Hi. So, I Have This Friend™ who has checked out both plenty of VN's, as well as experienced some very grind-centric games. And this Friend, *cough*, has very little patience for grind in most games. It's one of the reasons I -- I mean, he -- doesn't get into MMO's much. However, having played this game I can honestly say (yeah, I'm dropping the conceit) that you have the option to minimize the grind in a way other games of its kind do not. Yes, there's a sleep, eat, cleanliness mechanic, but if you lower the difficulty level (and there's no shame in doing so), it largely fades into the background, making it much more tolerable than 90% of the "survival/daily grind" mechanics I've seen in other games. You can also make it harder on yourself, but I'm not sure why you would want to. Maaaybe there's a reward for cranking up the difficulty, I don't remember, but it's not necessary, nor is it necessary to 100% a game like this. One of the upsides to this vs a straight-up Kinetic Novel is that you have flexibility and choices, there's not one Right Path™, and while perhaps having to make choices is not your cup of tea, I personally like being given that kind of agency. There are a variety of LI's in this game, and yes, in a given playthrough you're limited as to how many of them you can pursue at once, and maximizing that would probably necessitate a walkthrough, but if you just go through the game making sensible choices based on context, you end up with an overall fun time. If you have significant degrees of FOMO, this game has replaybility on its side, which I would think you'd want in a game you're paying good money for. Beyond all that, the art style, the music, voices, humor, etc., are all really enjoyable and in my opinion make even the grind bearable and not a deal-breaker by any stretch. It might still not be your cup of tea, but don't let a fear of tedious game mechanics scare you off. I give it four stars because other reviews aren't wrong about needy LI's.
Learn from my mistake. I had assumed "Battle Chess Special Edition" meant NOT the floppy disk version, but rather the CD-ROM version with music and high-quality digitized sound effects. And the 29MB size listing seemed reasonable to me in that sense. What I didn't realize was that size is because it comes with two other chess games, Chinese Chess and Battle Chess 4000. So three games for what I paid is reasonable, hence 3 out of 5 stars. But it's not what I was expecting, and not what I was trying to purchase. It's my own fault for not reading it more closely, but it's also an easy mistake to make. The chess game itself is solid, based on my memories of having played it in high school, but this is lower resolution and PC beeps. I will comment on Chinese Chess and Battle Chess 4000 if and when I try them, but again, it wasn't my intent to purchase those. I love GOG and buy my games through them whenever possible, so I'm very reluctant to write anything negative about a title, but this needs to be more clearly labeled somehow as a 3-pack of older games; it's too easy to assume "Special Edition" = CD-ROM version.
