I have been a moderate fan of Sweet Leaves for a while now. I remember first seeing its short, cutesy and sometimes melancholic comics on Twitter and becoming easily invested in its cast (especially main family unit). I still keep up with the project through the Telegram channel, which is where I first heard the team was going to try their hand at Visual Novel. The news invoked in me curiosity and concern. Curiosity came through the early artwork depicting a magical scene, with the supernatural being a nebulous aspect of SL's world. And concern because aside from one or two multipage specials, Sweet Leaves was mainly a work of very short vignettes. A transition to a longer format with higher expectations for storytelling can be hard even to skillful teams. Nevertheless, I came into the FVN with high expectations, especially given the size and experience of its team members.

I've offered this preamble in hopes that it will colour and contextualise the disappointment I felt playing this. Sweet Leaves (the VN) is riddled with what I see as shortcomings in nearly all aspects. Visually, writing-wise, technically, this project fell short of my expectations not just for this series, but also for FVNs in general. From this, you may imagine I think this is a total failure of a project or a disastrous, which is not the case. However, I point the experienced team and my aforementioned history with this "franchise" to make clear how Sweet Leaves (the VN terribly lacking a subtitle to tell it apart from the rest of the series) failed to be more than the sum of its parts in my eyes.

My first issue with this project comes from the visual aspects. This may sound positively ludicrous given how it looks, so allow me to explain. *Individually*, sprites, portraits, backgrounds, and UI are all incredibly well-made and reflect a team of proficient artists. Based on screenshots alone, this is straight-up the best-looking FVN. That said, these assets don't exist individually or in still screenshots, they are part of an interactive video game where player interaction must be kept in mind. And that's where I think the VN slips up.

A simple and recurring example of how these shortcomings manifest is how the sprites move across the screen: they fade out from one position and fade in to a new one. This doesn't look great most of the time, but it is a solution to otherwise having to animate characters strutting about. That said, there many times where characters don't simply go from point A to B and stay there. Instead, the game tries to simulate characters walking by having character fade from point A to B to C to D before continuing with the scene. To me, that looked ugly and cheap, not to mention how awkward it was waiting this long series of already unpleasing transitions.

Another form I believe SL falls short visually is in the amount of elements on screen. Between portraits (bottom left), text (bottom centre/right), sprites (anywhere in second horizontal third of the screen) and "notification pop-ups" (top right), I had a hard time understanding where the game was leading my eyes. There's a scene right near the start of the game where all the elements above changed simultaneously, robbing of the opportunity to appreciate individual, well-crafted visual piece. The way I see it, this is a game severely lacking in visual direction. When there's this much going on visually in a game, there must be a knowledgeable force able to coordinate each component and avoid the myriad of pitfalls this project ends up falling into.

These problems didn't make up the only issue that surprised me in this project. I was shocked to find myself disliking the writing too. First and foremost, I must say that the dialogue itself is fine at worst. These characters are cohesive with the comics and manage to feel three-dimensional enough that you can imagine they have lives beyond what you see onscreen.

The real issue lies in the narration. While it displays some minor troubles—such as a reliance on weak adverbs—its gravest sins in my eyes are how it often becomes redundant and/or meandering. For the former, I see in the game a tendency to reiterate information that was already (or about to be) conveyed visually without any addition to justify its repetition; as if no conciliation of visual and text was considered. And for the latter, the text is filled with sentences that go on after conveying its core idea, again, without adding any important or interesting information. 

These problems are borderline nonexistent it in the dialogue, which, in my opinion, speaks to inexperience, further explained by the prior works in this series being short comics or image sets.

The story itself didn't evoke in me a level of aversion as my prior two points, but it also left some bad taste in my mouth. When it comes to the protagonist's (Red's) journey, I think the game makes a mistake in skipping about two weeks of potentially rich character development and drama to "get to the magic part already." That said, what I keep thinking about is Toby (the child of the main family).

In the comics, all of what we get to see of him is his talent, obedience, and kindness; he's not a difficult child at all. In that form—that is to say, shorter—it is easy to suspend your disbelief and feel that there are moments of struggle in raising him and we just don't see it due to scope. But here in FVN form, Toby's unending goodness turns saccharine and makes for a flat character. It's hard to get a feel that this a real kid, because it seems like he's always his best, which no one is but especially children, who are still learning how the world and people work.

The game makes a reference to Bluey and the children in that show are difficult sometimes; they display talent and incompetence, wildness, and obedience, and selfishness and kindness, a much more well rounded depiction of childhood. Maybe I would not be thinking this much about this if Sweet Leaves itself hadn't brought up the "rectangle dog show," but even so, Toby just ended up feeling too two-dimensional for me.

All these harsh words may seem that I hated the game, but as I said there's much to like. The assets, the music, and the characters are all enjoyable enough and this first build does set up upcoming plot points pretty well. However, I cannot say I enjoyed SL either. It seems none of the aspects I care most, however well made, are free from caveats. There other problems—specially on the technical side—that harmed my experience, but none of them did as much damage to it as those I have gone through in this review.

Perhaps interest, time, and effort will make a better VN out of this, but, right now, I simply did not enjoy Sweet Leaves (the VN, obviously!).