First of all, I want to say that the vibes of this VN are immaculate. Every team member did a great job and the individual parts click together really well: the music has a wonderful ethereal quality, the prose is dreamy and just flowery enough, the backgrounds look haunting and beautiful, and both the CG illustrators made pieces that fit what the game is trying to communicate perfectly. I'm not even gonna comment on the coder putting their entire pussy into making the structural shenanigans this game has to offer happen. The sprites have a slightly "off" quality to them (but in a good way), where all of Ian's expressions have various degrees of "hide the pain" in them. It is remarkable for having a spriteset with the most aggressive headtilts I've ever seen in a FVN.

The writing is the part I have the most issue with, but in a way I find hard to put into words. I took a few days to digest this and digest what I think the issue is.

I enjoyed the prose itself, and I would love to go back to the game and cite some examples in this review to prove and elaborate my point... but uhhh errr ummmm hhhh... I guess we're not doing that💀

A lot of the character interactions and storytelling decisions were good at getting me excited, dreading, and wondering  what is happening and what to expect next but... In the end i feel like it's a very short, straightforward story.

As the story slowly revealed its hand by exposing more of its structure, the more I felt like I'm reading three very pretty short stories in a trench coat, but I'm not really sure what the figure in the trench coat is trying to sell me. I feel like from all the dazzling structural and code tricks, I was distracted from the greater picture.

While chewing on my feelings, I told a friend how I feel like To the Shore's End is style over substance, but how that doesn't feel quite right calling it that either. They said that sometimes form over functions is sometimes fine, if the form is fucking fire. Maybe it's not about the destination, maybe it's about the transient time spent wandering.

Despite my hangups that there's SOMETHING missing from this story to pack that final OOMPH, it's a very strong first showing, and the lead developer showed a very good skill at running a team. Bonus points for even if I have issues with the storytelling, the writer still managed to make me spend days untangling my own thoughts and feelings about what I just read, and have me come out none the wiser in the end.