Theme: 5/5
Story: 5/5
Presentation: 5/5
Writing: 4/5
Creativity: 5/5
Most of what I want to say has already been said by previous commenters, so I'm not going to go in-depth in my explanations as to why theme, story, presentation, and creativity are 5/5. However, I will explain why I gave 4/5 in writing.
To give the non-writing readers some context, in writing historical fiction (or historical fantasy) the author always has to balance carefully the tightrope battle between clarity, brevity, and being understandable to modern audiences versus congruence with the established setting. While for the most part the writing is successful in balancing this regard, it does err too far to the latter's side once in a while, especially in the beginning, where I had to reread a few sentences because of their odd structures.
Goldenglow
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THEME
3/5. The folklore here is present. I loved the discussions with the ghosts and the pursuit of trying to get them in camera. But more than anything, it felt like it was just there to technically fulfill the theme of folklore, rather than genuinely engaging with the spirit of the theme in a meaningful or engaging way. You can quite literally replace the topic of their Youtube videos with something else entirely and it would change almost nothing in the story. The ghosts and the monsters were simply just... there.
Presentation
5/5 I genuinely enjoyed the art assets here. I found them personally charming and entertaining to look at. In fact, I have a crush on Trent.
Story & Writing
4/5 and 4/5. This was a really fun read! However, the overall story doesn't strike me as particularly memorable or striking. While I liked the overall development of Lilah's coming-out romance, it just doesn't feel particularly innovative or fresh, and that for me gets it a star off. The simplicity of the writing style and the plot really converge together to make an easy read, but at the same time also makes the fatal flaw of being easily forgettable. And that for me gets it a star off. 4 stars, however, is a grade that shouldn't be easily scoffed at for me personally.
Creativity
2/5 Sadly, this is the worst point of the visual novel for me. The ideas displayed here, of a story of a woman coming out of the closet to her best friend, feels boring and not particularly novel or interesting to me. I feel like I've seen this a thousand times already. This would have earned a point or two if it implemented the folklore theme creatively, but has only written it as an aside rather than an integral part of the story.
THEME
(1.5/5) I'm genuinely trying to think of a reason how this could be folklore, even trying to contrive how the monster in the story was folklore to begin with. Ultimately however, I fail to be properly convinced how the monster relates to the May Wolf theme at all. If anything, it feels more symbolic than a literal monster in the woods. For me personally (emphasis on personally because I know there will be some people who think otherwise) , if a story is going to be considered folklore, the "folklore" in question has to have at least one thing going on for it: (1) the "folklore" in question is believed or discussed by a group of people prior to the story's encounter of it, (2) the story, (or the topic of the folklore) becomes the folklore itself after the events of the story, or (3) has at least something to do with the beliefs of a group of people. The story meets none of my personal criteria. For #1, there is a lack of proper set-up in regards to the story's folklore. Prior to Sam and Martin's disappearance, no one was talking about the sudden disappearances or how they believe that there's a monster out there. While there is a deer man harassing people in and out of the gas station and the gadget on Bird's ankle, those are not necessarily the set-up for folklore. For #2, the story ends too abruptly for me to get a clear sense if the monster or the event in question becomes folklore after the story. Harper and Bird together don't decompress or talk about what happened. Harper just asks Bird what he's thinking of and Bird just says that he wants to live. There is no talking about the monster or acknowledgment about the story's events. For all I know, the monster turned out to all be in Bird's head and it never existed to begin with.
In fairness, one can argue that the folklore is not the monster but the deer man---the homophobic dad cop---himself. That or Bird's cut off hand becomes the source of the folklore. People talk about what happened to Bird's hand or what happened to The Fucking Bastard, but as of right now, I'm not given much (if any) particularly strong evidence at all to prove that those are the story's folklore. I have to contrive hard to even consider those, and even then it's not convincing enough.
Presentation
(5/5) I mostly just heard the music of the bar or silence throughout the story. While it does get pretty repetitive after a while, it's pretty tolerable. At its worst, the music goes against the scene where it's supposed to be going along with it, but even then it's not that much of a big deal. At its best, the silence (or the lack of sound) goes along with what the scene is trying to establish. The story's biggest strength, however, goes to the art. I'm not an artist, so I can't go in depth, but I'm a big fan of the simplistic art style and the amount of animations, all these done in one month.
Story & Writing
(3/5) I think the story partially succeeds in establishing a kind of relationship with Harper that's "quiet", the kind of relationship that doesn't need emotionally strong scenes to establish a connection with the reader. However, the story could definitely use some more words. When I heard Harper's backstory about how they felt when Bird left, I could hardly feel anything. When Bird told Harper about if they'll leave one day, I didn't feel particularly attached to it either. Don't get me wrong, I'm not asking the story to have these scenes be emotionally strong (I don't think that's right for the story), more so that the story should further expand on these scenes so that the readers gets to know more and become attached to both Harper and Bird. Because the story lacks the expansion necessary to get the reader attached to the characters, I don't get a sense of urgency when I read about Sam or Martin disappearing. I don't feel like I care when I read that Bird's hand got bitten off by the monster. One of the more fatal flaws as well is that the story ends too fast. After Bird's hand gets bitten off, we're only told immediately after that Bird wants to live. There's no proper denouement or conclusion to the story. While the backstory was good in revealing the mystery, it suffered like all the others before it in establishing impact and connection.
However, I don't think it's particularly bad either. The VN isn't boring---far from it. I genuinely enjoyed Bird's internal conflict, the mystery set up with the gadget on his ankle, and what his problem could possibly be with The Fucking Bastard. I enjoyed the dialogue between all the characters and the "quiet" vibes of the visual novel. It is for this reason that I settled on 3/5, not bad, but not striking either.
