The Way We All Go (2015)

sooo many routes, it's amazing - but Noelle will always be #1 in the game! i love her personality and dynamic, and the overall story feel is great number of charas pretty perfect for what is, this is def one of my more fave ebi-hime VNs (of which FANTASTIC writer, go check out the others on steam/itch!) : D also the side route was cute and pleasant switch from main story : > i really like how much more you can see of charas even when not on *their* routes the art is really nice too

relatable

While there isn't much horror to this VN, with only a handful of the 21 endings leading to our MC's unfortunate demise. And for the most part the horror doesn't happen until the later part of those routes. But behind all that is a touching, and sometimes depressing, story about friendship with all the complicated feeling intertwined all stemming from a few miscommunications. There is quite a lot of padding and build up, but for me it didn't feel like it took away too much from the story. It kept me engaged throughout and had me immersed until the very end! Overall it was an enjoyable read and loved going trough all the endings, even if it destroyed my heart in the end!

This game is an absolute gem. There are a wide multitude of endings, many of which include some form of character death. I love when the stakes in a visual novel are high enough for death to be on the table for one or more characters. Not every ending is available at the start. You have to complete the earlier ones to gain access to the later ones. It's always fun to go back into a game for a new playthrough and see brand new branches that didn't exist before. It adds massive replayability. The characters are fantastic. They're introduced as standard stereotypes, but they're so much deeper than that. You learn so much about them and their upbringings through the various routes, making you want to go back in and complete all the routes so you can learn as much as you can. Definitely recommend!

A very interesting and well written VN

I got every ending. The story probably won't make any sense if you don't try for that. Good balance of romance and horror, imo. I'm looking forward to the remake.

I've seen this game a while ago and i've been really interested in it. The characters looked cute, the reviews seemed interesting and the name with the blood stains seemed scary. It seemed like the perfect visual novel exactly what i was waiting for. Something that can make me love its story and its characters, make me really happy, smiling from ear to ear and then kill one of the characters and make me cry. Scary, happy and depressing! It seemed like a good visual novel to try out. I had to figure out what the story was that blood stain, the name and the reviews really caught my attention. And after trying it out and getting all 21 endings (thanks to a guide) i can gladly say... I wish i bought this game sooner. It made so happy and so sad at the same time. Some of the endings had me smiling a lot while some others almost made me cry. I realise i don't like admitting this but i think i might be a lot more emotional then i think i am! +The writing is really nice. Reading was tons of fun. The way all the emotions were told to me was just really good. Writing was great. +The graphics are good. I love the backgrounds they look really good and kind of like distorted and scary at the same time. The characters look cute as well. +The music and the sountrack is really good. Sometimes i would just stop reading and progressing the story just to listen to the music. +Tons of endings. +I enjoyed the story and the characters a lot. Noelle is, obviously, best girl. Followed by Amu and Saki. But i love Noelle. Seeing her sad, especially after learning more about her, made me incredibly sad too! Some of the endings almost made me cry dude! +It can get surprisingly sad at times which is what i was looking for anyways. I mean i don't enjoy being sad but i love sad, depressing stories. So yeah i liked it. Its wild how one ending will almost make me cry and the next one will have me smiling from ear to ear. +A great starting place if you wanna get into Visual Novels. Its not too restrictive, there are paths you can choose, tons of endings, good characters, music and backgrounds. The story is great too. +The game actually has some really interesting and serious topics. I don't wanna give major spoilers so i'll try not to say too much. I haven't played that many visual novels. One of the visual novels that i played that most people know about is the "Nekopara" series. I wanna mention how different these two are. Nekopara wasn't a bad visual novel or anything but it was never great either. It felt like it was there to do 2 things. Tell a cute story and hentai scenes. At times i felt like it was about to get serious but it never did. I never had to think about anything, i never had to do anything. I just kept reading as the cute cat girls said things and did things. It was not bad but as soon as i stopped playing i entirely forgot about it. Because it never made me think, it never did anything serious. While The Way We All Go is the exact opposite. All of the characters have really interesting things to say and they think and live their lives in interesting ways. The game deals with some really serious things openly talks about them, how they can effect people like how they effected our characters and the game does it so well too. I just get captivated reading why a character did this, what that character thought while he/she was doing that thing and so on. I'm comparing Nekopara and The Way We All Go because i haven't played that many visual novels, most people know about Nekopara and these two games are really different then each other. I just like this a lot how this game actually thinks, says and shows more serious and heavy stuff. I love the writing, i love how each character is weird and different in their own way. The writing helps a lot too i never really felt confused. I enjoyed reading everything. Its just such a wild difference i guess. This is something i love about visual novels when the story is interesting, setting is cool and the characters are fun to listen to i just start to get really captivated by the game i guess you could say. And that offers the perfect oppurtunity to hit me in my ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ face with some really serious topic. To ask me really different questions, to make me look at things in a different way. Its just what i love in a visual novel. Some really dark, depressing, serious things being told to me and even shown to me. This serious tone, coupled with everything else in this game from the background screens that are realistic but kind of distorted, to the cute but sometimes scary character sprites, with the beautiful music and the great writing for each character all of them with their own issues and problems and insecurities and their own way to look at life, look at the events happening around them and how they live their own life it all just combines into a great visual novel experience. -I wanna buy this games OST. Please sell it to me as a DLC on Steam. I love the music i often found myself just sitting back and listening to the music in the main menu or in a certain scene i really enjoyed it and i wanna buy it. Except its not being sold. Please start selling it as a DLC thanks in advance. (After some research and by that i mean randomly finding this comment by the developer on the community hub i now understand why the OST isn't being sold. Here is what i found: "Sorry, but I am not going to include the OST as DLC or provide a download for it because none of the songs were composed for the game - they are all royalty free. Distributing the songs individually is against the terms of use." so yeah. It makes sense now. I'm just gonna download and open the game and listen to the songs whenever i want to. It would be fun looking at the main menu and listening, remembering everything.) -I want more. Believe me this was a long game. A long visual novel with tons of things to read and think about. It made me sad, it made me happy i just had tons of fun. And i want more. I want like after stories. Like a "oh you got that ending? Here is a small game about what happened after that ending." The game itself is absolutely fine its not a short game or anything i just liked it so much that i want more with the same characters. The issue with that is... It kinda destroys the point of the game. I'm not gonna get too much into that because it would be major spoilers just know that i want more but i know i won't and can't get more. As you can see I have almost no issues with this game. And the few issues that i have are really insignificant things. Like wanting to buy the OST even tho i suppose it doesn't really exist. Thats not a problem with the game itself thats just what i want. Or wanting to see more of the characters. Again thats not an issue with the game its already a long game its just i liked it so much that i wanna see more. 22 hours wasn't enough for me apperantly. I NEED TO SEE NOELLE MORE! Honestly i enjoyed this game way too much. I loved the story, the characters, the setting, the sounds and the music, the backgrounds i just liked it all. In my first playthrough i got the 11th Ending "Best Friend" and i was incredibly happy with it. I was scared to play more cuz i really liked the characters and like come on even the main screen has blood stains on it i did not wanna see the characters being hurt. Of course i kept going and decided to see some other endings cuz why not curiosity killed the cat but satisfaction brought it back or something along those lines and like if i had made a review after i got my first ending i would have recommended the game. After some more hours and seeing some more endings i still recommend the game even more then i did previously. I paid 3,30 TL for this game and if i had known how good it was i would have happily paid the full price for this game. 11 TL is an awesome price. Maybe even too little. I just liked the game that much. Its my favorite visual novel and it'll stay that way for a long time.

