This review contains spoilers
So this was far from the worst game I actually played in 2021 but god was it the game that left me the most mad.
Because it starts out so well. You start off with a pretty funny and on-point parody of what Facebook is like nowadays before zooming back into the past and giving the player a snapshot of what it — and the internet in general — was like back in 2008. That, as a whole, is where this game is at its greatest. Leaving the game window to go onto a simulation of early-era YouTube, all the little things like pokes that you can't do on Facebook anymore, the general sound design... this game is the best kind of nostalgia trip, and even as someone who was too young to really be on social media in 2008 I was still really immersed in what the game was trying to recreate — I spent a long while in those YouToob playlists and it turns out I'm a lot more into that era of music than I realized. Roughly half of what goes into this game is interface and atmosphere, and to that effect the effort pays off: the vibe is what makes this game.
So to that effect it didn't really matter to me that the story was mostly just a slice-of-life graduation story — it didn't really need to be anything higher-key than it actually was. The characters that were given to me were fun representatives of certain 08-era cultures (dorky girl who's just a little bit random xd, hard-edge punk rocker) and it made me feel bad that you lose the chance to even just be friends with the one you don't choose to romance at the end of chapter one (which... reads worse knowing the general way this game treats women/relationships, but we'll get to that later). There's a charm to just hanging out with this girl on facebook, planning meetups, getting into poke wars, eventually developing a serious relationship with this girl, and even though there were minor annoyances (I hated having to manually mash my keyboard every time I wanted to say something, really wished there was an option to just have you say the dialogue option instead) by the end of chapter three I was really high on this game, and given how I was promised my choices would matter (and how the previous game in this series actually made good on that promise, unlike the first game) I was excited to keep going and see how it all ended.
And then I found out that you can't get the good ending for someone on your first playthrough no matter what you do.
And that the only way you can actually get said good ending is to get the bad ending, then replay the entire game dating the other girl instead, then do the same steps to get the bad ending you got the first time.
And that the other girl's route is functionally THE EXACT SAME as the first girl's route. you do the same things. you go through the exact same events at the exact same time they happened attempt #1. The only functional difference is that some names are different and the girl you romance is a different 00s subculture.
And what happens on the route to the bad ending you're forced into is so asinine. The short is that (at least, this is what happened in nerdy girl's route because fuck me was I not replaying the entire game again just to arbitrarily get the good ending the second time) your GF gets assigned some study partners for an English class you're not in, friends them all on Facebook and starts chatting with them there. You're okay with this for a couple of months until your BRO messages you like "bro wtf look at what she's posting on his wall" so you log into his account and actually she's been kinda getting really close to him for a while behind your back. You confront them about this, to which they explain to you that she and he are just friends, and that she's been spending time with him because he's going through mental health stuff and really needs people to be there for him, explicitly asking you to drop the topic. You then have the option to back down and apologize, or to keep going and press her harder.
The option that leads her to her breaking up with you/the bad ending is if you choose to back down and apologize to her in the face of that information. i.e what anybody who isn't a controlling asshole would do in that exact situation.
And what happens is also so infuriating. One day after you two graduate she messages you and is all like "I still explicitly love you but suddenly I don't really want to jump your bones anymore I think don't think I can love you anymore. I'm really happy being with you but also I don't want to just be stuck dating my high school sweetheart forever" and no matter how much you try to convince her otherwise whoops your choices don't actually matter, the conversation just goes round in circles until you either decide to take a break or break up entirely. You do so, talk with your bro and the other girl for a bit, and then it turns out... your girlfriend was actually in love with the other guy this whole time and she was lying to you when she said he was just a friend.
And
God
You know what game basically went the exact same way as this? Emily Is Away, the first game in this series. The game lies to you about how your choices matter and has a really sudden turn when your love interest just suddenly becomes a really awful person in order to justify the unavoidable bad ending you get where you don't get the girl and all the people who've been manipulated by this game go on about how it's absolutely heartbreaking and the saddest thing they've played. The second game was an exception — you could end up on good terms with both girls so long as you didn't try to two-time them — but in general this series/this developer just really has a problem with women, huh? They're easily emotional, they'll very quickly dump you then immediately move on to a different guy they've been pining for all this time (and that's not limited to you — there's a storyline where your bro is depressed and deletes his account because his ex abruptly dumped him then immediately started dating someone else), and they'll very quickly try to paint you as The Bad Person if you don't side with them or if you call them out for being shitty. I don't really like making aspersions about someone I only know through their work, but when 2/3 of the works they've made do this exact thing... I'm beginning to see a recurring theme. And it's not a good look.
And honestly? I think I'm done with this series. At least for the time being. There's absolutely a talent for emulating the old days of the internet and using that to create an immaculate atmosphere (seriously, what makes these games is concept and visual and sound design) and I'd still at least bat for the second game in the series for actually diverging from the norm, but until this developer actually starts writing a different story instead of relying on the same old schlock which starts off great then falls apart hard for the sake providing the audience the manipulative ending it'll happily eat up, I'm out. 5/10.
