Little Goody Two Shoes Review (The Gay)
The Good:
As everyone else has been saying, the art and music are beautiful. The sound design is one of the best I've heard in this style of RPG. The horror imagery is fantastic, it's just the right amount of uncanny and stylistic. I LOVED finding the Golden Girls as well, my first ending their involvement didn't really apply but I'm working through endings where it will and I have an unreasonable amount of built up hype for it. I also really enjoyed the mini games visually and mechanically. The only disappointment I had with that was the rat game, and how often you're meant to play it to make money. It's probably the least fun out of all of them. Doable, but wish it wasn't so... Popular.
Also... Whoever was on this team did their sapphic homework. This is the gayest thing I've seen all year, and it's NOVEMBER.
The Not So Good:
Some of the puzzles are frustrating. I can definitely tell that the devs put a lot of work into trying to figure out how to make things complex while still guiding the player in the right direction, and I would say that it was mostly successful. The big 'moon room' is probably (mechanically) the clumsiest.
That one boss fight... The one with the three locks? That needs to be changed. I'm all for a punishing boss mechanically speaking because once I figured out how to handle the dodges I was set. And it gave me a very 'I DID IT' feeling, which is what you want. But I'm not sure how many people are going to be able to figure out the tricks to get through it. Apart from THAT, however, the 50/50 choice options you have incredibly unfair consequences if you get them wrong. You should not get one-shot for... Honestly, very vague options. Punished by having to repeat the mechanics? Sure. Halved health? You betcha. One-shot for that is unreasonable.
As of November 7th only 16% of people have the achievement of defeating that boss.
My First Completion, Ending #10 (MASSIVE SPOILERS):
So I went into the game with the mindset of not romancing anyone on my first playthrough. I will be working towards all the endings but I wanted to do that one first because I figured it would be the shortest. I was purposefully avoiding the love interests and dialogue with them. I went on no dates. I had no hearts with any of the girls. And when I got to Aziel in the twisted church, it just... Picked Rozen? Which is fine, she's our 'they were roommates', she's with us most of the story anyhow. In that moment it makes sense.
The first dialogue option in that fight was about a bracelet and a pine cone that I never received. The second, I made a lucky guess. And the third option was about 'fate' and 'purpose'. You're meant to choose 'purpose'. Which is kind of insane to me, maybe that makes more sense if you ACTUALLY romance Rozen but if you don't she's spouting about 'fate' left and right and that's all the context you have. So with that run, it one-shot me on the last lock and I had to do the whole thing all over again. I answered honestly a couple of times, too, on how I did plan to use her to get what Elise wanted. One-shot.
The game needs you to have a romance with the girls for the 'Good Company' for its story, but it doesn't actually need you to romance ANY of the girls to get a conclusion for its story or mechanics. If you got Ending # 10, you'll know what I mean. So with that in mind, I don't know why the devs didn't consider that option with Aziel? Up until this point I had no trouble getting around with the decisions I made. I was getting to know the town and its people, not so much the girls, and it was really fun to play it that way. Getting the dialogue with them was so special and well thought out.
I knew my ending was gonna be rough, I was making selfish choices and I was willing to sacrifice anyone to get there. That's bad karma in RPGs. Fuck me up, fam, tell me that I'm bitter and stone-hearted and only my mother could love me. ...If you got Ending #10, you'll know what I mean. But don't one-shot me when I have no context.
It didn't ruin the game for me by any means, but it took me out of the moment. I'm looking forward to playing through the other endings and seeing how that goes.
GLITCHES FOUND (will be updating, MASSIVE SPOILERS):
1. When Apfel is lost and blindly walking around, you can glitch through to the right bottom corner and get to his side of the map. This isn't really a big deal, since he falls in the pit and it ends (so if you saved it's just a restart). At first I thought it was supposed to happen, the transition was so natural.