This VN is incredibly unique, and I’ll have to agree with everyone else in that it’s very well-made technically - I think NVL mode is used well here, the UI and “filled in” sprites look great, and the music is incredibly pleasant to listen to. In general, this is quite a fun read.
I’ll also have to commend the VN on introducing me to Los Motivos del Lobo - I’m not christian, and I don’t have particularly fond feelings regarding Christianity, but it’s a pretty damn good poem, and I wouldn’t have learned of it without reading this.
In practice, the VN functions as an extended version of the poem, swapping out verses for the structure of a traditional novel, and with a new framing device to tie it all together - but I feel as though the VN’s additions wind up making the impact of it all dimish somewhat, without adding enough to bolster it in place of what the poem had to offer.
The main element that stands out to me is with the decision to turn the wolf into a more humanlike figure - within the poem, the wolf is pure - untainted by humanity - and Francis’ taming of the wolf and its integration into society is its first exposure to humanity and the village’s sins. The wolf functions as a foil to the humans of the village - its natural instincts to hunt, devour, and terrorize the village (which is something that is absent from this work - the wolf in the poem killed a whole lot of people) are shown to be no more evil than the sins of humanity - which is why it eventually chooses to abandon them and return to nature.
Within the VN, however, the wolf is, effectively, human as well. Someone from a different, mysterious culture - and someone who is perhaps even more of an outsider than a wolf would be, given how an ordinary wolf could just be considered a dog - but a human nonetheless. The story becomes one about a queer foreigner converting to Christianity and eventually being ostracized from the village due to his stricter adhesion to its rules than the rest of the villagers.
Of course, this criticism operates under the (presumably incorrect) assumption that the VN wants to just adapt the poem - but, at least in my eyes, it also doesn’t vary things up enough to make its changes and additions work well. It feels as though, in spite of expanding on the original, the story mostly adheres to it in tone - and its additions don’t flesh it out, as much as they just change the format of the narrative.
This forms a sort of dissonance - where the narrative of the original and the narrative formed by the changes to the story clash, neither really reaching their full potential due to both ‘opposing’ one another - after all, the wolf in this VN can’t exactly represent the ambivalent violence inherent to nature when he’s so humanized and his sins are ‘sanded down’, just as the wolf in the original poem can’t be seen as representative of foreigners without it coming off as incredibly offensive.
I’ll also mention that, in spite of me focusing so much on the ‘twist’ at the end - the VN actually puts far less of an emphasis on the ending than Los Motivos del Lobo does. In the poem, the narrative of the wolf abandoning the village takes up almost a third of the work - whereas here it feels more like an after-credits scene - one final twist for us to keep in mind after the pair’s emotional farewell. I feel as though this could have certainly benefited from putting more focus on that scene, or on changing how it happened… but at the end of the day, that’s just my opinion, and I can also see how that might not align with the creator’s intentions.
Ultimately though, like I said… this is just my opinion, and I certainly don’t want to downplay the incredible work that went into actually putting this all together. This VN is incredibly well put together technically, and is still an enjoyable read - I’d definitely recommend people read it, even if just to see a new unique take on how to present a visual novel. It’s just that it I ultimately didn’t really connect with it all that much as a result of the changes made to the original work (and, no doubt, due to some of my own personal feelings regarding Christianity. At the end of the day, I find the parts inspired by Los Motivos del Lobo far more interesting than the more straightforward tale of St. Francis and the Wolf of Gubbio - which is why I focused more on it and why I was disappointed to see how little focus was placed on it comparatively).