A 3/10 is not a good rating in any way?? I disliked playing it and wouldn’t recommend it. You’re arguing that I am looking at a rating for a purely emotional standpoint. I hated Horizon Zero Dawn, I would’ve given it a 1 in enjoyment. But the game in of itself is fine, so for me it’s a capped 5 because the actual game is not badly made.
Same with DDLC, there is nothing in it that would make me put it at a 1 or a 2. Yuri and Natsuki are just generic baseplate characters, but they’re not badly written. If they had tons of contradictions and terrible dialogue then sure, they would be BAD characters and that could lower DDLC’s rating. But they’re not bad, they’re boring. DDLC is a 2 hour indie game, there is nothing reason for me to give it a lower rating than a 3 because it doesn’t do many things badly and it still has some good mixed in with it. Any experience I would actually put in a 2/10 would need to have such minimal good things and actually be inherently terrible. You could go down to a 1 or a 0 or whatever but 2 is where “exceedingly bad” starts. I emotionally l disliked DDLC but the game in of itself is not bad enough to warrant such a low score.
DDLC’s twist was not creative in any way, Totono had done the exact same thing years prior, and much better and lengthier. It doesn’t subvert anything, context matters for this. If you’ve got 30 IQ and can’t obviously tell that Sayori is going to be dead when she turns suicidal overnight (Bravo, Dan. Nice pacing), + have avoided spoilers for a decade and stumbled upon this game randomly, then MAYBE you would be surprised at Sayori’s suicide. There are tons of dark visual novels (and are typically the best in the medium) that do similar things to DDLC. It only got famous because it released during the inception of horror games made for kids (Baldi, Bendy), it’s incredibly short and simple to understand and it’s not eroge.
That being said, I have tons of issues with DDLC which is why it scales at a 3, but none of the characters or the game is objectively bad. There are some things that I like about DDLC. Sayori’s short lived depressive arc was well written. The concept itself is good although never built upon. DDLC would have to have none of this to constitute a 2 or a 1. It’s generally mediocre and unenjoyable with hints of something that could’ve been bigger within there. If you asked me what I liked about Hello Neighbour, maybe the artstyle? That’s about it. A media that is “offensively dull” could go below 3/10 if the characters are badly written, if not then I see no reason to put it lower than a 3.
1 - Dreadful
2 - Trash
3 - Mediocre
4 - Okay
5 - Fine
6 - Good
7 - Great
8 - Brilliant
9 - Exceptional
10 - Masterpiece
