After all of that it just drops you in the next level like, “welp time to start killing again.”

It's not hardest level to beat, but hardest to live after

So you're telling me the answer to my existential dread is to simply accept that an end is coming and choose to find whatever worth I can in spite of it? Seems legit.

"lol i wanna see what the funny waifu joke is from"

"Hehe robot is schoolgirl"

See, the best part about this mini-level is how it uses the dating-sim genre tropes to help tell the narrative and bring the player into the conversation. You start off by responding to the girls questions with 1-3 responses. Your choices provide different dialogue diversions but always return back to the main topic. You can make different choices, and they do provide different immediate results, but you can’t change the ultimate fate of the narrative. Then the robot begins her monologue, describing humanities efforts to distract themselves from their own mortality and lack of meaning. You can no longer make the meaningless choices as she exposes them for their meaninglessness: what does it matter how you responded to her earlier questions when you inevitably always end up at the same depressing realization? You regain the ability to respond to her, but your dialogue is set for you: all of your paths may lead to the same end, but the act of choosing itself, of selecting theses responses, is meaningful. She explains how she feels unable to control her emotions with pure logic, and the player has to repeatedly press the dialogue options in order to convince her: it takes effort to overcome the despair, but it can be done. Finally, when she is finally convinced that her demons can be defeated, you regain the ability to make choices by going with her or leaving. This is the only choice that affects the direction of the story, as you both realize that your actions have meaning to yourselves and that’s what makes them important. This might seem like over analyzing, but for a small side level in a game about punching your own bullets to make them explode, I thought it was a pretty spectacular way to combine both the gameplay and dialogue narratives into a single narrative.

V1 coming out of the anime-verse: "Well that was disturbing, I was chick for like 15 minutes."

this actually made me cry

Is it just me or did the line "We will always love you" fucking gut punch anyone else? In a good way, but enough to make you just pause and feel absolute connection.

I like to think them pausing right as V showed up in a fucking schoolgirl outfit was just out of pure disbelief, like he needed to take a moment for the shock that just filled his body.

3:03 That pause

I had to rewatch this Secret Level just to fully understand what this game really is

Nihilism:

1:02 has the same energy when your trying to pick something up off of the ground and you miss a few times so then you just grab it harder

Lmao I like how that secret level is in the lust layer

OK, i expexted this to be a parody or dating sims and being quitky and shit with every game character as a dating character as well, not turn into a dark existensial nightmare!

The first part made me roll my eyes because of the "I had an existential crisis, ain't I cool?" feel it had but the second part where the protagonist actually answers was pretty good! That's exactly how someone should justify their lives. Thanks Hakita for enlightening so many people

"why is every steam game secretly a visual novel"