Very interesting to me, and I'm glad I played it in short. Had a blast.
Will be upfront: it's an inclusive game, queer oriented- which I actually like and don't mind. Representation doesn't feel forced, and I don't feel like a terrible person like in Huniepop. There's 11 main characters with a few side ones, very open ended experience, and all characters interweave in the main story which is tied up wonderfully, imo. I will add as well that like other reviews have said, the game is open ended as far as match games go - you have the tutorial character, you can choose your gender, and you can interact with whoever you want in whatever order. For the most part- also meaning you can romance the same sex/non-binary people. I suppose if that's an issue the game allows the flexibility to some people, but I prefer this kind of story telling personally.
Difficulty is subjective for the most part, but in being thorough and choosing who to interact with will alter who is easier/more difficult. I did the normal difficulty and enjoyed myself, despite being interested in these kinds of games. [spoiler] By far, Amara is the most difficult - you can only score 4+ matches and more, followed by Ember, so I recommend doing them later, but can be done earlier if wanted. Reasonably. [/spoiler] There are a few interesting spell combos, though once I had all of them I figured out my style and I didn't lose again about 3/4ths in- so playing again I might do the higher difficulty, and I recommend that for most normal is enough, especially first time players, though that's a plus as well that there are options here as well. Nice to unwind with.
This is definitely a romance game as well, so I'll summarise that next. There's nothing visually explicit, but you can choose between different options whether to have flings, romantic options, or explicit relationships. At the end they show a photo and it's supposed to be memorabilia I think. Pretty standard, nothing explicit, and showcases the character- pretty much covered or in lingerie. Interestingly, maybe only to me anyways, this is also a magic game in a college setting, so I actually liked almost all the characters.
Playtime to doing almost everything, minus a few bonus after post-scenes and all the matching sequences, took about 15-16 hours, which I imagine could fluctuate a few hours give or take- especially if every optional dialogue is done. Feels very replay-able based on who focus on or synergise with.
As an aside, the tutorial character kinda warns you at first about romancing more than one person, but I found there's no real consequence to dating/romancing multiple people and [spoiler] there's actually a threesome I found in one of the quest-lines. I leave it to you to profile me who I did that with [/spoiler] But the mere fact they allow that sort of thing really appeals to me and adds a lot of depth.
Anyways, I like the game but I can definitely see for some people mileage may vary, though imo this was very enjoyable and would definitely recommend to a lot of people.
Last thing: I played this on the steam deck, and the game's definitely designed for a mouse and keyboard - the layout really only used the trackpad and mouse click buttons. Despite that, felt fluid - so from what I can tell using custom controllers without trackpads won't work here, and it's best portably played I found.
