The setup is rich with satiric potential, but I feel like the execution is not exaggerated and ridiculous enough to really work as a comedy? I kind of get the feeling that the game takes the central arc – the insufferable lib protagonist with a bunch of firmly held yet poorly articulated views learning to be less stuck up by dating and banging a newly out conservative man – too seriously to risk making fun of itself and the characters. The middle section in particular feels like it's more eager to provide setups for character drama than humor; for instance, the (admittedly amusing) premise of the date being a means of gauging this dude's erectile dysfunction only comes up in the beginning and in the very end. As a dramedy, I think it doesn't really find a good balance between the constituent genres.
With the relative lack of laughs, I guess my mind wandered mostly towards what point, if any, is being made here. I guess the VN ultimately felt a little hollow due to how abstract it all is. The character portraits aren't always fully convincing (would an old conservative guy really say "tankies"? isn't that more of a terminally online centrist–liberal thing), and the story is in general kind of disconnected from reality and the cultural moment at large.
For instance, it feels very indicative that the characters spend a lot of time arguing about low-stakes issues like "forced diversity" in Hollywood movies and topics specific to the fictional world. Furry worldbuilding using species as an analogue for race is a bigger conversation, but here in particular it comes off as a means of smoothing over the uncomfortable fact that the love interest is some kind of racist (?) or at least has a couple of racially charged interactions with the protagonist. I think this is just one of those situations where you can't have your cake and eat it, too. If you paper over the thorny aspects of the story you're telling instead of going all the way there and confronting them, it just starts to feel like it's not grounded in anything and becomes less easy to get hold of as a reader.
Political satire in furry visual novels is a concept it will probably not surprise to hear I'm pretty enthusiastic about, but Every Date Has Its Progs And Cons just didn't really grab me as a comedy or feel like it had enough meat to it as a story with something to say. The prose and the presentation are competent but not distinctive.
Comments
The setup is rich with satiric potential, but I feel like the execution is not exaggerated and ridiculous enough to really work as a comedy? I kind of get the feeling that the game takes the central arc – the insufferable lib protagonist with a bunch of firmly held yet poorly articulated views learning to be less stuck up by dating and banging a newly out conservative man – too seriously to risk making fun of itself and the characters. The middle section in particular feels like it's more eager to provide setups for character drama than humor; for instance, the (admittedly amusing) premise of the date being a means of gauging this dude's erectile dysfunction only comes up in the beginning and in the very end. As a dramedy, I think it doesn't really find a good balance between the constituent genres.
With the relative lack of laughs, I guess my mind wandered mostly towards what point, if any, is being made here. I guess the VN ultimately felt a little hollow due to how abstract it all is. The character portraits aren't always fully convincing (would an old conservative guy really say "tankies"? isn't that more of a terminally online centrist–liberal thing), and the story is in general kind of disconnected from reality and the cultural moment at large.
For instance, it feels very indicative that the characters spend a lot of time arguing about low-stakes issues like "forced diversity" in Hollywood movies and topics specific to the fictional world. Furry worldbuilding using species as an analogue for race is a bigger conversation, but here in particular it comes off as a means of smoothing over the uncomfortable fact that the love interest is some kind of racist (?) or at least has a couple of racially charged interactions with the protagonist. I think this is just one of those situations where you can't have your cake and eat it, too. If you paper over the thorny aspects of the story you're telling instead of going all the way there and confronting them, it just starts to feel like it's not grounded in anything and becomes less easy to get hold of as a reader.
Political satire in furry visual novels is a concept it will probably not surprise to hear I'm pretty enthusiastic about, but Every Date Has Its Progs And Cons just didn't really grab me as a comedy or feel like it had enough meat to it as a story with something to say. The prose and the presentation are competent but not distinctive.