just to feel something, die trying dopamine

bad before good and uh. there might be a lot to cover here LMAO

even after doing 10+ endings which, tbf is not a lot compared to the number of endings this game boasts, but still an objectively large number of endings, i can confidently say idk wtf this game is about. r0 is flawed, but still really fun. i think r0 got bogged down by its own strangely self-imposed goal of "100 days!" and ends up giving you a bunch of empty days where nothing happens and that ends up killing the momentum and tension that the plot otherwise is really good at building. but whatever. r0 is a solid 7 or 7.5/10 to me. i felt (mostly) engaged throughout the whole route and genuinely invested in trying to figure out the mysteries of wtf was happening around here

but the game after r0? throws all that out the window. depending on what choices you make, takumi might totally forget what he came back in time for and honestly even i myself as the player ended forgetting why i was here.

there were too many times to count where takumi just. did not seem to gaf about the stuff we were here for. rarely, if at all, did i see him try and figure out why karua and nozomi were the same person. he stops questioning the "truth" of the war that eito teased about. i'm somehow supposed to believe that takumi has a strong enough will to turn back time and save everyone while simultaneously bedrotting and doing nothing. i feel like i'm just twiddling my thumbs most of the time, waiting for the plot to advance and feed me lore when it should be takumi taking the initiative to get off his ass and do it himself. mf has 100 days of experience and all this kid does is tell you boss movesets and uh. make presents in the gift-o-matic.

and it's not that every route is like that. but all of the routes i originally got were lmao. which leads me into my next critique of the game which is that the choices are so artificial most of the time. what does choosing meat or fish for dinner have to do with anything? why does choosing to save kurara over gaku decide whether or not gotoh shows up? that choice especially was annoying to me because the only "justification" they could provide was kako's premonition that gaku needs to survive. girl i'm sorry that's not good writing that's just giving me a good grade in listening.

i think this issue becomes especially egregious when dealing with choices that the writers clearly have a bias for *cough* sparing eito *cough*. the game puts takumi in this extremely emotionally charged position, having dealt with multiple losses, and gives him the opportunity to kill the person who he believes is at fault.

now, there are many reasons to decide to not kill him. what i did NOT like as the reason the game gave was "wah. he didn't do anything in this timeline. killing is bad :(" get these catholic freaks OUTTA here give me the gun what is wrong with you. mf saying he didn't do anything in this timeline when we heard him confess to killing his own family. okay.

i just really wish this game gave an actual compelling reason to save eito other than the milquetoast "killing is bad no matter what!" excuse that's just code for "i don't wanna do anything about it right now so i'm punting this issue down the line for me to deal with in 30 days but at least i feel good about myself right now bc i took the moral high road :)".

i think this game just struggles to articulate motivations in general, or connect consequences to choices in a meaningful way. the killing game route was probably a perfect example of that. when takumi gets the invite to the killing game, we just discovered gaku had gotten murdered presumably because we didn't listen to the threat of "leave the school or you'll be killed". given that takumi's goal is to complete the 100 days without anyone dying, it would make sense for takumi to then take future threats seriously in order to achieve this goal of "no one else will die".

so tell me WHY do we then just treat shouma like a lame horse we need to put down "omg we've known for days that you're going to be the next to die that sucks lemme just spend some time with you and then send you to the slaughter". ????? what is the POINT then of any of this brother you have lost the plot. i just ditched the route after that bc i truly didn't know what i was here for anymore.

okay i think that's it for complaints about this game. which i uh. recognize is a lot lmao so lemme move on to the good.

shouma and eito were truly two standout characters to me. shouma is the number one in my heart.

idgaf about nozomi but i would turn back time and do it all again for shouma a million times over. goated character. quite honestly if it weren't for shouma i dropped this game long ago i was truly holding on this entire time for him and him alone.

eito was a HUGE surprise to me in that i normally hateeee traitor characters. so for the writers to turn my opinion around on him?? unbelievable. i am so glad they didn't go for the "omg we can be friends.. it's okay we forgive you 🥺" approach that always leaves me like "mf who is WE i am not onboard with this". instead they just made eito a software bug which. lmao. genuinely hilarious. poor boy did nothing wrong. and you can even see him try to overcome that and idk i just loved seeing that growth in him. even tho he didn't end up in my "omg i love this character" tier, the fact that i no longer hate him is a miracle so props to these writers for that lmao

i also thought the plot was great and the fact that i can summarize this plot in like. 3 sentences. holy. i was expecting something insane and convoluted that made NO sense but instead it's just climate change and humanity repeating its past evils. the last kodaka game i played was v3 and well. lmao i just very much appreciate that the plot was more comprehensible this time.

idk man this game is truly such a mixed bag and i think ultimately i am not the playerbase this game was made for. i loved the premise and the idea of going back in time to achieve your previously failed goal but the game quickly abandons that in favor of other pursuits, which made me in turn stop caring about the plot and mysteries. still a fun romp because i turned this game into "spend time with shouma simulator" but i personally would have wanted to see a more deliberate and intentional approach to the story rather than what was delivered.

THANK YOU AND YOU AS WELL