Hello! I honestly wasn't sure what the best place between here or discord would be for a full review type message so I went here. I've tried to keep this as free of spoilers as possible just in case other folks read it.
First off I just want to say this game is absolutely beyond fantastic!! I haven't enjoyed a story based game like this is a really, really long time. My file's sitting at about 90 hours right now and I started about.... err. Five days ago, tops. So that's a bit scary but WHAT CAN I SAY, WHEN IT'S GOOD IT'S GOOD. It would probably be even longer if I hadn't saved myself into the hole at the end of chapter 6 part 1, LOL. Sorry this is going to be a bit of a long ramble here but I really wanted to give, like. An equal amout of feedback for time spent! Or, well. Hopefully not literally equal, teehee.
Not what I was expecting at all from downloading another TF game off itch.io but I am SO delighted I tried. Admittedly I had been looking more for shit like Fenoxo games at the time but I was so hooked on this barely a scene in I completely forgot I was looking for, well. Y'know. Other stuff.
The story is genuinely really fucking interesting. I usually feel like things start to drag in really long games like this especially after the 50-60 hour mark, but not at all here! Every single chapter I've been climbing at the walls to keep going and read more, I feel like the casino Will LMFAO. Fantastic pacing and reader engagement. Twists and turns have mostly varied between feeling like slow, awful realizations (in a good way!) and shocking slaps in the face (still in a good way!). You present everything in the story in such an intruiging, mysterious way that it's not just the characters that want to find out more about the situation. I've got a couple of theories myself and I can't wait to see if they're right!
I think a big part of why the story is so engaging is also the characters. They're insanely endearing! I'm super fond of the entire cast. Character writing feels consistant and solid, they have strong personalities without being overbearing, and each character very clearly has development and an arc to go through even if we can't see the whole picture yet. Honestly a better cast than a good number of professional games I've played recenty, the writing is just fantastic and the number of little interactions and dialogues you have plays a big part in that. When I talk to a character who has something new to say, I never feel like I don't get anything out of that conversation. Even if it's just silly small things, it never feels pointless. That's really really hard to do, I think, let alone for 90+ hours of gameplay. You should be proud of what you've got here, it's really something special!
My favorites are probably Liebra and Cal. I get really excited whenever I get to see more of them. A certain familiar orange [redacted] from chapter 6, too, I'm probably going to die if I don't get to see what was up with that.
Honestly it's so good that I've been trying to see if I can get a few good long time friends who aren't really into the TF scene but are really into things like Umineko and Persona to play. Those have been awkward conversations. "no, no, listen, you'll see what I mean, you'll get it just give it a try-"
The gameplay itself is very unique! I can for sure see the XIV influence in alot of it, surprising idea to try to mix with turn based systems but I think it worked out well! Long time raider in XIV so I've been pretty delighted by alot of it. leonardo di caprio pointing meme every time i saw something I recognized, LOL. I really like the implementation of the tank busters and aggro mechanics, they felt like they made the most sense. Great job! All in all it made for a really freshly unique experience as a whole that I can't say is much like any other game I've played.
The maps have all been fairly easy to navigate and explore (good thing) with very minimal frustration in that department. Each zone is wildly different enough to keep things new and interesting consistantly. Puzzles have varied in difficulty, some being real headscratchers and others fairly simple. Good to have a balanced mix, I think! I really appreciate the options to brute force most things if you can't figure it out. I mostly refused to use them and was still able to get through fine, but I liked that the option was there. The only part so far where I got too frustrated to continue normally was the trial.
It wouldn't be a full review without talking about the TFs. Honestly a fairly shocking range all things considered with occasionally more reflection than I would expect for things like current hair or other permanent TFs. I love that you can buy them for the wardrobe, too! It's alot of fun. The ones that happen by surprise through action choices are my favorites, I'd love to see more of those. I also really like how respectful the writing and overall game is towards how the player decides to handle Bennet's mental state. There's occasionally some stuff that was a bit off to me, but the majority felt about as respectful to gender issues as a TF game is reasonably going to get, LOL. I was pleasantly surprised that most of the characters at least didn't misgender Bennet if I tried to keep them as a guy.
I think most of the technical bugs I ran into were already mentioned in the discord. I'm fairly sure that at one point I used an item labeled to heal the whole party and it only healed a single person (some kind of first aid kit?) but honestly at this point I don't really remember so I can't say for sure. Could be worth a check.
For critical feedback, I don't think I have much but there WERE a few things that lightly bothered or annoyed me. This is all very personal opinion type feedback, so if you don't wanna consider it or even read it that's totally fine too xD I just wanted to give a full rundown of my experience since it WAS a rather long game in the event it might help development or provide a different viewpoint. I'm a bit of an idiot though, so mileage may vary LOL.
My biggest complaint is probably an issue I ran into a couple of times with side quests in that I very much wanted to do all of them and scoured the hotel trying to pick up new quests every chance I got, but the cast is quite large after a point and it took me a while to realize characters could be outside, too. I wound up missing a couple and by the time the chapter actually properly ended and it notified me that I'd missed a quest, there was always a couple hours of scenes or bosses between me and the save from before I agreed to end the chapter (if i'd remembered to save on a new file at all. oops!). I wound up not going back for them because I didn't want to redo everything, but I was pretty disappointed about it. I would have really appreciated either the notification for failing sidequests to appear earlier as soon as you get locked out from doing them, or some kind of warning that you specifically still have quests you can pick up that will get closed if you continue! I totally understand if that's just not the vision for the game, though. If one of those DOES exist already and I just didn't realize that's what it was, it might be nice if it was a bit clearer? To be fair I was also avoiding the walkthrough because I wanted to do everything myself, LOL. Monkey's paw and all so like I said I completely understand that one's on me, hehe.
Second kinda ties into the first a bit, I really want to replay the game from the start and start fresh to make different choices and try new things (and/or hunt down those quests I missed, LOL) but as it is there are just SO many scenes even with the fast forward. I understand not being able to skip every scene because of choice options and stuff, but maybe if possible it might be nice for replayability to impliment the ability to skip scenes that don't have them at all?
Other than that... I dunno! All minor stuff. I like the face swap option from the hole because I personally thought the old face was alot cuter and was really sad when it changed, but the outfit it's stuck to isn't really to my taste. I'd love the ability to leave the hole and wander around the map goofing off after hitting the content end. The ONLY part of the story where I got a bit annoyed was the bit of trying to find the party member in the school (first visit), if only because I felt like the writing had made it really obvious which student it was and it felt sort of weird that Bennet didn't pick up on it at all whatsoever and it got made into such a big deal. Not really a problem or anything, just a bit that felt odd to me personally.
I am going to stop now otherwise I will ramble as long as my save file. Thank you very very much for the hard work you've put into this project and for sharing it with us, this was honestly one of the best games I've played in months! I honestly cannot WAIT for the next part of chapter 6, I'm super excited. (Take your time of course, LOL.) Haha... I want to... draw fanart.... just a bit. Utterly fantastic game, thank you again!