Recent reviews by kolache

I've finished one playthrough of this game and will finish the others in the near future, and I have to say that this is a great game. The romance is well fleshed out, and the platonic relationships are also amazingly written. If you're a fan of romance VN games you'd definitely be into this, and I'd even recommend it to some people who aren't typically into VNs because the game is still fun and cute if you go 100% platonic. Besides that, the voice acting is pretty good (I only remember one awkwardly delivered line), the music is awesome, and the aesthetic is cool. It's also pretty hefty in terms of content, compared to other VNs. I'm a fast reader and tbh I skim quite a bit because I'm just so eager to get to the good stuff, and it took me almost 5 hours to complete one route. The only thing I wish the game had was a little more character customization options. The androgynous character is great and inclusive, but I wish there were also feminine and masculine options in terms of build, hairstyles, clothes, etc. It kind of took me out of the game since I personally like a girly look, and the character model looked nothing like me. I don't think it would be that difficult to implement either, and it would improve my already good experience greatly if it were added.

Good game. Only issue I can think of is that the playerbase is extremely small.

Pros:
Graphics are still nice on lowest settings, and you don't need a godly computer to run the game. Works perfectly on my ♥♥♥♥♥♥ laptop
Gameplay is fun
Communication options are great while still being potentially punishing
Game is only slightly grindy in that you need to level up to unlock characters, skins, and flashlights, but you unlock them pretty quickly
As an investigator you can still do things after you die which I think is awesome
Devs are good and they fix bugs quickly
Each investigator and creature has a huge variety of strengths they can persue due to the skin, flashlight, and idol systems

Cons:
There's only one game mode, can potentially get boring over time
No way to rejoin the game if you DC unfortunately
The playerbase is tiny
There's quite a bit of DLC which is worrying (even though they are relatively cheap)

Game is decent but there are numerous problems both on the ends of survivors and killers.

Problems for Survivors:
The basement can be OP as hell depending on the map and the killer
There are some incredibly useless perks that either need to be removed or changed (almost every single non-learnable perk) - which can lead to some really stale builds especially in higher ranked play. Not that it's necessary that you run meta perks or any perks at all, but 95% of people do
The map design for The Game is absolutely atrocious and is nigh-unwinnable when up against the Nurse or the Doctor, but it's still really strong for every killer except Billy
There is pretty much no counter-play against the Nurse (no I don't care that she "is the most difficult killer to learn" that's no excuse for making her literally uncounterable - and when you get above rank 10 pretty much every Nurse knows what they're doing)
The grind is absolutely insane. Look at my hours played. I only have 1 prestige 2 character, 1 level 50 character, and 3 characters somewhere between levels 35-40. And the rest, which make up more than half, are at level 0

Problems for Killers:
When multiple survivors run DS and/or Borrowed Time, it's probably the most tilting thing on this Earth. Especially in higher ranked play and even more so in SWF when everyone is way more coordinated and knows what they're doing
The grind is really bad, just not as bad for survivors since killers on average get more bloodpoints. Again, it's still really bad. All of my killers are rank 0 since I only play them to complete dailies. So in case you read my above tidbit about what rank my survivors are and you thought "oh maybe this person has leveled up their killers as well, surely the grind can't be thaaaat bad." Yes, it is in fact that bad
Some killers are just... way superior to other killers. Since the Wraith got his changes in PTB he's actually viable now, but Freddy is still considered extremely weak by most of the community. Leatherface and Trapper (but also the Clown and the Pig to some extent) mostly rely on the survivors making mistakes, in general. Also the meta CLEARLY favors high-mobility killers such as Billy and the Nurse, and the Huntress who has a ranged attack

Other than all of that ♥♥♥♥ the game is pretty good. It's fun, has good atmosphere, all that jazz. It's just over time you start noticing all the little flaws, and that paired with the toxic community... I'll just say that the salt is abundant.
If I could change one thing about the game, I wish survivor builds were more diverse (can't really speak for killers since I don't really play them - and their playstyle naturally differs from one another since they all have unique modes of movement or attack). If I had complete control of this game I would make it so that each survivor had one unique perk to them (probably whatever their most viable teachable is, but never exhaustion perks because any changes to exhaustion would be a direct buff or nerf to that survivor), and then they could pick the rest of their 3 perks (this is assuming that the useless perks are now viable). Then it's probably less likely that everyone is running the same DS/exhaust perk/Borrowed Time/Self-Care that you always see, because each survivor would encourage a different type of play.