Recent reviews by maple

yeah just ♥♥♥♥ me up

this game cured my depression then made it come back again

This is the one. They nailed it. Perfect balance between story content and choices. I complained that the first game made it hard to explore all the choices, but this game didn't have that same problem. Even the choices which get funneled into the same endings, those still have scenes worth reading, and there are only a few. The writing went harder while miraculously relying less on edgy humor, and it's so much more polished than the first game all around. Also, yuri. The greedy part of me wants more content from this, but it has plenty.

While I loved this game, there are a lot of things about it that I didn't like.

The good:
- Amazing writing, voice acting, and comedic timing
- Lots of endings
- Love the implicit story building and foreshadowing in the texts (and everywhere else, really)

Despite being awful people, most of the characters are still entertaining and loveable in some way. Even the dumbass guys and Lynn. But not the other teachers.

Nicole especially impresses me because she's the horrible person. She's not a predator or abuser, but she happily takes advantage of others anyways, even if just for fun with no actual gain, but the game lets you explore several paths of her either reflecting on what she did, or just going to the bank and never looking back. This lets pretty much anyone see a part of themselves in her.

I don't think the truth in what Nicole says is the key bit here. I feel the appeal is in the shameless rawness in which she expresses herself, regardless of what she does. Even while she's talking Jeffrey out of killing himself, she's not even trying to be nice, she's just being realistic in a way that they understand, making them look at themselves and go: "wait, no, I'm being dumb, you're right."

Do I agree with everything she says and does? Hell ♥♥♥♥ no. But is it entertaining nonetheless, making me feel awful for laughing at Jeffery being ♥♥♥♥ on? Absolutely.

The bad: they gimped the visual novel UX. The first few organic playthroughs were fun, but getting all the endings was an annoying, tedious slog.

At first, I was just really eager to see what the game had to offer to me, so I ignored this, but in retrospect, I really hated having to guess which paths lead somewhere different. It would've been fine if only a handful of the same choices lead to the same endings, but it's more like ~50% of your choices lead to the same 2-3 endings. Especially without the "skip seen dialog" option that exists in every Ren'Py game (why did they remove it?? isn't it there by default?), making me rely on memory to know where I went or didn't go felt like a kick in the balls. If that's what they were going for, great! But I didn't enjoy that. In addition to "skip seen dialog", something to tell you which choices you've already made, that would've made this a lot more enjoyable.

The Re-Up strikes a way better balance in this regard: more choices are meaningful with lots more depth per path. But this game is still well worth playing.

this game is so blessed, man. broke my heart and mended it several times over. noémie needs a route!

anguish.

made me feel warm and comfy 💖

girl kiss

depression

it's ok