Jishogi

It's an enjoyable and unique puzzle game. It's got a good story with interesting worldbuilding. I found it worthy of 100% completing. I found most of the endings satisfying and appropriately spicy. (You are in full control of how toxic this yuri gets, and consequences play out quite nicely) The only complaint I might have is that the difficulty of the puzzles are a little inconsistently paced in the 2nd half, but perhaps that's the price of freedom. The music is also a little bit repetitive, and I felt like I wanted to lower the volume sometimes but I think that's probably just my taste. But I forgive a lot of these flaws because I think the game was made with a lot of heart.

This is an enjoyable game that is certainly somewhat rough around the edges. Pacing is probably one of its main flaws, with the game taking some time to pick up, both from a story standpoint as well as gameplay-wise. It’s also at the end where you get to start working toward a specific ending. So I’d say from a story point of view the start of the second act is when it starts to pick up and from a gameplay point of view it’s more so after the end of the second act where you’re basically at the end since that’s where the endings are decided. For the puzzles, however, I personally found the pacing fine, with the game also warning you if a puzzle might be a bit too much at your current point in time. Enjoyment of the story, most likely the main appeal of the game, will depend on how much you can buy the characters. Both the protagonist and the antagonist are flawed individuals who lend themselves to a morally grey narrative. The narrative is also built in such a way where it trusts the reader to piece out the characters’ motivations and come up with their own conclusions. I’m a bit split on the lore entries the player can get. On one hand, they help flesh out the universe of the game more and reward the player with a better understanding of the situation. On the other, some of this info could be more integrated in the memories and overall story. Three difficulties are offered for the puzzles. I personally haven't got to try out the middle difficulty, but easy allows to progress through puzzles fairly quickly, allowing the player to focus more on the story while 9th dan offers challenging puzzles, especially in the later half of the game, at the risk of feeling tedious at times, especially with the amount of puzzles the player has to go through to gain access to a room. The player is, however, not locked out of any difficulty, so it's always possible to change the difficulty later on. At the time of writing this review, I personally was not able to select the middle difficulty when starting a new game. While this was fine by me, this does mean that, if necessary, it is possible to select it later on when changing the difficulty in the in-game menu. The OST does its job well for the most part, with the tracks fitting the vibes nicely, though I have found it sometimes a bit repetitive, especially when spending a bit too much time in some of the puzzle rooms or in some of the memory rooms. Generally though there is more than enough diversity in the tracks to avoid this. Some slight bugs and typos can be found at times, but nothing that should significantly hinder enjoyment of the game. Overall a pretty interesting game with a more compelling story than what one might expect at first and some unique puzzles.