The pacing (spoilers)

[Keko]

First of all, amazing game. I just finished it (was reading for like 4 hours) and I enjoyed every moment of it. It'd been long time since a VN had kept me reading until the end, and I have serious attention issues lol

But there is a major thing that bothered me: the pacing. I feel like the VN had pretty good pacing overall, but something happens around the time Aoi's chapter begins. It feels like the game starts throwing at you way too many timeskips, way too many events happen offscreen, and then you get tons of plot twists before the game just ends. Anyone else feel like the narrative skipped a little too many events? I don't mind connecting the dots via character dialogue, but when it happens so often in so little time, it rubs me the wrong way. Not to mention a LOT of things do not get the proper attention, like Aoi's father incident, Kojiro's fire incidents, Tomoe and Shinya's relationship, EVERYONE'S relationship with Noriko in between timeskips, etc. Noriko even mentions Tomoe taught her how to cook, even tho Tomoe wanted her dead? It really makes you feel like you missed out on important stuff and not just details. I kept waiting for the game to go back to the first victim (the scarecrow girl), Yuriko's party, Tomoe and Shinya's breakup, Kojiro's request, Aoi's deal with her "relative" that harassed her, etc. Nothing.

Again, I -LOVED- this game, but it did leave me wanting more, not only because I wanted more, but because I felt like I was missing information. Here's hoping we get a sequel, a bonus chapter or something else.
PS: The extra mini game was the most horrifying thing in the game.

[dgresevfan]

Just completed it myself and I must say the pacing seemed very strange. The final chapter was over as soon as it started.

[Sailor♡Strawberry]

I will be honest with you, I am unsure if they wanted to lean heavily into an erratic and unreliable narrator but I think they ran out of time and budget. The writing was good, the story was meticulous and well crafted at the start but started devolving after chapter 1. If there was just a few more hours of content, to cover the time skips and play more into the lost plot holes, this could be even better then it was. I still love the game though, crazy as it gets.

Like say Shinya gets a small chapter, to show their progression and thoughts. PLay more into the cat and mouse game with the police in a more suspense kind of way. Also explore more into Koji' and Noriko's dynamic a bit more. I dont know, those felt rushed. Oh and the colored text with Aoi. Just it could have been way more hashed.

[Kalavinka]

Bingo @Sailor♡Strawberry, this is how it feels to me. There's a ton of hints at unreliable narrator stuff woven throughout - like Noriko's anorexic body image, for example, weaving all kinds of contradictions about how she looks - but I didn't quite make any connections that turned out to be true. The story and characters were masterfully crafted throughout Act 1, showed a few gaps in Act 2 I overlooked as part of the mystery, and then utterly came apart in Act 3 imo.

The sheer scale of the human removal service beggared belief in a story that otherwise grounded itself extremely well in a realistic setting. A whole bunch of stuff happened off-screen that we were supposed to just accept and not get any closure on (Corpse Girl going down, Noriko suffering memory lapses, Aoi having apparently previously declared war on Noriko, Aoi being the killer behind it all etc). It just felt like a machine gun spray of plot twists that they wanted to draw out and justify more, but they just felt largely unsubstantiated.

Which isn't to say the game is poorly written by any stretch - the writing is for the most part absolutely phenomenal, especially when it comes to dialogue. It just seems like time constraints or budget constraints or something. Damn shame, but I loved this VN regardless.