Hiveswap Friendsim Review (I / Me / Meowself)
I think Friendsim is easily the most mixed bag games I ever played, although that is quite literally by design. This game features 18 volumes covering 36 chapters (38 trolls) with 10 different writers, and the quality between some of these were like night and day.
The context of Friendsim itself is that it serves as a setup for Hiveswap Act 2 as most of these characters find their way into that game. It's probably best to read this before diving into Act 2. Each chapter introduces a troll that the reader tries to befriend, with good and bad endings that will either build their character or try to get a laugh. Big emphasis on try.
Yeah to get to the point of why I don't recommend Friendsim is because I only outright enjoyed about 16 of the 36 chapters, which is a pretty bad ratio. Many chapters had multiple routes that felt underwhelming and didn't have the best of writing. There were a few that were outright terrible, but my main issue is the amount of chapters that just went nowhere by the end of it.
I only lightly recommend against Friendsim, however, as I did state I enjoyed quite a few chapters. There were a lot of moments that humor landed really well, the trolls were well written and i got actually invested in the outcome. I initially was leaning towards a positive recommendation because these stuck out in my mind, but seeing the full list of trolls just reminds me how underwhelmed I was for a bulk of the time.
I won't state what chapters I felt were worth reading as some of these build off of previous chapters. Only reading some of these will miss context, you gotta do the whole thing. I recommend getting Friendsim on sale or just watching a playthrough, it doesn't really make a difference as this is just a visual novel that was probably rushed.