Recent reviews by starlite-decay

This game is both amazing and frustrating so I will list reasons why for both.

Amazing:
- The atmosphere and art style is a unique blend of 90's anime and European folklore. You can see the influence of characters like Asuka from Evangelion, Tomoyo from Cardcaptor Sakura, and art styles like Slayers, Utena, etc. Everything is gorgeous, from the CG characters that have a copic-like quality to them, to the pixel art, and especially the art style during the witching hours. There are times where I want to pause the game just to stare at the characters or environment.
- The soundtrack is beautiful, a mix of anime-like pop with folksy accordion. The animated scenes that accompany the songs feel fun and perfect.

Frustrating:
- The game itself really leans into classic RPGs in that it gives you very little guidance. You can easily miss something and not realize it until later when unfortunately it's too late and you just lost hours of gameplay. I am actually writing this after a second playthrough where I hardlocked myself out of the endings I was trying to get. It feels a bit ridiculous that you need to be so so cautious when saving to the point that you should have a separate save file every day just in case. I forgot to get the mill key and make the bread on Wednesday night. And I realized on Friday night. And I didn't have a save between Tuesday and Friday.
- You cannot skip cutscenes. I feel like there is nothing more enraging than dying after trying hard against a boss only to be sent back to the last save and have to watch the fight cutscene again. I think this may have been done on purpose to envoke the feeling of 90's RPGs when the same thing would happen. Unfortunately it just makes me upset because you have to die multiple times to learn how to win each fight.

Overall this is the most conflicted I've felt about a game in a while. Because I absolutely love it and think people should play it but some aspects are so irritating to me that I am going to have to take a break for a few days before starting over. It seems someone has made a 100% guide, which I will be following the third time around as to not make the same mistakes again.

I keep coming back to this game again and again.

The puzzle mechanic of the game is super fun to me, especially paired with items you can use for different scenarios.
The music is great, I find myself having songs stuck in my head, even when I haven't played for months.
The characters are all funny in their own way, and the CG art you unlock is very pretty.

Also it lets you set your player to female which is always nice in female dating sims, since a lot of them don't let you do that.

The only thing I wish they would do, is have DLC with new characters and puzzles. That would be an instabuy for me. I hope HuniePop 2 comes out soon.

Quite possibly my favorite game released in years. The gameplay is unique in that you are playing an RPG where you don't have to actually fight if you don't want to. The story has heart and left me feeling emotionally broken after it was finished.

I would reccomend playing this with a nice plate of pasta and some spoopy spidery tea.

This visual novel has no choices at all, not even one.
I finished it in about a half hour and I still don't really understand the story or the characters.
The only real reason to play this is if you want to see some quick yuri hentai and for some reason can't google that.

Overall, I was disappointed, but there are a lot of people out there who were overjoyed.