Because it starts out so well. You start off with a pretty funny and on-point parody of what Facebook is like nowadays before zooming back into the past and giving the player a snapshot of what it — and the internet in general — was like back in 2008. That, as a whole, is where this game is at its greatest. Leaving the game window to go onto a simulation of early-era YouTube, all the little things like pokes that you can't do on Facebook anymore, the general sound design... this game is the best kind of nostalgia trip, and even as someone who was too young to really be on social media in 2008 I was still really immersed in what the game was trying to recreate — I spent a long while in those YouToob playlists and it turns out I'm a lot more into that era of music than I realized. Roughly half of what goes into this game is interface and atmosphere, and to that effect the effort pays off: the vibe is what makes this game.
So to that effect it didn't really matter to me that the story was mostly just a slice-of-life graduation story — it didn't really need to be anything higher-key than it actually was. The characters that were given to me were fun representatives of certain 08-era cultures (dorky girl who's just a little bit random xd, hard-edge punk rocker) and it made me feel bad that you lose the chance to even just be friends with the one you don't choose to romance at the end of chapter one (which... reads worse knowing the general way this game treats women/relationships, but we'll get to that later). There's a charm to just hanging out with this girl on facebook, planning meetups, getting into poke wars, eventually developing a serious relationship with this girl, and even though there were minor annoyances (I hated having to manually mash my keyboard every time I wanted to say something, really wished there was an option to just have you say the dialogue option instead) by the end of chapter three I was really high on this game, and given how I was promised my choices would matter (and how the previous game in this series actually made good on that promise, unlike the first game) I was excited to keep going and see how it all ended.
And then I found out that you can't get the good ending for someone on your first playthrough no matter what you do.
And that the only way you can actually get said good ending is to get the bad ending, then replay the entire game dating the other girl instead, then do the same steps to get the bad ending you got the first time.
And that the other girl's route is functionally THE EXACT SAME as the first girl's route. you do the same things. you go through the exact same events at the exact same time they happened attempt #1. The only functional difference is that some names are different and the girl you romance is a different 00s subculture.
And what happens on the route to the bad ending you're forced into is so asinine. The short is that (at least, this is what happened in nerdy girl's route because fuck me was I not replaying the entire game again just to arbitrarily get the good ending the second time) your GF gets assigned some study partners for an English class you're not in, friends them all on Facebook and starts chatting with them there. You're okay with this for a couple of months until your BRO messages you like "bro wtf look at what she's posting on his wall" so you log into his account and actually she's been kinda getting really close to him for a while behind your back. You confront them about this, to which they explain to you that she and he are just friends, and that she's been spending time with him because he's going through mental health stuff and really needs people to be there for him, explicitly asking you to drop the topic. You then have the option to back down and apologize, or to keep going and press her harder.
The option that leads her to her breaking up with you/the bad ending is if you choose to back down and apologize to her in the face of that information. i.e what anybody who isn't a controlling asshole would do in that exact situation.
And what happens is also so infuriating. One day after you two graduate she messages you and is all like "I still explicitly love you but suddenly I don't really want to jump your bones anymore I think don't think I can love you anymore. I'm really happy being with you but also I don't want to just be stuck dating my high school sweetheart forever" and no matter how much you try to convince her otherwise whoops your choices don't actually matter, the conversation just goes round in circles until you either decide to take a break or break up entirely. You do so, talk with your bro and the other girl for a bit, and then it turns out... your girlfriend was actually in love with the other guy this whole time and she was lying to you when she said he was just a friend.
And
God
You know what game basically went the exact same way as this? Emily Is Away, the first game in this series. The game lies to you about how your choices matter and has a really sudden turn when your love interest just suddenly becomes a really awful person in order to justify the unavoidable bad ending you get where you don't get the girl and all the people who've been manipulated by this game go on about how it's absolutely heartbreaking and the saddest thing they've played. The second game was an exception — you could end up on good terms with both girls so long as you didn't try to two-time them — but in general this series/this developer just really has a problem with women, huh? They're easily emotional, they'll very quickly dump you then immediately move on to a different guy they've been pining for all this time (and that's not limited to you — there's a storyline where your bro is depressed and deletes his account because his ex abruptly dumped him then immediately started dating someone else), and they'll very quickly try to paint you as The Bad Person if you don't side with them or if you call them out for being shitty. I don't really like making aspersions about someone I only know through their work, but when 2/3 of the works they've made do this exact thing... I'm beginning to see a recurring theme. And it's not a good look.
And honestly? I think I'm done with this series. At least for the time being. There's absolutely a talent for emulating the old days of the internet and using that to create an immaculate atmosphere (seriously, what makes these games is concept and visual and sound design) and I'd still at least bat for the second game in the series for actually diverging from the norm, but until this developer actually starts writing a different story instead of relying on the same old schlock which starts off great then falls apart hard for the sake providing the audience the manipulative ending it'll happily eat up, I'm out. 5/10.