OK. So it's been some time since I made that first post. It should be noted that I wrote that right after I finished the game. It was late. I was tired. I still stand by the majority of what I said, even if the comarisons to Shadow of the Colossus might have been a bit of a stretch. I guess why this resonated with me so much is because in this day and age, genuine surprise is almost nonexistant.
We all know what 'rosebud' means, who Luke Skywalker's father is and what Joe Schlubb media star had for breakfast. If you don't know those things now, chances are someone or something on the internet will be more than happy to tell you. Anything that manages to break through all that becomes special. It'll stick with you. Even if the product itself isn't spectacular, you might just view it differently, like I do.
Sure, Doki Doki Literature Club borrows tricks learned from IMSCARED, Pony Island and so-on, but it applied them in a way that I felt was new enough to warrant merit. I should also mention that I kind of wanted something like this to come along for a while now. Visual Novels are kind of a guilty pleasure of mine, and the Dating Sim sub-genre in particular often has this surreal awkwardness about it, that I feel could lead to great horror... though whether this game is an example of that is subjective.
I'd still find it hard to recommend to someone who doesn't like this sort of thing already, and I do agree that it has its problems. But when you get down to it, you could do so much worse than this.