It's an interesting and cool concept, it takes a cliche anime setting and turns into a psychological horror halfway through. This is a double-edged sword though, as the characters are cliches as well. Even only having watched a couple animes, I was already able to predict the characters' lines and reactions at every turn. I believe it's intentional on the part of the developers but I do find that it's hard to get attached to them.

Instead, the real emphasis is placed on the second half, which does make the first half feel like a slog, but it's not a very long game anyway so it's not a massive issue for me. The psychological horror is done very well, and the twist of who's causing it all is a cool plot point as well.

As I said earlier, the characters don't do very much for me, and the actual narrative doesn't feel compelling to me either. It's more like a sequence of horror moments with a reveal that one of the characters was behind it all at the end. I guess what I mean is that there are rarely moments that feel narratively important, as the majority of the game is unnerving character interactions that eventually culminate in death.

Stories don't always need to be packed with narratively impactful moments, as I think there are plenty of stories that have a very miniscule narrative and mainly focus on the characters, or maybe they focus on your actions and how you interact with the game. I'd say Doki Doki doesn't have so much emphasis on story, characters, or the player's involvement, but rather the horror experience.

As a last note, I believe that if you're interested in meta storytelling, namely that which directly or indirectly acknowledges the existence of the player, the player's role in the story should be more important. Beyond being cool and shocking, involving the player in the story should elevate the player's relationship with the story in some way. Monika's actions are driven out of the player's existence, so it does service the plot to have the player as part of this story, but I don't feel that it's integrated in a very elegant way. Again, I do think it's an interesting ending on paper but in execution I don't feel that it does anything beyond being interesting.

TL;DR the horror is the standout feature of this game, though to me horror is more of a supplementary feature. This game's only real draw IS the horror, so it ended up feeling somewhat shallow and unsatisfying, but still memorable. And while I like meta storytelling and find the concept of the ending cool, I also find that it banked too hard on being interesting and unique rather than leaving me with a satisfactory experience.