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[Funyarinpa]

I think I discovered a new "anomaly" yet to be documented elsewhere:

Spoiler

Try to save the game after Sayori's suicide but before Act 2 starts.

I think I kinda know what you mean

Spoiler

the game, right after rejecting her confession, says something like "this isn't a game, you can't reload a save and make things right" and then your saves are wiped and you can't save. Is that what you mean?

 

[BTA]

Spoiler

For the good ending can I use 3 seperate save files to get all the cgs before moving onto the next part of the game?

Spoiler

Yes. There’s no way to see all of the CGs in one playthrough, so save and reload as needed to see them all before moving on.

If you’re asking more about how it saves whether you’ve seen the CGs, I don’t think it cares at all about how many playthrough or sittings or whether you reload or start a new game from the main menu.

 

[Tank Jr.]

I think I kinda know what you mean

Spoiler

the game, right after rejecting her confession, says something like "this isn't a game, you can't reload a save and make things right" and then your saves are wiped and you can't save. Is that what you mean?

Spoiler

It does say that but it's unlikely people to to save (possibly overwrite) at Sayori's suicide rather than load at that point. It still produces an interesting result.

EDIT -

Spoiler

It's one of the game's random events. I got "lucky" to see this then.

 

[Yohane]

I'm about 50 min in.

Man this is so corny and boring.

How long till the "interesting part"?

 

[Tank Jr.]

I'm about 50 min in.

Man this is so corny and boring.

How long till the "interesting part"?

About two or three hours depending on how fast you can read. If you tell us where you last left off, we can clue you in on how much more to do.

It does kind of help to know about the characters a little though.

 

[Ucchedavāda]

The game has a rather amusing uncaught exception handler (from traceback.txt):

[SPOILER]While running game code:
  File "game/script.rpy", line 58, in script call
  File "game/script-ch3.rpy", line 637, in script call
  File "game/script-ch3.rpy", line 783, in script call
  File "game/script-ch3.rpy", line 916, in script
  File "renpy/common/00action_menu.rpy", line 103, in __call__
    renpy.call_in_new_context("_game_menu", *self.args, _game_menu_screen=screen, **self.kwargs)
  File "renpy/common/00gamemenu.rpy", line 173, in script
    $ ui.interact()
  File "renpy/common/00gamemenu.rpy", line 173, in <module>
    $ ui.interact()
  File "renpy/common/00action_file.rpy", line 427, in __call__
    renpy.load(fn)
RestartTopContext: Oh jeez...I didn't break anything, did I? Hold on a sec, I can probably fix this...I think...
Actually, you know what? This would probably be a lot easier if I just deleted her. She's the one who's making this so difficult. Ahaha! Well, here's goes nothing.[/SPOILER]

Could be scripted, though.

 

[BTA]

The game has a rather amusing uncaught exception handler (from traceback.txt):

[SPOILER]While running game code:
  File "game/script.rpy", line 58, in script call
  File "game/script-ch3.rpy", line 637, in script call
  File "game/script-ch3.rpy", line 783, in script call
  File "game/script-ch3.rpy", line 916, in script
  File "renpy/common/00action_menu.rpy", line 103, in __call__
    renpy.call_in_new_context("_game_menu", *self.args, _game_menu_screen=screen, **self.kwargs)
  File "renpy/common/00gamemenu.rpy", line 173, in script
    $ ui.interact()
  File "renpy/common/00gamemenu.rpy", line 173, in <module>
    $ ui.interact()
  File "renpy/common/00action_file.rpy", line 427, in __call__
    renpy.load(fn)
RestartTopContext: Oh jeez...I didn't break anything, did I? Hold on a sec, I can probably fix this...I think...
Actually, you know what? This would probably be a lot easier if I just deleted her. She's the one who's making this so difficult. Ahaha! Well, here's goes nothing.[/SPOILER]

Could be scripted, though.

It is.

Spoiler

It always happens when Sayori’s suicide happens; you see a note about the traceback onscreen.

 

[Ctlead]

I gave this a try cause why not.

It took too long to get interesting (first route was obnoxious), but the payoff was good. I enjoyed it.

Spoiler

Needing to delete Monika's character file to get the ending was pretty cool.

 

[Stoop Man]

I mean, I don’t think it’s anywhere near a 9 for that in general; that was my point. It just could be triggering, which is why they have the warning. They asked about the warning for depression as if that’s connected to how “fucked up” it is when they’re entirely separate things.

Spoiler

Which is to say I’d warn about depression if an entirely serious and dramatic story talked about depression and suicide, let alone showed one.

I just think for a horror game in general, even as someone with a limited experience with them, there’s not too much here that felt out of the ordinary.

Spoiler

In your example it’s not like they show her rotting or anything, or at least I never noticed if the CGs changed beyond lighting. They don’t really do anything with it in writing either since the text during that time is garbled (with the description in the history) instead of driving in that you are actually sitting next to a decaying corpse the whole weekend- imagine if they had done something long then like they do for Monika’s room. The actual sprites of Yuri stabbing herself and Natsuki’s (unfortunately sorta memey in a way that distracted me) puke sprite was the grossest part of that for me. Rather, sure, “event x” did happen but as someone who reads a lot of Wikipedia summaries instead of watching horror movies, there’s a big difference between knowing that event happened and actually being terrified by the execution of it and... in this case it’s mostly not a very upsetting execution of it despite the waiting 3 days thing being cool on another level.

Though I don’t really know what a scale for this even is, really, so all of this is just a personal feeling. Numbers are sorta arbitrary if you apply them to only this game in a void anyway. I’d just say that I don’t think anything here stuck with me after seeing it, or was uniquely upsetting in a “fucked up” way.

