"The worst thing I can imagine is to live and die without being born."

So, this game is hard to talk about. More or less, it's an exercise in postmodernist storytelling with a (thin) veneer of cool mechas. And it's also very much a social critique. The problem is that it's pretty much entirely left up to the reader to figure out, because most of the surface story doesn't really make sense, nor is it satisfying without the metanarrative level to it. Reality-breaking mechs as large and powerful as galaxies, basically gods, that run on really rough concepts of potential things happening? That doesn't make any sense, and it's too abstract to really tell a story about.

But then, if you're used to this kind of stuff - literary analysis - and note that the game is really, really queer, you make the connection that all the mecha stuff is actually a narrative conceit to talk about trans people and their experiences, it opens up. Yeah, you can be yourself in space (or friendly spaces) where there's nobody to judge you, but the moment you come back down to earth, the societal pressure makes your real self crumble into a lifeless husk because it doesn't accept you. Your reconstructed, homemade interpretation of your own person just doesn't have the gravity of the cruel social consensus. To be fair, the game also touches on some other philosophical stuff, like how humanity will always need an enemy to fight, to the point of inventing one if there is none to begin with.

The writing is actually brilliant. But it's inaccessible. It's so, so very inaccessible. The Dark Souls of visual novels, if you'll excuse the tired joke, one that actively tries to fight you understanding it. Are the mechas real at all? I mean, even in-universe, not really, given that their whole thing is breaking reality like a paper straw. I suppose they're as real as you'd like them to be, if you really like that stuff.

So, do I recommend it? If you read the review, you know if it's for you. It probably isn't, honestly. It's like what other review said, who would I actually recommend this to? Well, uh, queer people who like literary analysis and philosophy, while also not being turned off by the mecha aesthetic, who enjoy really earning their pictures of cute lesbians kissing. So that's like ten people or so total.

But for those ten people it's amazing.

p.s. pick the MF ending for intense feelings.