You’re welcome! I’m glad it was useful and also encouraging!
I absolutely agree with what you wrote on Rue. My mc does have a decent moral compass, but to be clearly wanted and longed for in a way that almost feels unconditional to him (something he’d also would really want to believe) and he’s ready to give up and do just about anything to make that happen, having been so devoid of care/love in his life. Were he a more stable person with a less miserable life he might have thought it better to let Rue down gently for his own sake, but for the game’s mc/my mc, it’s a moth to a flame.
In that sense I can also see an mc who’s still pretty heavy into seeing the mob as his only choice, can be persuaded to become someone better for Rue/Prue, as well as a morally bankrupt character to exploit it (and perhaps even regret it later) and once again: I love that those options are there!
Btw are there things both of you are specifically looking for feedback wise? I’d be happy to help if I can.
I didn’t mean envying Paul’s life quite so literally, my mc is very different from Paul.
We can agree to disagree on the clothes. I don’t have issues with it bc in my opinion it’s solid from a narrative standpoint, it actually helps me be immersed in the story and want better things for mc. The pictures in my mind’s eye aren’t quite as damning as yours either, but that’s why it’s good to have different perspectives communicated to the authors.
I did try writing some flashbacks, but they didn’t really work, so I dropped the idea. I get your point though—Seb is also quite a difficult character to write.
Both of them fall into a pretty niche category: trauma, drug use, promiscuity. Sieun somehow holds it together, while Seb… not so much anymore. I have a feeling he’d flip me off for everything I’ve put him through.
Yeah, I pretty much agree with you.
Thanks so much for the long feedback. I really appreciate that.
I actually really like that comparison for Rue’s romance dynamic. He’s definitely the source of light, but he’s so vulnerable, especially with the influence MC can have over him.
Thank you! I’d love any feedback on the plot, pacing, characters, possible plot holes, or bugs, of course! Or just a quick message to say the game was engaging enough. It’s always appreciated.
I hope this comes off as the constructive criticism it’s meant as, but I had huge issues with the Mark route. I was drawn to him from the start, I absolutely loved the dynamic between him and MC and them being assholes to each other. Two of my favorite cog romances of all time are Jun from SoH and Seven from Infamous so clearly I have a type and the type is fucked up. It was between Seb and Mark for me and Seb pretty much confirmed he was not into guys the very first time we talked and there was seemingly a kiss scene in chapter one that I never got so I messed that up. Oh well, I was more into Mark anyway so no biggie.
So I was doing pretty good with him, I had 69% loyalty. Man’s protective from the start, almost took a bullet for me. Weakness of mine, yes please. Then we fight over Sebastian, physically fight and he seems to show his protectiveness even more. Except now MC is musing that Mark is also straight so uh oh. I keep going, because Mark is listed as a RO so we’ll see where it’s headed because I’m liking it a lot at this point. And then we get to the fishing trip. I don’t know what happens but man’s so detached here all of a sudden. But it’s fine, I’m committed at this point. So my first mistake was saying no to a threesome because a woman was involved. I was immediately locked out of his romance, which, fair enough I guess. I wish I’d gotten as much of a warning as Seb gave from the character himself because I lived in my own little la la land that MC just doesn’t know better. Okay so I load back, do the threesome because okay, not into it but sacrifices must be made. This time I’m so far up his ass even though we’ve had this amazing back and forth banter relationship but I just want to trigger this damn romance. No, still greyed out. This time he effectively kills me, because I’m desperately trying all the options. Now I’m getting annoyed, because I really didn’t want to see that. At first I assumed it’s based on my stats being wrong but thankfully I saw the guide before restarting the whole game and changing MC’s personality only to hit a wall again. So I finally hit the forum, followed the guide posted by batmansrobin (thank you, btw). Except I only called him psychotic once instead of twice, again hit with the bad ending. This time, yeah, absolutely my fault for not following it step by step. If this was a full game without save files, I probably would’ve rage quit. Takes all the fun out of it that for this whole scene almost every interaction with him you need to pick very specific dialogue. And some of it doesn’t even make sense, why would I constantly be thinking he’s creepy if I want to get into his pants? So after all this reloading, experiencing absolutely every bad ending this scene has and I finally get the romance unlocked. At this point I’m too annoyed to even properly enjoy it. I loaded back one more time, tried Rue instead even though he’s too wholesome for my MC and got soulmate instantly without even really trying. So it’s interesting that Rue’s route has a proper guide in the OP when it’s so easy to get just by picking basically every option to talk to him in his romance scene, meanwhile if you pick one wrong option with Mark he’ll basically kill you. So my one request would be to make the Mark route more forgiving, I assume the intention was not to make it painstakingly difficult.
Sorry for the rant, I really enjoyed the game otherwise. Especially love the MC, one of my favorite MC’s I’ve played.
First of all, thanks so much for all the feedback.
Your determination to get into Mark’s pants is honestly kind of flattering. But seriously, I hear you.
And yeah, I can definitely see where the frustration is coming from, especially if you ended up going through multiple bad endings and a lot of replays.
With Mark, that scene is intentionally strict. It’s meant to feel uncomfortable and kind of unforgiving, because it’s part of his route, just not a typical romance setup. It’s more about how far MC is willing to go with something that’s obviously off, and how they respond to it.
That said, I do get that this can come across more like trial and error than intended, especially without guidance. I’ll probably put together a more detailed guide for his route to make it less frustrating to navigate without changing how it plays out.
Really glad you enjoyed the game overall and love the MC!
I totally get it when it comes to the threesome for example, it ain’t for me but I’ll roll with it for his sake. But when you kinda lose me is when it comes to the dialogue choices. Especially when out of like five choices I’m limited to two, and one of them is thinking he’s creepy. I’m into it so why would I be thinking he’s creepy, you know? I’ve enjoyed the dynamic between them a lot and in this scene I feel like my hands are so tied in how I’m allowed to talk or think about him and taking away basically all illusion of choice.
I don’t really care if Becka dies or not, though admittedly after my very unenthusiastic participation in the threesome I kinda felt like she deserved me sticking up for her haha. I wouldn’t care if I had to go murder hobo for the auction if that was Mark’s kink. But dang, having fantastic snarky dialogue options I’m not allowed to pick because I’m actually very limited in what I’m allowed to say was just kind of unexpected, I guess, especially when so far the freedom to choose which option sounds like your MC the most has been there. Here it felt like I was handheld through the whole scene, being forced to follow this guide step by step, or else lose out. Also Mark tried to kill me twice thanks to bad endings. At least Seb doesn’t try to kill me, Mark ya hypocritical bastard. That sucked. I just wanna love him.
Sorry, let me focus on the positives for a change. My MC is so snarky, I love him. Poor Rue’s grandmother gets the brunt of it. Or Ernest. Or Mark. I think that’s why he loves me over Paul (I like to think so anyway). Also MC’s relationship to Paul and the amount of choices you get how you feel about him is so fun. I like how the whole hostage situation was handled, and that you could at least offer to stay yourself. I would’ve been able to handle it way better than Sieun but I’m not letting Ernest use Seb like that, in your dreams dad. Speaking of Seb, I don’t know if I missed out on more scenes of him because I was so focused on picking Mark every chance I got but I do wish there was more Sebastian. One of my favorite scenes of the whole book was when we messed with Paul’s best buddy while I was (or tried) to be undercover as Paul. The Paul is dead dialogue was chefs kiss.
But seriously, I hear you.