itch.io

Honestly, so far I've had alot of fun with the game. The plot, while often casual, and a little similar to other games that go for the same 3D vague fantasy aesthetic, if fun to watch progress and guess the twists and turns. I also like that the game sort of indulges you in making decisions good and bad, knowing full well you'll be save scumming in places or just curious to see what would happen. That said, while I'm still playing, I've noticed a lot of things that make me worry about the pacing of things.

First off, the home the M/C lives in, in general, is a bit of a problem. It's stated early on that the move and lifestyle is something of a problem with budgeting, so it's a little jarring that we move from a house we can see all of two or three rooms in to one that's three stories with a balcony, shed, etc. Though obviously, some immersion being broken is fine, I also don't find much justification for the size of the building, and with it, the navigation. There's a view of the entryway which, for the most part, is entirely unused, multiple views of the backyard that mainly serve to move you to other parts of the back yard, stairwells that have multiple views that aren't next to each other, and more. Your younger sister is almost always in her room, your mother is almost always in the kitchen, and the day to day activities is almost always the same despite all that unutilized space. To get from your front door to your bedroom you have to go from the doorway, turn around, go right, go to the stairs, go up the stairs, turn again to the next stair well, go up it, go into the third floor hallway, and finally make it into your room, turning navigating your home into a 9 step process, provided you don't make a wrong turn somewhere. There needs to be an easier way, like a house minimap that you can use to traverse multiple rooms at once without any complications. Considering you need to do this every day ( and that in order to stop you from doing it twice, they literally give you a one way shortcut down from your bedroom already ), this gets pretty grating only a few days into the exploration phases.

Secondly, I don't think the checks for various abilities is fair. Your chances to expand one of your few stats in the early game is limited, and you have no idea if any of it's going to cost you access to scenes in a setting where replayability for the early game of the plot seems excessive with all the plot that comes later. While there is some merit to many of these checks being unannounced and random, I also feel once exploration stages hit, you can't actually explore in a fun way knowing fully well a Level 3 skill check is going to sideswipe you in a lot of the first quests available. While the consequences for failing them is thankfully low, the amount of time you need to actually get even one of those skills to level three is to put it bluntly, too long. Of course, you can make that go faster by squeaking the wheels with a little money, except that the money you make is slow. Doing your Job can net you 2-3 silver per day, and sometimes the early Guild will have a random task that pays a silver or two, but ultimately, that means in order to get the first basic upgrades, you're going to have to waste 3-4 days each just in grinding alone for each one. Of course, if you want to succeed on the checks that actually unlock you doing Guild tasks or other work, you can miss some checks all the same with very limited ways to increase stats in the meantime. Naturally, this system looks to still be in development anyway, and those hardships are an optional part of the game for that exact reason, I wouldn't say this point is exactly a detractor if you just want to jump in the story, but if you actually want to focus on building your character to a certain level of specs, it's definitely a slog. 

The main quests are all optional to do in the order we choose, but again, it's hard to want to try to even do any of them when there's no suggested skill levels for additional content, nor any real warnings that those kinds of checks will take place during that quest line, especially when such a high level check can randomly jump out at you even early on. I also feel like the markers to getting to scenes with certain characters should be better outlined on their tabs in the relationships screen. I also feel like certain CGs aren't properly allocated. For instance, when you do a Bad End with Kat, the ending sequence after the Bad End sex saves, but the actual sex scene with Kat does not.

That said, I absolutely intend to keep playing and keep abreast of updates. The creator's writing is fun, clever while being a little memey at times, and they definitely capture the daily life and feelings of this protagonist in a decent way. Each character has quirks that you want to explore and learn about, even if you aren't as interested in them romantically, and the plot sneaks its way in left and right to keep hooking you to the main plot. Even in the downtime, there's no shortage of character cameos that often don't even involve themselves in the plot, and sometimes just playing through and spotting a character you know from a game you like can be half the fun when there's not much going on in the plot.