By the time I finished reading, I was quite confused. There are many things I want to say.
It started well enough. Patchouli being her wordy self, until there's text that autoskips. I'm not sure if it's intentional but I'm pretty sure the autoskipped text in this case was important to actually read. I had to watch my recorded footage to see that Patchouli was burning the love letter she just wrote, I think that's a big deal that would be better not skipped.
There are many other instances where the text autoskips. It was annoying not to catch even the first words because the font is a bit hard to read, AND of the second main issue I described below.
(I don't know if the autoskipping happens to other fellow players, it's possible this is just me somehow)
Then the rest of the game becomes really confusing because:
- It's hard to tell what's spoken from what's thought
- And it's even hard to tell at times who's the one speaking
There's little consistency in how the dialog box behaves.
Example with the first lines of the game:
- There's a white box with "Patchouli" written on it. I know it's Patchouli speaking or thinking to herself.
- Then she remembers her letter's words. No white box. I understand it's not "spoken".
- Then later Marisa pops out. But her second dialog box ("I get it it's a stake out!") had no white box, so I read it as Patchouli's thinking. And right after, there's Patchouli's actually speaking ("That's really not what I was thinking") but there's still no white box so there I thought the story was starting to go a bit bonkers.
- And right after this, there's this dialog box with Patchouli's name, and it says "I should have never fallen in love. The chance for me to be with Marisa [...]" complete with quotation marks. Everything pointed to Patchouli audibly speaking this, in front of Marisa. When it actually feels like an inner thought.
It's not that the game doesn't "obey the visual novel standards", it's that it's too hard to actually get a grasp of how you're supposed to make sense of the novel.
And even after realizing all of the above, There are still some things in the writing, the story itself that feel weird. In example, resuming from Patchouli's inner thought just above, that would mean the story goes like this: Marisa first thought she was being staked out, to which Patchouli says it is not the case. And if the next boxes of dialog was just Patchouli's thought process, that means that both of them just stood there without saying anything and the next scene plays.
This kind of transition made very little sense to me, it's just a jump-cut with little explanation or actual reason. And it's not the only one in the game.
The worst of them is definitely the "ending". It's just so abrupt, the game just ends without a proper conclusion. "Years of reading. I'd love to spend them by your side." "Sounds like an incident to me." *goes back to fishing*. Those are really the last words of the novel. The novel about dating just ends on Marisa just flat out resuming her outdoor activity (which doesn't really involve Patchouli).
It's not the fact that it's anti-climactic which makes this feel off (anti-climax can be a tool to subvert expectations), it's the fact that it feels like nothing really came out of it as the last words of the story. She goes back to fishing, so what? It just ends there, it's not exciting, it's not conclusive, it does not give an idea of how the future will play out. The very last thing that happens is just a girl doing a thing unrelated to what the novel presents as the main topic, which is Patchouli dating Marisa.
TLDR: how do I even interpret the dialog boxes? And even taking that into account, the writing has lots of room for improvement.
It's really a shame because the ideas in the story were good and cute.
PS: I forgot to say that I like the painting-style backgrounds, and that I like the artstyle for Marisa and Patchouli's portraits. The artstyle is not fully fleshed out but I see hints of personal charm.