I played this game mostly in offline mode, putting ~50 hours into it. I have kept this as spoiler-free as possible.

I am conflicted on this review. There are a few things it does that I genuinely like, but when it comes to VNs it's all about sticking the landing, imo. Raging Loop fails in that regard in almost every way imaginable. The first act is interesting, the second really grabbed my attention, but the third act? Sweet Lord, it's a mess. A disaster, even. The game throws such an intense amount of information and lore in the closing hours of the game making it very difficult to understand what's being said (it doesn't help that there's no small amount of word play with the native Japanese, but the game does its best to keep the reader in the loop). It honestly feels as if the author wanted to create what was presented in the final 1/3 of the game but the producers wanted a "werewolf the VN" and what we got was this poorly sewn together combination of the two. It feels like two different ideas mashed together.

When the game ends it gives several epilogues to see what happens next with some characters, overall immaterial to plot. It also offers a sort of NG+ where you can replay the game to get characters' thoughts and perspectives throughout. This is interesting mechanic but ultimately it shows how much of the MC's thoughts are completely hidden from the reader for the purpose of "what a twist this will be later!" It relies so heavily on the unreliable narrator that it begs the question of why make this a 1st person narrative and not 3rd? The MC is presented as this genius paragon who, whenever he figures something out, says something like "ah, so that's what it means," leaving the reader guessing (he's also clearly a self-projection of the game's author which... is not a good thing here). This is not a bad thing in small amounts, but when it covers 50+ hours of reading, it feels disingenuous and frankly is just bad writing.

I'm frankly amazed at the overwhelming positive reviews for this game. It had its good moments, but if you're going into this thinking it's a werewolf simulator where you can choose who to vote on or that it has dynamic dialogue options (who should I talk to today?), you will be disappointed. This is a very linear story, which isn't bad at all, but I was hoping for more player choice in a social deception story.

lit

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