Bladedfanfighter
Lynn   Canada
 
 
The even meaner lesbian.
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One hell of a sky
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11 Hours played
You know, usually when a visual novel has only one save file and multiple ending achievements, its because there's actually more content to find, not because the dev wants to pad your playtime.

First of all on a technical level:

Apparently pressing x used to fully skip dialogue to speed through additional playthroughs. I have not experienced this would-be timesaver myself, as the last update removed this control. Considering said update seems to have contributed nothing content wise, I am inclined to believe that the latest update was largely just to make this game LESS user friendly. My arm actually hurts from pressing the spacebar so much.

Further, if you're going to have a music volume bar and an ambience volume bar, you might consider making sure they both work before putting your game out into the world. I can turn off the music. great. Why is it that I've set both my volume bars to 0% and yet have a constant overlay of that text bubble sound or birds chirping while in the garden? I've got better things to listen to than this unrelenting boop sound.

Further still, why are the click boxes in both the letter and the gardening portions of the game so janky? I've tried clicking around, I've tried hovering over until things light up, and nothing is tried and true to guarantee that clicking in the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ middle of the item in question will actually select said item. what is this game design. I'm so tired.

THEN, on a story level:

The Tarot deck is relevant once, at that point why even have it. Your character talks a big game about experimenting, but only ever does so when you have no agency and to the active detriment of everyone around you. Every playthrough has the exact ingredients used per person, no guess work, no thought after the first playthrough, no capacity for failure since the game wont let you craft if you don't have the right flowers selected. The Gardening/farming aspect is nowhere near as prevalent as advertising led me to believe. All three dateable/friendable characters have the exact same date, exact same hangout. Worse, the hangout and the date are ALSO exactly the same, originally leaving me worried I'd just wasted a playthrough by accidentally clicking the wrong option before I got the achievement. This is not a game, this is a drawn out single path story with a single point of failure in the middle.

Your character will, within the first week: threaten multiple times to poison their familiar, steal public property twice, alter an old woman's drinks with said stolen goods twice, deliberately mess with someone while they work with dangerous equipment; the health and safety committee member in me gave up on this character then and there, allowed a woman who clearly has a magic addiction to snort lit incense like ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ cocaine which- does that make this character a drug dealer in universe? is Meg's decision to learn actual magic the equivalent to learning how to cook meth? you lie to people, you perform human experimentation on a whim without prior consent or knowledge of the effected party and without any idea what consequences may befall them, and all of this, you have NO choice in. Not only do your choices not matter, nothing does.

Beyond the absolute ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ war crimes your character is skipping around committing, when you come across the baker creating, just, so much unnecessary food waste, instead of doing literally anything a normal human being would do, your character's response is to pretend to be possessed by the trashed food. I thought this person was supposed to be 18, not 8. No one alive is this stupid.

Your character makes some vague allusions to a poor family life prior to moving in with your grandmother- no social life, largely unliked, a poor student, never had food made without magical intent, never been to a party or any gathering that wasn't magic related. Okay, hi, Christian fundamentalism metaphor. First of all, again, this character is 18, not 8. They are not trapped in the house. They can take a walk and talk to other people. And as a nominally grown adult, they are responsible for their actions. in the case of any of these experiments going horrifically wrong to the tune of, say, causing death, it would have been a case of 'cool motive, still murder.'

If this little brat had the gall to drug me with unknown substances, lie to me several times, and generally be a little trash can, before about facing after the full moon and trying to talk guided meditations and grounding exercises, my response would be neither amicable nor pleasant.

TL:DR- This game is not a game, but an exercise in frustration. Take your money somewhere else.