I really enjoyed the themes of risk and trust in the story, and overall, this is a fantastic visual novel. The abundance of choices and consequences makes it so a determined player who wants to see everything can easily get over 15 hours out of a game with a run length of around 3.
The visuals are really unique too, …
I really enjoyed the themes of risk and trust in the story, and overall, this is a fantastic visual novel. The abundance of choices and consequences makes it so a determined player who wants to see everything can easily get over 15 hours out of a game with a run length of around 3.
The visuals are really unique too, with a handcrafted feel to them that makes it feel like a transposition of those old choose-your-own-adventure book games. The music also has a melancholic feel to it that perfectly complements the story.
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What takes this game down a notch, for me, is that it did not grab me emotionally and story wise the way I kind of expected it to. The premise of it being a horror game that is actually a love story between two characters trapped in an endless loop is right up my alley. However, after the first cycle it is established that "the real" princess lives outside of those cycles, and wants to essentially mature by observing them. This kind of instantly makes all the horror and tension a lot more tame. I am suddenly not that preoccupied anymore, because at the end of the day, I am not hurting her. Whatever I do, I am helping her. There is no tension of trying to do it "right", just exploration. On a meta level about videogame narrative and how we see stories with multiple endings, it is really cool, however in practice, for an emotional love story, it maybe could have been a revelation in the ending, or handled in a different way as so to preserve the illusion of tension.
