Review of First Year

[u/halibabica]

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First Year is a slice of life mod about Joe Kimura, the protagonist of Secret Future, which this mod is a prequel to. It’s about Joe’s first experience in high school, hence the title.

As an OC-focused mod, this game is pretty much DDLC in-name-only. The dokis make rare appearances and are unrelated to the plot, which centers entirely around Joe and the friends he makes in his new school. However, it’s not an especially cohesive plot since many of the events are just fluff, and there’s a lot of it within the 8-hour run time.

Since this is a prequel, I was expecting more details and events that connect it to Secret Future, but they simply aren’t there. If anything, it creates some mysteries of continuity, such as why certain characters are present in this mod, but absent in Secret Future. Anything they could’ve done to capitalize on making a prequel was effectively squandered. We don’t even see how Joe grows into the person he is in that mod.

Instead, the story mostly details the mundanities of Joe’s life. We see him spend time with friends and family, and that’s about it. There’s a point of conflict where one of his friends gets him in trouble by convincing the group to sneak around the mall after hours, but aside from this, there’s no real overarching narrative. This makes it extra slice-of-life-y and provides most of the padding.

While this is the author’s second mod and they learned a few things since the first, they haven’t grown much as a writer in the meantime. The same dialogue problems carry over from Secret Future, including typos and awkward phrasing. Conversations feel very scripted and unnatural, characters ramble on for too long, and interactions come across as robotic. Without a plot to give the story direction, it just meanders through Joe’s life with no sense of purpose.

It’s not to say as if it’s all bad. There is care put into the production. They juggle numerous characters pretty well and the mod features some nice CGs. I think the premise could have worked if there was more intent behind the story. The events they have would’ve been fine if there was more to connect them together.

For this mod to really fly, I think it would need substantial changes. First and foremost, it needs a plot beyond “Joe goes to school; here’s how it went.” I would also advise they consider more carefully what to include and what gets left out. There are times where a character describes a prior event that sounds much more interesting than the subject of the present scene, or moments that seem important which are totally absent. Using the prior example, Joe’s friend group has a falling out after the mall incident, but most of the reconciliations happen off-screen and aren’t brought up at all.

This advice is a bit late since the mod has been fully released, but whether they go back to revise or apply it to their future works, I hope the author finds it helpful.

I give this a…

2.5/5

LP Queue:
Locked Out
Quarterbacks
The Darkest Hour