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Considering I've played the heck out of the original game (with additional custom content of my own). I'm very excited to hear about an expansion! I'm certainly looking forward to this project.

I didn't know about the "true/good" ending until after I played the game [naturally] without "scum saving" (I didn't realise that was a thing). So I just went along with my choices as normal and got the standard ending. After playing the game a few more times, trying to find a better ending I did some searching around and found the way to the better ending.

Yeah, I meant to say the poem portions of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd poems you're to create in Act 1. I wrote too fast and didn't go over what I had written. For example

Candy1,3,2

I'm guessing this means that for Natsuki, Candy would only add +1, +3, or +2 points to the total poem score depending on which poem this was being written for in the 1st act.

Hmm, yeah, probably since I was invested in Yuri first, I overlooked her sensitivity. I probably read too quickly as well and didn't fully grasp what was happening either. Thinking about it now, maybe I just took the sensativity as a lack of confidence and not knowing how to properly act with people (which was touched on, later on in the game).

For other tsundere characters, usually when that tough character exterior is broken down, that's it and the caring person is revealed. Natsuki would pretty much throw up the same strength as before once the moment passed. I think thats why I had the hardest time with her.

I don't mind the VN types but I generally get pretty bored of them quickly. This one held my attention till the very end (a few times) and was satisfying with all the easter eggs thrown in. It probably helped that it was also an ARG and that kept my attention.

In any event, it was a fun game and I look forward to TS's next game. 

After realizing this was an ARG, I started looking around in the files that were easily accessed. One such file "game\scripts.rpa", when opened has an opening poem "There's a little devil inside all of us." When you scroll down, there is a bunch of RENPY [garbage] for whatever reason. If you scroll even further down to line 4149, you'll get access to winning words for each of the three girls.

The interesting part is that it appears each word bears more weight depending on the act. Where Sayori seems to get the most impact in act 1, Natsuki in act 2, and Yuri in act 3. Oddly enough, Yuri has a lot of words that are 1,1,3 when chosen. So it seems especially difficult to draw her attention in act poems 1 and 2 if you accidently pick Sayori/Natsuki words. That being if each word, the number indicates a value and is totaled at the end of the poem creation.

Now that I'm reviewing the file again. At the bottom, there is huge section of characters. I just took it to a Base64 converter and found out that it's the small wooden box story. Heh, go figure.

Oh yeah, I did that to test the game and if you grab a few words for them, they stay calm about it.

Speaking of all that, did you find the list of girl approved words? I fondly remember Monika 4th walling me about cheating and at that time, I didn't cheat for the poem, hahah.

In regards to Natsuki, I had never heard the term "tsundere" before. Now that I've looked it up, she certainly doesn't leave the cold hostility for very long. Which made her less apealing as a character to approach for me. 

With Yuri, I didn't notice the over sensativity, if anything, I enjoyed the mystery about her. I thought Natsuki had a hair-trigger sensativity with almost everything though. With respects to Yuri in act 2, I can't really blame the Yuri character for what happens considering all of the changes that are forces onto her and the others. I actually tried my hardest to see if act 2 would have similar results to Natsuki as well. Regardless if you focus your poems on her in that act, it still goes back to Yuri, which did lead to some interesting new converstations but no interactions. I thought a focused, act 2 Natsuki would be more [forceful] or so.

Anyone else get the somewhat secret "love" poems from Natsuki/Yuri on the 3rd exchange if you focused on them properly? On my first play through I didn't get them, so when I started my 3rd play through, I was surprised to see the slight difference and how accepting they were at that point. Just a fun thing I wanted to point out. 

I noticed, that sometimes, depending on whether you favor Natsuki or Yuri more, by the 3rd poem, the other may completely ignore you based on poem order. I've had this happen once for both girls.

On my first play through, I focused on Yuri, I would show her my poems first and then the other girls. By the 3rd poem exchange, Natsuki was so pissed off with [me/my character] that she refused to even talk to me. This also happened on my last play through when I focused more on Natsuki and had Yuri very upset with the character as well. 

With the other play throughs, if I saved the poem for the girl I was focused on last, then I wouldn't see any problems during exchanges. Just a pretty interesting if/else code segment setup in the design (I found it fascinating as I'm a programmer myself).

I'll certainly try to make this as spoiler free as possible but if you've just started playing, best to play the game first and then come back to this discussion.

My favorite character is definitely Yuri. I liked her elegance, quiet demenor and the long purple hair certainly drew me to her. With that, I ended up focusing my decisions and choices on getting to know Yuri first of all the available characters to choose from. I'm curious to see what character drew your attention first on the 1st play through of the game? In regards to the other characters, I didn't choose them because:

Natsuki: her aggresive nature was just extremely annoying on a first impression. We all know that saying of first impressions.

Sayori: would have been another good 1st run choice for her silly nature and carefree attitudes but since she was the first character you meet, I decided against learning more about her and opted for Yuri instead.

Monika: Unfortunately, there was really no chance to get to know her. Even when you get the chance as a player, it still doesn't work out.

So, who were you drawn too and why did you pick that character to get to know them on your first play through?

After doing a little bit of looking around, I did find a path to the 100% complete best ending there is for the game. If you'd like to know, I'll share it with you as well. Until then, enjoy the game, I know I did. Such a great and sad game at the same time. This game certainly is, as Sayori stated about her favorite poetic style, "bittersweet."

No, I missed that and will look for it when I next play act 2.

I've been studying Japanese for a bit now and had to look up the the reference to squid in Monika's name. Natsuki breaks down Monika's name into Mon and Ika. If you do a google translate, you'll see that squid translates into the characters 'i' & 'ka' (い & か). Therefor you have Ika (いか) for squid as Natsuki (な na, つ tsu, き ki) tries to play out. Monika kind of breaks the forth wall a bit in this by explaning that it doens't work in translation, Mo-ni-ka, as we would say her name in English. Actually, it would be roughly the same in Japanese as well, もにか (も mo, に ni, か ka) but Natsuki breaks the ni down into seperate characters (ん n & い i) for Mon-ika (もん & いか).

... hopefully that wasn't too confusing.

Once you see the game in its entirity, it's actually quite deceptive in what's truly going on and touches on some social issues that just are not recognized in society (sadly). It's a fantastic game and I am working on the best ending you can get, if there is one... 

I'm working on the "best" ending as well. I'm currently working through just "obsessing" over each girl to see the different cut scenes on the first true play through of each. I think I know the best route through it to get a good/best ending at least. Thanks for the tip by the way.

Is it just me or does the order you show your poem to the girls also play a factor?

Since we're adding to the secrets here. On my 2nd play through and trying to get cut scenes with Natsuki I stumbled across an interesting "secret" of sorts. 

This happened during the 2nd or 3rd poem creation portion, after Sayori's suicide and the game is corrupted/hacked. I picked a random word that I thought would trigger Natsuki but ended up triggering either Sayori or Monika's chibi paper cutout that was off the bottom of the screen. 

I sadly don't recall what word triggered it but was surprised to see a cutout off screen. Anyone else have luck triggering this?

@superleop3108, You'll get a similar "end" of the game if you delete all of the characters except for Monika as well. Presumably, if you delete all the characters, you'll get Sayori swinging as well since there is nobody to interact with. Strange that the DDLC didn't have an exception route for just having Monika.chr by itself as well.