I hate almost everything I read, I've only ever liked completely liked two books in my entire life and those were Mary Shelley's original "Frankenstein" and Albert Camus "The Stranger" and I've read a shit ton of books including those books that everyone loves and those that are considered classics. This VN came really darn close to passing my extreme criticism. (To further prove my point on how critical I am of writing, I once told my friend to restart her paper the night before it was due).
Anyway, this is definitely my favorite VN ever. I loved Fritz's and Karma's routes and I liked Waltz's but I definitely feel it could have been better.
A big thing I liked about this VN overall is the twist on fairytales it had, especially the twisted endings, the endings were mostly happily ever after but still had a lot of authenticity, except for in Waltz's route. And I suppose Rumpel's, but his character seemed a little misplaced anyway since he was the only one that didn't have some kind of prior connection or logical connection to Lucette (in Karma's case there was a logical connection since they were both royalty).
Some of Waltz's route was too staged, like one or two really cliche scenes is good but I feel like there were too many in Waltz's route. Especially since the order suggested in terms of plot was to do Fritz first then Waltz; doing Fritz's path first made Waltz's path feel less realistic. Waltz's route a couple errors in the writing actually, I believe it was Parfait's line when she was talking to Hildyr and she said something like "violence does not beget violence", which isn't the correct use of the word beget. Waltz's strife did not feel all that real to me either, I would like to have known more about his family and his past with Hildyr, and his past with Lucette, I think that would have made it easier to connect with his character. Also more on exactly how he betrayed Hildyr. There were just a lot of unanswered questions in his route and I can't list them all because I'd like to reread Karma's route tonight. Waltz just had so much potential and I feel like he fell really short of that potential. I understand that it would have been a TON more work to really make his story but also like he could have been such a great character. He lost some of his depth in the fact that his personality was so constant and his responses were pretty much the same to everything. I feel like he should have had more than one trait, like his childlike optimism could have shown through a lot more or his love of fun. What's the point of his curse if isn't a part of who he is? That was the whole basis for everyone else's curses and, yeah, Waltz had a different situation but in his case the point of his specific curse was overlooked. If he was supposed to be the grand finale, he should have blown every reader away, even the most critical of readers.
I would suggest reading Fritz's story last, rather than Walt'z.
I haven't played Varg because I needed an emotional break from his storyline.
What I love about this VN,
is how different the story is, the twist on old fairytales is genius and this VN could easily become huge, like HUGE with more work. As with anything truly iconic, it takes years of work but this totally has the potential. There were so many unique things to each character and those things were so carefully thought of, some more than others but still. I would love to read more about Karma just in general because he had so many layers and, in my opinion, had the most depth of all the characters. Fritz had depth because of Varg, but Varg's existence could definitely have been explained more/explored more, like how there was enough to create Varg. As well as why Fritz loved Lucette in the first place, like more flashbacks to his past with her because how Lucette is written at first doesn't really support the reason Fritz gives for loving her before she was cursed, it does to an extent but it needs more support. Either way the stories were beautiful, original, and clearly had a ton of work put into them. It is incredible that this is free to download but I am so glad it is otherwise I would never have gotten to read this enchanting story. It reminded me that life is hard but worth it when you have people that love you, even if they are not always with you. Living away from home for the first time in my life, I definitely needed that reminder.