Okay, I'm finally finished with this game. Actually, I'm still doing the wrap-up, you know, the post-credits epilogue. But I've been playing too much just to try and rush to the end so I'll finish that one later.

Tl;dr: Wow! And, huh?

I'll try not to spoil but there are mild spoilers below. The game suffers from pacing. I ended up looking up how to unlock the true route and beelined for it after I had unlocked everything there was in the VN itself. I was actually really close to unlocking it but by pure accident. I wasted days on nothing and would probably still be looking for it if I didn't know what choices to pick by looking up the answer online.

The true route is super long, because everything is compacted into it. If I had to summarize the game in just one sentence, it would be: ever17 tells you its secrets exactly when it wants to and not a moment earlier.

You literally can't theorize before the game infodumps the reveal onto you, and the true route is a lot of that. Also kind of a lot of stuff being repeated but in slightly different ways which you can't skip because it's technically new text. A lot of stuff that pertains to other characters was not introduced or explained in their route and only revealed in the true route. You can theorize all you want, but you'll be wrong because you are given literally nothing to form a theory.

With that said the reveals are great, I legit got goosebumps at several times in the real ending (my brain loves a good plot twist what can I say), so that's a mark of quality.

You can see it's kind of the 'grandaddy' of later VNs. The guy behind it later went on to make the zero escape and ai somnium files series.

There are some questionable topics. A 14yo girl who looks and acts like an 8yo is in love with every male character and even you (yes, you, the player)? Super weird. Thanks, Japan.

I do have to say something about the 4th dimension. The game explains it terribly and mystifies it. So the first dimension is length, second is width, third is depth, fourth is time. You can move in 3 dimensions upwards, downwards, left, right, forward and backward. If we had access to the 4th dimension, we could also move in time, as time is a direction too. That also implies you could move in time upwards and downwards, like a ladder, which we know as parallel dimensions. This is all real science by the way (if string theory is correct).

The game gets into a time travel plot briefly, which are always janky and in my opinion could have avoided that, but it really puts the sci in sci-fi otherwise. I mean, can you name any game from the 2000s that explores the 4th dimension?

It did start out as a kind of romance novel and has some light fanservice, but it's all salvaged by that ending. It's also ultimately a touching family story with a happy ending, which is refreshing in this age where everything has to be grimdark and edgy.

So would I recommend Ever17? Hell yes. You play it for the true route reveals, everything before that is just the appetizer. If you decide to play it, my advice is make sure you make every choice in the VN (requires 4 replays which means 4 endings), then look up the flowchart online and beeline for the true ending. Skip whatever you've already read. Make it efficient.

If you want to play it I recommend the PSP rom on PPSSPP which you can play on smartphones, with the english patch installed. The patch has some formatting issues (no commas and some text displays weirdly), but it's perfectly readable and the quality of the text itself is perfectly fine. The PC version (from 2002, not the remaster) also has its own english patch which might be better quality. I just like loading games on portable consoles.

I think I'm done with chunsoft VNs for a while now and my next game will probably be The Cry of the Cicadas, or for a lighter and shorter play, the new famicom detective game... I played the remakes of the first two on switch and while I loved the production quality, the plots were nothing to write home about. But the third one is apparently brand new and seems much more serious.