Update Two Hundred and Seventy-Eight: 5 February 2019
Root Letter
103 hours playtime, ~8 hrs actual, 26 of 26 achievements
5/10
☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆
Hooo boy am I tired.
So, unfortunately, my tastes ran a little counter to my kyoudai’s, BLAEO user Shax. This isn’t the first or last time I’d have to disagree with him (Virtue’s Last Reward is the BEST ONE, SHAX!!!!) He, and a couple of other people here, really liked Root Letter… but I was kind of let down. To me, it was mostly style, little substance.
This is a competently made VN+, for sure - the interface is slick and there’s a lot of tactile engagement, where you’re asking questions and moving around a map and examining things… but there wasn’t a lot of point to it. A lot of it felt on-rails, and that most of the actions I took was just trying to introduce gameplay without really bringing any meaning or worth to it. There was one point I just wanted to check on what I had in my inventory… but the game wouldn’t let me because the current right answer to progress wasn’t to look in my inventory.
The story isn’t much to write home about - it’s an interesting premise, but not executed in a particularly interesting way. You play as a man in his early thirties who wants to find the penpal he had in high school after receiving an ominous letter from her years later. He goes to her hometown and investigates, no matter how much her former classmates want him to stop.
This isn’t going to be very surprising, but… I wanted more writing. Everything was focused too much on just the actual investigation plot, and as a result the main character and all the classmates didn’t have time to get filled out or have depth. I’m a bitch who loves huge huge huge VNs with ton of ‘non-essential’ writing that’s mostly just setting up and getting to know all the characters intimately, so all this shoestring nonsense left me really bereft and wanting to know more. The tone is also inconsistent, veering wildly from funny to serious in a way that isn’t handled particularly well. I’m not even touching ‘Fatty’s’ story because that is just one huge yikes.
Slick but empty, Root Letter was an… okay ride. I’ve read worse!
Next up: You wanna talk about a never-ending backlog? I don’t think my VN backlog has dropped below 63 in the past year and a half!
I played the first installment of this a billion years ago - let’s see how it improved!
See you soon!
For the sake of our love and friendship I will not comment on this Partially also because I don’t remember much it’s been almost a year since I played the game :P
As long as we understand and accept our differences in taste. <3
If this had more writing I probably would’ve lost my patience and never get around beating it.
PS: You can’t beat 999
Yes! Absolutely and for always.
… okay I might concede that, 999 was really fuckin good.
Oh be interesting to see the review on seduce me otome 2. I played the 1st one and it was alright so I’m interested in the next but I never see it on sale so the full price just doesn’t sit well with me when the 1st game wasnt mind blowing
Iiiiit’s already not really worth the price. The writing is really purple n clunky, moreso than I remember - or, I guess, I was nicer then because I didn’t have to pay for it.
Hooo boy it’s gonna be a rough time. At least VNDB says it’s on the shorter side!
Oh sounds disappointing. Thats what I mean though, because it was free it was alright but as a paid game for £7+ doesn’t seem worth it. I love lonely yuri but I cant even bring myself to buy that because it takes me an hour so that price again just seems like a rip off. You seem to be reading not the best stories of late too
Mehhhhh, it happens. You get ups n downs. If anything, I read ‘em so you don’t have to!
I know I have good ones lurking in my backlog… I just need RNGesus to bid me to pick them up!