izigame.me

This is a difficult review to write because simply giving Mask of the Rose a "recommend" or "do not recommend" rating fails to capture the massive list of caveats required for either choice to feel genuine. As such, I'm going with a positive recommendation because I did really enjoy the game through all six or so playthroughs it took for me to get all the achievements and see most storylines.
There are several ways in which the game excels and several more that it fails to live up to hopes. Perhaps most significantly, it fails to be completely compelling as both a "dating sim" and a "mystery game" due, in some part, to the constraints of the mechanics. However, the constraints don't fully explain why both aren't entirely satisfying in their goal. Before I dive into what the game does and doesn't do well in regards to these two gameplay/plot aspects, here is a breakdown of the other compliments and criticisms I have:
The Positives:
- Enjoyable soundtrack
- Great world-building
- Very nice art
- Plenty of time to explore multiple quests and relationships in both seasons
- Interesting characters
The Negatives:
- Not every character seems to be (end-pairing) romance-able for unclear reasons
- The "affinity" system is vague and, at times, confusing
- Unclear how to manipulate some endgame character pairings
- No, and I cannot stress this enough, save states
- No feature to skip previously seen dialogue (a visual-novel staple)
With that out of the way, let's first talk about the dating aspects of the game. Like most modern visual novels, there are options for all levels of comfortable interactions: platonic relationships, platonic and romantic relationships with no "seduction", platonic and "seduction" relationships with no romance, and all of the above green-lighted. I, for one, always appreciate when all options are present because it is more inclusive to players of all types, so I was happy to see this here. The character creation options were also interesting, though they ultimately made little impact to the game's mechanics (i.e., starting as one "class" only influences initial clothing and location availability, which is soon rectified, and one dialogue option talking about your background, which can be avoided and doesn't seem to make a huge impact on favorability with characters). What I did not fully understand until after my first two playthroughs is that the initial conversation with Griz determines your personality and dialogue options more than anything else, until building a strong relationship with a character gives you the option to emulate their attributes. Thankfully, I liked the choices I made in that conversation the first two times, and once I realized that they were part of the character creation model, I started exploring with other options to see what effects they would have on my later interactions.
All in all, I found the favorability system in the game to be a bit obtuse. No matter how repellent I might try to make my character, it was difficult for me not to have characters falling over themselves to flirt with me or end up back in their good graces despite how rude I might be. (For instance, during my last playthrough, I cried to create the worst person I could and was horrible to everyone, picking the most offensive choices I could, and I still ended up with multiple characters wanting to be friends or lovers. I was as rude as possible to Horatia, and she still ended up considering me her friend by early Yule.) Of course, my preference is to play a character more like me on initial runs and then mix it up once I become familiar with the mechanics, but even after understanding them, I couldn't seem to get a truly repugnant experience for my MC.
Furthermore, the friendship and romance system was rather "flat" compared to most any other dating sim I've played. Part of the fun in a dating sim, for me anyway, is getting the know the characters on a "deep" level, and then exploring an even deeper connection once making my choice of who to befriend/romance. As much as I liked the characters, I felt like there wasn't a lot of depth to any of them. Our relationship never really changed in a dramatic way from the beginning to the end, and all interactions intended to "deepen" our relationships were nonexistent for me as the player (i.e., there was a whole lot of telling and not showing when it came to conversations between the MC and characters as they got to know each other). I wonder if, perhaps, this methodology is a remnant of how short each season was in the original version of the game, but even with a greater time constraint, I don't understand writing stuff like, "We talked about our hopes and dreams" or "We fell into banter for a while and did not recover quickly" instead of actually providing details and dialogue options.
In fact, there were more times that I found out something fascinating about a character when I wasn't pursuing a friendship or romance with them than the times when I was spending every free moment interacting with that particular character (e.g., if you don't talk to Griz within the first day or so of the game, you will probably never hear her tell you about her mother's fate). I genuinely struggled with wanting to actually romance any of the characters after a certain point because there was no true development to our relationship. (The ones I still wanted to romance were seemingly unromance-able, or I was never able to make enough progress in our relationship to trigger a successful meeting at the bridge anyway.) The same lines might trigger twice in a conversation, whether I had been courting them for five minutes or five days. This aspect of the game was especially disappointing to me because I know the Fallen London games are known for remarkable depth, and that was lacking here.
The mystery aspect of the game fared a bit better than the romance, but it still wasn't entirely compelling for me. For the sake of spoilers, I won't speak about the crime or the myriad of ways to resolve it, but I did enjoy that there were multiple approaches to the problem and even layers behind the actual true solution. Unfortunately, it is far too easy, in my opinion, to figure out the culprit and motive. I was a bit confused at first on how to use the information I gathered to continually change my hypotheses and present them to characters, but once I did, it took quite literally one interaction to get the culprit to confess everything. (I will say that I was initially shocked by the crime because I was romancing the person affected, and I was devastated that I had invested time into our relationship only for them to seemingly be unavailable.) I think part of the reason the mystery fails a bit, too, in terms of motive to solve it is that it is based on the assumption that you, as the player, will care about a certain character from the beginning. My first playthrough, I blew this person off and didn't like them, so when the crime occurred, I was entirely unmotivated to help said character and far more interested in pursuing my relationship with Mr. Pages and talking to Rubbery Men. Playing the game more as it was intended, I found that whole mystery plot to be far more interesting.
Honestly, what I enjoyed the most about the game was getting to explore the world and lore of Fallen London. I wasn't able to dive as deeply as I might would have hoped, but it certainly whet my appetite. I was more drawn to figuring out what was going on at the Ministry (and seducing Mr. Pages lol), investigating the Rubbery Men, trying to help Harjit find Lucian, and doing that whole (AMAZING!!!) subplot with Moss. I feel like part of the game's biggest problem is that it tries to be too many things at once and, thus, can't (or didn't) give everything the kind of care and attention it deserved. The mechanics further hampered the storytelling. Still, with all of these things in mind, I did have a really good time playing it.