summer haze/glory days

I've been looking forward for this to finally come out, and I'm glad it did. ggs to the teams, you've done a wonderful job. The story is sweet, the characters grow on you, and it encapsulates the heavy but unavoidable toll of time very well. Also, the ability to see the effect your choices have on the narrative after the first playthrough is such a life-saver for those of us obsessed with getting very specific results or achievements.) Great game!

I've played so many VNs and dating sims and I genuinely have never played one like this before. I love the writing and the characters so much! The use of the NG+ in the storytelling is so good, it adds so much depth to the story when replaying. I don't want to give away too much since I feel like going in blind makes it much more enjoyable and your choices and the results you get more authentic! I played the demo for this when it came out all that time ago and to see how it is as a final product, I'm really satisfied. Some things can only really be seen and understood when reflecting, and some things can only be done when you've regretted your past decisions. It's easy to regret the things you did in the past and dwell on them, wondering what you could've done right. But some things - regardless of how much you try - will always happen, but certain people will be there for you to make the inevitable bearable, and make it a less lonely experience even when it ended how it did. <3

This is a really, really good visual novel. The whole cast is great; the game does an amazing job at portraying a dramatic slice-of-life story without veering too heavily into melodrama. The customization balances allowing you to shape the MC's identity and personality while also giving them a defined history and relationships. It's really well-written with great character writing in particular; every character has their own voice but they're all still heavily grounded in the setting. Most of all what I really liked is the New Game+ system. Most visual novels expect you to play the game multiple times to get different endings, but instead of a typical implementation, NG+ sets your original choices in stone; instead, what you change is how the MC feels about what happened a decade later, as well as which events were important to them. (For what it's worth, you do get three world state slots, so you can also play around with choices in a more typical way, too.) Combined with the customization and the choice density, this gives the game a lot more replay value and opportunities for experimentation than most indie VNs. summer haze/glory days technically does have romance in it, but it's not the focus of the game at all. Only one character (Emerson) has an explicitly romantic arc outside of the epilogue and the main events surrounding him all happen regardless of whether or not you pursue him romantically; the romance is more something that affects how the main dramatic conflicts play out rather than the dramatic center in itself. The main themes of the story (regret/acceptance, the tension between art and career, watching someone spiral downwards without you being able to help them in any meaningful way) all hit hard regardless. One last thing I do want to mention is the nostalgia value. I was a teenager who was super into emo/indie rock during the time this game takes place...but I burned myself out so thoroughly on the sound near the end of high school that even in my thirties I still can't stand listening to most of what used to be my favorite bands lol. But it's clear that the soundtrack does a good job at emulating the type of sound that was common. And aside from the obvious music factor, the story does a really good job of portraying the 2000s. It's a little bit idealized in the way a lot of period pieces are (I remember there being a lot more overt homophobia, even around this scene) but not so much as to be cloying or fully rose-colored.