So this game, Lovephobia. I played it in one sitting, which is rare for me because I usually get distracted by, like, the texture of my ceiling or wondering if pigeons have internal monologues. It starts with the MC coming home after a year abroad, and the whole thing is this weird tangle of people who all know each other. The NTR tag scared me at first because I hate that feeling of being cucked by a menu choice I didn't understand. But here's the thing, the game is honest about it. There's one unavoidable NTR image early on with a side character, and it's not even hot, just kind of sad and awkward, like watching someone drop a whole pizza face down on a dirty floor. After that, it's mostly avoidable if you don't click on certain side stories. The main girl's love route is completely clean, which is nice if you're a softie like me.

The pacing is like a slow cooked stew that sometimes forgets it's on the stove. You'll be reading for twenty minutes about someone's job or a missed bus, and then suddenly a sex scene happens and you're like, oh right, this is an adult game. The writing has this weird charm, like a non-native speaker trying really hard to sound casual and mostly succeeding. Some lines made me laugh out loud, not because they were jokes, but because the phrasing was so off it circled back to being poetic. I wish there was more actual choice in the early game, because for a while it feels like you're just clicking through a novel with occasional boobs. But then you realize the choices matter later, and you have to replay to see different fates, which is annoying because I already forgot which save was which.

One thing that bugged me, the game never explains what Lovephobia actually means. Is it fear of love? Fear of loving the wrong person? I kept waiting for a character to say it out loud like a thesis statement, but nope. Just vibes. Also the sound design is basically nonexistent, which is fine because I had my own music on. I don't know, man. It's messy and uneven but it stuck with me, like a weird dream about your hometown where everyone's face is slightly wrong.