Let's get the good out of the way first, and the reason I'm giving this two stars instead of 1: Roar's art is always great, and I think it's neat that some big name (in the fvn community) musicians were pulled in on this game.

Everything else about the game feels like a mess. A lot of the high emotion moments feel very awkward when there are no expressions and the characters are locked in non-neutral defaults. Curtis battling addiction, or having a huge crashout about his band breaking up falls off when he is politely doing the pleading emoji with his hands in his pockets. Ashley and Pat have sprites, but the characters collectively have like 20 lines total. Sam is on screen for two scenes. Each character also has an outfit for the respective year they're in, which is neat, but pales in comparison to actual expressions. Mikey (who comes out of nowhere in the last 200 lines of the game, but apparently ends up as Everett's husband) doesn't have any visuals at all. It's just a case where a little more focused direction on how the limited time and resources were used, would go a long way. 

The writing also leaves a lot to be desired. This is a game that's supposed to be about the Rise and Fall, sort of an homage to a lot of those 90s to  00s bands that came out of nowhere and then died off, either creatively or literally, but we're missing the rise. They're never really that famous. The main character ends up falling flat because the narrative tries to make him a victim, but struggles to keep him consistent in that, and instead makes him seem shallow. He joins a band because he's got an unrequited one sided crush the front man, and leaves the band when he finds a new guy (offscreen) to like. A lot of things happen off screen. Several relapses, rehab, record deals. Because of this the other character we're supposed to care about, Curtis, also ends  up two dimensional, and the two have no real chemistry. We get less "interaction between the two," and more "Everett looking at him wistfully in various ways while thinking about how much he does, or does not, currently like him." Occasionally various plot threads or character traits pop up, like Everett's parents trying to get back in touch, or Curtis being a capital P Punk, but these are all abandoned and forgotten about in the same scene they're introduced. By the end the only thing we really have going for Curtis is that he's got a heroin problem. In fact, the most chemistry and genuine interaction it feels like Curtis and Everett have since their initial meet cute at a mall is when Everett is blitzed after their final show and Curtis is meekly trying to make amends. Despite the plentiful foreshadowing about his drug problem, Curtis does not die by OD or related problems (maybe AIDS from sharing needles, would've been a good thing to pull in here, something else that was briefly brought up and left in the background) but instead dies in a car accident that wasn't even his fault, because they got caught in a record snowstorm. This feels like a rugpull. It isn't extra tragic because he got his life back together, he didn't, and it's not narratively meaningful because it had been foreshadowed (he mentions one of the reasons he previously relapsed was feeling abandoned by all of his friends, which is what literally happens to him in the final scene, but this is also irrelevant) but instead he dies randomly from something that wasn't his fault or even particularly preventable. We see, well, we are told, that the main character blames himself for his death which, sure, fine, trauma and grief don't often make sense, but it would once again be so much better if it was something that Everett had any actual control over to help add to it affecting him. Or if Everett was still into him. 

This is all followed up by perhaps the most baffling decision of the game. Everything we've seen was actually a simulation from a matrix/vr like device made for reliving memories. This is an extremely jarring genre shift that forces the narrative to spend 30 lines of its final scene trying to provide context for, which it does so badly, considering the timeline puts us in the present day, but with technology that we just don't have. I wouldn't complain about the inexplicable high tech present, but we had just spent the previous 650 lines in a very normal version of the 1990s. Like all of the important events of the game besides the initial meeting of Curtis and Everett, and Curtis' death, we find out off screen Everett got back into music eventually, got married to Mike (remember him?) and had an extremely successful career, and only had to stop because his trauma suddenly resurfaced. Since then he's become an alcoholic addicted to watching his own memories of Curtis over and over even though it's literally frying his brain. But no worries because the ghost of curtis comes out of our brain delusion to gently tell us to let it go, don't worry about it kitten, and we call our husband and happily ever after lyric song into the sunset. Which also happens off screen. 

The music is good, but it feels rather sparse, and disconnected from the VN itself. There's a lot of silence, some of the drama is once again hard to take with very emphatic piano and absolutely no expression changes. The four lyric songs are good, and impressive, but they just kind of happen, only one actually being performed by our protagonists' band (and shout outs to roar again, because everyone in that CG looks fucking MISERABLE) and the rest are just background noise without a lot to offer in relevance. 

I want to like The Bygones, but it's just a bunch of individual pieces that all come from a different puzzles, and none of them fit together well. It's an ambitious team with a lot of really awesome players... but the lack of focus leaves this vn feeling more like a rough draft than a finished whole.