of things you could miss if you aren't scrutinizing.
I wish that more thought had been put into the text "skip" function. It's really slow, and can't be adjusted in any way beyond skipping read text or skipping all text, making it pretty troublesome to double back for other route endings. It took me out of the flow of the story more than it should have. I didn't want to miss any content, but the experience of the game would likely be better if I didn't bother. The regular route endings are where it's at. (Edit: I have seen someone else's Skip function in action, and it's much faster than mine is. No idea why. You might get lucky with your copy/system. Or not.)
Skipping to the next choice is becoming a more common feature in otome games, and I missed it here.
The game did crash on me once, which isn't something I recall experiencing with any other Switch games. Not a big deal if one saves often. (Edit: the game of the aforementioned "someone" also crashed a heck of a lot!)

This is really all of my complaints, and I can't even complain... I'm really looking forward to the fan disk. I hope Voltage will make more games like this one.

I love GNOSIA. I love the vibes, the mystery, and the characters, who are all unique and fun. I loved gradually gaining bits of information to see how the characters tie into the mysteries.
Even got a couple of great, explicitly non-binary characters (notably, the player can also play as non-binary).
I almost didn't take a chance on this, as I'd never gotten into any games categorized as "roguelite", and the concept doesn't generally appeal to me. I feel that there's narrative utility in the repetitive gameplay loop, in really feeling the situation wear on the player. For me, it was a somewhat immersive aspect.
For anybody who enjoys this gameplay despite the repetition, this game has a lot of replay value. After one full playthrough, I'm still coming across a lot of new things. It's kind of amazing.
The computer AI is "smart" and well designed (as a single-player social deduction game necessitates). Catching subtle hints based on NPC behavior is fun, as well as developing one's own strategy in order to influence the NPCs (lying gave me such intense anxiety though, LOL). The different characters each have unique ways of behaving in different situations, and varying inherent (and circumstantial) affinity towards other characters, including the player.
I wish they would allow for a multiplayer mode (separate from the story)!! I would love to play simultaneously with both the computer AI, and a friend.
I also wish I could casually spend more time with the characters. There's so much to work with here!
Cotori's lovely artwork, and the unusual music are the perfect dressing.
It's exciting to see such a cool game come from such a small development team.

Disappointingly cis-het LOL.

I heard that reception of this game in Japan has mostly been either quite negative, or quite positive. I got my hopes up about it, given the premise. My feelings fell somewhere in the middle, though.

The romance is relatively weak in most of the routes (a few of which don't even depict a kiss... which indeed, probably would have felt forced in some routes), and definitely second to the rest of the story, but that doesn't feel like such a bad thing in this case. The story was engaging enough for me to keep me playing until the end, but I was forcing it by the time I was halfway through. Notably, this game features eight love interests, which is a lot, so I think they did OK considering that.
Of the six character routes that are initially available, only three (of the player's choice) must be played in order to unlock the last three routes (including the grand finale). So if, among those initial six LIs, you find a few that you really aren't into, you will have the freedom to skip over them. I felt that each route contributed some bits of information (some routes more than others) to the overall story, but I could see it being fine if some early ones were skipped over.
I felt that all of the LIs were likeable (at least upon concluding their routes... I'm looking at you, Ayumu).

The "gender bending" really felt like a missed opportunity. It doesn't really apply to the romantic aspects of the game, which is odd since they are both big focuses of the game. There isn't much interesting going on here in terms of gender identity, and most of the male characters don't feel anything special about being able to transform into or exist as females. (It's really just their anatomy that changes – not their gender.) It's often treated as something to be embarrassed about, that's hidden. It's mostly there to create what's supposed to be an amusing scenario in which the main character is unaware of the LI's dual identities (which are entirely obvious to the player). Which repeats to varying degrees in all applicable routes and started to annoy me after its second occurrence. It gets old quickly, and I found myself wishing they didn't waste so much time on it, and instead focused on the plot or romance more.
Ibuki is essentially non-binary at least. 😅

I think that the majority of the CGs were of nice quality. Nothing super fancy. Most of the art didn't feel awkward. I feel that they made OK choices about which scenes to include CGs for... Some felt unnecessary, while other scenes would have really benefited from one.
I really liked a lot of the character sprites! There were a bunch of interesting, asymmetrical facial expressions. I was a little disappointed at the lack of inclusion of character portraits for the protagonist, though. And I know it's uncommon for games of this genre, but I would have liked the protagonist to be voiced as well.
I thought the voice acting was great!
The music was fitting and I enjoyed it during the game, but I don't think much of it stood out enough that I would listen to the soundtrack on its own.
The text isn't without typos, and the formatting of the text is disjointed in places, but there's nothing too grievous. The English is not a very literal translation, which differs from my taste — especially where the content is severely altered in order to be more understandable for a non-Japanese audience — but I think most players will be OK with it.

This game functions well as a VN. Players can access a flowchart to return to any part of the game they've played before, and can skip to next choice or next line of unread text (whichever comes first) instantly and with ease. Returning for different endings is a cinch.
Button functions can be remapped manually (there are no alternative presets).
Volume of voice acting can be adjusted as a whole and also individually for each recurring character (although the default volumes are mostly balanced and I barely adjusted them).
My main complaint here is that the Auto mode functions very poorly. I'm not a super speedy reader when playing video games, and the Auto speed was still incredibly slow even at its fastest. I'll be waiting too long for the Auto to proceed from an unvoiced section, meanwhile at the same Auto speed, I'll have unvoiced single word text boxes ripped away before I can comprehend them. I just kept Auto off the whole time I played, and that was fine for me.

As the player progresses through the routes, they will unlock little extra scenes that can be accessed from the ACTIVITY REPORTS section of the menu. These are neat. However, no indication is provided as to which of these extras have been viewed previously, which I found to be a nuisance.

I think there's stuff here to enjoy. I just don't want people to get their hopes up the way that I did. You can still romance the magical girl boys... but don't expect too much.

(Review edited upon game completion.)

Can actually play as non-binary for once! 🙏 Really makes a difference, considering the protagonist is meant to be relatively self-insert.
Graphics on Switch version are often very bleary, especially noticeable in handheld mode. Shame, because it's otherwise very pretty. The character art is lovely.
Engaging gameplay, allowing the player to create their own balance between farming and JRPG elements, without forcing either. It is more JRPG than it is farming sim (the farming doesn't have the same depth as is found in others of the genre), but one can take the quests and story at their own pace.
Varied job system, and the story is interesting enough so far. Has side quests I actually want to do.
Appealing characters (moreso for me when compared with other farming life sims). Everyone has nice voice acting – too bad it's limited to small lines here and there.
Romance options are not gender-locked~
And the music is lovely... Would definitely purchase the soundtrack if they release that.