A Foretold Affair

Review – A Foretold Affair, an indie visual novel from 2017. 4.5 hours to finish I only played the male romance route, as a heterosexual woman, so that’s the perspective I’m speaking from. Player Character: The protagonist is masked and hooded, leaving their appearance and identity deliberately ambiguous. In theory, this lets the player project onto them. No point in that, I can’t relate to them at all. They are reckless and alien as they aren’t from a culture like ours so there is no point in trying to project anything. Their ambiguity only serves to make them more alien in this case. Their behavior seems rooted in a bizarre, hyper-isolationist culture—almost cult-like. It reminded me of the “factions” in Divergent, but even more extreme. There is a line about how they aren’t seen as individuals until a coming of age ritual where they get a mask to hide them even better from each other. The game attempts to reflect the PC’s upbringing through odd behavior. That they believe in love and feel it, yes. Did they ever seek it out before? Do they like or want sex? They seem to be asexual. So I can pick their pronouns and gender but I can’t pick what romantic structure they want, od…

[h1] Horrible experience. Play something better. [/h1]

I love the company GB PATCH, this just might be their weakest product. Not that I didn't enjoy the characters! January was a favorite of mine, it just was a bit rough to get through. Some of the styles did not stay consistent, there were typos, it just felt a bit unpolished and the main character felt a bit confusing sometimes, there was not a very understanding of them, even as someone we should insert ourselves into. I felt as if the romance sometimes lacked, it was lacking something, communication with some of the main characters you were romancing felt like a rushed ending thing, but besides pointing out the things I didn't like, I want to mention what I did like! I loved the backgrounds to these characters, although we as the player didn't get to delve too much into our own story, the main three have lives that are super interesting! I wish we could have gotten into them more! I wish this game was a little more tidied up, but besides that I do suggest this game, I just wish it was cheaper for how it is.

At first i was really off-putted by MC. Loved realising that this is precisely the point. Im sure like half the plot is a metaphor for autism.

A fine visual novel, kind of missing the mark on that romance tag though. Genuinely started to enjoy the entire cast by the end of Kea's route, but I did feel like after the story actually started getting good the entire future marriage partner stopped mattering in any capacity. And while the ending bit was cute, it was a bit of a bad epilogue. I think the game needs a *Three years later* or a *How the Buffalo Seer actually ends up getting married* type thing, because having none of either despite it being the main thing talked about on the game's description is weird. As other reviewers mentioned, the Buffalo Seer can be annoying for the first half(?) of the game, but they come around, so don't worry about that. Overall, if you can get it on sale like I did, it's a lovely time.

I primarily played this on Itch but I wanted to buy it here to support the dev. This is a great game. The game is pretty funny, and I really like how the characters are written. This is quite an interesting world that was written.