So, this is my first time I'm ever writing a review for a game, and this game deserves that first review. This is a wonderful masterpiece and legitimately one of the best games I've ever played when it comes to representation. I myself am a member of the LGBT community, but there is nothing more that I hate when a game flat out says dialogue such as "God I'm so gay!" It's unnatural and honestly, really tacky? In this game, there is none of that if you are wondering. Moving on to that:
[h1] PROS: [/h1]
[u] -Hispanic LGBT Representation through the roof! [/u]
*Moving onto things I dislike, nothing more than when popular media decides to directly translate spanish to english such as: "Hola Mi Hermano! Hi, my Brother!" Spanish people don't talk like that. Chelo and Mickey are some of the most organic characters I've seen when it comes to this. Chelo using words such as Cojones and Cabrones is also incredibly funny, especially since this is 80s MIAMI, there's gonna be spanish speakers! It's soo refreshing to see them talking like actual hispanic people.
*What I was NOT expecting in this game were drag queens, I mean, that's nothing bad of course, but how were they portrayed so well as well? The stereotypes of hispanic and lgbt people seen in other video games are NO WHERE near this game, which is a breath of fresh air. The characters are all pleasant in their own ways, and you can't help but enjoy each and every piece of dialogue that they say.
[u] -The romantic interests are not all the same age and gender. [/u]
*So I'm a visual novel connoisseur, and one thing I absolutely hate about them is that they'll copy-paste the same interest multiple times. With this game, that's not the case. I would hate to spoil about it, but They have the assortment of: An escobar party queen, a highschool senior socialite, a sweet, dorky EMT, a mysterious older man, and a drag king who treats you like a princess. The male-to-female ratio is also surprising, considering the female love interests overbalance the male, which i think is a good thing! Since most visual novels only ever provide one female love interest, this is, again, a breath of fresh air to me.
[u] -You can't save everyone. Also the music freaking bops. [/u]
*The darkness of this game is astonishing, considering this is the best soundtrack I've heard in a video game in a long time. The intro? Best thing I've seen all year, you should purchase it for that reason alone. Anyways, the game advertises being a detective that finds missing people. Neato, right? It teaches you the dark side of that, that you can't find everyone and become a savior to your city. Which, is sad, but it's ultimately the truth, the game doesn't sugarcoat it that Chelo is some kind of superhero. She's not, she's human like you and me.
[h1] CONS: [/h1]
[u] -You can only kiss once. [/u]
*That is to say, I am a bit disappointed we don't see any actual physical romantic moments between Chelo and her love interests save for Ethan and Tala. I would have liked to see her kiss Luci, devs. Sorry.
[u] -There is no CG gallery. [/u]
*So yeah, I played this game for almost ten hours, but I'm still disappointed that there is no gallery to go back to seeing the lovely art the creators probably painstakingly spent making, it would be nice to see it!
[u] -The skip button isn't obvious. [/u]
*Let me save you a world of headache and tell you ahead of time that the skip dialogue option is the tilde button that looks like ~ this. If you don't know this, you will be stuck in limbo manually skipping everything, I wish there was a way the devs put this into the game, so we would know for achievement purposes.
[u] -There isn't a lot. [/u]
*Okay, this is less of a con and more of me getting attached; but the game is a bit short if you have ADHD like me and binged the whole thing in one day. I get it, you're not supposed to do that, but I kind of wish we had more cases with Chelo and a way to actually see her sign up to be a P.I. I hope the devs add DLC, or even a sequel to this, because there is ONE playthrough of this on youtube.
[h1] OVERALL: [/h1]
I'm pissed off that this game isn't popular. The game is an 80's centric LGBT themed hispanic-starring MASTERPIECE with what, 20 reviews in total? It's depressing, upsetting, and I hate it. I am definitely going to try to make all of my friends play this game, because Chelo Martinez deserves more representation, and the true ending was upsetting! Come on devs, give us more CHELO!
[i] (I would like to add this, creators, if you see this, the word "Boardwalk" is misspelled multiple times in case you guys don't speak english as your first language either) [/i]
