I am a bit conflicted.
I think main gripe with the game is that it's probably not my type of visual novel in terms of how the text is structured and presented. I prefer the way it's done in Heart of the Forest or the Vampire games (including Reckoning of New York): each paragraph or dialog requires explicit press of a button and auto-continue or whatever it's called is an option. Here it's completely automatic and requires your action only when you need to make a choice and when there is a change to the "next page" or "chapter". While this may be somewhat more convenient, to me it felt like an inconsistent pace, and it especially affected the "fighting" sequences, where frequency of pressing "Space" can create a necessary rhythm. And while you can use it to speed things up here, the pieces of text are usually larger, more elaborate, and a couple of times hitting "Space" a millisecond later resulted in a choice selection, that I did not even see (so holding the button is better).
It's not the only gripe, though, and this more like a preference, or at least more of a preference than the other things. The art is another thing. I really liked some of the pieces here, and it's generally way better than "Reckoning of New York". Probably not for everyone, but it has character and works well with the narrative most of the time. Some things felt a bit inconsistent, but I think they felt like that because they did not match the text or did not sync with the text properly (although, maybe adjusting the speed of the text can address that). The most obvious example was in the last chapter, when wolves were traveling in lupus form, but the art showed homids.
The story though... Firstly, there were some choices which affected what you see in the environment, and if they made sense in dreams, having a choice in "reality" did not: it does not affect anything, but can change perception of the moment with no obvious benefit. There were also a lot of choices for the character background, which were spread-out across first half of the story, and I think it would have been better to have a character creation instead, even if it is "outside of the narrative", because those choices broke the rhythm of the game. Other that it was ok. Quite logical and intriguing and with clear paths, that blocked out content, which is good for this kind of game.
That is until the last 2 chapters. Chapter 5 was... Weird. It had understandable structure, and the purpose of it was quite clear, but it still felt as if something was amiss, something was skipped (possibly dependent on the choices). It was short, but made sense, although previous chapters had more "banter" moments which gave the chance to build relationships. Chapter 6, though... Again, maybe it's just because of my choices but it ended very abruptly. Here's the fight that's supposed to be the culmination of the story, which I kind of avoided, I guess, and then just a few lines summarizing that now everything is kind of good, but could have been better. It felt like I missed like another 20 minutes of reading, even if I consider that my choices led me to having now fighting at all.
I am also not sure it was a good idea to show icons of "resources" near choices, because in some cases it skewed what I chose. I think they need to be hidden. The music while good as a standalone often did not match what was happening in the text, for example, fighting music starting too early or playing for too long. (another reason for using explicit "Space" presses).
While writing this, I opened the page for Heart of the Forest and based on screenshots, I realized, that some of the gameplay aspects above might have been true there as well, but I do not remember that game in the same manner for some reason. Which, probably makes it better in my eyes. Is it a bad game, though? No. And if you can support the devs, please, do, I do want more games to come out in the series. But manage your expectations. It just does not have as much "bite" to it, even though the main topic is much more tangible nowadays for a much wider audience.
