I got the ending where she prepares herself for school again, and what I assume is the author arguing that this is a mistake because it only ignores your reality and you will still feel pain for the rest of your life. I have an issue with this, we are not machines with a faulty gear, we are human beings, we are organic and we come from nature.

I've had a similar situation in real life with some differences. At school I felt safe and I had a similar experience of preferring to be at school than at home, until external factors changed my life, just like the decision of the parents of the girl, just for different reasons. I spent a year in a psych ward after defending my mom from my brother, he lost his life. I stopped going to school for that year and another year after, where I went to some kind of camp called "daily hospital" for patients that were ending their stay at the ward. I was only around 10 years old and this made me very vulnerable, as well as making me very scared of certain stuff.

I was highly medicated and misdiagnosed with schizophrenia and depression. Trusting the "professionals" (what the girl does in the game, trusting the player/medication) in facing my supposed faulty gear, I had a horrible time on my teenage years, always on the verge of jumping. This is what happened when I had in my mind that I was unnatural, that I had a problem that I needed to solve and to face, and almost everyone at the psych ward was facing the same issue. Today when I try to visit the people that I met in that hospital, they still try to fight this faulty gear, they have horrible lives, they think there is something wrong with them. They live in misery thanks to this.

I've had a mother with whom I had many problems with on that part of my life. I was scared of her and she was also a victim of the "faulty gear" lie. She only fueled this lie on me.
But thanks to my father I changed this on myself, there was nothing wrong with me. A lot of stuff happened in my life, but this change is the only thing I needed to have a beautiful life. I went back to my studies, thanks to the awesome education system in my country I had pretty easy entering the best university for pennies. I had a fulfilling social and romantic life, I completed my doctorate and two masters. I was being a human for the first time in many years. I wasn't hiding behind a faulty gear.

In my studies and in my personal life I ended up understanding that humans are not at fault for their nature, our struggle always ends up having the same culprit, the environment we created for ourselves. Blaming ourselves, telling us we are at fault for it, is inhumane.

I don't feel like replaying this game. I feel like the views from Nikita are a warp from reality and an acceptance of years of blaming, either from himself, or from his circle. I feel anxiety, knowing there is a lot of people like him and like the character in the game, who feel this same pain that makes them accept the blame. I am scared of replaying this, or to see the other endings.
I think people that think they have a faulty gear can have a fulfilling life if they go back to their nature. There is nothing wrong with crying, with accepting how you feel, with trying to adapt or trying to block what you don't feel comfortable with. There is everything wrong in trying to fix things you can't fix, there is everything wrong in trying to blame yourself for stuff that is not your fault, for problems that don't reside in you.

I think this is a beautiful game if you wish to understand some people, if you want to observe the thoughts and how some people operate. Sometimes it's hard to be put in the same shoes of another person and this helped me understand some people better. As other people analyzing the game already said, a lot of people connect with this game, which seems to be because Nikita is being more honest in here than the first title, or maybe it's because it's supposed to have a different perspective. It makes me a sad, thinking this is how my mom felt in her life, scared of her surroundings, not understanding why things worked the way they did, and that it was too late for me to help her.

"I think he was a monster, and we created him."

don't never buy no bagged milk from the gas station bro

This game put me in a state of constant discomfort and unsettling feeling. It was very mysterious and absorbing. Loved the animations and fresh artstyle. It isn't something new or unseen but gives the pretty rare feeling of engagement despite the "fear"