This demo is pretty good, exceptionally high quality work and very engaging. It is definitely an improvement of other similar WIPs of the same genre but of course there are some good and bad I’ve seen based on one playthrough.
Cons:
Repetitive Tropes - Young Detective in a small town, supernatural Feds come in, investigate a murder, the detective has to work with the other agents, your boss introduces you to the feds, etc. It is very very repetitive as I’ve seen this trope happen many many many times in WIPs all over, a reason why I am not a fan of the supernatural mystery genre.
Pacing - The pacing of the story is extremely slow and tedious, while the writing quality is undoubtedly high the fact is not much happens aside from talking and investigating a bit, no major plot points are visited enough to warrant my interest, it just feels like a cop show.
High Quantity if Characters - There are too many characters, from a whopping 7 Romance Interests and side characters.
Genre Fatigue - The same way Hollywood movies have given us Superhero Fatigue, a lot of novels and WIPs have given me Supernatural Detective fatigue, its all the same and I’ve seen elements of it in this story as well.
Pros:
Interesting Characters: The characters are very human and interesting, they’re not just generic archetypes but actually feel humanized, from K being overworked, L being lonely, M being conflicted, R being very aggressive, the characters feel more interesting
POV Switch: Having different POVs made it interesting, it humanizes the characters even more. I definitely like that aspect of showing how other characters also have their own lives and opinions.
Adult Problems: Unlike other stories where the problems feel childish in this story your MC and other ROs actually have side characters in their lives, personal drama and some kind of back story that affects you. The addition of having characters like Parker and Norma adds more fuel to the fire and makes it interesting
Writing Quality - The writing quality is extremely detailed and clear, very professional and high quality, its just the slow story that bored me but the writing itself is pretty polished.
No Stat Checks - This alone is a Pro, stat checks are so annoying. Just give us a good story and good characters, not an RPG haha. I appreciate this part.
Summary: I think the story has potential for sure, I’m just unsure on how it would go from a story and character perspective, the plot is boring for me, I’m here for the characters not another murder mystery, I can already guess it would be a vampire, werewolf, angel or demon doing some blood voodoo sacrifice goat demon stuff, I’ve seen it plenty of times.
I’d like to see more character interactions, conflicts, and action drama, something that won’t be boring since I do enjoy how the world feels very much alive with side characters getting involved in the story well as plot devices. Shame there’s no poly or triangle romance, that would be pretty good.