Review of Cynthia ~Sincerely to You~
| Subject | Cynthia ~Sincerely to You~ |
| By | Helpfulness: 1 Vote: 6funnerific on 2021-04-07 |
| Review | Very interesting plot premise, interesting plot developments towards the end, but more than half of the game will be an almost plotless borefest with hardly anything happening, which lowers the score. There are lots of scene selection screens (which determine the route you get) so you have to go back to the boring parts every time before getting to the fun parts. It does get pretty exciting there: that's where all the intrigue and tension is, almost like a complete genre shift. The maid's route in particular is worth it, while others aren't so interesting in my opinion. She might be hard to like at first because of her attitude, but remember that the people of the house don't know the MC's background, to them he's just a suspicious doctor who's obviously not very good at his job (because he's not a real doctor, although he's trying to do the required research in the process). With that in mind, her abrasive behavior makes a lot of sense. People seem to like the game for the "feral girl moe" but I'm not sure you'll find it ultimately satisfying if that's what you're here for: she gets her memories and speech back in her route, doing away with the whole "feral" aspect in one night rather than continuing to gradually regain her humanity, which she does in other routes. She is the central heroine of the common route, however, with heavy focus and lots of scenes. The real highlight is the maid's route. Much more interesting than the other two both in terms of exposition and storytelling, it is ironically the only one that doesn't force you into a bad end the first time — even though its bad end is the best written ending in the whole game. Speaking of bad ends, in every route they're pretty long, have lots of CGs and somewhat add to the story. I like their contents, but definitely not how they're brought about. You're forced into it the first time in 2/3 routes, and they work with this kind of logic: Low favor with the heroine -> it rains on day X. High favor with the heroine -> skies clear on day X. ...rather than changing how she feels about the MC, or how the MC feels about her! I used rain as an example, the actual events are much more dire and get people killed. The happy ends I found pretty underwhelming, they aren't really "achieved", things just happen to work out for our characters and not much interesting happens in terms of developments. Minor gripes: 1) Unskippable, slow scene transitions. Ready to sit there for 5 seconds at the end of every in-game day to watch the background go from daylight to dusk to nighttime, then fade out? 2) Forced system voice (characters announcing your actions such as going to the save menu, opening the options, or returning to the title screen). You do get to choose, as usual, and some options are decent. One of them is really fucking good but it requires full-clearing the game first, or maybe just doing Maria route, which I happened to do last. 3) No option to continue voice playback, it always gets cut off if you advance text even if there's no voice on the next line. 4) CG collection is a pain, and this isn't about mere variations. Some are so deeply hidden in the choice system that getting them is slow and unintuitive, so you're recommended to use a walkthrough. There's another one that isn't so minor and some people may be bothered by it: the setting is noticeably bigger than the events you observe. There's quite a bit of political intrigue at play in the background and this could totally do with a true route that would address the global issues, but instead the VN is focused on its characters, and the global developments merely coincide with your "local" resolution. Got a bad end? Things will go to shit everywhere else, even if it's not directly related. Don't play this for the H, by the way. 1 scene per heroine, so 3 scenes total, all fairly short and nothing out of the ordinary (although Maria squirting several times was a kek moment.) ————————————————— Do I recommend playing it? Somewhat. If you're curious about the whole feral girl thing, and you want cool plot, just play the maid route (good and bad ends) and leave it at that. That's the suggestion I would give my past self. |
| 1 point |