"Doki Doki Literature Club" Review - Yes, I went there - part 4

No matter what genre of story you're peddling, a surefire way to make whatever content you have in store land with your audience is to subvert their expectations. To give but one example, the death that takes place in Clannad: Afterstory was so devastating because the entire show up until that point had never really dealt with the subject of death. There was no reason to suspect a death in the show, even when hints started to be dropped, so it came as a shock when it happened. In the same way, Doki Doki Literature Club (hereafter referred to as DDLC) managed to leave me completely emotionally stricken by hiding its true nature and pretending to be the kind of cringey anime dating simulator that I play for these "Yes, I went there" reviews. Don't be deceived: this game is not what it appears to be. The warning it gives, that it isn't suitable for children or people who are easily disturbed, should be taken seriously. This game deals with some seriously sensitive subject matter, so I can't in good conscience recommend it to everybody. Let me put it this way: I'm a veteran of the depressing and the disturbing. My policy is that if I haven't been moved to tears or seriously unsettled, then my time has been wasted. That being said, DDLC left me an empty husk for a full day after I finished. That's how shocking it is. I don't want to spoil the experience for you, so I'll try not to harp on that point, but just know going in that your day might be ruined. Beyond how effective it is in subverting expectations, I'm also proud to report that DDLC is fantastic in just about every other way. Unfortunately, a lot of what makes it fantastic ventures into serious spoiler territory, so this is going to have to be one of those "take my word for it" kind of reviews. The game is 100% free though, so it's not like you're taking a chance with your money if you take my word for it. Now, let me tell you more.

Though I've just finished explaining to you lovely people that this is not what it appears to be, DDLC has all the trappings of your standard dating sim. You play as a snake-in-the-grass male high-schooler whose only purpose in life seems to be getting with one of the girls in school (This is a side note, but even though these protagonists would probably just look like anime characters, I have a tendency to picture them as weeaboos with cheeto fingers, the kind of folks who I imagine unironically seek these games out, and it makes things a little creepy........right, moving on). At the start of the game, we're introduced to our hero's flighty, always-hungry, childhood friend, literally-the-girl-next-door-type-love-interest: Sayori. Sayori invites our hero to join the club that she's vice president of: the literature club, and he decides to swing in order to live up to the promise he made about joining a club this year. Upon reaching the club, our hero realizes that the club is made up exclusively of girls, and we realize that the proverbial gang is, indeed, all here. There's Natsuki, the petite and grumpy one who's really sweet on the inside. There's Yuri, the tall, shy one who stammers and has a massive rack (the game points it out on more than one occasion, don't you worry). Finally, there's Monika, the president of the club (with an unusually anglo name) who's super popular and athletic but doesn't have a lot of confidence as a leader. Combine these three with our aforementioned girl next door, and voila, we have the cast of just about every dating sim every made...or, at least that's what I thought. DDLC handles these characters really well, giving them the kind of depth that's absolutely unheard of in this genre. Even our protagonist isn't 100% a snake in the grass. As far as Sayori is concerned, he really does care about her well-being without an ulterior motive (well...until I came along and gave him one, but that's besides the point). The development here surpasses even Panzermadels, the reigning king of this genre for me. The downside here is that, despite the fantastic initial development, there isn't nearly enough. That may seem like a contradiction to my previous statement, but bear with me. The development in Panzermadels was shallow, but it got the job done and left me feeling satisfied with each character. In DDLC,  character development is much deeper and more realistic than in Panzermadels, but it never quite hits the punchline, if that makes sense. The characters are so deep, but they're not as deep as they needed to be. The result is that the developers whetted my appetite to learn more, but didn't let me do so. I was just left hanging and feeling unsatisfied. Maybe that doesn't make sense to you, but despite how objectively good the characters are, I just felt that they were underutilized, and it did take away from my experience (For those who've already played, I understand why, but it doesn't make it any less disappointing).
The story, at least up until a certain point, is also what you might expect from a dating sim. The literature club is trying its hardest to look impressive to get new members, so they're spending time preparing for...actually, let's see if you can guess. In this anime-inspired dating simulator that takes place in a high school, are these characters preparing for a) a parade, b) a camping trip, or c) the school festival?






