This is a visual novel I enjoyed a considerable amount, but I do think it’s held back by some questionable writing decisions. This is kinda hard to review because there’s a bunch of little things going on, so excuse me if I’m a bit scattered here. The friend group is fine for the plot. They have terrible chemistry with each other, but it’s still entertaining, and it’s believable that you’d have a group of people who just hang out with each other because they’re the only people who’d play DnD with each other (And I know it’s not called DnD, but it’s DnD with a different name). I really enjoyed Harvey; he is my trash, as I love divorced dads desperate for love (See Asgore from Undertale/Deltarune and Brendan Baker from By Your Hands). Bias aside, however, he’s not a very deep character and seems to be more of a flat character with various traits assigned to him. That’s basically every character in this VN, more or less. Like, I can’t really imagine any of the characters acting outside of the scenario of the VN. Like, Erza’s character is defined by his situation. He wants revenge on his cheating ex before he realizes that he genuinely wants to fuck his ex’s dad. Take away the scenario, and there’s not much left to him. Also, while the romance between Erza and Harvey is cute, it’s also very rushed and kinda awkward. I’m going to explain that more in the spoiler section, but I just find it hard to believe that these two characters have any chemistry beyond a simple friendship. Before I go into spoilers, I do want to touch on some other things. The presentation is good. It’s nothing crazy, but it works well with the VN. The music’s fine, but it didn’t really add much to the VN. I also find the narration to be a bit odd at times. It’s written in third person, but some lines are written as if they’re from Erza’s perspective. The only reason why it seems to be written in third person is so that it can narrate two scenes outside of Erza’s perspective that could be taken out of the VN without much trouble.
And now for spoilers. If you want to read the VN for yourself, I recommend you don’t read the section below.
Spoilers Section (Click me to view)
The LARPing section is pretty interesting. It’s not really explored in VNs, unlike DnD. The first episode of The Adventure Zone, before they do any adventure zoning, discusses that LARPing will become mainstream when we have slash fiction of LARPers, and I guess this is kinda close to that. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really delve that deep into the game, so it feels kinda flat. The folklore is also kinda bare-bones, not really being implemented until the section happens. So this VN is based on Boomer’s Big Date by Nanoff. I’m quite a big fan of that comic, but I think there are some things that comic does, that this VN doesn’t do as well. First of all, both have an asshole friend(s) who push the protagonist into doing petty revenge, which leads to a “you just used me” moment from the love interest. But in BBD, Joe (the asshole friend) actually confronts Boomer (the protagonist) several times, with Boomer being wishy-washy about the whole thing and not being honest to anyone, so when the “oh shit, I fucked up” moment happens, you feel like both Joe and Boomer made poor decisions. Whereas here, Erza’s friends don’t talk about the whole revenge plot with Erza after the initial bit, so it comes across as a misunderstanding at best, and them being dicks at worst. As a result, Erza feeling taken the blame for pursuing this revenge plot feels hollow, because the only time he really takes the plan seriously is when Stella confronts him and Harvey at his house. The romance is also a bit forced, as I mentioned. We only see them interact for like three or four days tops, before they say “I love you” to each other. This is more egregious when you consider that several days have passed, yet the VN doesn’t use this opportunity to discuss what happened between the two during that time. It just feels strange. Also, the reconciliation scene is very awkward. Okay, so Erza tries to text Harvey, and he doesn’t respond to him back. But then they randomly meet in the forest, and then they suddenly forgive each other. Like c’mon, you were just asking to be overdramatic. The sex scene was nice though. The writing is hot and so is the CG. Although the degrading name-calling is a bit forced, as it’s not really established that either Erza or Harvey would act like that. Whatever.
Overall, I enjoyed reading this VN, but objectively, it’s just okay. If you want more dadfuckers in the world, I recommend reading it, but don’t expect anything special.