izigame.me

I really wanted to like this game, I truly did, but I just... didn't.
I love dating sims with wacky premises. I love dungeon crawlers with rogue-lite elements. I'm VERY gay.
But the writing in this game was just... not good. I didn't feel connected with any of the characters in any meaningful way. Most of them had a single one-note 'problem' that wasn't really explored in enough depth to make an impact on me.
The only one I liked even a little was Hato Moa's doing, and that just made me wish I was playing Hatoful Boyfriend again instead.
This is very much a personal taste thing, but all of these characters were too damn nice, and the only exceptions to that were: 1. a guy who stalks you. 2. the bisexual bad boy who only wants sex archetype. Neither of which do it for me. Robert from Dream Daddy did and subverted the latter with way better writing and more complexity. Where's my gay weirdos?
Aside from that, there's only two dungeons in a game that's supposed to be equally about dungeon crawling AND dating. Once your character gets even mildly powerful the dungeons are completely trivial and basically a repetitive chore you have to do to get more story content. Combat isn't particularly deep. Having to use weapons I hated just to see their dates was annoying. The art style in the Dungeons is also completely different from the rest of the game and not in a way I like - I'm not expecting mind-blowing hand animated 2D art, but I would like it to remind me less of goofy party games when the 2D art in the game is so gorgeous.
Yeah, the art's nice. Can definitely say that. Backgrounds are pretty, 2D animations are beautiful, portraits of the characters are visually lovely. But it absolutely cannot save this game from being a 'kind of okay in parts, wouldn't recommend'.
TL;DR: Just buy Hatoful Boyfriend if you want a dating sim with a wacky premise that has deep characters and emotional writing in it. Just buy Hades if you want a dungeon crawler where you also get to date. This is less than both.