A little bit of MONIKA in my life – Doki Doki Literature Club

I know its been a while since Doki Doki Literature Club had been released but I finally gained the courage and time to play through the entire game and achieve all the endings even if it took a mental toll on me.

If you’re late on the trend-train, Doki Doki Literature Club is a visual novel style game where you, the Main Character get to choose from a variety of girls and select your romantic interest by playing poem mini-games to gain their favor. On the surface, it seems to be a bright and colourful game that any anime enthusiast would enjoy but if you play for a little longer, some things start to change.

In order not to spoil you, I highly recommend you go play the game as its free on Steam and actually, I had found it before it gained momentum on YouTube but lacked the time to play it so it was rusting in my game library until now. Nevertheless, its a brilliantly crafted game with stunning visuals that any anime-fan can admire so please do play it!

– GAME MECHANICS AND GAMEPLAY –

As I said before, its a visual-novel game in which you get a total of three love interests but there’s a twist, in this game, there is no end-goal, in fact, there is no possible way to peacefully end the game. Whatever route you choose be it the cheerful childhood friend, Sayori or the moe-blob tsundere, Natsuki (My personal favourite) or even the mature but shy beauty, Yuri, nothing goes as you’ll expect.

However, you can achieve cut-scenes respective to each route by picking words that represent each character in the poem mini-game. Bittersweet words like love and pain for Sayori, cute and simplistic words like fluffy and boop for Natsuki and melancholy and descriptive words for Yuri. As long as you have a majority of words correct for the character you’re aiming for, you will have access to spending more time with them and gaining the cut-scene.

There is only 2 real endings for the game, as far as I know and I had painstakingly managed to complete the two endings. One of them is the “bad” or “beginner’s ending” where you play freely and finish the game by deleting Monika from the game to which you cannot play it again unless you uninstall or delete the “first-run” file from the game’s properties.

The second one requires much more time as you drill through repetitive dialogues over and over again, the skip button does help so if you’re eyeing for this ending, turn it on in the setting. This ending requires you to play through all of the three characters’ routes and gain all 9 cut-scenes including the one with Monika in the end.

Once you delete Monika’s character file from the game, you will get extra dialougue from a self-aware Sayori and a letter from the game developer which makes you smile a little as you can see how much effort and love had been put into the game and the fact that Team Salvato had released the game for free makes it all the more worthwhile to play.

– PLOT TWISTS AND TURNS (STORY) –

I had restrained myself from reading any game reviews or watching any walkthroughs so I was still left in the dark about the story, all I knew was that it may or may not contain some Madoka Magica madness and it delivered the horror, hot and steaming to my doorstep.

Did I find the game scary? Quite I suppose, only because I played it at night and was not expecting the sudden glitches and transformation of the characters. I had to even call my brother to sit and watch with me for a while because I couldn’t bear to click next on the dialogue box.

What I found truly commendable was the story buried under its cutesy and deceiving exterior, at its core is a story about an AI, Monika that seeks companionship, hating her “friends” for being able to spend more time with the MC (That’s us) and herself being helpless, only able to watch from the sidelines.

Its rather tear-jerking and I could not find it in my heart to hate Monika or even see her as the evil antagonist of this game when all she wanted was for someone to talk to and have her only in their eyes. Thinking about it again, Monika’s expressions and dialogue always seemed so forced like she couldn’t do anything but grit her teeth as the other characters take their turn at being pampered by the MC.

At the end of the “bad” ending, we have Sayori take Monika’s place as club president and she slowly succumbs into a possessive and rather terrifying Monika 2.0 but it ends rather sourly as Monika deletes Sayori and the literature club despite herself stating before that she had actually loved it and her friends very much. Monika sacrificed everything, including herself for our well-being, doesn’t that already say a lot about her character?

Also, Game Theory has a rather well-drafted theory on Doki Doki Literature Club’s true origins so I’ll link it here for you to watch if you’re curious as it really flips the game’s story on its head: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i28Dd8jXZxs

– OVERALL RATING –

It’s a wonderful game and I don’t really have any criticism to speak of when its a creation filled with raw passion that undermines any flaws that it might have. I loved the story and fell in love with each of the characters and how human they felt despite being digital.

For any lover of anime-literature or even visual novels in general will surely feel at home with this game but warning, this is not a good idea for the faint of heart!

GAME RATING: 9 BAKA NATSUKI /10