I've posted a few times here already, but I also want to sing my praises of this story. I first played this when it was in a pretty early stage in development, iirc it ended right when the second guest (Luke/Kota) entered the hotel, and I remember chatting with nanoff about the game a bit after finishing that part. At that point I thought it was alright, had an interesting concept. On a whim I tried this again, expecting to play for one night, maybe, but got much more invested than I thought I would, to the point of spending the whole weekend and then some playing this. The universe and characters are very compelling, especially Asterion and Nikos. A great improvement in every way.
Asterion's writing is superb. He's strong, but fragile. Traumatized, but hopeful. You want nothing more than to be his absolute protector from any and all sources of danger -- but you need to respect his agency, too. It is such a delight to slowly but surely help him feel again, and of course to reveal the farce of his sentence.
As much as I didn't want to at first, I did go back and do two of the ruthless routes, and while it felt awful to see what the master does there, it made the things I found on my next playthrough of the main storyline all the more gratifying (especially with the events around Argos in chapter 17 onwards).
How much reading must that all have been? There were figures about what was added in 0.5 being about a novel's worth in length? No idea how that extends to the game as a whole. (I see now that the main page for the game lists the total number of words - my bad, not sure how I missed that)
Man. I have some serious book hangover now.