I enjoyed this. Nice art and presentation, a good mystery with characters I liked following, and some meta elements that I'm always a little bit of a sucker for (they make for a few cool puzzles but I wish they would have done more with it). Reminded me of 999 a bit, and I appreciated how this clocked in at a well-paced ten hours without tons of bullshit padding <3 though maybe it should have been longer?

I was disappointed with how some plot points/twists either didn't make a lot of sense or just felt... Underwhelming and a little stupid with how they resolved. There are themes, characters, and potential subplots that are established and then never resolved or explored in any depth. I spent the last few hours expecting some emotional payoff that never ended up coming, and I think this has the potential to be a game I look back on less fondly with time. I enjoyed most of my time playing it as I played it but thinking back on the whole narrative with context is reminding me of all the little plot threads and themes that underwhelmed me—it's a good game that could have been great! The soundtrack kicks ass though. No notes.

I replayed this for some reason after almost 9 years and got the bad ending :( the idea of playing the game through again to get the good ending was too unbearable so I guess this one is abandoned. It's charming at times and the non-westernized translation is way better and less awkward than the one I remember, but it's just not that fun to play and the writing isn't good enough to make up for it. Also maybe it's less fun without the horrible America-set translation that talked about hamburgers all the time

I was interested in playing this after hearing that it was better than expected and a really early example of a dating sim. The one thing that stood out to me was how the women you can date felt closer to actual characters with lives that don't exclusively revolve around a) being utterly obsessed with the protagonist or b) being porny archetypes. That's not to say those things aren't ever an issue, or that it doesn't sometimes fall into gross tropes, but at the very least I found the writing funny and more interesting than I expected it to be. Cool as a piece of gaming history (sort of?) but not really my thing.

"Human beings are made out of meat. We get mentally ill when that meat is defective."

So many things I want to criticize here, most of which are issues with the whole series; they're full of dull and tedious sections, they can be so so corny, and the reveals are (mostly) ridiculous. Despite all of that, I still find myself drawn to these characters and honestly excited to see how things play out, even if it's batshit. Maybe especially if it's batshit? Anyway, this one isn't as good as the previous chapter (which I thought was one of the best overall), but it answers a lot of questions and takes the plot in a few new directions leading into the finale.

The quote at the top is my favorite line from this whole fucking series. I don't know how much of these games are meant to be taken deadly seriously but either way it's the funniest thing I've read recently. I want to send it to my psychiatrist