![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The pretty art drew me back into trying Julian's route and...well! I can articulate why I didn't like that, and suspect that freemium dating sims of this sort aren't ever going to work for me. I went in not expecting to like it very much and was still disappointed.
The story is basically linear, choices affect the player's experience and the ending but the optional scenes don't contain any real plot. And the really appealing, fanservicey, romantic moments cost money. A lot of money.
Not only is the basic, free story unsatisfying, but I'm pretty sure that even if I paid the HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS required to see all the paid scenes, the story wouldn't hold together emotionally. I only saw one paid scene, but it feels unavoidable that since they can't affect anything plotwise they are emotionally static, bursts of romantic candy devoid of any further value to the story.
Which is frustrating because I really liked Julian's character. He's a self-hating cursed masochistic bi plague doctor inspired by Jeff Goldblum, and suffers beautifully.
Finally: even though the player character's gender is customisable, and I was playing mine as masculine leaning non binary, the dynamic drew heavily on het romance tropes. Fun tropes, mostly, and nothing contradicted the PC being a guy or non binary. And obviously this is fine for anyone playing a woman. But it made me feel a little weird. (You would think I'd enjoy the female LIs more, but they seemed very...toothless f/f as written by het writers)
Spoilery discussion of Julian's route below the cut. I only played through the first two and a half chapters of fourteen.
( Spoilers for Julian's route )
The story is basically linear, choices affect the player's experience and the ending but the optional scenes don't contain any real plot. And the really appealing, fanservicey, romantic moments cost money. A lot of money.
Not only is the basic, free story unsatisfying, but I'm pretty sure that even if I paid the HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS required to see all the paid scenes, the story wouldn't hold together emotionally. I only saw one paid scene, but it feels unavoidable that since they can't affect anything plotwise they are emotionally static, bursts of romantic candy devoid of any further value to the story.
Which is frustrating because I really liked Julian's character. He's a self-hating cursed masochistic bi plague doctor inspired by Jeff Goldblum, and suffers beautifully.
Finally: even though the player character's gender is customisable, and I was playing mine as masculine leaning non binary, the dynamic drew heavily on het romance tropes. Fun tropes, mostly, and nothing contradicted the PC being a guy or non binary. And obviously this is fine for anyone playing a woman. But it made me feel a little weird. (You would think I'd enjoy the female LIs more, but they seemed very...toothless f/f as written by het writers)
Spoilery discussion of Julian's route below the cut. I only played through the first two and a half chapters of fourteen.
( Spoilers for Julian's route )
