IFReviewed by
Andrew Plotkin on 2006-06-25 10:13
Basically all in the right place, but still vaguely unsatisfying. I had trouble getting into the story; I felt like I missed all the introductions. In fact, I think I did miss most of the introductions, by not using "examine" on enough the characters in my first run-through. This left me flailing around, trying to guess the relationship between any given pair of people (including the protagonist). (Also including some pairs of people who turned out to be the same person. The masquerade didn't help.)
After I finished, I ran through the game again. I was able to follow the story that time, but it still felt much too compressed to be a plausible romance.
In fact, although it's an unfortunate comparison, I felt this game had the same basic problem as 1-2-3: I saw characters relating to each other, but I never felt they were behaving like real people. Well, that's not totally true. The minor character relationships made sense -- just not, you know, the main one.
I liked the wide and subtle range of variant endings (although I certainly never saw them all).