The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood

SPOILERS!! READ AT YOUR OWN DISCRETION I tried to be as vague as possible but yeah. This game had amazing potential. The story telling in the demo got me hooked enough to purchase the full game to play, as a woman, someone with a sister, and someone who has experienced depression there were multiple moments in this game where I cried. I liked the game play of making cards and loved learning about people through them. Then the game violently pivots and rushes storylines that could have been really beautiful. My first experience of this pivot is when one of the characters abruptly confesses they are in love with you. They act weird the whole time you talk to them then they confess and you confess back and suddenly you're in love this is great and everything is perfect... it's jarring and weird it feels completely unnatural and forced. Your wish was for romance not sudden deep committed relationship. You have better chemistry with other characters yet this one is the one you end up with? Not to mention that if you don't pick the right answers they will end up betraying you at the end with no warning as they are coded that way. The other rushed storyline is about a trans woman. The idea behind this storyline is super interesting and emotional. but that's all this felt like, an idea. You could feel the story behind it but it was like they condensed it down into just the most important parts and left out the details. This could have been something bigger, and I was left wanting more out of this character. Then we get shifted into a political party management sim??? This outright threw me for a loop. Suddenly we are no longer talking about emotions, making connections, and learning about characters. Instead we are using the knowledge to manipulate the outcomes of the game. To make this worse it is honestly against what our main character stands for. The game becomes very management style as you have to keep telling people what to do, they do it and come back, and then you send them off again. It gets boring, the story loses meaning and starts to completely unravel. Your choices feel like they have no meaning and the conversations are just dull. My last issue with this game comes from a political standpoint. This game was sold as something that was LGBTQ+ friendly/supportive. However a huge issue comes up when we meet the transgender character, while her story is very emotional and beautiful we then get insight about how "men" cannot become witches yet non binary people can. I am not sure how I feel about this as I don't think we should be putting nonbinary people into the box of women. I don't think this information was integral to the story line, even with the trans woman's story included, and felt like it was thrown in there as a bone to the community and honestly comes off as disrespectful. In the end I feel like the game had a lot of potential if it kept it's focus on the storyline and people instead of becoming more of a political party management sim. It also should have been slowed down as a lot of the stories feel completely rushed. I really liked the first half of the game, it's a shame it didn't end as strongly.