'To The Shore's End' is a melancholic mystery romance that goes to lengths to take advantage of all the benefits using the medium of visual novels. I feel like this type of review and comment can't really go into lengths without spoiling the twists, so this is the spoiler warning. I have to commend the creativity and ambition of this visual novel, to try and craft a narrative that becomes recursive upon itself, thus reaching a sort of meta level of story-telling is one where I can feel the 'Doki Doki Literature Club' and 'Undertale' inspirations in it. The intentional use of Ren'py errors, the sort of 'passcode' level of typing in your own name to get a more 'true' ending, are really fun mechanics to unlock more story from this visual novel.
That being said, the story does leave me wanting, since with the 'mystery' being solved upon multiple playthrus, a lot of details are left unanswered and intentionally vague, and the framework of this story leaves me wondering about the nature of this world and if it's just made this way just to make Ian suffer. To start, the biggest question is that I'm unsure if this world is meant to be some sort of afterlife, a state of purgatory, or maybe even some kind of computer simulation. If it's the afterlife, does that mean that Ian has also died? If so, why is he stuck in this purgatory and not us? Is it actually Ian's story and he's just trying to come to terms with our death, so he's just replaying the same thing over and over? If so, why is it in this purgatory that we'd degrade upon each reformation? It's what leads me to think it might also be a simulation instead, cause then that makes sense for the degradation to happen. But then it's like, why is Ian also in this simulation? If it's a simulation, why doesn't Ian have this degradation problem? Just feels like the world is inconsistent with itself from this stand point.
Part of me then tries to figure out this story as if maybe it's allegorical, where it's about how Ian is living in the real world, and these are his dreams/hallucinations for what may have been. From context clues, it seems the main character dies from some kind of meltdown or explosion in some kind of nuclear energy facility or research lab. The 'dreams' that the main character had add to the tension and confusion, but don't fully add to the resolution of the mystery. Since Ian never did get to take the main character to the beach, this was his way of trying to fulfill his dream. That kind of tracks with the log book having so many names and fulfilled wishes, but not sure if it was alluding to the main character not having memory and choosing a bunch of different names, or if this was a metaphysical log book for the afterlife. I think I'm getting too caught up in the weeds of it all, so I'll summarize with that I'm still confused at the end of it.
Which leads to the payoff of going through the mystery of a romance that doesn't feel fully realized either. With both characters playing amnesiacs, there's not much of a romance that I feel builds between these two characters, and the sudden twist at the end where the main character is the one to go, feels emotionally manipulative. I think Ian is supposed to have some kind of arc once he talks with death at the end of the story, but it don't know what that would be with the vague fate of Ian left unexplained. Especially with character backstory flashbacks in the epilogue, that hint at more concrete story beats, it only really makes me wish I could see an acknowledgement that he knows the main character in the main narrative. I'm unsure what the goal of making the ending such a downer with the recursive code to leave the reader in black screen is supposed to impart on the reader. If it's meant to be a tragedy, I don't think that there's enough emotional connections made that earns it.
Aside from the structure of the main narrative, I think the prose is really wonderfully constructed. There's lot's of vivid imagery and interesting descriptions of existing within that world. That being said, when it comes to the theme of 'light in the dark', I don't think I really see the inspiration in a physical or metaphorical sense. You could say that it was Tor being Ian's light as he walked through purgatory, but his situation is so vague, I don't know just how much sense that makes. There's also a lab scene with what I imagine is an explosion, which could be seen as a light in the dark, but once again, way too vague for me to say concretely. Presentation is solid, with all the great artwork and the music matching the dream-like environment. The idea is really interesting, especially in a "each time you play through the story, you can unlock the truer endings based on information you learned before," but without seemingly being able to change your fate using this information, it becomes kinda depressing to read in the end. If that's the kind of story that was intended, then it accomplished that goal.