The Specter's Desire Reviews

Unmarked metagame-related spoilers for the series below, though nothing too plot-specific. While I can't bring myself to leave a negative review, I'm enjoying this game less overall than Zodiac Trial or Divine Deception. Its a shame that while the writing keeps getting better in this VN series, the inputs required are getting increasingly off-putting. In the first game, deductive skills were required with a mild dose of riddle solving. At a key point when this process reaches its peak, a player could potentially brick their "New Game+ save" by taking certain action(s) consistent with a player stuck with their progress. In the second game, various minigames were added and the player is given an impression that there's accessibility options related to handling them. Depending on what they choose to do with that information as well as with other choices, they could potentially brick their "New Game+ save". In this game, the third in the series, one that assumes its player has played the previous two games based on plot developments, the player is once again presented accessibility options. Due to how the previous games went, I reasonably assume said options were fake, meaning I now need to survive a battery of puzzles throughout the game without help. And that might be okay. If, for example, there weren't a lot of color-specific puzzles when I'm colorblind, with no alternatives to work around that issue (and this isn't even the only example of a puzzle type ingame I literally can't attempt unassisted.) Or if the game didn't delve heavily into topics like game theory, programming/algebraic logic, and math concepts that I have a decent grounding in but many other players might not. Or if I bought into the series in the first place for its writing, yet I find I spend far more time puzzle solving than reading. I can't use the built-in help system because it might brick the "New Game+ save" the way it could in the first game, just as save-scumming might. And I can't opt-out of the puzzles. So I'm spending a lot of my time doing activities I can't or wouldn't want to do, just to get to the parts I do enjoy. Plot spoiler: [spoiler]"New Game+" referring to "missing elements of the ending", as Zodiac Trial and Divine Deception both inflicted on its players, the former permanently bricked by clicking an ingame hint once, the latter if a player failed to earn a lot of chips.[/spoiler]