Kugayama Shiori's Death Diary

Really enjoyable VN, art style is fantastic and the story is really good, the true ending is certain worth the effort to figure out how to get it!

Honestly I hated it for the first hour but this subverted all expectations by the end of it and I'm so happy I persevered beyond the beginning. My main gripes were that Shiori felt like such a neutral character that didn't feel like she had any strong personality quirks aside from being a generic kind and warmhearted soul, and then there was also you, the player, who had no aspects to even define yourself by. Its like you were Gordon Freeman but you had no name, no description, nothing. The beginning just felt like a drag because I didn't really give the cast a chance to grow on me. However, once I just gave it time and got used to the format that it was trying to tell the story, I found myself enjoying it much more. Usually I'm used to a back and forth between the player/protag and the character on screen, not a one-sided dialogue that is completely dominated. Also, the VN is all about figuring out the mystery of who exactly is Kaguyama Shiori as well as everyone else and their roles in the incident. Everyone's already dead, so you're trying to figure out the story of what happened after everything is long settled and done rather than trying to reach a conclusion in the present. Having recognised what the intent of the VN, the method with which it was telling the story and realising there is way more to the characters than initial impressions let on, this is definitely a title that is worth reading through to the very end. I still think the beginning can be a bit rough but carries itself well once you give it time to gain a bit of substance.