Alright Kiwis! Its been a ride (mostly for Malik), but mercifully for you, me, and the thread there is but one more route for me to go over. Ashlie X your favorite chicken hat Yolanda. Yolanda's quote makes her sound like a lesbian, can she defeat the demon that is Ashlie's heterosexuality to score a win for lesbian kind? Or will the gamer fail to rise up to the occasion?
We're back to Zo as a writer, we've got a new target meaning the Malik formula is probably dead. Instead, our protagonist randomly walks into a hair salon instead of a chicken place while complaining about the city getting gentrified! Totally different. She notices everyone in the room is black and immediately attempts to flee the premises. There is no context for this and the screenshot was already posted. Turns out Yolanda works here! The music turns menacing: Ashlie and Yolanda are ex-friends! This is the second pre-existing relationship we've run into, and the only one to involve the on-screen characters.
Yolanda is cool with it and makes casual conversation. Ashlie spergs out and mentally lists the number of days they haven't been friends to the day. Yolanda makes casual conversation about how she got a hair salon going, our protagonist gets jealous. Yolanda asks how her streaming is going, and is happy that she went pro. Our protagonist is confused as to why this person is happy for her, and you get the choice of confusedly asking why this person is happy for you or vaguely accusing them of pretending to be happy. I'm not sure our protagonist understands positive emotions. I picked "Are you faking this?" and Ashlie goes on mentally about how Yolanda took "good boy Isiah" (who didn't do nothin')'s side during the fight. Our protagonist spergs out about how they should never have talked to Yolanda who gets kinda confused, calls Ashlie her friend, and invites her into her office to talk.
You'd think it would be something about how they can still be friends even with the Isiah thing...but no. Yolanda says she cut Isiah out of her life a month after Ash broke up with him, saying she took Ash's side later. But never bothered to contact her about it I guess. Ash has an inferiority complex stemming from Isiah with some hints their relationship was abusive, then turns around and says the boyfriend she had after that (Xen) was dumb. Multiple times.
Yolanda invites our protagonist to a poetry reading and dinner. She accepts the dinner but has to be streaming during the event (being a Bwitch thot is hard work you see). They exchange numbers and Ash leaves to make a frozen pizza and mentally complain about Xen.
As with the last story, after the first meeting we go to the texting phase. Chicken hat asks if our protagonist is still up for their date, and our protagonist checks the calendar and notes she can barely squeeze it in between video game training (no, really). They set it for Thai food. End scene!
Now at the restaurant, we actually show up on time! An NPC manages to get shadowy screen-time to tell them they have a table. Yolanda talks about how she's getting repeated customers by making it a pleasant place for them to say anything they want. Ash spergs out again because she uses the phrase "safe space". Yolanda asks if she wants to talk about it. Yolanda says people can be safe spaces and Ash says she doesn't understand....but she used the same concept in her mental rant right before this conversation so it doesn't really work. Ash asks if Yolanda is still friends with Isiah's friends (apparently fully believing in guilt by association), being placated with her answer that they all got cut off too. They talk a bit about Yolanda's exes and a hostess comes to steal more screen time. They start having a conversation about relationships and Ash mentally says that she doesn't know how to say she's not OK (Despite literally saying that earlier in the route when Yolanda literally asks if she's OK and she literally replies no.).
Then we get the choice of that old emo stereotype "I'm fine" or "I don't know". I'm super fine, so I picked the first option. Ash snaps and Yolanda complains about having to walk on eggshells around her and leaves. So I rollback and hit the second option. Ash continues talking about how pretty she is, and wishes she was into woman again. This time out loud, leading to a conversation where Yolanda basically tries to talk her out of being straight. She fails, ruining our chance of this route going anywhere. They talk about hookups leading Ash to rant about how much she hates her fans. They talk about gossip and how Ash ruined some dudes guitar for cheating on her then screamed at him. Real catch here.
Our protagonist awkwardly segways into poetry and Microsoft Sam notices a missed space. Its an error I probably wouldn't have noticed if my ever-present narrator didn't read it as "joking dot the". Yolanda suggests our protagonist should write poetry and they have some strange conversation about how she always reads poetry to her boyfriends but doesn't tell them it is about her and she just kinda assumes they never notice. Yolanda invites her over, causing her to cancel her vital gaming practice and reviving our hopes for yuri. These are immediately killed, the epilogue says they had a sleepover but it doesn't look like the sexy kind. Ash complains about her skin care routine being off. They become friends, the end!
No drugged up lesbian sex. I'm sure my readers are disappointed in that. So far of the 5 routes we where provided, 2 end in one night stands while 3 end in friendships. Here we see a major problem in what is supposed to be a dating sim, their methods mean that they have pre-developed characters who have sexuality as one of their very few character traits. There are only so many romantic pairings that can be made, and by the look of it they paired off uninterested parties anyway. Now we go into the second problem of what is supposed to be a dating sim: None of the characters are attractive or particularly likable. We've gone over this beforehand, but now that we've gone through we can see this first hand. The writing wasn't sexy, cute, or endearing. I didn't feel anything for any of the people "I" was supposed to be dating. Even the lead up and aftermath of the sex scenes was completely unsatisfactory. I'm not even convinced the characters themselves felt anything. I'm probably getting repetitive here, but the creators seem to have missed the point of a dating sim. Since all the characters are dating each other rather than "you" you don't really get attached to them, despite the story being told in first person. You don't self insert into any of the characters, you don't really direct their personality, and at the best of times its "Character A connects with Character B" rather than "Character A connects with you, the reader". None of the characters are really relatable or overall likeable, and the characters rarely even relate to each other. As the others have said, it reads like fanfiction. I'm meaning that here as a genuine criticism rather than "it feels like a 12 year old wrote it". The characters arn't meant to date each other. Normally when you do a romance, the characters are literally meant for each other. You can build up their relationship from the ground up, give them something in common, make them fall in love at first sight, but in the end characters A and B are designed to be together (Even if Character A is a protagonist who can also go with C, D, and F on different playthroughs). Here, the characters are designed seperatly then shoved haphazardly together. Characters A and B have sex because this is a dating sim and they have compatible orientations (even if that is the only thing compatible about them). That is where the fanfiction feeling comes from, they are trying to take two characters not designed to go together and force them together like a fanfiction, either in friendship or a sexual relationship.
Segwaying back onto this route, the author managed to somewhat cleverly get around that by giving the two characters a shared backstory. Given the characters had nothing in common it was a valid way to move the plot along and allowed for more character development of the protagonist than the other route, helping to explain how they become the terrible person they are today. Their chemistry still wasn't great, but it gave them an actual reason to interact and some topics relevant to both that they can talk about. Yolanda didn't have much character and the main character's character was "unlikable jerk" in the end, but it did end up feeling more natural than Anoki's route for example. The fact that a good 75% of the routes will be people having friendship dinners is probably going to be a surprise to the kickstart backers. Keeping with the original idea would be an easy way to cut out all the incompatible fluff, which might be why they dumped the idea in the first place.
And thus ends my terrible review series. Thanks for reading. I'm sure I'm as excited as all of you to see the finished product (read: not very) and am anxously on the edge of my seat wondering "So are any of these loosers going to end up in an actual relationship at some point or are you just wasting everyone's time?"