Creativity
(4/5) Creativity is very difficult to judge because it's practically unactionable as a criteria. In spite of this, I decided to settle on 4/5. Using the counter was a genius idea in execution to use as a textbox without actually using a textbox. The animations were charming, and the ideas displayed here, of dealing with suicidal ideation, struggles with sexuality, etc, were ideas I found neat.
Okay, as much as I'd like to love the visual novel, the writing style is just not it for me. I get "white room" in between character dialogues and the narrative, the prose itself doesn't feel strong or evocative, especially in the scenes with slow pacing. I think the pacing definitely could be fixed to be faster than it is and the writing style could be improved. Some just feel too slow and boring. The art for the background and the characters meet my expectations well. The music is also atmospheric. Overall the writing just needs quite a bit of work.
So far characterization is really well done so far.
However, I'm still in Chapter 4 and my thoughts are subject to change.
I really love the prose and the characterization of all these characters! They're so amazing!!! I'm genuinely hyped when the real game comes out.
Some things as of now, like the music and some art, are placeholders until the official game comes out. So I won't comment on that.
BUT THE WRITING. HOOOOOLY SHIT the writing! It's phenomenal and immersive, and amazingly paints the world and the protagonist well. Even in the slow scenes, I'm still *hooked* in reading. It's like a visual novel written by a novelist, and that's a great thing. Definitely the author's writing style I believe is one of, if not THE best main selling point about Catalyst:Blind Faith. I hardly give comments like these often, but I know good writing when I see one.
CW: // Contains Spoilers
Something about the story's narrative voice just bores me and I find that it doesn't become as immersive later on into the story. I don't think the problem inherently lies in the 2nd POV, but rather how the voice shows the details in the story. In short, there is A LOT of 'telling' than 'showing'.
I find the lack of actions in between pieces of dialogue troublesome... and blank-ish for the lack of a better word.
Katan as a protagonist... he seems to be quite dichotomic as a character, but I digress.
That doesn't necessarily mean that I don't like the VN. I'he had quite the enjoyable experienc for the most part.
Edit: Actually I find the characterization of Ramos to sometimes not really make sense. At some point, I recall Katan saying that he plans to pawn off the sword his uncle and aunt gave him for money, but when Ramos asked to sell it, he's hesitant all of a sudden.
I also find that he's quite ignorant for a prince. Somehow, he barely knows anything about Farhoron. Isn't he supposed to at least know more about it than stories because he is taught all these sorts of things, otherwise he wouldn't really be a good prince, would he?
There were also some character inconsistencies like when Ramos declined some stuff such as sleeping in Renee's old child's bed because he didn't want to be indebted. I found it weird because he was the same person who didn't hesitate to take the money and find the booze.
There were also some errors in grammar, sometimes. This becomes further evident later into the story. While they aren't to the point that the text no longer becomes understandable, I find them to be a bother to my pedantic self.
I played this VN months ago, and I decided to come back to this now to see its progress. I was really surprised at how there was a complete rewrite of the entire story, and not to mention there was barely any progress from where I left.
Okay, um... you're going to barely progress this way (mostly as a writer) if you keep on doing this.
I'd like to say that the VN is kind of 90% dialogue and 10% narration to me. (Whether this is good or bad, I don't know. This is a visual novel, and so, the art, images, and sfx already satisfy the reader when they read.)
To me, the narration or writing style felt more plot-driven or straight-forward. Of course, I still found the flowery language that's present.
Jayce's childish and goofy nature is really evident throughout the entire story. Maccon's character gives off 'big daddy' vibes (asides from the external looks). John is the naughty kind of boy while David has the enigmatic, quiet troublemaker trope I guess. As for Tom, eh, he's more of a friendly brother, I guess?
Personally, there were scenes that I found quite boring or slow, not much going on and kind of meh.
I've yet to go to the other routes, so I don't really have all that much to say.
Overall, I don't hate it. The best advice I have to say is, to literally just keep on going. Don't rewrite again unless you're finished or you have something that fundamentally changes the story. It can be bothersome to the readers, but hey, it's your story.
7/10 I really appreciate the concept of using dices. It's fun, strategic, and unique. The enemies in the game are also really nice. The game's not too hard, but it just gets repetitive for a while. I also hope for a little story in the game (albeit I didn't finish all of the levels) but I overall found the game pretty nice!
My thoughts and criticisms
The worldbuilding of the story is really well done, that I can say. I also appreciate the characterization especially with characters like Harren and Jymsar.
The art is also a fresh thing to see, but I can't help but notice that in earlier parts of the story, Alen pretty much has this same expression. Either that or I am blind. The music is also really nice to hear. You can feel its ominous and eery vibes sometimes and more than often, it's calming to hear.
The writing style personally feels decent, but boring. I feel as if it would be nice if we could see a bit more showing rather than telling, though to be fair, things are different with books and visual novels.
I also find it boring how Alen becomes this info dump character who tells Reamus everything about magic. While telling the audience of info about your world is important, doing it too much may sometimes cause the readers to be bored out of it. Some of the information presented isn't even utilized properly (such as the scene about the sigils and their shapes and what they mean.) Instead of creating a captivating experience for the readers, info dumps like this often cause the story to be some quite ~interesting~ lecture instead ( or something).
As for the MC (or Reamus), though it's just my opinion, I'd like to see him characterized a bit further than the simple nice guy in the story who's interested in magic. It's nice to get to see his thoughts over on dialogue, but I hope to see Reamus of being his own unique character.
These are all my opinions, though. Please take it all with a grain of salt, but I also hope it helps a bit.
Also more pics of reamus please thanks jk