One of the best WTC novels. Shows more of a human side of Grendel and how much her dad screwed her up. How kinky her mother is.

WTC was such a fun experience! I have been making weekly videos for those that want to see how the story played out! The art is fantastic, the characters are well written, and the story has a wonderful cadence that isn't too fast or too slow.

I may be crazy for this but I LOVE Grendle, she is my favorite character! I love to play this VN after a long day, it helps me unwind to get lost in the story!

I highly reccomend this VN if you like cute pink haired bad ass anime girl that is on an epic quest and oh! Did I mention there is an adorable guinea pig, who's the real star of the show!

WTC: Love's Labour's Lost is a visual novel developed and published by Triority Interactive Novels. It is the third game in the Welcome To... Chichester (thus, the WTC) series. You take on the roles of the protagonist (you can choose either to play as a male or female character) and Grendel Jinx. Grendel is up to her usual antics, wanting to take over the city of Chichester, England through bribery and other unlawful, questionable means. Since the protagonist is aware of Grendel's intentions and wants to stop her, they have a plan to take Grendel back to America. However, two staff members (Cindi, a tour guide, and Autumn, a waitress) at the hotel, where the protagonist and Grendel are staying, are made aware of the plan, but they're worried that harm might befall Grendel, so they have a counter-plan to stop the protagonist. Cindi and Autumn intentionally make Grendel stay at the hotel and ask her to regale them with one of her stories about her past, and that's where I'll end my story synopsis to avoid spoilers and all that. XD

As for the gameplay, it consists of the main story itself as well as recap stories upon initially opening up the game. It is recommended to go through the recap stories first if you're unfamiliar with the WTC series. As for the main story itself, it consists of multiple choices presented throughout the story as well as route selection choices, where you get more insight into certain characters or certain events. For example, you can choose either to continue following Grendel's past story or find out what Grendel's mother is planning. There are a total of 4 endings, with a couple of them being early bad endings. Also, there are plenty of CGs and a varied soundtrack along with a bit of voice acting, mainly from Cindi, Autumn, and Sabrina (the hotel receptionist). After you finish one playthrough, additional side stories are unlocked. Upon going through another playthrough, you'll then have access to additional dialogue options as well as an epilogue. In addition, there are lots of Steam/in-game achievements although they won't count towards a user's global total until the game is out of "profile features limited".

Now that I've gone over the story and gameplay, I'll move onto my thoughts. After watching a partial playthrough of WTC: Love's Labour's Lost (I'll call it WTC: LLL for short), I found the story to be comedical and interesting to catch my attention, so I wanted to give it a try. As this was my first time playing a visual novel in this series, I played through the recap stories first to familiarize myself with the series. I like that the dev added this feature, so it wouldn't be required to have played the previous games (although I must admit that after having played this game, I do want to play the other ones ^^). Then I played through the main story. Immediately, I could tell that WTC: LLL would be quite different from the usual VNs that I play. As the story mainly is narrated from Grendel's perspective, as it focuses on her past, I got to learn what kind of person she is and how she got that way. I mean, having parents who are in charge of an organization secretly bent on taking over the world will totally mess up a kid. :o Despite her parents and their organization, Grendel actually comes off as being more normal. Well, she extorts money from her fellow students via friendship taxes and all that, but considering what her parents do, Grendel is more tame. At times, I couldn't help laughing over Grendel's antics and how much she gets away with. I will say, though, that Grendel is a very strong female character, both physically and personality-wise, which is a plus for me. As for the other characters, there are a variety of personalities, and I like how there are a couple of love interests for Grendel, despite that Grendel rebuffs one and takes her time before opening herself up to the other. Of course, there are characters who despise Grendel and even some who want to eliminate her, so she's definitely not well loved. There's plenty of comedy, action, a bit of romance, and some drama, which all make for an engaging story. As for the ending, I liked how the story ends, especially in the epilogue, as I found it tragic, even when you get the good ending. You find out what happens to Grendel's parents' organization and Grendel's parents and how Grendel and the protagonist end up in their current situation.

With the gameplay, as the game is in early access, I did encounter some technical issues. There were a couple of occasions where I had a Ren'Py coding error screen, but you can just click Ignore to continue the story. Also, I noticed that some of the CGs wouldn't be unlocked in the Extras section of the Main Menu. In addition, there was one voiced line (I believe it was Sabrina's) where the character would continually repeat the line. These errors should be fixed before the game is out of early access, but I thought I'd note them. All of the achievements unlocked for me, but for one of them, I had to reset my game data since a certain option will only appear upon an initial playthrough. Also, a couple of them can be tricky. (I'm looking at that speedrun achievement. lol) However, at the time of this review, they are all obtainable.