If you guessed c, you're correct (anime characters are literally always preparing for some freakin' school festival). It's only after the school festival plot is resolved that the story starts to rise above the genre, but once again, that ventures on spoiler territory, so I'm going to just have to leave you with a "take my word for it."

Because this is a dating simulator, gameplay is pretty sparse. However, unlike others in the genre, DDLC does make you do some work. This being a literature club, there are times when you'll have to compose a poem. You won't actually be composing one, but you'll pick words out of a list that presumably influence the tone and style of your theoretical poem. The point of this is to choose words that might cause your girl of choice to like your poem more. For example, in order to impress Sayori, you might select a word like "joy" or "sadness." On the other hand, to impress Natsuki, you might choose cutesy words like "kitten." The key lies in thinking about each character's personality and selecting your words accordingly. After you've selected 20 words, time shifts to the next day, where you share your poem with everyone in the club. Each day, your poem will drastically impress one of the girls, thus increasing your standing with them. That's pretty much all there is with the gameplay, but it's more gameplay than you get with other dating sims. Not only that, I actually thought it was pretty unique, and there was quite the variety of reactions depending on how much I specifically tailored my poems to each girl.
The other side of gameplay is choices. There's not a lot to say on those. Your choices impact who likes you more, just like in any dating sim. However, I have to say I was quite disappointed by the impact my choices had on the story. Once again, I don't want to venture into spoiler territory...but let's just say there was something that happened in my first playthrough seemingly because of a choice I made. In my next playthrough, I wanted it not to happen, so I altered my choices accordingly. Nothing changed. I haven't played enough times to check every single choice, but I was disappointed by how little impact my choices actually had (For those who've already played, I understand why, but that doesn't make it any less disappointing).

Thus we come to the technical side of things. A lot of effort obviously went into the technical strength of DDLC, and it shows. There are several sprites of each character, so they all feel just the slightest bit more animated than your average dating sim character does. In addition, there's a lot of variety in the music; so much so, in fact, that it allows for a number of tactically placed musical stings. That's really the kind of thing that a dating sim needs to accomplish from a technical standpoint: variety. You're going to be reading and clicking the whole time, so the question that needs to be asked of each dating sim/visual novel is this: what does the game do to keep reading and clicking from getting boring? Developer Team Salvato clearly understood this about the genre, and they went all out to make sure that things never get stale. They even included a skip feature that allows you to fastforward up until the next choice or poem section. I know that functionality to not play the game probably seems like a poor design choice, but it's the kind of thing that all dating sims/visual novels need. The only variety in text tends to come from choices, so in subsequent playthroughs, you're often left having to play for hours just to see what was different if you make a different choice. In DDLC, however, you can breeze through text you've already seen with ease, ensuring that further playthroughs aren't a hassle.

This may very well have been the shortest review I've ever written, but there's just so much that I can't talk about. Writing a review seems futile, because this game is something that has to be experienced, but I needed to put a score on it so that I could include it in my GOTY calculations (that time of year is closing in, after all). As I mentioned in the introduction, this game is free-to-play on steam for mac or windows, so it will literally cost you nothing to give it a try. The kicker, though? I would've been willing to pay money for this game. Don't get me wrong, it would need to be indie-priced ($10-15 at most), but there's just such quality here that it would've been worth an actual price of admission. I can't encourage you enough to go out and support these developers by playing their game (unless you're easily disturbed, of course). For the cost of literally nothing, you get a well-developed cast of characters, a story that ends up being one of the most unique stories I've seen since Undertale, and you get an experience that subverts expectations so effectively that I'm still feeling haunted by it even now. I won't lie. I did want more from this experience than was given, but the quality of this game and what we did get is just too darned good to complain too loudly. To put it another way, the issues I had with this game were purely subjective. There is absolutely nothing objectively wrong with DDLC. That alone should make it worth a try, right?

So, let us review:

Underutilizing good character development - 0.5
Poor choice impact - 0.5

So, the final score for Doki Doki Literature Club is...

9.0/10 - Fantastic
Excellent work, Team Salvato, excellent work.