This review contains spoilers, click expand to view.
To preface this, this is the first otome game I have ever played. I picked it up because I liked the noir heist vibes, and proceeded to 100 percent the game. For what it's worth, I am also a straight guy, so take all elements of perspective into account in reading this review. Heavy Spoilers ahead, as this is a very thorough review. To start, let me get the generic praise out of the way. The music is good, the art is amazing- though a bit misplaced (will elaborate later), and the vibes are spectacular. The New York city vibes is nailed, and the immersion and world building of New Sieg is fantastic. So to start, the game is structured with 4 common chapters, the choices then decide which route you are on, do 2 chapter routes dedicated to specific characters. Repeat and skip through the common route, with really useful and helpful tools added by the game, and do all 5 character routes. This unlocks a final route, Full Circle, which beating unlocks Auld Lang Syne which I will explain later. Common route is great, it establishes characters, tells fun shorter stories and leads well into the rest of the game. The character specific routes are all pretty good, Shu's is phenomenal with Crow and Mozu's following pretty close. Limbo and Helveticas are nice. The character's themselves are all phenomenal. They have great and unique personalities, yet none of them feel especially fake. Their backstories, which often tie strongly into the stories of the routes, are all great. The protagonist, Teuta, is amazing. She is also very defined as a character, and thus is able to have well written and honest relationships with each love interest. The relationships between every character are all great, and this is really boosted by the FULL Japanese voice acting for EVERY CHARACTER AND LINE, including Teuta. This is an amazing bonus. Not every character, however, is great. The antagonists of each route are all pretty bad, often due to poor motivation, illogical actions, or just straight up poor writing. The game suffers in its antagonist department. The main villain of the whole game is barely seen, and the secondary twist villain is said to be a villain like a paragraph before the game ends. More on this later. So, Full Circle. Full Circle is alright, but the things introduced feel like they come out of no where, and the plot is so weird at this point I think it's bad overall. I could write an entire review on Full Circle itself, but I am already running out of characters. The pacing of Bustafellows suffers due to it's structure. Full Circle picks up where chapter 4 left off, but the player will have gone through all 10 romance chapters in between that. This makes the pacing a nightmare and the player probably has forgotten the exact events of the common route. The archives system is nice, but a rundown and summary would have been nice. Alright, now it's time for Auld Lang Syne. To start with praise, the use of perspective is phenomenal. The blur effects are a bit annoying, but the way the zoom outs and the car scene with Teuta are handled are amazing. Everything with Zora and the cuts between reality are great. That aside.. come on. They drop major bombshells like 3 in a row, do some vague sequel bait that just leaves a ton of questions, and then just end the game. This feels extremely rushed, and the pointless sequel bait really hurts the story and writing of the game. There's an overarching lack of conclusion because of it. The twist villain is stupid and unexplained. The final scenes of the novel might have been nice. I don't know. I literally couldn't read it. There aren't any subtitles on it. This is a problem the game suffers from through its entirety- many scenes just don't have subtitles making them incomprehensible unless you know Japanese. Normal scenes you can open the log afterwards to read, but the ending- which looked really sad but I couldn't understand- has no log. You can not read the ending. This is the main reason I gave the game an 8/10 instead of a 9 or 10. This is also true for the bonus features such as trailers/interviews, they have no subtitles and are audio only making them impossible to read for English audiences. Alright running out of time, now random topics I want to mention- the art. The art is amazing but feels a bit misplaced. Several important characters don't even have sprites, and some random scenes get CGs while important ones don't. All romance routes have bad endings, they are devastating- this game can make you cry. The topics and themes throughout the VN are good, they can be very deep but are handled well. I LOVE Shu's route, Yang is my favorite character. Writing can be a bit repetitive- on Shu's route we faked someone's death 4 times. The gallery is great, memorabilia is nice. Choices can unlock short stories which are fun. The vibe is great, the characters are amazing, the writing is good most of the time. This is a great otome, I highly recommend it.… Expand
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