Mission: It's Complicated
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playingstoryName: Mission: It's Complicated
Status: Complete
Site: https://schellgames.itch.io/mission-its-complicated
Rating: PG
Pairing: M/M, M/F, F/F, and nonbinary pairings
Description: Superheroes being cute and talking about feelings.
If the words "wholesome queerness" are attractive to you, this is a game for you. If they aren't it's not. This game feels very much like tumblr issue fic. As the player you're not romancing anyone. Your job is to get two of the NPCs so deeply in love within 13 days of meeting each other that the power of their love defeats a cosmic evil coming to swallow up the earth. The realism of going from 0 to 100 so quickly is lampshaded by making you a researcher on Speed Theory, aka the conceit that people who share dangerous and life threatening experiences grow closer extremely quickly. But the quests you send your heroes on aren't particularly life-threatening. Whatever, video game logic. Let's move on.
The structure of the game is based on picking two NPCs to go on various missions in the night, which earns them relationship points with each other, and then, if their relationship levels are adequate you send them on a date during the day. After three successful dates the characters are deeply in love and can overcome a world eater with the power of their devotion to each other. This is not difficult at all, and you can get full love within 6 days without much trying.
My first run through was entertaining enough. Because you can pick between five NPCs and multiple quests there does seem to be a lot of choice, even though once those missions start you only get to decide which plan of 2 you will enact. And the writing is decent and snappy. It doesn't feel like you have much control, and watching other people fall in love is not really what I play VNs for, but for the most part it was an entertaining read, the realism of the whirlwind romance notwithstanding.
But subsequent runthroughs are significantly more tedious. Basically, the game only credits you with getting one pairing to "in love" status per run through, even though getting NPCs to that status is easy enough that you can get two to the max in a single run through. So the time you spend on more than a single pairing per run is basically wasted if you want to go for "full completion." Resulting in spamming the skip button to race to the end of the game once your chosen pairing is complete. On top of that there is basically no major difference between runthroughs when it comes to the hero missions. The game acknowledges this by letting you basically skip them after the first run, but it's still tedium to set them up and the fast forward through 13 days. The payoff for this isn't really worth it. If you go through every pairing ending you get a special ending, but it's basically just a few extra frames. Something is wrong with your game design if you know you're making the player go through the same content so much that you give them multiple tools to skip actually playing all together.
And the romances all play out basically the same. While I wouldn't go so far as to call the NPCs cliche they do feel way too much like a collection of identities at many points. Your options are:
Nightgaunt - He's a genetic experiment assassin who can go invisible in shadows. A loner who don't need no team except he does need insurance.
Zirconia - An extremely buff scientist who can become impenetrable stone. She got the muscles by good old fashioned work. In it for the babes.
Riptide - A manic-depressive pixie dream boy who was bitten by a radioactive shark and now is part shark. Also controls water.
Wi-fi - Turns anything with electronics into a talking sentient being. Also it becomes her best friend. Very anxious.
Zael - They're an alien from a race that kicked them out for being too friendly to other races, and also boning other races.
The emotional buildup all happens on dates and all the parings follow a single track, so you can't manipulate the nature of their relationship. And while some relationships are platonic and some or not, and characters reveal different things about themselves in different pairings, the broad tone of every pairing is basically the same. It's relentless wholesomeness with constant conversation about mental health and emotional well-being, for the most part. You hear shit about "Bad brain buddies," PTSD, gender identity, sexuality, etc. At the final scene where you face the world eater the two heroes you picked to fall in love give speeches about how in love they are, and while they aren't the exact same every time again the tone is always identical. "You make me a better person, I love you so much, I want to be with you and face any trial, blah blah blah." It's fine for the first time through but after round 10 I was feeling emotionally diabetic, especially because these proclamations felt unearned. Because the relationships are established in a total of 3 scenes, there is no space to actually deal with any of the dozens of issues that are brought up. If feels like one very special episode is being thrown at you after another, and you can't spend a second to actually engage with that issue.
I also felt mildly offended when in one runthrough a trans character is asking you the player if you think that his date is hinting that she knows he is trans. You have the option of telling him you don't think so, and if you do he gives you a very dismissive, "I think I know better than you do."
This was I think the last run that I needed to do, so I was getting very bored with the game by then, and when that hit I got straight pissed off and wanted to yell at the character, "Bitch, I'm trans too!" It's one of the things I don't like about these sorts of hyper woke games. They always seem to address the player as if the player is not a part of the group but some ignorant cishet who would benefit greatly from a little queer theory 101. It's lowkey offensive. And to add insult to injury I was right.
Mission: It's complicated is the quintessential broad but shallow game. A single run through is entertaining enough but over extremely fast. Subsequent playthroughs add very little and give you maybe 10 mins of new content per. Because there are 10 possible pairings the game doesn't really spend much time to flesh out any single one of them. All in all it's not a terrible game but it also had many frustrating elements, some of which were an issue of taste, and some of which were a problem with mechanics. As an aside, one thing I did appreciate is that on its store page this game cites having no voice acting as a feature. I hate voice acted VNs and was very pleased to see that.
