I'm not sure what I was expecting, but you actually have to know a lot of books and be an avid reader to play this game. The book recommendations minigame will give you a description like, "I loved The Ginger Tree, and I enjoy poetry". You then have to choose the correct book given a title and very short description of the book. Really you have to actually know the book you're recommending, otherwise it's hopeless. What the heck is The Ginger Tree??? What is Lady Audley's Secret??? Does it have poetry???

30 minutes in, a kid walks up to me and tells me I'm terrible at my job. And the worst part is, they're right. I have nobody to blame but myself.

Anyway, this system is really cool and I think lots of people will love it, but I'm too dumb, ignorant, and unread for this game. Just an FYI for others like me. I'll recommend it even if it didn't work out for me.

Overall, a game that I enjoyed, but if I could give it a "mixed" or sideways thumb review I would. I've added my full review below, with either + or - indicating the weight of positive or negative traits.

+++ Very amusing, good writing, with a sense of humour. A fun read. So many puns.

+++ Great graphics and music, very nice to look at and listen to.

+ In chapter 1 and 2, choices actually do seem to have consequences. But often the choice has no real logic or way to identify what the "correct" choice is. There's never multiple correct-ish choices, it's always right/wrong. So you're kind of just guessing and then either reloading or you lose resources if you're wrong. Chapter 3 is the only chapter with 3 branching paths, with chapter 4 being an epilogue story chapter. Overall I did feel like I had agency here, even if it was a bit limited.

+/- Here's my big beef / drama with this game. Ignore this completely if you don't care about artwork history.

I'm going to refer to both musicians and illustrators as "artists" and "artworks" for brevity. The graphics and music are actually just straight rips from public domain old artists. The game itself doesn't really credit the artists at all, except very briefly in the closing credits and the store page. They're briefly mentioned as "inspired by". I'm not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand - it's wonderful work, and suits the theme perfectly, and it is public domain after all. On the other hand - the artworks are not original. Like if you Google "J. J. Grandville" you will literally see the exact character designs online. In fact, here is the main character I found online from a museum here[www.metmuseum.org] - the original caption in French being "This old court apparently has an old falcon..."

It makes me wonder how much of this game is actually "made" and how much is just essentially public domain asset rips? What makes me even more suspicious is people already flipping these prints online for over $200 without credit. I feel like I would accept this more if the character profile list functioned as an art gallery. Actually display each character in full with the caption, and credit given to the original artist. Also the fact that they're reselling a 100+ year old music composition as a deluxe edition OST feels... off. It's possible that they got an orchestra or custom performance of the music but I somehow doubt it. You can see the full original collection by the original artist here[www.metmuseum.org] in case you would like to see more.

- Missing major visual novel industry-standard QOL features. See previous text, fast text display, skip previously seen text, hide UI to appreciate the art, multiple save files, spacebar/enter to proceed, the list goes on. You can basically only click to proceed the text and select options with the mouse.

-- The actual game window / client is horrible. It's very glitchy, and feels exactly like playing a browser based flash game from the early 2000's. Like if you resize the window you can see the other menus hiding just off screen, and the character's feet which are not normally displayed from the original artwork cutouts. You have to carefully resize the window so that the UI displays properly, otherwise text will runn off screen by default. It was playable for me, but annoying.

-- Only 4 hours actual playtime to complete an "ending" - I didn't have the motivation to hunt down the other endings but I'd imagine you're looking at a total of 7-10 hours playtime.

-- It's quite expensive for what it is.