Honestly, this game reminds me a lot of some of my earlier writing attempts. It has cool ideas, a nice vibe going on, but the end result is a tad bit clumsy. I feel a lot of that comes from wanting to stick to genre conventions that don't necessarily apply to the story it's trying to tell. At its core, this game's story is a drama about longing and companionship, but it feels they were too afraid of it being boring, so they shoehorned a bad guy at the end who's behind everything and you fight him in a big dumb battle. Like, having combat makes sense since it's a video game and even to this day there's a stigma against walking sims and such, but then they decided to add a villain with an evil plan which is completely unnecessary for the story it's trying to tell and I think it does a real diservice to it.
The reason Shin's entire character isn't thematically appropriate is that even though technically his motivation relates to the themes of the game, said themes get lost when the plot devolves into standard battle anime fare with him at the center. The reason for Seto to look for the silver-haired girl is no longer out of yearning for human warmth, but to sAvE tHe WoRlD from the evil scientist! An evil scientist who monopolizes the plot and makes it all about him. It's no longer about the differences between people, it's about this one dude. Even the AI stuff, which seemed like it was building up towards something, gets ditched because it doesn't concern his evil plan. In the end, adding Shin to the story does not work to tie up anything whatsoever that the game was working to establish. The only real thing he had going for him was his relationship with Sai, but she also feels like she unnecessarily hogs the plot after a while when the first few acts had you change companion each time. It honestly feels like having her related to Shin was more of a plot convenience so that Seto isn't completely helpless (why the heck was her body in the hotel in the first place?).
It frustrates me a little bit, because like I said, it's so similar to something I'd write, so I can very easily see where it stumbles. And in a way, I can't be totally disatisfied with it because the amateurish nature of the game gives it so much charm, where you can clearly see how much the person cared for the story even if they didn't have the technical writing skill to truly pull it off. I think it's cool that they got to tell it, at least, and it deserves to exist. But at the same time, part of me wishes it could see the potential fully realized, because it's certainly there (and so is the floor, most of the time). All the emotions are in the right place, it just needed to have be structured better and have more confidence in what it wanted to do. You don't need to bring Crow back, for example. Him coming back just to die gave off big "you can't have a character in a story that doesn't return later! It's bad writing!" energy. It's fine for him to just go on his own journey and for you to never find out what happens to him. It's fine. Rules are meant to be broken.
But what's not fine is that we were denied Ren wearing a big ol' poncho. And that I can't forgive.
#1 mega cd enjoyer AND "making fun of"-er 
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