Reviewing "Please, Don't Hate Christmas" by Rice Love Coffee
With love, I hated this game. Let me explain.
I hate possessive partners.
I hate overbearing, clingy, manipulative, gaslighting characters.
And Albert is written so well into this character that I seethed with rage through half this game, and I mean that as praise.
If you are going to write a maniacal character, then go all the way, and Albert is a perfect example of when all the ingredients of a yandere man get poured into the same tray.
On another note, this game was created by one person alone, and I've taken that into account when writing this.
~ 𝐹𝐸𝒜𝒯𝒰𝑅𝐸𝒮 ~
Fully voiced
16.3k words
11 CGs (with CG gallery)
4 endings (two bad endings, one normal ending and one best ending)
Custom name
Available Languages: English (US), 繁體中文
~ 𝒞𝒪𝒩𝒯𝐸𝒩𝒯 𝒲𝒜𝑅𝒩𝐼𝒩𝒢 ~
"Please note that this game contains mild violence, paranoid love, and mild horror"
~ 𝒜𝑅𝒯 ~
(Only mentioning character art since the BGs are assets)
The most impressive detail that stood out to me about the character design, particularly Albert, is that he's drawn to look so incredibly innocent and sweet, which creates a fantastic contrast to his other personality when it comes out.
The glee and excitement he exudes made me giddy behind the screen, and whenever that mask fell from his face, the discomfort was palpable.
~ 𝒲𝑅𝐼𝒯𝐼𝒩𝒢 ~
Aside from Albert being well-written into the character he portrays, I did have issues with the MC being utterly clueless at times. I understand that having an MC that's sharp as a blade would've undone a lot of the plot points in the game since they rely on the MC being okay with a lot of weird behaviors and being attracted by them rather than alarmed.
Still, when it's revealed that Albert does some particularly, highly unethical things behind our back, I wouldn't have minded if the MC had been a bit more disturbed.
Storywise, it took me some time to get a hang of what the big juicy secret was, but once I did, many details clicked into place. The storyline does a number of twists and turns; some I felt were left hanging without a conclusion, but in the end most of the threads all got tied together into a lovely, manipulative Christmas gift.
~ 𝒢𝒜𝑀𝐸𝒫𝐿𝒜𝒴 ~
While mostly straightforward, you are served a handful of options that'll lead you to different endings, with my personal favorite being one at the very beginning of the game.
On a technical point, the volume of the voice acting wavers between the scenes, so at times it was hard to make out what a character was saying, and if two characters are talking in the same scene, the volume was uneven at times.
~ 𝑅𝐸𝒜𝒟𝐼𝒩𝒢 𝐸𝒳𝒫𝐸𝑅𝐼𝐸𝒩𝒞𝐸 ~
The game is written and translated by one person, so I won't comment on the grammatical errors and incorrect sentence structures other than to say they exist.
I was still able to understand everything and follow the story.
~ 𝒱𝒪𝐼𝒞𝐸 𝒜𝒞𝒯𝐼𝒩𝒢 ~
No notes; the voice acting is great. Nova Charles, the voice of Albert, did an amazing job portraying that gleeful excitement while simultaneously creeping me the fuck out when the mood took a turn.
The same goes for all the other voiced characters; they did a great job setting the mood and keeping a mysterious shroud over the story with their intonations alone.
~ 𝑀𝒴 𝐹𝒜𝒱𝒪𝑅𝐼𝒯𝐸𝒮 ~
There is a lot of (described) gore.
I like gore.
Overall, a fun playthrough where I got to bitch and moan about the well-portrayed extreme yandere aspect; great job for a single person to write and create the story and the characters, and while I got pissed off at the game multiple times, I had a blast at the same time.
Go play it for yourselves at itch.io and enjoy some intimate moments with an adorable, manipulating stalker.