Status: Complete
Site: https://schellgames.itch.io/mission-its-complicated
Rating: PG
Pairing: M/M, M/F, F/F, and nonbinary pairings
Description: Superheroes being cute and talking about feelings.
If the words "wholesome queerness" are attractive to you, this is a game for you. If they aren't it's not. This game feels very much like tumblr issue fic. As the player you're not romancing anyone. Your job is to get two of the NPCs so deeply in love within 13 days of meeting each other that the power of their love defeats a cosmic evil coming to swallow up the earth. The realism of going from 0 to 100 so quickly is lampshaded by making you a researcher on Speed Theory, aka the conceit that people who share dangerous and life threatening experiences grow closer extremely quickly. But the quests you send your heroes on aren't particularly life-threatening. Whatever, video game logic. Let's move on.
The structure of the game is based on picking two NPCs to go on various missions in the night, which earns them relationship points with each other, and then, if their relationship levels are adequate you send them on a date during the day. After three successful dates the characters are deeply in love and can overcome a world eater with the power of their devotion to each other. This is not difficult at all, and you can get full love within 6 days without much trying.
My first run through was entertaining enough. Because you can pick between five NPCs and multiple quests there does seem to be a lot of choice, even though once those missions start you only get to decide which plan of 2 you will enact. And the writing is decent and snappy. It doesn't feel like you have much control, and watching other people fall in love is not really what I play VNs for, but for the most part it was an entertaining read, the realism of the whirlwind romance notwithstanding.
But subsequent runthroughs are significantly more tedious. Basically, the game only credits you with getting one pairing to "in love" status per run through, even though getting NPCs to that status is easy enough that you can get two to the max in a single run through. So the time you spend on more than a single pairing per run is basically wasted if you want to go for "full completion." Resulting in spamming the skip button to race to the end of the game once your chosen pairing is complete. On top of that there is basically no major difference between runthroughs when it comes to the hero missions. The game acknowledges this by letting you basically skip them after the first run, but it's still tedium to set them up and the fast forward through 13 days. The payoff for this isn't really worth it. If you go through every pairing ending you get a special ending, but it's basically just a few extra frames. Something is wrong with your game design if you know you're making the player go through the same content so much that you give them multiple tools to skip actually playing all together.
And the romances all play out basically the same. While I wouldn't go so far as to call the NPCs cliche they do feel way too much like a collection of identities at many points. Your options are:
Nightgaunt - He's a genetic experiment assassin who can go invisible in shadows. A loner who don't need no team except he does need insurance.
Zirconia - An extremely buff scientist who can become impenetrable stone. She got the muscles by good old fashioned work. In it for the babes.
Riptide - A manic-depressive pixie dream boy who was bitten by a radioactive shark and now is part shark. Also controls water.
Wi-fi - Turns anything with electronics into a talking sentient being. Also it becomes her best friend. Very anxious.
Zael - They're an alien from a race that kicked them out for being too friendly to other races, and also boning other races.
The emotional buildup all happens on dates and all the parings follow a single track, so you can't manipulate the nature of their relationship. And while some relationships are platonic and some or not, and characters reveal different things about themselves in different pairings, the broad tone of every pairing is basically the same. It's relentless wholesomeness with constant conversation about mental health and emotional well-being, for the most part. You hear shit about "Bad brain buddies," PTSD, gender identity, sexuality, etc. At the final scene where you face the world eater the two heroes you picked to fall in love give speeches about how in love they are, and while they aren't the exact same every time again the tone is always identical. "You make me a better person, I love you so much, I want to be with you and face any trial, blah blah blah." It's fine for the first time through but after round 10 I was feeling emotionally diabetic, especially because these proclamations felt unearned. Because the relationships are established in a total of 3 scenes, there is no space to actually deal with any of the dozens of issues that are brought up. If feels like one very special episode is being thrown at you after another, and you can't spend a second to actually engage with that issue.
I also felt mildly offended when in one runthrough a trans character is asking you the player if you think that his date is hinting that she knows he is trans. You have the option of telling him you don't think so, and if you do he gives you a very dismissive, "I think I know better than you do."
This was I think the last run that I needed to do, so I was getting very bored with the game by then, and when that hit I got straight pissed off and wanted to yell at the character, "Bitch, I'm trans too!" It's one of the things I don't like about these sorts of hyper woke games. They always seem to address the player as if the player is not a part of the group but some ignorant cishet who would benefit greatly from a little queer theory 101. It's lowkey offensive. And to add insult to injury I was right.
Mission: It's complicated is the quintessential broad but shallow game. A single run through is entertaining enough but over extremely fast. Subsequent playthroughs add very little and give you maybe 10 mins of new content per. Because there are 10 possible pairings the game doesn't really spend much time to flesh out any single one of them. All in all it's not a terrible game but it also had many frustrating elements, some of which were an issue of taste, and some of which were a problem with mechanics. As an aside, one thing I did appreciate is that on its store page this game cites having no voice acting as a feature. I hate voice acted VNs and was very pleased to see that.
