Recommending Story-first games

[kotte]

Speaking of well-written LIs, has anyone played The Missing Part? The game starts off in an extremely conventional and unappealing way, but then throws two curveballs. The first one I saw coming, but the second one caught me completely by surprise.

I was on my "has potential" list, now I feel I might have to bump it up prioritywise and try it earlier.

Five minutes into the game, I wanted to stop playing ('not another callow teenage MC!'). Fifteen minutes in, I was hooked.

This was exactly how I felt about Corporate Culture, it reminds me of how Umberto Eco discribed how he wanted the reader to experience The Name of the Rose.

 

[yossa999]

Speaking of well-written LIs, has anyone played The Missing Part? The game starts off in an extremely conventional and unappealing way, but then throws two curveballs. The first one I saw coming, but the second one caught me completely by surprise.

Five minutes into the game, I wanted to stop playing ('not another callow teenage MC!'). Fifteen minutes in, I was hooked.

The Missing Part is the best I've seen in 2025 so far. The dev is good at playing with the feelings and emotions of the players. Constantly rolls you on an emotional roller coaster. Although the second chapter, which just came out, has a mostly lighthearted mood, especially compared to the prologue, you can see that it has a lot of bookmarks for future dramatic events. The three main girls are very different types, but what they have in common is that each has their own drama in the past, which will sooner or later come to light. So, even if it seems for a while that the plot will develop like a classic dating sim, I am sure that this is a planted wrong impression. The dev is just gives us a break.

 

[Raife]

The Missing Part is the best I've seen in 2025 so far.

I agree: it's a very, very strong story-first game thus far, once you get past the short head fake at the beginning.

The stories I like the most have quite a lot of darkness and sadness in them, but also a strong thread of hope and possibility. The sweet and the bitter. This game has it.

 

[yossa999]

I agree: it's a very, very strong story-first game thus far, once you get past the short head fake at the beginning.

The stories I like the most have quite a lot of darkness and sadness in them, but also a strong thread of hope and possibility. The sweet and the bitter. This game has it.

Damn reaction limit.
Exactly my line. And yeah, I even had to have a break near the end of the prologue because this picture, music and mood affected me too much at the moment.

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[forthewins]

The stories I like the most have quite a lot of darkness and sadness in them, but also a strong thread of hope and possibility. The sweet and the bitter. This game has it.

Okay, you've sold me as this describes many of my favorites too. I'll give this a shot.

For the record, this description very much fits The Shell series, which I've pushed here enough. Also two other favorites of mine that don't have adult content: Higurashi: When They Cry and the

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series. I really like stories that are capable of exploring really dark topics, while also having characters pushing forward to overcome those difficulties.

 

[Vasin]

I have just finished playing The Missing Part, and, well, what a ride.

Overall I think it's a great game, definitely deserves the places on the list, and playing through. I will now go into an overall impression with unmarked spoilers.

Initially, I was momentarily put off by the intro, as many here, but after getting through the first time skip, the nature of the prologue got apparent to me. Despite that I didn't quite expect the second twist, and I think that the prologue being so short kind of robs those 2 events of emotional impact that they could have had. Partially due to the massive time skips and partially because the game is clearly set up with other LIs in mind and it almost felt like Ella and Maddie were getting in the way. Given that they seem to still be affecting the story in other ways, it's not directly bad, but it brings me to my second gripe.

What it boils down to is the game falling short of it's potential. I'm not saying that it's bad, it's very good, the character writing is splendid, but in the end so far it appears like another "choose your LI" dating sim, with a dash of grief, sorrow and wistfulness on top. That's great, but the issue I have with the LIs is that I just don't care about any of them. I would much rather play an AVN about a single father trying to raise Maddie, and *maybe* having one fixed love interest. Not on this website though, I doubt most of local population has any experience with fathers or fatherhood.

And finally my final writing nitpick is this quality that you see a lot of the time when characters just tapdance around things instead of saying it outright just to save it for dramatic "reveal" at the end, like why Sarah left her job, or who Lisa's mother is.

Production wise the game is also, in my opinion, falls a little short of the quality of writing, renders are good, but not exceptional, and the camerawork has the typical AVN feel to it. I liked the autoplay thing though and the soundtrack is the only soundtrack from the AVN to date where I actually looked up the title track. For a copyright free music it fit the story amazingly well.