I am invested enough in the story that I actually want to finish it, and I'm getting close to chapter 5, and thus the end. However, I wouldn't have stuck to the game if it wasn't for its usefulness for me as a tool for learning Mandarin. It is dirty cheap and has very high production value for a visual novel. Voice acting is mostly but definitely not always on point. The art and animations are solid. The story is repetitive, it feels like the same handful of themes keep showing up again and again. At their peak moments, the characters can be endearing, but those are for sure not frequent enough to make up for the many times when the game is just silly.
Given how much effort clearly went into it, the story could be more mature, and I don't mean by including more sexual content. We could do with less of that, though there's nothing explicit, to be clear, everything is very much tame. Also, many of the challenges faced by the characters are presented as big dramatic story points, the stakes are supposedly high, but everything comes across as a bit pointless and boring. The character arcs are not good. I for sure can get into stories about shy people and I am an enjoyer of slow SOL. This is still subpar. I'm glad I am playing it anyway, despite how negative this review is, I overall like the game, it was at least somewhat entertaining the majority of the time, and it is easy to put in long hours with the voice acting and anime-style drawings. Great way to improve my Mandarin literacy. Still, I crave good stories and I am a bit disappointed on that front.