Very cool game. Manages to be a very unique and boundary pushing murder mystery while still being a good murder mystery at the heart of it, not sacrificing a good story and good characters for the sake of a gimmick. I really like mizuki, mizuki is well written both overall and line by line, the latter especially sold by some good VA work, the sequel lowkey starring her is a very fun prospect if I do get around to it.
I love that Date lost his memory 6 years ago, firstly because it's actually a point of interest to how and why it happened, secondly because it means that we get all the mystery of the amnesia gimmick with none of the annoying who are you? basic immediate after bullshit, like he's been at this shit for 6 years, his character is a real character not just some nothing character who's "nothing because he has amnesia bro", and thirdly because it seems like he just spent the 6 years working and spending most of his time watching anime and not much else, like he's watched enough anime in his 6 year period that he's gotten all elitist about it. I don't like how the actual explanation of the memory loss is barely explained and pretty hand wavy but it's okay
So cool to throw the player off the trail that Hitomi isn't Iris' mother despite her having a completely different hair colour by having iris have pink hair in an anime game as well as being a streamer, so you just accept the pink hair as some bullshit and don't question if Hitomi's her real mum.
I talk about this every time I talk to anyone about this game, but the game tricking you into thinking that dreams affect reality and then having the axoliotlax path happen to you so that you think all the events of that path are all because of the dream influence, including pewter's betrayal, so they get to play the pewter betrayal card TWICE and it's a shock both times, that's sick bro, very cool like linear non-linear storytelling.
There was a short period in like the middle of the game where I was no longer hooked but once I finished up whatever route I was on and went back to another they got me again, but other than that the pacing was quite well done, managing to keep a mystery going for so long, like ace attorney they can keep it high quality easier because cases are shorter and mainly self contained, but this isn't even one long one, it's one sprawwwling big one with many paths and yet for the most part it was engaging all the way through.
The action scenes were mainly doo doo ass, apart from like the final round of fisticuffs between date and saito, made me think that all the other fights involving guns in a way that evoked that one terrible fight scene from that resident evil movie where nobody shoots anyone was a silly choice when the hand to hand combat looked so so much better. The puzzles were okay, but falling on the good side of ok, I think the way of just picking a choice isn't the most interesting way of interacting with the dream world puzzles, although the time stuff does make them infinitely more engaging. I think I will probably play more VNs in the future, even if you might not count this specifically as a VN, maybe other spike chunsoft, maybe more pretentious we shall see
