Judgement: Not Recommended
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What to expect from this game: as other reviews will tell you, it's a RPGmaker-style game with a bunch of sad stories to tell around a central theme. It's simultaneously linear while leaving you lost on what to do at some points.
However, those sad stories this game revolves around are all terribly cliche and predictable. Oh the Dad doesn't really hate his daughter after his son died? Obviously. The slightly racist parents are mean but might come around to being more open when they realize their son loves another woman? Wow. And many many other examples, but I'm staying generic to avoid spoilers if you do decide to play.
There are also in-story inconsistencies that are just annoying. The wife doesn't visit her husband for years (even though he is 1 screen away) because their shop needs to stay open to make money? #Inconsistency because she immediately closes up shop to say hi to him later when you give her a present to give to her husband. Not to mention the timeframe for whenever half of these stories are taking place - 21st century memes and jokes are spread throughout character dialogue that clearly doesn't fit the setting providing a jarring clash with the developer's intentions.
*BUT* my #1 gripes are the mechanics and display issues. This game has more resolution problems than Japanese pixellated ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Good luck trying to get it to display correctly on 4K much less any non-standard screen ratio. Basically 1080p is the only "stable" resolution even though it will only use a fraction of that. It randomly sometimes starts in fullscreen mode, and sometimes works fine in windowed. Other times it handles alt+tabbing fine, or it might completely spaz out and gamespeed will slow to a crawl when you go back, or be dramatically accelerated to the point you have to restart because tapping a directional key will send you all the way across the map. Also, the controls are just clunky with zero key rebinding and really awkward binds to begin with (A/Z for maps and switching layers? wtf?).
Is it a terrible game? No. But is it overhyped? Absolutely. It would need a lot more polish for me to recommend this.
However, those sad stories this game revolves around are all terribly cliche and predictable. Oh the Dad doesn't really hate his daughter after his son died? Obviously. The slightly racist parents are mean but might come around to being more open when they realize their son loves another woman? Wow. And many many other examples, but I'm staying generic to avoid spoilers if you do decide to play.
There are also in-story inconsistencies that are just annoying. The wife doesn't visit her husband for years (even though he is 1 screen away) because their shop needs to stay open to make money? #Inconsistency because she immediately closes up shop to say hi to him later when you give her a present to give to her husband. Not to mention the timeframe for whenever half of these stories are taking place - 21st century memes and jokes are spread throughout character dialogue that clearly doesn't fit the setting providing a jarring clash with the developer's intentions.
*BUT* my #1 gripes are the mechanics and display issues. This game has more resolution problems than Japanese pixellated ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Good luck trying to get it to display correctly on 4K much less any non-standard screen ratio. Basically 1080p is the only "stable" resolution even though it will only use a fraction of that. It randomly sometimes starts in fullscreen mode, and sometimes works fine in windowed. Other times it handles alt+tabbing fine, or it might completely spaz out and gamespeed will slow to a crawl when you go back, or be dramatically accelerated to the point you have to restart because tapping a directional key will send you all the way across the map. Also, the controls are just clunky with zero key rebinding and really awkward binds to begin with (A/Z for maps and switching layers? wtf?).
Is it a terrible game? No. But is it overhyped? Absolutely. It would need a lot more polish for me to recommend this.
Review posted on 21/05/2018, 16:10:00.