You know what gets me about these university setting games? The dorms are always too clean. In Letter to My Dream, the first thing I noticed was a stain on the carpet in the common room. I don't know why that stuck with me. Maybe because everything else is so... deliberate. The way characters look at you when you pick the wrong dialogue option. There's this girl, Mei, who I kept pissing off by accident because apparently asking about her major was too personal? The CG scenes unlock at weird moments too, not when you'd expect. I got one during a study session that had nothing to do with studying, if you catch my drift.

The soundtrack loops in this way that made me check if my browser was broken. Three times. But then I caught myself humming it while making coffee so maybe it works on some subliminal level. The sex scenes are explicit, no fade to black bullshit, but the anatomy goes a bit wild sometimes. There's a position in chapter two that I'm pretty sure would require removing ribs. Still hot though. The voice acting is only partial, some lines are voiced and others aren't, which is jarring like when you're getting into a rhythm and suddenly silence. I wish they'd either commit fully or not bother.

My coworker Dave walked by while I was playing on my phone during lunch break and I had to pretend it was a spreadsheet. The game doesn't have a quick hide feature which seems like an oversight for something you'd play in... situations. The branching paths actually matter though, I got locked out of a whole character route because I chose to go to a party instead of the library. Realistic, I guess. University was exactly like that, minus the conveniently timed sexual encounters. The writing has these moments of genuine sweetness between all the fucking, like when the protagonist calls his dad and you can hear the worry in his voice. Then two scenes later someone's bent over a desk. The tonal whiplash is something else. I keep coming back to it though, even after the third crash that wiped my saves. Something about seeing those CGs fill up the gallery.