great, great atmosphere and hotel exploring and that's all it does good. i don't care about how great a game can be, i don't want to learn about abuse and grooming if not by the perspective of the victim. no one have anything to say that interests me more than how this affected the girl that was groomed. dont try to justify how a pedophile is a good person, tell me about rachel! how was she like? what were her dreams? i dont care about your father, nicole, tell me about rachel!!

i left the game knowing more about a groomer than about rachel and i hate the feeling that the writter wanted me to forget that she is a victim. shes the only character that don't have anything to say about her own abuse and death. she is a voiceless victim, a name used as a badly written plot device and nothing more.

the only thing stopping this game from being perfect is the combat, it would work so much better as a walking simulator! other than that, rule of rose masters everything else. i love seeing female adolescence and trauma through the lens of fairytales and flowery language to remind the audience that jennifer was too young. a silly yet efficient reminder that these are just kids, capable of doing awful, awful things, but still, kids playing a game.
diana in special stands out to me the most: she's just awful. maybe there's a reason for that, after all the adults around her aren't exactly teaching her to be a good person. but to jennifer, she's just a mean girl. the things diana did might not impact her, she might not even think about it often, but to poor jennifer, it's a scar she carried for a long time, something that takes a long time to make peace with.
rule of rose tells this bittersweet tale in a way that haunts me, if i think too much about it: it never hide its horrors, only try to cover it a little with rose motifs, because it's a children fairytale. but in its core, it's a letter full of empathy to all those kids that were mistreated, and it says "you can survive this, and you can move on"
hits too close to home and i know i'll keep this game in my heart for a long time.