Okay, well...
At this juncture, I don't think this should have been an otome VN game at all. Not even a visual novel game. Being in a visual novel genre makes the game overall boring. It tries to have half-assed puzzle mechanics to make it seem like you're legitimately doing something of merit, but you really aren't. You're just reading the dialogue and selecting the most obvious answer. This isn't puzzle-solving. This is simple reading comprehension. I was looking at the first puzzle room, almost expecting to do something, when I'm just making decisions as to who to go with or who to chastise. Honestly, this game would have felt more consistent if it had been an adventure/puzzle game as opposed to a light VN.
And the date mechanics just seemed to have been thrown in there at the last minute. It's not even difficult to try to pair up with someone since the options are so specific. In other VNs (not just otome games, but VNs in general), it's something you genuinely have to work for. Now perhaps I feel like this is highlighted to me even moreso because I'd recently replayed Steins;Gate and Steins;Gate: Hiyoku Renri no Darling where you genuinely had to work for the ending you got (and in the special case of Hiyoku Renri no Darling where you had to reload saves in order to respond to the texts you want / not send certain texts to get on certain paths), but when the dating mechanics in this feel so half-baked, you can’t help but to wonder if they threw it in that the moment. Some of the reviews from the Japanese version on various sites had said that the romance aspect was incredibly lacking and I should have anticipated that, but even the small snippets of romance in this game are kind of boring or not as mature as I’d like to the point where I’m just wondering if the genre is even for me anymore. In short, I feel like the relationship mechanics in this game are incredibly ham-fisted at best. You don’t have to try, and there is no sense of trying to get to know the characters involved in the game because everything is spoonfed to you to the point where you're not really learning anything at all to intuitively react to them. If you need to tell someone off, you can generally tell them off or be nice to them because it's so obvious as to how their minds work.
People who'd asked whether or not this is a game that's equivalent to 999 / VLR / Danganronpa are sorely mistaken in asking that particular question since this game is absolutely nothing like these games in terms of puzzle elements or even down to how the characters carry the narrative. You watch them waffle around an answer even though you’ve gotten the point and can solve the puzzle yourself, but you have to get the point where they’re desperate for an answer in the dialogue to do this makeshift attempt to try to give the player a sense of agency, when in reality it’s one of the shallowest attempts at puzzle saving for the sake of giving some sense of agency in a game when in reality the game would have been so much better as a point-and-click or adventure game in order to facilitate player agency.
In short, the game seems to have a sense of identity crisis where it doesn't seem to know what it wants to be at its core function. Its way of solving the player agency issue is to give shoddy attempts at puzzle-solving mechanics when the answer’s been reasoned out already and the answer’s in your face halfway through the characters’ deliberations to the point where you’re wondering when the game is finally going to give you a chance to finally progress.
Granted, I have finished two routes so far. Perhaps my opinion may change if I finish all of the routes, but so far this does not look promising in the slightest. This game lacks consistency and its bugging the hell out of me.
I have other issues, too, but the glaring inconsistencies and lack of identity that this game has are the two biggest issues for me right now and it makes the game incredibly boring for me. It's not structured well at all.
