I tried this out a few years ago and bounced off it. The setting seemed dreary and the cast kinda unpleasant. It finally clicked for me after getting an introduction to the town via the first couple of hours of The Smoke Room. I was talking to someone looking for VN recs and they said that TSR was too scary for them, so I played through it long enough to get an idea of the the series' vibe.

That was enough to return to Echo with fresh and more forgiving eyes. It paid off! The writing has problems with malapropisms, odd phrasings, occasional misspellings, and an idea of life in a hot climate that seems untouched by personal experience, but the imaginative work that the writing is doing elevates it to something special.