As with every Strawberry Noodles production, often the thing that I find myself wishing for the most is simply More. I want more time with this world, and these characters, and the interactions between them. Not to imply it's not enough, it gets the job done. I just want to indulge. I find the dynamics you construct between characters fascinating, and compelling, and despite an outwardly similar set up, they're always so unique. I love that Lazarus can't help but love, and forgive, even though it hurts. It's just in their nature to do so. I especially like that their relationship with Cyryl by the end has become a bit blurred. Like there's the start of something, maybe. Lazarus already loves him, after all they can't help but love him, but just in what way, hm? I adore their reason for hating themself, and the way that it's resolved. I love that Cyryl has this survivor's guilt burden, like a captain that didn't go down with his ship, and I love his little bit of cheekiness hidden under his ashen knight persona. His entire concept is frankly just cool as fuck, I always love seeing people twist and play with concepts. As someone who did something similar once with a dryad, it hits a soft spot for me. And as everyone knows, I love life, and dying, and symbolism, so someone quite literally burning out despite surviving the impossible, while helping to resurrect someone else, is sooooo tasty. There's just back to back to back moments like these that compel me with how cool they are! They're fresh and exciting, and inspiring! It's the type of worldbuilding and dynamics and plotbeats that make me want to write more.
The translation is the weakest link, unfortunately, but I do think that the writing style comes through better now compared to some of the rougher first translations of the older work. I'm especially fond of "Because love you can" though I think it would benefit from a comma, reading as "Because love, you can." I think the prose also works better with the format of a visual novel. It no longer feels like I'm getting redundant descriptions of actions or expressions, and instead they expand on the relatively few and simple expressions that the characters have, though I do think they go a long ways. Most impressively is just how deeply integrated the folklore is with the game itself. It's a respectable size, and yet so many sentences have these other bits and pieces of folklore stitched into them. Some things that I've got cursory knowledge of, like szeptucha, some stories with my interpretations like Cygnus (teehee), and some I've frankly got no idea, but they all strike my attention without feeling overwhelming. The scene with Butwiala has an especially intriguing line, where Lazarus notes that gods should always have faces, usually three, but she has none, which just goes to show how powerful she is. Is that made up? is that tradition? i don't know, but I sure want to.
The art is gorgeous. Butwiala is especially striking, though I'm also partial to Birdie and Kitty and the little cameo of old friends at the end ;> The music reminds me, unsurprisingly, of the blue hour, at least on the main menu. This is one of those games I can really feel the time constraints in, so I hope you'll give it some more polish (no pun intended) post jam, because I think it deserves it, since it's already so strong. I wish some of the sprites were used a little bit more, sometimes a character is mentioned emoting something like happiness or anger, which there exist sprites for, but they remain in their neutral expressions. Anyway I look forward to whatever comes next from this group. You can expect me to be in the front row seats every time!