I am a big fangirl of Ryukishi despite all of his imperfections, so take this review with a grain of salt as it is inevitably going to be extremely biased.
That being said, R.G.D. is the only significant Sound Novel of his I have put back reading for a loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong time. In result, I'm coming into it with a significant pause after some of Ryukishi's best works.
I will try to avoid spoilers here, but will touch on themes and my issues with the writing (although avoiding specific examples)
=================[b] STORY [/b]=================
To list the formalities, the prose of R.G.D. is clean and adequately eloquent, with healthy and energetic pacing - there aren't any questionable translations, and it is pleasant to read. It is best to treat the novel as a pleasant glamurous criminal thriller that has things to say; I wouldn't recommend expecting this to be another Umineko or Ciconia with their philosophical and sophisticated merits.
As you have probably (100% guaranteed I don't even know why I'm writing this section) read, the game presents a story about survival in unstable (and overtly criminal) Stone Jungles of post-WW2 Tokyo (with a small remark that Japan has resigned earlier in the war, becoming an occupied state by 1944). In specific, R.G.D.'s story focuses on the path of Club Primavera ("spring" in Italian), a union created by- and for protection of City 23's sex workers. This, of course, opens the door for Ryukishi's trademark broad-topic discussion arising from the struggles and joys of our heros and villains.
Season 1 of R.G.D. inspects the consequences for the culture of a defeated nation: throughout the plot, popular reactions to the issue of cultural erasure lie in the base of characterisation. Unsurprisingly, the main ideological conflict of the novel lies in the weighing of different approaches in pursuing a better future for the people of Japan. (At first, I was fearing the worst - what if Ryukishi decided to pursue a very nationalistic line, quite distasteful with the background of WW2 Japan? This, however, ended up being an empty worry, as the novel, in my opinion, avoided glamourization of aggressive nationalisation, favouring morally sound ideas of healthy restoration).
Sadly, I still can't help but feel weird about a lot of characterisation and writing concerning the main party of interest - ladies of the night. I am in no way an expert or have any experience with difficulties (and outright horrors) of sex work, and therefore have no grounding for my words, but even I have conflicting opinions on some scenes. R.G.D. often slips into anime-fying concerned characters with popular tropes and gags, sometimes even following/during scenes depicting their profession hours. Additionally, often times women are used as a damsel-in-distress catalyst for a fight scene or development of the plot. It would be wrong to call the novel mysoginistic though, because it stresses the unfairness of male perception of prostitution, as well as allowing us to perceive female characters in this sphere as actual people with hopes, dreams, aspirations, and individuality, and not just faceless victim-dolls. After all, our main cast is almost exclusively sex workers, so I would say that Ryukishi is, as usual, sympathetic to injustice and attempts humane portrayal of different social groups.
=================[b] "GAMEPLAY" [/b]=================
R.G.D. is a kinetic Sound Novel. That means, there are no choices for you to make, nor is there any in depth gameplay intended at all. Usually, all this would be is a book with sound in your ears and sprites on your screen. This time, however, 07thExpansion decided to add simple point and click minigame, remotely similar to OSU gameplay, during the fight scenes. And I wish they didn't. Even if we get over the idea that in general this isn't a greatest idea to add a "find a giant white circle on your screen and press on it to block" gameplay loop to a novel that has billion fight scenes, the game also will require you to see a 30 second long score screen segments after each one. If you want to have a good time, I really recommend you completely turn off this option: this way, you'll still be able to see fabulous CG's without having to suffer from boredom/wait 2000 years for the story.
=================[b] ART AND MUSIC [/b]=================
Despite being done by multiple artists in completely different artsyles, R.G.D.s character sprites remain pleasant, vibrant, and full of personality. Visually, it's a great pleasure to see all of City 23's and its inhabitants; I'd drink some apple juice inside beautiful Club Primavera myself.
Now about music.....I can't be as positive. The tracks themselves are amazing and totally fitting for respective antourages, however they are very few unique ones and the game actively prevents you from enjoying them: for some unknown reason, be it mangagamer's mistake in this release or something else, the music feels almost bugged as the track ques tied to certain dialogue boxes are not at all seamless, and almost always there will be an uncomfortable 60 seconds pause of silence after one OST finishes and the trigger for other has not yet been reached. It caused me a lot of displeasure and I really hope it will be fixed one day :C
There is no Voice Acting in this game, but that is something I have gotten used to with other non-WTC Ryukishi novels, so I did not find that troublesome at all.
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In conclusion, R.G.D. is a pleasant even if an unpolished read, and a solid 7/10
