izigame.me

I'm undecided about this game, and I wish I could give it a mixed review. The art is lovely, the music is great, the characters are nuanced and endearing, the storytelling is detailed and filled with humour, but there are some serious issues. Many comments have brought up the lack of basic gameplay mechanics that could improve the experience. Something obviously went wrong while the game was designed, and I don't want to repeat what other people have said, so I'll add something else that troubled me: role-playing in this game is incredibly hard, despite being encouraged to create a character with a specific background and identity.
For my 1st playthrough, I decided to play a romance and do the character quests of a few befriended NPCs completely seriously. Problem is, I accidentally skipped through most of Act 2 because all I wanted to do was to get an NPC important to my character out of prison as quickly as possible. The reason was that the narration was frequently commenting on how much that NPC was in danger of being killed. Yet the game didn't acknowledge when I found a solution and kept pretending that I still had to find a way to 'solve' the murder plot, effectively killing my efforts at romance by cutting the gameplay experience short.
On my 2nd playthrough, I decided to play a 'joke' character to test how flexible the roleplay options were. Basically, I wanted to play an upper-class old man with highly conservative views. I really wanted to embody the worst of the worst of Victorian gentry with a character who'd resist all changes and keep voicing the opinions of 19th century Establishment men. Truth is that the dialogue trees don't really let you be absolutely horrid, and narratively, the characters who dislike you simply stop giving you side-quests without actively going up against you - so you just have nothing to do. Talking to characters in the most condescending, horrendous way didn't prevent NPCs from expressing romantic interest in my PC, and my plans to simply have no-strings-attached intercourse with characters then abandon them didn't work out. (I tried to seduce David in this manner, but at some point I was not given the choice to specify I wanted nothing serious, and was kind of pushed to 'court' instead). I have to conclude that if you have a specific character and gameplay experience that you want to bring to life, then you'll find yourself limited by the lack of role-play options. No villain run in my case! I pretended to be on board with Archie's far-left ideas to denounce him to the Ministry - and then, nothing. I let David know I would try to end the relationship between his sister and Milton - and then, nothing. I brought out some forms to Mr Pages, and it suddenly decided to bring me to the Parliament by moonlight to seduce me. What the hell.
It's a bit disappointing, because it feels like this game wants to be everything, everywhere, all at once, and so far I haven't been able to find an entry point into it despite desperately wanting to learn the way it's supposed to be played. I feel like it should have taken the Pentiment route: three well-balanced Acts of equal length and importance; some mechanics to help the player shape a PC that would meet their role-playing wants; and plenty of time to explore the immersive and detailed world filled with nuanced NPCs with whom to develop relationships. If the world-building is that minute, and the relationships with NPCs that important, then the game should want to let the player spend as much time as possible in one playthrough to ensure an enjoyable experience, regardless of whether the player succeeds at picking the right culprit for the murders.
And if not, due to lack of time or budget, do more like The Arcana dating sim/visual novel: make the murder plot something that can be solved passively during the romance routes, which allows the player to focus on making choices that will impact their relationship and ending with the NPC of their choice.