I found the BETA pretty interesting. That little conversation we tried to have near the end of Alternative was one of my favorite parts of the story, until Meiya came barging in and interrupted us. I have some suspicions as to their origin, but I haven't gone back yet to research and confirm them.
Honestly, I feel like early Alternative was probably the peak of the series. I was wowed by the high production values in contrast to MLE & MLU, but the story was also a lot more mysterious and interesting to me at that point. As MLA went on, I started to grow less interested in it, as evidenced by the fact that I started reading it in August of last year and only just now finished it. The last several hours of reading were mostly spent just waiting for everything to be over with. All my comerades' death flags were raised so high there at the end that it was obvious nobody was going to make it, so I found myself impatiently mashing enter through the combat and saying "just hurry up and die already so we can get a move on with the story." Class Rep's and Ayamine's death scene was the most affecting, since it came first and wasn't necessarily completely expected. It was nice to see them finally having become...friends, I guess, since the word I'm looking for is evading me.
The whole "Sumika did it" explanation for Takeru's being a "causality conductor" seemed...well, I guess about as reasonable an explanation as I could really have hoped for. I'm kind of embarrassed that I hadn't predicted it, really, so I guess I'll give it points for that. I wish Takeru'd been able to stay in the war-ravaged timeline, though. I wanted to learn more about the BETA, and see their final fate, and that of humanity. The new Extra-esque timeline that formed, though, was satisfying enough. I may not always agree that happy endings are for the best, but I've never found a happy ending I've been able to really hate. What I think would be awesome is if beating Alternative unlocked some new content for Extra, so that you could replay Extra with Meiya's sister and Kasumi in the class, lol. I'd do that.
Speaking of Extra, it seems like a big portion of MLA fans really disliked it. Personally, I thought its idiotic harem eroge romcom hijinks were a lot of fun. I didn't read Ayamine's or Chizuru's routes, but I read all the others (and Marimo's was
easily the best). Sure, most of the drama was idiotic (childhood promises are the stupidest cliche ever), but that's pretty expected from these sorts of VNs. A rom-com harem eroge with truly well done drama would be highly exceptional. The only thing I really disliked about Extra was the super boring lacrosse bit that seemed to never end.
Unlimited was a step down from Extra, IMO. I found it much less fun, so it took me a lot longer to slog through it. The grimdark setting and everything put a damper on all the fun, I felt. I missed Sumika, too. Oh, and I can't forget the utterly stupid fetish armor. The more opaque armor they get down the road is bad enough, but this transparent shit is just ridiculous.
Alternative, I've already talked about some, but I guess I'll go back and talk about it some more. I'm reading through a forum thread at another site where I posted my thoughts as I was reading it to remind myself what my thoughts were, since it's been a while, lol. Right from the beginning, I liked it a lot more than Unlimited. Takeru had matured, the production values had gone up, there was a lot of mystery, and it was just cool. I wasn't real into the coup d'etat arc, but it had some redeeming qualities to it. I took a ~30 minute break after the first big attack by the BETA, when I lost my mind and started going ballistic on them with paint balls, and when I came back from my break, this was the message I posted:
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oh my f***ing god
i came back and started reading, and as soon as i did, marimo got her damned head bitten off
i kind of want to -- or well, wish I wanted to, I suppose is more accurate -- cry, because she was my favorite, but i actually couldn't help but laugh >.> the alien is just sooooooooo stupid looking, and that face...oh lawd
RIP marimo-chan
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>.>
I really liked Marimo a lot, but the way that scene was done just made me literally LOL. It didn't help at all that the BETA looked so goddamn stupid. That face is just too goofy to take seriously.
Marimo's second death, though, back in the "Extra" timeline, as I call it, affected me more strongly. This was my reaction:
Then when there was the explosion in the gym...
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Oh geez, an explosion from where the girls are having gym? If Sumika's hurt/killed now, I'm just going to roll my eyes and sigh.
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Oh come on; this is just stupid
there's such a thing as overdoing it
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But I mean, I guess I can excuse it, since Takeru's causal conductivity probably tried to reduce Sumika to nothing but a vegetative brain in a tube >.>
Speaking of Sumika, when I read her diaries, it reminded me of what a total jackass Takeru used to be. I forgot to mention this earlier, but I totally did not like Takeru at all in Extra. It wasn't really until Alternative that he'd matured into a likeable character. Back to Sumika's diaries, though, it's sort of sad and a bit disturbing that Sumika's entire life seemed to revolve around Takeru, no?
Reading on, I'm reminded of more of the annoyingly long infodumps that were abundant in MLA. Visual novels in general suffer from notoriously bad pacing and an apparent lack of editors, and this is no exception. There was way too much fluffy military babble in which I had no interest at all.
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the thing i hate most about sci-fi and fantasy authors is that they spend way too much time talking about s*** i don't care about
i don't care about all the specific mechanical details of the tsf
all i need to know about the tsf is "it's a fancy robot"
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Oh, and then the tentacle rape scene. That was honestly the most idiotic thing in this entire series. This was my reaction:
The next scene to make an impact on me was Suzumiya's death, but it wasn't really the intended sort of impact >.>
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lmao @ the way that beater creeped in the door just now
bye suzumiya
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Then there were the deaths of my other comerades, which I mentioned back near the start of this post, but what I didn't mention was how hilarious the final boss was. It's a giant alien penis with a tiny little squid thing sitting on top of it, which attacks us with mind-breaking rape tentacles. Like, wow. Only in eroge.
And then it was over.