Bad End Theater attempts to deconstruct common fantasy archetypes by introducing a personality modifier system that influences timelines. The game fails to achieve its deconstruction meta-commentary by not allowing its characters enough time to flesh out their ideologies and motivations.

Part of what makes a bad ending so tragic is your investment in a story's characters. Games such as 999 or Higurashi are able to have impactful Bad End scenes because they did the due diligence of establishing character interactions and relationships. Without the time to come to grow and love the characters in a story, it's difficult to be invested in bad things happening to them.

Bad End Theater shines in its relationship between the Overlord and the Maiden, being a metaphor for frowned upon queer relationships. I would've loved to see their dynamic expanded upon, but only spending about 5-8 hours with several different characters made it difficult to be invested in any character interactions.

Furthermore, the game attempts to have a 4th wall breaking discussion with the player on the futility of seeing so much tragedy occurring to characters that they've spent time playing, This message could've been conveyed more powerfully if the authors spent more time creating interesting and varied routes. Many of the endings in the game are slight variations of the same basic premise, just shown from a different perspective.

Sadly, not all characters are treated with the same level of thoughtfulness and intrigue as the Overlord and Maiden, causing the Underling and Hero to mostly feel like plot vehicles to move the story forward.

Overall, I wouldn't recommend purchasing this game. It tries to market itself as a self aware meta commentary on established tropes, yet fails to create interesting, fleshed out character dynamics.

YOU and ME and HER is a metatextual romance novel that critiques established tropes propagated by the visual novel industry. The game pulls off its critique by presenting itself as a generic romance VN with a protagonist that must pick one of two routes between main heroines: Aoi or Miyuki.

The first half of the game, to say the least, was exhausting to play. While I understand the necessity of establishing verisimilitude (a literary term describing a narrative technique where authors manipulate readers by creating a deceptively "normal" storytelling environment) I wish this VN got to the point faster.

I loved what the author had to say about the quite literal objectification and gameification of VN heroines as symbolized by Aoi's vast experience with sexual encounters. Aoi is a stand-in for the player's "dream girl" or "dream crush," she can be whatever the player imagines her to be. Aoi's personality is dialed in to male sensibilities: a goofy, nerdy, socially awkward gamer girl struggling to make friends. This waifu bait perfectly encapsulates how the VN industry creates heroines for the purpose of being consumed sexually and romantically, a perfectly focus tested product designed to be sold and commodified. In the game, Aoi mentions that her avatar has had sex with animals, pre-pubescent boys, adults, teenagers, and fantasy creatures. She is a sexual object in an abstract and literal sense, an insatiable sexual greed that mirrors the capitalist hunger that fuels this industry. Aoi, like many VN heroines, are vessels for the player to fill their perverse sexual desires in to. Beautifully, the game attempts to give Aoi agency by making her fall in love with the player of the game.

Miyuki on the other hand, is the logical conclusion of wanting a VN heroine to have a "real" relationship to the player. She is starved of love and attention in her world, feeling that nobody truly understands or is capable of loving her. She forms a relationship with our player character and also ourselves, and forces us to learn every aspect of her personality in order for the game to progress beyond its final part. Miyuki's relationship with the player is limited by the confines of what the developers and writers imagines our relationship to be, so in a beautiful narrative beat, our relationship with Miyuki is predetermined and hollow, for she doesn't truly know "us" the player. She is a lonely trapped in a video game searching for love wherever she can find it, similar to love starved VN players searching for the next VN heroine to profess their love to.

Ones and zeros influence the complex chemical composition of our brains as we form unrealistic attractions to depictions of focus-tested heroines whose personalities go through several revisions. Girls created out of the collective imagination of coders, writers, artists, developers, marketers, and the VN community writ large. VNs, like much of what we consume in society, are a disposable commodity designed to be used and forgotten about after a set period of time. Then the next game comes out. And the next. Thus, the machinations of our insatiable sexual obsession and need for romantic gratification is fulfilled by an exchange of currency for a brief respite from crushing modern solitude. A digital girl told us that she loved us. "Us" being whatever the developers of the game we played predetermined our pretend personalities to be as depicted by dialogue selections.

YOU and ME and HER raises several questions about manufactured sexual attraction and romantic love. Pushing the boundaries of what the relationship between the player and the game along with its heroines, YOU and ME and HER is self aware of its reliance on generic tropes and essentialisms about love.

I recommend this game if you're OK with sitting through some painfully generic SOL dialogue for about 6 or 7 hours before you get to the good stuff.