Hi, I'm the guy who was considering recording my first playthrough the game the other day. I eventually opted not to due to the lukewarm reaction here and the fact that I couldn't get Camstudio to cooperate with me. But I've just finished my first run through the game, and I'd like to gush a bit about it.

I ended up just picking choices according to what I would do in real life, and I somehow ended up in Hanako's route in Act 1. I looked this up, and it turns out that out of the 1600-someodd outcomes available in Act 1, only 40 lead to Hanako. So go me, I guess.

So I kept going through the game, still picking what felt natural to me. And before I knew it, I was well on my way to Hanako's good ending. I looked this up, too, and of the sixteen distinct Hanako paths, only four lead to it. According to the guide I read (this was AFTER the credits rolled, mind you; I didn't spoil myself, no sir), this is the least commonly achieved ending in the game. So, again, go me.

In my other thread, someone told me that this game is a very personal experience. Whoever you were, you were right. I do plan to explore more routes, but this one alone brought on a storm of feels. I've had experience volunteering at a library for the blind, so I have indeed been around disabled people- though I mostly ended up working with sighted (is that PC? Someone correct me if I'm wrong) people due to the organizational structure of the workplace. Nevertheless, when Hisao kept talking about how he should go about dealing with other students' disabilities- I knew exactly where he was coming from. This game really hit home for me. I have nothing against disabled people at all, but I do feel that same unease that Hisao felt. How should I act? Should I pretend like there's nothing out of the ordinary? Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So this game really was a personal experience for me.

Oh, and after I had already entered Hanako's route, somebody posted that this game had... for lack of a better term, sex scenes. I probably would've noticed if I had checked the Options menu. But even after I was told this, I opted not to hide them, if only to unlock them in the Gallery for completion percentage. I was fearing shameless fan service, but the way it was handled (at least, in Hanako's arc) felt so smooth that I violently failed to believe that I was playing such a good game for free. I'm not sure how far the game skips if you turn them off, but I feel like I would've lost something if I had skipped that scene. And any game that can make such an event hold such significance is a really special game, in my book.

Wow, this turned out to be one heck of a ramble. Let me just conclude by saying that when I first heard about this game, it was nothing but a name that showed up here and there around the Internet. Then I looked into it a bit more and found this subreddit, where I asked about doing a YouTube series of my first playthrough. The reaction to that was negative (as in, "don't do the series," not "YOU'RE BAD"), but if it weren't for some of the things you guys said on that post, I might not have gone into the game too seriously. So, thank you all for that. And thanks for reading all this, even though this kind of post must crop up fairly often on this sub. One final message before I shut my trap and hit the submit button:

HANAKOISBESTGIRLAIN'TNOBODYGONNATELLMEOTHERWISE

/ramble

EDIT: This is a gane I plan to stick with, I think. From here I'll probably go get the rest of tge endings, starting with Hanako's other two. Though I'm a bit hesitant because I've heard that her bad ending is really tragic.