izigame.me

Eeeeeeeeh.

For me, it boils down to a simple thing: I don't think the base gameplay is fun. And it doesn't jibe well with the story, either. This might be a 'me' problem, I'm not a fan of speedrunning by itself; to me, speedrunning is like lovemaking, a fun act that's enabled by your affection towards whatever you're loving; taking it apart, little by little, learning the most intricate parts never meant to be discovered - to exploit them to your satisfaction. In this case, shaving off milliseconds off your completion time.

Here, there's no affection. For one thing, the levels are blatantly designed with speedrunning in mind; so you're not cleverly blazing past things that weren't meant to be blazed past, you're... playing the game as intended. Hell, the game even has the audacity to give you a hint how to "skip" past a part of itself, once you reach a high enough rank.

In fact, a lot of the design seems to be in direct conflict with something else in the game. The medals, for example. There are four: bronze, silver, gold and diamond. To progress in the game, it's enough to have a few golds/diamonds per mission, no need to go hard on every single level. White, our edgy Oni-chan (single i) protagonist, throws a voice line when you're awarded a medal. On bronze he's like "okay, made it", silver - "alright, not bad", gold - "yeah! Nice!" and diamond something like "yup, I'm the best, no beating that".

But this is a leaderboard game. You'll be judged against other players. Your friends. And that lays bare just how nonsensical these medals are; in practice, bronze is "bro, did you stop to have a leak on the way?", silver is "f*cking awful", gold is "bad", and diamond is "mediocre". Maybe my friends are too good, maybe I am too bad, maybe both are true; point is, this creates a mood whiplash. Ideally, you'd be able to disable the leaderboard and only enable it later, when you're not playing to immerse yourself in the world, but when you actually want to do some competing. Alas, you can't.

So obviously you will tryhard as you go through the levels. "I will only continue once I beat my friends!" or something. But this kills the pacing so hard, it becomes retroactively removed not only from this timeline, but from the very fabric of time and space. The concept of pacing itself is void; I might as well say "squiggleberry" or "dumpadum". So the dumpadum is made even worse (if you can believe that) by the fact that there are gifts to find in the levels. But - FOR SOME INSANE REASON - only findable once you beat the level once.

So let me break it down. First, you go through the level blind, try to get your bearings. Maybe you even get a good score, I did get gold on my first try a few times - and I suck, so it's definitely possible. And then you're expected to do it again, this time looking around rooftops and other strange places, to locate a gift box - and to get to it. The concept itself is reasonable - after all, speedrunning is very much about observation and planning. But wouldn't it make sense for it to be, y'know... the first thing you do when you enter the level?. Again, a squiggleberry failure.

Why get the gifts, then? Well, you use them to increase your friendship level with your fellow Neons and the bloody cats angels. To get dialogue, sidequests and memories. Because, you see, these Neons are people you used to know. And you don't seem to remember; they, however, do. And for one reason or the other, they're very economical with the truth. The whole thing with "who was I, and what was my relation to these people?" is a mystery, and it's...

actually good????

See, this is why I played this game for 6 damn hours. The writing is "cringe" in the sense that the characters look and act in a way that is considered embarrassing nowadays, like gun-toting Shadow the Edgehog pouring whisky after playing board games with Latina Hatsune Miku in a gaudy hotel room. But hey, people these days are into this Gojo dude (is this still a thing?), and I find him unfathomably cringe, so it's kinda like that. Cringe or not, though - the general story would work even if the characters would act differently.

There are a lot of questions. What's going on here? Who are you, and who are they? Did you and Red use to bang? Did you and Violet use to bang? Is Yellow actually your bro, and to what extent? Why can't God take care of the demon problem himself? Why is everything so fishy? What's Green's deal? Did Red and Violet use to bang? And the dialogue might be kinda cringy, yes, but the humanity of it all shines through, and catches your attention. Everybody's wearing masks, and it's up to you to see past them. You could say the cringe is a mask, too.

But then you remember that you're not playing a visual novel, you're playing a speedrunning game with conflicted design. And this is a conflict in of itself; the story feels like you're supposed to be a demon slayer. A hunter. An assassin. But in the game, the demons are a complete afterthought - to the point that I think the game would've been better without them, as you must kill every single one before you're allowed to progress. This goes against your natural speedrunning instinct to seek aggressive skips.

The characters grew on me. The fun bants with Yellow, the hot and cold with Red, the hot and weird with Violet (warning, big titty goth gfs always come with a deadly catch), and more; but the game itself is just too annoying to play. I didn't even say anything about the day-to-day gameplay, and guess what, that part is pretty barebones; so there's really no reason for me to stay here.

I'll be honest with you. I'm scared. How can this game have such insanely good reviews? 98%??? How is this possible? How can my perception of reality differ so much from so many of these people? Do people just upvote the game after playing the first mission and moving on, since it's too boring to continue? But no, 30% of all players have beaten the game. Did they all enjoy it? You know what, I don't even care anymore. Okay, I do, but I refuse to dwell on this any longer.

I only recommend games that I've actually beaten