I didn't really have major issues with the way characters were written, and the voice acting wasn't overall bad in my opinion. I think the worst voice acting goes to Sage and Naser. The only characters who I found really annoying were Sage and Naomi. Everyone else I didn't have much of a problem with, though Fatima (lol they gave her a dead name) can easily be bitchy depending on your dialogue options. I did my best to make her nice and focus on the relationships with her friends more. I doubt much is different if I did something else, though.
I didn't exactly care for the "We don't owe them normal" scene with Sage which is out of your hands. I refused to interact with Sage. I think Stella ended up being my favorite of the cast, even though irl bitches who do tarot and "witchcraft" are annoying as hell. If I were to pick one of the cast to have a plushie of, it would be Stella. She's round enough that it would be cute anyway.
There's a whole thing with Naomi where she has a crush on Fang and sends her texts anonymously. There aren't really romance options that I can see besides hooking up with Naomi at the end of the game, because Rosa is into Trish, Stella is into Naser, Reed is gay and hooks up with a rando you don't meet, and Sage idk, but she calls Fang hot multiple times. I chose to reject Naomi and just be friends, along with not giving flirty responses to the text messages and not immediately going to meet her after the audition. I ain't making my character fuck an annoying weeb dinosaur.
I really enjoyed the music, though I suck at rhythm sections. I feel like the UI for it could have been tweaked so your eyes don't have to jump around the screen as much. I'm fine with the fact that failing at those sections doesn't affect anything, honestly. I'd rather just watch the cutscene because they're more interesting and decently animated then the rest of the game.
On the animation, the characters barely move as is. One thing I hate with everyone's mouths is that characters like Reed and Fang have little sharp teeth lines when their mouths are closed, but as soon as they start talking those disappear. It looks stupid for it not be consistent. I noticed at the end of the game where all those CG's pop up of memories the characters had together, they had those lines even with their jaws open, and they actually look fine. So whoever they got to do the character's lipsynch animations was a complete fuckwit who phoned it in. Not surprised. They just are not expressive enough, and when the animation suddenly becomes expressive during certain scenes it's actually jarring.
As far as bugs/glitches, it might just be my older computer but I got screen tearing, and backgrounds not loading in for a second after the scene changes. I noticed Fang's arm clipped weirdly for a split second once. I went to change something in the settings and for some reason it reverted back to default instead of accepting changes when I tried to back out of the menu after already hitting the "accept settings" button. And the biggest thing - I had a controller plugged in, but the UI would constantly switch around as if I were playing with a keyboard. During the music sections it pissed me off. I have never had a game do that before, but it has the possibility of being due to software I installed to use my PS4 controller with incompatible software so I won't blame GVH unless it doesn't happen with other games I have.
All in all, wouldn't pay for it. Just like Night In The Woods, I'll buy the soundtrack because I genuinely love the music, but be like me and just pirate the game if you really want to play it. It's not worth buying.
