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As a person who was not an American teenager in the 1990s, this game looks like completely overrated trash. First off, it's not a game, it's a 2 hour cut scene. They should have made it be a corny coming of age movie. The plot is completely boring. The aesthetics are ugly and look trans (1). The characters look like SSRI addicted 2010s university Marxist vegan polyamorists with mystery ancestry, not 1990s European-American teenagers.
Clannad is a better slice-of-life high school „ video game“ by a mile, the United States just cannot compete when it comes to that genre because it's too narcissistic about all of its obnoxious peculiarities: it's terrible music, its terrible politics, its ugly aesthetics, its inferior culture.
That it got straight 10/10s means the review companies are being suffocated by 45 year old American liberals. Does that sound like meritocracy to you? Are they really the best people to review video games?
While I agree that it looks like trash, I would question the label "overrated", seeing as practically all commentary I've seen on it firsthand comes to the same conclusion. I guess "overrated" begs the question "overrated by who". "Gaming journalists"? Uh, okay; are there any real people with that opinion?
Even post-gamergate, the culture that gaming journalists belong to still has fairly disproportionate influence over what games are made and what they are made of, despite that culture being obviously disconnected from the culture and preferences of the actual people who buy and play video games. Mixtape getting a bunch of 10/10s from gaming journalism outlets is probably a sign that we have more games with its aesthetics to look forward to.
Over on X, someone pointed out that they bought perpetual rights to all the songs involved, and this would cost a fortune. Meaning there's a lot of money behind the game. So those 10/10s may simply be purchased (as is traditional).
It's made my Larry Ellison's daughter. There's huge money behind it.
I'm sure they sprung for the "ultra premium ad package" for the major sites.
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I don't know if it would have cost a fortune, at least not compared to what they already paid. I don't think they bought all the rights, just that they paid a little extra to use the songs in the game indefinitely and not for five years or whatever. I doubt the agreement even would allow them to use the songs in another game.
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