// Spoilers ahead:
Finally finished the game! The experience was unexpectedly great! I'd give it a 4/5. The cutest character is definitely Alon! Among the three routes, I feel the Rune route was the best crafted. The storyline for Rune is exceptionally well done, starting with the tragic scene of Rune's childhood, which instantly drew me in. The flashback during the fight with the "monster," where Rune recalls his father's words... was just so powerful.
The Max route, on the other hand, perfectly complements the overall plot. For instance, right after finishing Rune's route, I thought... although it was amazing, maybe the story’s setting was a bit too romanticized? Shelter is now free and becomes a sort of Eden? But after playing Max's route, I realized that wasn’t the case at all. Rune is a competent hero who carefully balances everything in the chaos.
However, I do have some small complaints... about Max's route. I was initially drawn to the game for Max, but in the end, his route seemed more about unraveling the story. Even though it's the longest route, Max himself doesn’t dominate most of it. He remained a bit too calm throughout, and his growth and changes were more seen from a third-person perspective, with very little direct expression from the character himself. Could this be related to Max’s personality? Acri’s existence was completely erased, with all of Acri's past automatically transferred to Max, and he was the only one aware of everything. Then he quietly bore the weight of it all, taking over Acri's role in the shelter and carrying the burden of a tragic history. He even ended up comforting Luke, who had forgotten everything. His rare outbursts were just a few complaints in the afternoon. There seemed to be too few descriptions of how he viewed and came to terms with all of this.
Another thing is the relationship between Acri and Max. There were too few perspectives from Max’s point of view. I understand Acri’s thoughts throughout the entire story very well, but Max’s thoughts... yes, they were written, but compared to Acri’s development in the same route, it felt like there was less focus on Max.
And then there's Shagbark... It seems like they don't appear in the other routes or during the daytime, right? Are they... usually staying in the shelter as well? Or did Max summon them back urgently after the disaster struck? If they were usually in the shelter, why didn’t we see them during the day? This is a big contrast with the other route NPCs...His views are so similar to Teak’s; if he had been there, maybe he could have guided Teak? Based on the daytime descriptions, I initially thought the person who attacked Max and Acri before was Teak. But it turned out to be Shagbark, which felt like it came out of nowhere...
Damn, I think I just realized something while writing this! Could it be that Shagbark is the result of history “correcting itself” after Teak “disappeared”?! Teak vanished, so Shagbark appeared?!Even though Luke allowed Max to retain his memories of Acri, he didn’t preserve the memories related to Teak. Everything was replaced by Shagbark. And the final event with the cable wasn’t transferred to Shagbark because of Alon’s knife—Alon and his belongings have the ability to escape history’s corrections. Is that what happened?!