Little Goody Two Shoes Review (Potato PC)
If you haven't played Pocket Mirror (either original or remastered version), PLEASE play the remastered version first.
Story
I'm glad LGTS's writing quality is much better than Pocket Mirror. The main story is easier to digest and I could connect the dots (even between LTGS and Pocket Mirror) without very thorough thinking or research. In overall, the story is amazing and does a great job of introducing layers of mysteries.
While Elise initially seems to be a short-fused and selfish character, I promise her character isn't that shallow. As for why, you'll understand if you keep progressing the story and pursue any of the bachelorettes. The romance aspect is better than I expected, where each bachelorette is lovely/likable in different ways and doesn't feel stereotypical. In addition, the romantic scenes are so sweet and wholesome. And while many minor characters fall into stereotypes, it fits well with the setting of a rural religious village.
Gameplay
LTGS offers 4 aspects of gameplay: money/time management, mini-games, puzzles and action sequences. While I understand AstralShiftPro trying to bring richer and better gameplay, some of it feels worse than Pocket Mirror.
You'll encounter various mini-games when Elise doing a part-time job or certain parts of the story. While I think this approach is creative, some of them require above-average hand-eye coordination. It's bad news for some players since the amount of money Elise could earn depends on how good you're at those and you need to beat it in order to continue the story. While I've unlocked all achievements, actually I almost rage-quit and wrote a short negative review due to a mini-game during Wednesday - Witching Hour.
The money/time management is rather simple. You choose to either hang out with one of the bachelorettes or do a part-time job. It's not challenging, unless you're bad at the mini-games or trying to romance all bachelorettes. But other actions don't spend any in-game time, so you could do other tasks such as optional investigation or trying to reduce the suspiciousness meter.
Both puzzle and action sequences are those you usually find on RPGMaker horror games. I find both are harder than your usual 2D horror game, where hints for some puzzles are too subtle while few action sequences involve either trial-and-error or fast reaction. It's both good news for veterans and bad news for casual/beginners.
However, there are 3 unacceptable gameplay designs. While the game warns to save frequently, there's no auto-save feature. During action sequences, you're forced to restart from previous load save rather than just before the action sequence started if Elise is dead. It means you could waste 10 seconds - 1 minute to walk and see same dialogue, which could be extremely frustrating if Elise dies many times. In addition, the game doesn't offer to skip after several failures. How come free games offer both (e.g. "Paper Lily - Chapter 1") while LTGS offer neither, despite having $20 base price.
Replayability value
Rough gameplay hurts replayability value, but I still suggest you play at least 2 whole playthroughs. Aside from obtaining remaining endings/achievements, you may enjoy noticing all kinds of foreshadowing and have a better understanding of the whole story. And unlike Pocket Mirror, you can see most endings with the help of a guide where you just need a small amount of time to load older save files.
Visual and Audio
The visual is very eye-catching. I like the combination of pixel, 90's anime and old fairytale art styles. However, some pixel sprite or resource feels a bit blurry on 2K/1440p monitor. It'd be great if the game offers both default and sharp/integer scaling. I also think some font choices for the game UI don't really fit atmosphere of the game.
LGTS soundtrack is simply splendid, where I've listened whole soundtrack 2 times before writing this review. It did an amazing job of emphasizing atmosphere of the game, whether during daytime or nighttime. Elise and the bachelorettes are partially voiced, which enhance personality of each character. But since some same voice is played many times, it also becomes repetitive quickly. While it's not a complaint, it'd be amazing if the confession scenes were fully voiced.
Other
LGTS runs mostly great on Linux, where the only problem is the FPS drop after playing for few hours. But simple close and re-open the game solve that problem. I also tried using Cheat Engine to slow down the game, in order to beat a mini-game during Wednesday - Witching Hour. But the game crashed instead, so I had to retry it about 20 times.
Conclusion
Little Goody Two Shoes (LGTS) is a decent RPGMaker-esque horror game, with many major improvements compared with Pocket Mirror. But some aspects of the gameplay sucked so much, so I'm not surprised some people left a negative review solely due to that reason.