GORGEOUS game, thank you so much for this, sincerely.
i've tried a lot of VNs, and especially a lot of dating sims. the concept appeals very much, but i always find the specifics either offputting or unintineresting and invariably give up on the idea of VNs for a few months until one looks compelling enough to make me relent and give it a try and, yep, still don't like it. including other serial killer dating sim VNs!
i'd come to think that there's a certain type of game, a certain genre or something, that i could enjoy if only i could find it, but in trying to describe that genre i always find myself describing dating sims, so what am i missing?
apparently, i was missing this specific dating sim. i wouldn't call it perfect but i enjoyed it very much despite its flaws. and i don't mean "i begrugingly played it to the end and enjoyed some parts but found other parts a slog", i mean i ENJOYED it despite its flaws, every bit of it. in fact, i think i even enjoyed some parts of it that others might call flaws. there's no accounting for taste.
speaking of subjective, the voice-acting is the best i've ever heard in a vn, i'd go so far as to say it might be the best voice-acting i've ever heard in any game, at all. not merely "acceptable", or "sometimes good and sometimes bad" like a lot of game voice-acting is, especially in VNs, absolutely FLAWLESS performances all around. i loved it.
i normally mute voices in most games i play, especially VNs. i will mute my whole computer if it's the only way to not hear voice-acting in a VN. i hate it. i find it annoying and distracting. i think, shut up and let me read.
not here, ohh this is the first VN i've ever played where i was actually disappointed whenever the voice-acted portions came to an end.
the characters feel like people. they talk like people. okay, goreboy may be the biggest drama queen on the planet but he still feels completely believable, ESPECIALLY with that voice-actor. i respect his commitment to the bit, anything less would have been too little. (by which the voice actor, and the writer, and goreboy the character)
i think the presentation helped a lot with immersion. this is something i've always struggled with in VNs, besides generally finding the romanceable characters boring (often the supporting cast is far more interesting, why did VN writers all agree to not let us date the interesting characters?)
i found it incredibly easy to forget i was playing a game, to such a point that i consider it to only have one major flaw: a lot of my dialogue options felt deeply lacking, often trapping me between choices i would never want to pick. this has always been my biggest issue with VNs, but i always accepted it as a natural limitation of playing a game. here, though, i felt it as a significant frustration, especially during certain scenes.
i accept that every possible option can never be accounted for, but it often felt like the most obviously desirable responses were deliberately ommitted, and i can't figure out if that's a lack of imagination on the writer's part, or deliberate railroading due to not wanting to write certain conversation trees.
normally, when i play a VN (or any choices-matter game) i don't actually decide on a particular desired outcome, at least not on a first playthrough. this sometimes results in messy or nonsensical outcomes, due to romance being an invisible points-based system, or else if the writer was smart being stuck in a disappointing (but understandable, given my choices) neutral non-ending.
i just play naturally and pick the responses that feel real, or closest to what "i" (that is, the character i am playing as) would really do.
i could mostly do that here, which was great, and as i said the lacking options was frustrating in places, but i suprised myself (and was surprised by the game, in fact). i expected to end up pursuing goreboy because he was quite immediately attractive, and i can see from the other comments that he's understandably popular.
but then V introduced himself and i understood by our second conversation that i was Going to date him. it wasn't a conscious decision, it just felt like a fact.
i do have one other complaint (and i'm kinda hoping it's actually a bug
report): quite a few times, the killers talked about their kills and the
resultant conversation implied that they'd posted an image or
something, but there was nothing. i was beginning to think i had run
into a bug and that however you got renpy to handle image messages just
wasn't working, but then the sunset photos and christmas dinner appeared, so, was that artwork just not completed?
SPOILERS below this line for V's route, and for the game's overall story.
he fought me all the way, too. i believed, more than once, that i had irrevocably fucked up, or that i had never held his interest at all. i felt certain on more than one occasion that he hated me, but decided (as i ALWAYS do on first playthroughs of games) to stick to my choices no matter what. maybe i'd get to see his bad ending?
he did literally say he didn't like me, it's not like i was guessing based on ambiguous dialogue. yet somehow i remained charmed anyway. in fact, he was remarkably forthcoming, and i was charmed by the truth.
but wow! turns out he's just really good at self-denial, hiding his feelings, and displaying unfathomable apathy regardless of how he really feels! i'm pretty sure the apathy was mostly not an act, he is pretty clear later on that he doesn't even understand his own emotions.
my greatest frustration was in a lengthy railroaded conversation in which i had no other option but to talk V out of killing goreboy. i would have happily taken several other routes in that conversation, but that specific approach was the one thing i knew i didn't want to do.
i was relieved when he finally believed i was telling him the truth.
while i was playing, i couldn't figure out what i was about V that i found so compelling. he's not exactly the kind of character one plays a killer dating sim for.
it hit me when he named the bird. dishonest about his own feelings, even to himself, views himself as the embodiment of justice, waits until the very last possible opportunity to act...
turns out i just have a very specific type.
this is a love letter to V i guess, but indirectly (or more directly) to the writer, and his voice actor (incredible, seriously).
when i genuinely enjoy a story, however it's presented, when it comes to an end i usually find myself with a deep and intense hollowness. a yawning chasm that the story had hitherto filled. i generally consider this Intense Nothing a compliment to the author of the story. their story was so great, and real, and full, that it actually had to carve out space for itself. and so, lacking the story, the enormity of that space is felt for the first time. (and i'll be honest, i ENJOY that incredible depth of emptiness at the end of a good story).
i didn't get that here. i was instead left with a remarkable lightness, the same lightness V described, alien and unexpected but very pleasant. i still feel it and i spent like an hour writing this. i think that's better, actually. i don't feel like i've finished a story, i feel like i've met someone.
so again, thank you for killer chat. i don't know if i'll ever find another dating sim this good.