Unluckily in Love: Fragments of Love Steam Charts & Stats

[i]Note: My original review (posted below) is from when the game was free, and the text of the review reflects this. As the price change had nullified all reviews from those who had obtained the free product, I deleted my old review and re-purchased the game in order to support the dev.[/i] The original [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/2146500/Unluckily_in_Love/]Unluckily in Love[/url] was my first introduction to Yuel and Tavi and their various iterations, so I was incredibly excited for this sequel story to come out! It's a perfect follow-up to UIL; while the original is, for the most part, a fluffy slice-of-life story, the spectre of Yuel's father and his death hangs over the story all the while. This more serious undertone was one of the things that I sincerely enjoyed, as I felt it made the story stronger and more memorable, but it also makes way for this series of extremely lighthearted sequel episodes as a well-deserved treat for Yuel, Tavi, and their readers! The first episode introduces Yuel at work, as well as his colorful cast of coworkers. I was really pleased to see Kai from [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/2355830/With_Eyes_of_Ice/]With Eyes of Ice[/url] make a reappearance as a side character here; it's one of my favorite of ebi-hime's VNs, and he's my absolute favorite character in that story! Yuel's other coworkers are newly created just for this story, and all together they're an absolute riot given the ways their personalities compete with one another. If I had to pick one word to describe Episode 1, it'd be "hijinks" hahaha. The second episode was probably my favorite of the three currently released episodes - it features Tavi more heavily than the first episode does (<3), as well as Safiya, who doesn't appear in every Yuel/Tavi story but who I'm quite fond of. As much as I liked this episode, I actually have very little to say about it; what I enjoyed was Yuel and Tavi's swapping of stories and growing intimacy with one another, and in that case I think the writing really speaks for itself. The third episode was LOTS of fun for me personally, as it felt very escapist in a way, haha. It features Tavi absolutely overloaded with work stress (which was highly relatable lol), so he and Yuel make plans to take a camping trip together. (Which sounds like an AWESOME TIME... take me with you please Yuel and Tavi!!) I really appreciated this story for the slight role reversal it featured: Yuel is able to show off his skills a bit for Tavi (though of course Tavi still has the upper hand when it comes to 'general competency', haha.) All three episodes stand alone from one another, so you can easily take long breaks in between reading them if it's how you prefer to read! That said, they aren't too long; each episode took me approximately 3 hours to read. The artist for this VN is the same one who illustrated the original UIL (and, as it happens, With Eyes of Ice), and they did an absolutely bang-up job on UIL Fragments. The quality of the art is upheld from the original, and as a matter of fact, I think they outdid themselves with some of the CGs here (what can I say, I'm a sucker for sunrise/sunset lighting and they were able to illustrate it beautifully a few times here)! And, after all the praise that I heaped on, this is where I would normally say something like "definitely well worth the price," but I can't even do that because the currently released episodes are FREE!!! Which is insane to me for the amount of extra content (both gorgeous art and fun new scenarios) that you'll get with UIL Fragments, but it also means that there's absolutely nothing stopping you from picking this up if you enjoyed UIL. (Or, alternatively, if you're interested in UIL but on the fence about buying it, you could start here to see if you enjoy Yuel and Tavi's dynamic, then work backwards!) [i]Addendum: Episode 4, which is included in the base product on Steam, is also incredibly cute!! It features Yuel learning to ride a bike and going on a cute countryside date with Tavi >w< and there's a fun cameo from a certain friend from the [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/1244260/The_Fairys_Song/]Fairy's Song[/url] series of VNs as well..... a lovely unexpected treat for sure. There's a huge amount of content - 200,000 words! - for such a low price point of 10 dollars. There are a lot of far more expensive VNs of similar quality out there, so I would definitely recommend giving this one some of your time.[/i]