Recent reviews by Ryechu

(Note, this review was written prior to the game's release, and is written based on the Alpha 0.30C patch (which is odd to me, considering the patch notes in the game also list the corrections for Alpha 0.30D, but Alphas are expected to have oddities like this from time to time).)

As somebody who works in the localization field and has seen his fair share of adult material, I'm having a mixed reaction to this game. The general concept of the game is intriguing—there's a sort of "parallel universe" theme going on, and characters seem to get mixed up from time to time—but the current iteration of the game has a lot of story inconsistencies that is making following that concept infinitely more difficult. I'm looking forward to seeing whether these holes get filled (pun entirely intended), which should lead to a much more interesting premise, especially with the goings-on that have already occurred in the game.

Presently, the script writing is riddled with grammatical errors and other inconsistencies. Missing punctuation, misspelled words, straight up "I don't know what this character is actually saying during normal dialogue" issues. I don't know if they have an editor on this title yet, but if they don't, I should throw my resume in...

The game makes it painfully obvious of the relationships between the characters (even though you "select" how each of the characters are related—be it rivals, friends, or roommates), and this quickly falls through about 30 minutes into the game. That's an obvious problem considering the disclaimer you receive if you try to state the relationship of the characters as what they obviously are: family. Thankfully, winc—never mind, disregard. I don't know what you're talking about.

Presently, the progression of the game is very buggy in that characters you are not supposed to be able to interact with at particular points of the game—"Mrs. Smith" is the greatest offender—in the current iteration. There are also tons of placeholder material, but, again, this is Alpha and to be expected and isn't a problem. Making sure there is a consistent storyline (considering how many routes are already available) and ensuring characters aren't accessible at key points is important to prevent loss of immersion. This is the case in both the "cheater" version (which allows you to cheat certain aspects of the game that I think will be necessary to build artificial spacing between events—this is especially the case in the "Jane" route) as well as the non-"cheater" version.

As for the "immersion" itself, the adult material isn't bad. Randomness to some of the scenes brings welcome variety to the game. The "scene replay" feature comes in the form of a VR headset that must be modified during normal gameplay, which is a unique approach, but it currently is missing materials. Again, Alpha build, to be expected. Other standard features of a visual novel/dating sim/whatever are still in construction (CG viewer, etc.), but are present in the game's menus, meaning they'll be added eventually. You'll have access to all of the standard stuff.

The current early access description says that the game is just missing "final touches," but that is not currently the case. Not by a long shot. The game advertises 40 characters, but only 33 are listed as "contacts" with 4 NPCs that will likely play a role eventually? The early access states that the game is playable from start to finish and character routes are being added—that's not the case at all presently, considering that the game quite literally tells you that's all for this character for now and the game is currently hardstopped at an interesting cliffhanger. There is a debug feature that is allowing you to skip chapters that break, meaning the team is aware of myriad game-breaking bugs and is offering a temporary solution. This is likely also why the team recommends not carrying over saves, as any messing around will end up putting you in an unplayable state, but in return you get a jump to the current situation.

Based on the release description, there's another year of fixes being made, and fingers crossed that we've only seen less than half the game. If we've seen more than half already, the ending is going to be very disappointing based on current events. Here's hoping!