HC3 abandons all interesting commentary and themes present in the second game in exchange for a narrative mess that really isn't cathartic or thought-provoking for anyone besides the author. While the second game is, admittedly, somewhat of a mood piece or stream of consciousness, it still consistently revolves around the same topics all throughout its runtime. The same could not be said here.

One of the most immediately noticeable downgrades in writing is the fact that the Housemates are even less developed than before, with Etherane seemingly avoiding any real character development or criticism of them even harder than she did previously. Bennett, for instance, has apparently been perpetually high since his preteen years, but the game doesn't really wanna ever talk about that because making him an UwU soft bean boi is more important, I guess. The writing overall feels really dated, even for 2018, and is just riddled with that style of Tumblr fanfiction prose that looks deep as long as you've never seen another work of art, and you don't analyze it to find out every "deep" moment is written with dialogue that borders on being entirely Escher sentences. I know Etherane likes Douglas Adams, and I can't help but question why she couldn't've at least taken some level inspiration from him and his humor, because God would she be much better off trying to be even a little bit cheeky with the cynicism at times.

While we're on the subject of false depth, basically all of this game either retcons previous events of the past two games, or is a metanarrative, something that far too many indie titles have decided to do since the release of that particular one back in 2015. The metanarrative doesn't really do a whole lot besides just convoluting things, as if that's ever going to hide the writer's blatant insecurities when Charles is right ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ there.

In terms of gameplay, it's fine, I guess? There's, like, one puzzle section which feels like it requires less thought than the first two entries, but is still a bit more intuitive. Still, every time puzzles come up in this series, I'm reminded of how much of a missed opportunity they really are. The puzzles are just intelligence tests for the sake of making Etherane look good, when I feel like they'd be better if they related to the characters somehow. The first two games were basically all in Charlotte's head, so there's really no reason for that to not be the case. After three entries, though, it's a pretty glaring problem at this point.

In summary, Childhood's End is a convoluted mess that doesn't hold a candle to the second game, or even the first.

go in blind, stop reading reviews, its worth it

I've loved Hello Charlotte since it's original release.
I played this as a troubled kid in a less than great environment ages ago and found myself resonating with a lot to do with topics the series explores through the lens of fictional story-telling.
It's 2025 now. I just replayed the three adjacent games for a couple of my friends and found myself understanding even more of this than I did back then and just want to say that I don't think I will ever find a game that I will ever be as fond of as this one. They've come to feel the same.
I hope Etherane is doing well. I hope they continue to create and story-tell.
Art is an important essence of humanity, and Etherane does an amazing job of utilizing it in many forms to create amazing things.