Let's start off with a simple fact: this game's world is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ insane and you will never feel like you fully understand it--and that's OK.

If you've played the previous game from this team, We Know The Devil, you'll already be familiar with how they make the interesting decision in their writing to not fully explain everything, allowing room for the audience to come to their own conclusions. To some people, this may feel annoying since the story isn't holding your hand through all the lore, but I think it works extremely well with how this team has structured their stories. The main focus is on the characters, the world around them facilitating their arcs and motivations. There's still enough to bite into for all the lore-heads out there like myself, though, so don't fret! Just know you'll have to mull over a lot of the strange sci-fi elements introduced in this story.

Unlike its sister game WKTD, the art and style for HWBM is cleaner and uses more angular shapes in its world and characters, which also help to facilitate this new setting we find ourselves in. This game features full illustrations its environments, even full scenes of the characters interacting, either face-to-face or in their mechs. And yes, this includes illustrations of some of the most beautiful women I've ever seen in fiction kissing, which is frankly cool and awesome. Each of the mechs evoke different feelings, reflecting their pilots--they can even be seen as both the literal and metaphorical outward appearances they all put on when around others.

As always, the writing is tight and engaging. Everyone speaks in a unique voice and has distinctive mannerisms that effect how the interact with each other and their circumstances, something that is absolutely delightful to watch unfold. There's bits of lore and story outside of the main missions, too; there are chats you can have with your companion between missions and mail you can browse through as you learn about the history of all of the factions and their head pilots and leaders. The world is complicated, and every time I've tried explaining the metaphysics to someone I sound like I'm actively going insane, which is honestly a good sign in my eyes. There's so much to play around with in this story.

The music was done by the same composer as WKTD, but this time brings a much more different vibe to the table. While the soundtrack for WKTD was haunted and beautiful, the one for HWBM is contemplative, even playful at times. The music in-game shifts with the mood of the scene, my favorite example being the track "Oxygen Ocean" and how it evolves and mutates through its own messy emotions and feelings.

The endings contrast heavily with WKTD, as well. In that game, depending on what ending you get, someone becomes the outcast you must confront (unless you get the true ending). However, in HWBM, our new trio of worst girls will always stick by each other no matter what happens.
This isn't to say that this game is the antithesis of its predecessor--in fact, I'd say the two compliment each other extremely well, elevating each others' themes even higher than before. While WKTD is very much a game about growing into your own skin and self-acceptance, HWBM is all about sticking to your guns and not letting the world try and push you back into your discarded shell. Both games center around themes of solidarity among those who have been pushed out of society. the ones who live on the fringes of what's considered "human." The elements of transhumanism have always been there since WKTD, but are further highlighted by this game. In my eyes, this game, much like WKTD, are perfect for queer audiences.

Much like the previous game, this one also almost made me cry! For me, that is a very high bar to each, actual tears having only been achieved by one singular game out of the many I've played. I have this one on my list of favorite games because of what it made me feel, a list that (at the time of writing this) sits at only four total games.

TL:DR: Heaven Will Be Mine is a game that is unabashedly complicated in its world, unafraid of subtext and strange metaphysics. It is a game for the outcasts, for the weird queers and people who will never quite "fit in" and those who refuse to be broken. Achievements aren't too difficult to obtain--much like WKTD this game asks you to replay it a few times, but the fresh perspectives will be rewarding. Writing is engaging and fun, and the art+music is beautiful and evocative. A must-play for queer audiences and general weirdos.

"The worst thing I can imagine is to live and die without being born."

So, this game is hard to talk about. More or less, it's an exercise in postmodernist storytelling with a (thin) veneer of cool mechas. And it's also very much a social critique. The problem is that it's pretty much entirely left up to the reader to figure out, because most of the surface story doesn't really make sense, nor is it satisfying without the metanarrative level to it. Reality-breaking mechs as large and powerful as galaxies, basically gods, that run on really rough concepts of potential things happening? That doesn't make any sense, and it's too abstract to really tell a story about.

But then, if you're used to this kind of stuff - literary analysis - and note that the game is really, really queer, you make the connection that all the mecha stuff is actually a narrative conceit to talk about trans people and their experiences, it opens up. Yeah, you can be yourself in space (or friendly spaces) where there's nobody to judge you, but the moment you come back down to earth, the societal pressure makes your real self crumble into a lifeless husk because it doesn't accept you. Your reconstructed, homemade interpretation of your own person just doesn't have the gravity of the cruel social consensus. To be fair, the game also touches on some other philosophical stuff, like how humanity will always need an enemy to fight, to the point of inventing one if there is none to begin with.

The writing is actually brilliant. But it's inaccessible. It's so, so very inaccessible. The Dark Souls of visual novels, if you'll excuse the tired joke, one that actively tries to fight you understanding it. Are the mechas real at all? I mean, even in-universe, not really, given that their whole thing is breaking reality like a paper straw. I suppose they're as real as you'd like them to be, if you really like that stuff.

So, do I recommend it? If you read the review, you know if it's for you. It probably isn't, honestly. It's like what other review said, who would I actually recommend this to? Well, uh, queer people who like literary analysis and philosophy, while also not being turned off by the mecha aesthetic, who enjoy really earning their pictures of cute lesbians kissing. So that's like ten people or so total.

But for those ten people it's amazing.

p.s. pick the MF ending for intense feelings.

it's fantastic. i sincerely think this is one of the best queer VNs ever written, and should resonate with anyone who's ever wanted to be free from the gravity of unavoidable circumstance, whether for yourself or the people you love. it'll confuse you at first, but then it just clicks and pulls you in deeper and deeper. please buy it at full price, play it, and then talk to me about it