Originally only for this first hyphens bit, but then I decided to just do a full review.
The majority of demo 1.6 of 'Lovesick Darlings' was rather enjoyable; the writing did what it needed and eventually 'disappeared' as I imagined the scenes before me.
Fear of Grammar | Stop with the Hyphens
However, at some point, the author(s) got afraid of the full stop. Suddenly, characters were interrupting each other left and right and the scenes felt awkward. And it happened when characters weren't even cutting each other off-- I assume it was meant for a falling down or abrupt sort of tone, i.e: 'Okay-' which somehow feels different than 'Okay.' I can understand it and it does technically get the job done, but it sort of results in the game suddenly feeling less professional, and it felt as if the writing dipped in quality. I am the one who likes long-winded, flowery, purple sort of prose with intention, metaphor, meaning, and creative grammar usage. Now I am not expecting that from a visual novel and I can deal with simple writing, too, but you can hopefully see how the game suddenly spitting out sentence fragments instead of whole sentences was quite against my favored writing.
It should not be that Japanese visual novels translations read better than some parts of this home-grown English title. However, this is mainly just my opinion, I'm sure it isn't a game-breaking thing for most-- I mean I still finished the demo and I said that I like writing which is the exact opposite of that which was written in the demo-- but please take this into consideration. And, yes, I am the one named 'TheMessallation' on twitter who has said very similar things; I just wanted to be sure that this message about these hyphens was received.
Jayda is best girl... why?
In other news, I went full dark-skinned tomboy waifu and maxed out Jayda, but I ensured to keep Stephanie and Maisy content with me as well. And, actually, I was a bit confused as to why Jayda was quite literally the panacea throughout. She was mature, already was in love with the protagonist, had every interest in common with the protagonist, and, finally, I find that she had struggles that were reasonable.
Now this is tricky since, I mean, this 'invalidates' the struggles of the other characters, but what I mean is that, like, in the real world, someone could reasonably help her out here with her self-doubt and her leaving the art class is something I see all the time in real life with competitive programs. It feels like Sydney could reasonably help her out, and I liked how he encouraged her to try being playing Marvel versus Capcom competitively-- that is, it all feels plausible. Honestly, I don't ever play Smash-esque (proper term?) games so that is just my best guess for what they were playing although could've just been Smash, (the most recent one) too.
However-- and this is my uninformed opinion since I have not played the other routes-- at first glance, Nacho is inevitable and Maisy has so many other issues, honestly; and Stephanie's home situation would take Australian CPS to fix. So to me, the player, it feels like Jayda was always and will always be 'the right route.' Christ, I mean I found myself actively annoyed at Syd for chasing after Stephanie who I feel probably has a crush on Maisy when Jayda who has less issues, more affection (I mean, she even waited for Syd out in the cold with only pajamas on-- that moved me in real life) and everything in common. A route system is great, however, I just feel that it's sort of pointless when there feels like there is only one best route. Just my opinion, though, I don't really think this is meant to be a real dating simulator, but, seriously, if this was real life, I would just stick with Jayda and help out Maisy and Stephanie when I can-- sort of like how you can only ease the pain of a terminally ill patient.
Final Remarks | Seriously, why are we in Australia
First things first, why is this game set in Australia. It sounds like a silly question, but, seriously what is the purpose of that in writing? Just the city Sydney that Sydney shares a name with? It was only funny the first time, and then no more. Most Japanese visual novels I've played do not state that they are in Japan until a character who is not from Japan is mentioned (similar to Kudryavka Noumi in Little Busters) since it just does not matter. The fact they are in Australia also means that a lot of jokes sometimes don't work. Like, I do not know what the Australian version of CPS is so it felt awkward when, earlier in this post, I had to literally say 'Australian CPS' since I do not want to read a Wikipedia page on this. Same thing with the FBI thing Sydney does near the end of the game, if I recall correctly. Australia does not have the FBI, that is an American agency.
Not to mention, that these characters don't even use proper Australian slang. There is no thong, no c*nt, no cobbler, and the speakers do not sound Australian. I know that not every Australian has a crazy accent, but if you are going to hammer it in that we are in Australia, I would expect to hear undeniably Australian accent. So I ask, again, why are we in Australia besides the name pun?