Spoiler

People going ~crazy~ isn’t really anything new, y’know? Like I said before, it mainly used the abuse/self harm/depression as cheap shorthand than actually showing them as being legitimately disturbing - it wasn’t shocking, it was shock value. That stuff kinda peaked with Sayori’s jarring depression confession by showing how much the player was writing off legitimate problems as anime tropes. The corruption effects were the scariest part and the game was maybe a bit too specific about the limited power Monika had over the game for even that to be really chilling; maybe the most upsetting thing she did directly was speak and that was only used to set up the ending song. So I just don’t see how this is particularly fucked up, if that makes sense?

Like... ANATOMY made me scared of houses the night my friends and I finished it. I’m scared of playing most 3D horror games by myself. This didn’t exactly fuck me up.

And yeah, I did. It was fine though perhaps not worth the time.

Spoiler

I mostly really appreciated the dev note at the end because it spoke to a lot of the things I appreciate about flawed games as well.

EDIT:



Yeah, this is basically my thoughts as well.

Spoiler

The stuff with Sayori had me hopeful and then as soon as she didn’t come with you in the morning I knew exactly where it was going and was kinda disappointed. Them showing her body was mostly scary because of the sudden jump to the CG, particularly coming off V3 where such a thing would have been slowly introduced by showing the player’s horrified face first. The second route was pretty creepy, I’ll totally admit, but not uniquely so beyond the corruption effects being executed well.

And then the self harm and abuse was... just used for the same ~crazy~ horror stuff as always, yeah, beyond maybe the Natsuki note that Monika shut down. The Monika influenced Natsuki dialogue of “MY DAD WOULD BEAT THE SHIT OUT OF ME” or whatever, and Natsuki shittalking about Yuri’s selfharm, and so on were shocking but not horrifying beyond that. If it had actually explored those things in any depth - particularly as Monika could, for example, go on to judge the player for enjoying a game all about comforting “people” who have to deal with this horrible things (and therefore in a way was the person who burdened them with it to begin with) as these seemingly were some of their original character traits - it could have been more unsettling but instead those parts were just regular old horror.

Yeah, I thought the game would have greatly benefited by taking it's time to develop the characters more

Spoiler

before everything goes screwy. Sayori's depression was handled well until she went "~crazy~" like you said. I was disappointed in its portrayal, at first. I could definitely empathize with Sayori's feeling of being a burden on people. I was really struggling with depression, too, all the way up to my mid-late 20's.

Then it was established it was Monika's meddling that caused the sudden shift, and I was a little more okay with it. But I think we should have settled on the heavier, genuinely emotional stuff for a while longer before everything goes bonkers. The ~crazy~ stuff would have had more impact if we had time to bond with the characters. As it is,
the game just barely starts to hint at the girls being more than one-dimensional tropes before eyeballs start popping out of their heads.

 

[Aaltopahvi]

Yeah, I thought the game would have greatly benefited by taking it's time to develop the characters more

Spoiler

before everything goes screwy. Sayori's depression was handled well until she went "~crazy~" like you said. I was disappointed in its portrayal, at first. I could definitely empathize with Sayori's feeling of being a burden on people. I was really struggling with depression, too, all the way up to my mid-late 20's.

Then it was established it was Monika's meddling that caused the sudden shift, and I was a little more okay with it. But I think we should have settled on the heavier, genuinely emotional stuff for a while longer before everything goes bonkers. The ~crazy~ stuff would have had more impact if we had time to bond with the characters. As it is,
the game just barely starts to hint at the girls being more than one-dimensional tropes before eyeballs start popping out of their heads.

I really would have liked it a bit longer too. We only get a glimpse of the interesting potential before it jumps to the deep end.

 

[Hybris]

Lol I got credits and a song:

Spoiler

After deleting monika, I put her back and reloaded and played for a bit.
Then i ended up with a short scene and then credits. Now it wants me to reinstall the game to keep playing. This was damn good fun, I really enjoyed this.

 

[Foxy the Fox]

Started to play it last night at 12AM with my little sister.

The boring part took around 2:30 hours and after

Spoiler

the childhood friend hanged herself

we went to sleep.

The images and music they used is so shocking that I couldn’t get any sleep for some hours.

I will try to do some more tonight.

 

[Tizoc]

So hey got my first Ending!
This shit is too disturbing now for me to aim for the other ending(s) :V

 

[Ucchedavāda]

So hey got my first Ending!
This shit is too disturbing now for me to aim for the other ending(s) :V

It's easy for me to say, but I would strongly recommend that you keep going.

Mild spoiler:

Spoiler

The other endings are not as disturbing, IMO.

 

[TWILT]

Finished this yesterday and got time to gather my thoughts.

(Spoilers for the whole thing)

Spoiler

I gotta admit I had to put the game down once I saw the creepy CG visual of Sayori...hanging herself like that (I know there was a warning about depression and such, but geez). Part of me wanted to drop the game as a whole because this was kind of my first experience with a psychological horror VN and I'm kind of just a wuss in general lol, but I really wanted to finish it. Stuff like the game getting really glitchy, Yuri being way more twisted than usual and how Monika manages to take over the game so she can force you to follow her "route" was kind of all sorts of amazing. I really enjoyed reading what she had to say in that special room and she's probably my favorite girl in the game to the point I felt sad I had to delete her character file to finish the game (true end with all the CGs unlocked).

Just Monika.

Really enjoyed it overall; glad I got myself to finish it after my initial impression haha.