I didn't get this for free but I did get it in a cheap bundle somewhere. Forgot I even had this until recently. Apparently I had a VN or three by ebi-hime, a small indie visual novel developer who makes short games between 1-10 hours long. I like short story games so not sure why I didn't pick this up earlier. I believe this is the first game of the developer. I only played Rituals in the Dark and I liked it. First thing that I noticed is the art style. I don't love it. The background are what I think are real photographs with a filter over it to make it a bit more like it's drawn. I've seen it before and I think it's a cheap and quick way of getting some scenes in your game. I don't love it because it's a disconnect between the anime characters. Speaking of, they're crudely drawn. Not bad, just... not great. The characters are real teenagers with real teenage angst. I'm a bit older (36) now but I do remember what it was like to be a teenager and it was a bit like this. All those insecurities, all those social fears, all that awkwardness... It's relatable but it's also a bit of a cliche at this point. The story is basically a teenager going back to it's hometown after having moved out a few years back. You'll spend two days here and who you spend it with and how you react to them is up to you. There's quite a few choices and quite a few endings (21 of them). It's nice to have choices and choices do matter here, quite a lot. I unlocked ending number 5. I would have preferred a more fleshed out ending. It's a bit too open ended. It's good, it's perfectly fine. Personally I just rather have less choices, or even no choices at all, and have one really well worked out elaborate ending to the story than something like this. That's personal preference though. For the price you get a nice little indie visual novel with a lot of player choice. Everything about it is more than fine and it's a nice read. I doubt it's something that anyone will remember after a few days though. Not bad especially if you take into account this is the first game by ebi-hime. The art and storytelling gets better from here. EDIT: I tried a few different endings and it makes me feel different about the game. Not better or worse, different. Somehow I unlock the least disturbing ending on my first run. On one hand I was happy to see another side of the story. On the other it kinda affirms my idea about having multiple endings. Unless it's really well done (Only game I know to do it right is Heavy Rain, and possibly Detroit Become Human) there's two possibilities: You either see one ending and miss a bunch of important plot-points/character development OR you see multiple ending and have to slog through the game multiple times, reading the same thing over and over (even with using skip mode) while at the same time seeing stuff that couldn't happen in the other timelines. This game does it better than most, but I still don't like it.

I'd probably personally prefer the ratio of creeping dread to slice of life to be balanced rather more towards the former, but the slice of life stuff does help you invest in the characters. It's been remade now, but I has a soft spot for the original.