In regards to the writing, I found the pacing to be fine. I noticed occasional typos, such as the double use of the same word. Some further proofreading would probably be a good idea before the game is out of early access.

As for the art, it is in the typical anime style, but I find it fitting for this story. The sprites and backgrounds are drawn and colored well, with the colors having more of a bright, vibrant look. Especially, the CGs are done well. I should note, though, that there are a couple of disturbing CGs in which there's blood and death. In regards to the music, I enjoyed listening to the variety of tracks. They range from the everyday beat to the more action-packed one. As for the voice acting, I enjoyed listening to Cindi's, Autumn's, and Sabrina's voices, as they have that English accent going on. I don't know if there are plans for other characters to have voiced lines, but even still, it was a treat to listen to a bit of voice acting.

Overall, would I recommend WTC: Love's Labour's Lost? If you enjoy visual novels and want to read a story that has a bit of a genre mix and breaks away from the norm, and love a main character who's entertaining and who wants to take over the world, then I say to give this a try. I had no expectations coming into this story, but after having finished it, I must say that I highly enjoyed it and if there's additional story content, I'll be going back to this. As I mentioned earlier, I'd love to read the other stories in this series at some point. For the asking price, I'd say that it's totally worth it, and I'd recommend getting it before the game is out of early access, since the price may increase afterwards.

Finally, I want to give a major thank you to the developer for the review copy. I had so much fun reading this story, and I hope that more people will take the chance to try it. ^^

For more detailed, high quality reviews like this, please follow The Introverted Gamer, prioritizing heart and soul always. ^^

I have talked to the developer quite a bit outside the game, and I consider him a buddy. That won’t change my core thoughts but do know that there will be a bit of bias there. I’ll try to be as objective as possible. I have also only gotten one ending so far (early bad ending).

Grendel Jynx is a gremlin. She’s pink haired, immature and pure insanity. The people that put up with her in the now (the Protagonist and several hotel staff members) are pretty much at their breaking point. But they’re not a major part of the story. This story mostly takes place five years earlier while she’s in school and is actually a romantic comedy. The now takes place after the events of the previous games in the series but the prologue gives enough info that you won’t absolutely need to play them to enjoy this one.

The school is such a treat. It’s mostly a villain training academy that’s one part Agent Cody Banks’ high school, another part sh*tpost ala Austin Powers. Grendel’s parents run both the school and the Not--Illuminati (Council of the Unseen). These are primarily dressing and both of her parents are “special.” I’ll let you experience them and decide what you feel. They and their cohorts should have a Magical Girl Spinoff similar to how Keiji has the Working Man Villain slice of life work com.

It's also under the cover of a normal public school but the majority of the classes and activities involve espionage, murder, stealing funds from fellow classmates and other “evil” shenanigans. The quotation marks are fully intended. Grendel was raised to rule the entire world; she gets special treatment and “dates” boys throughout the story. You also get to see how she became what she is now and it’s such a wild trip.

This is an Early Access game. That means that there are missing scenes, the dialogue is a bit funky at times (many typos, inconsistent character names, and some of the cutscenes have unintentional Engrish in their set pieces; that really stands out for people that obsess over those things like me), and some of the artwork is a bit inconsistent between scenes. I didn’t have any crashes and my saves weren’t affected by updates while playing. I did run into some animation related bugs but those, according to the developer, were a limitation of Ren’py (the engine used). The official documentation backed this up and from what I can tell about other projects, many developers work around it by using pre rendered cutscenes or custom code.

If there's one area you should be weary of, it's the humor. It’s mostly harmless and a very dry, very blunt, in your face absurdism mixture. If you don’t like the works of Edgar Wright (Shawn of the Dead and many other Simon Pegg absurdist comedies), this will probably not be for you. If you’re like me, though, you’ll be dying from laughter. This kind of story is always up my alley, and I hope to someday play the other games.

I hope to start over and try for a different, more complete route but have notified the dev through their Twitter that it may be a bit. I'm a content creator and social influencer; that comes with expectations and sadly VNs are hard to get viewers for despite how much I enjoy them. I love this mad game!!!

If you'd like to follow my socials and see future content, I can be found at all of these links: https://chaotic.gg/@5kSub30 . Thank you for reading. Have a wonderful day.