Gameplay-wise it has a lot in common with the Phoenix Wright games - you can have conversations with people, and, in some of those conversations, you can ask for more information or present other topics to either get more out of them or point out a contradiction. In some ways, it's a bit too much like Phoenix Wright - you can ask someone to revise their statement even though you're literally just a kid having a conversation with someone and not a lawyer in court. My biggest issue with the game is that the mysteries and how they are solved are not logical and obvious. They're nitpicky and require good guessing. There's not even a logical way to just try all the options. Quite early on, I just thought "fuck it" and followed a guide to get through because I entirely lost interest in trying to play the game properly. To be fair, maybe that's on me, maybe my brain just doesn't work the way the designer's does.
There are also elements of Persona 5 (and possibly the others which I haven't played) in that you need to make friends with people. How many friends you have define which of the three possible endings you see, and whether you unlock the bonus chapter (which contains a better mystery than the actual chapters). This...is ridiculously overdone. You can make 44 friends in the main game. A game that took me about 9 hours to play. I cannot care about 44 people in 9 hours, so the vast majority just became irritating background noise quite early on. To make friends, you need to make their "friendship points" - which the game doesn't tell you about and which are invisible - 100. You do this by giving them gifts. Each has 3 - out of, like, 40 or so (guesstimate) possible items that they like, and there are only vague hints as to which 3 they are. Luckily, everyone likes chocolate so I just defaulted to handing that over. When you get their points to 100 you receive an item from them and unlock an achievement, so at least there's some indication of how many total friends there are. Really, they could have halved - or even quartered - this element of the game. It's too many to actually be fun.
So, yeah. The game was fine, I guess. I'd have liked it better if it were more balanced, for example, better, more interesting mysteries for a longer game to balance the number of friends, or just less friends and a more logical progression through the game. I got through it, which I guess is not the sentiment you want people to have towards your game. At least it was only 99p, so about 10p per hour of gameplay. Which, again, fine, I'd spend that much on a book that I'd read in a third of the time.
I've been wanting to play the .Hack series again. I couldn't find a copy of the iso online so I just booted my old - as in, 2004 Christmas present - PS2. Still works great! The next steam game on my list is the Banner Saga, though I've still not finished FF8.
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