Before I get too far into this and give spoiler warnings, and such,
I’ll say: I’ve played it both with and without the NSFW DLC. You
don’t miss that much without the patch, but you do miss some
foreshadowing, and some character development. I would recommend
playing it with the patch, just know the sex scenes are… not to my
taste, but they do remove/change a lot of scenes otherwise.
| Game: ToToNo | Rating: 11.5, S |
|---|---|
| Accessibility: 2* | Expected: 7 |
| Badge: | Actual: 10 |
| Adjustment: 1.5 |
Foreward (No spoilers yet)
ToToNo is one of the more widely-acclaimed visual novels that’s been
released, and it’s well earned. What it does well, it does very
well, and there aren’t many things it doesn’t do well. The way they
handle the themes of learning to love, betrayal, trauma, etc, is
genuinely great, and lead to this becoming a favorite before I even
finished the first playthrough. It’s good, the horror elements aren’t
too strong, and there aren’t any jumpscares.
Note: If you have any triggers it’s still a good idea to read the
doesthedogdie page on it, just in case there are things that will
upset you.
Now, onto spoiler territory. If you have even a vague interest in
playing this game, stop reading now. It’s very much one of those
games where your first playthrough is so very dependent on you having
no idea what’s going on to get the full experience.
Run One: The Boy Who Would Not Be Cucked
At the start of the game, you’re introduced to our main boy: Suzuki
Shinichi. He’s one of the most infuriating people I’ve ever had the
misfortune of technically not playing as in a video game. Very in his
own head about not wanting to get with The Obvious Main Girl because
she deserves someone better, and he’s just a loser.
But very shortly into the game, we hear a phone ringing. Turns out
it’s God herself (canon), and she then hangs up. You’re then
introduced to Not Main Girl, Mukou Aoi, by way of her falling on top
of you and asking if you’re down to fuck because her battery is dying.
She’s certainly A Person, isn’t she?
Then we’re introduced to a baseball bat. The baseball bat is held by
an upskirt shot, because who else would it be held by. Oh right,
Obvious Main Girl, Sone Miyuki. She says she’s our girlfriend to get
Aoi off of us.
Shenanigans ensue for a while, and eventually the three of you become
friends, and honestly it’s precious. Miyuki and Aoi really do have
wonderful chemistry as characters. You all start sharing lunch on the
roof of the school, and the scenes really did make me almost
nostalgiac for something I never had.
After a while, Aoi reveals her true intentions with befriending the
two of you, though: She wants to get you into Miyuki’s pants,
desperately. The entire way through, she talks about life like it’s a
video game, talking about event flags, character routes, etc, and it’s
all… kind of saddening. She’s very clearly been very hurt by a lot
of people in her life, and they’re not shy about saying that she’s
essentially sleeping with people for housing.
But. There comes a point where she tells you that you’re afraid to be
cucked, and that she can make it so Miyuki will never, ever cuck you,
so you can be together forever. She then holds up her hand on the
school roof, phone clutched, like you’ve seen her do so many times.
Trying to call God, who never seems to answer.
Except this time she does. Turns out she’s not lying, or wrong; the
world is a video game, and she’s about to reprogram it. You can stop
her, but if you do you’ll live a boring life without Miyuki. If you
don’t stop her, God does reprogram the universe, and you can now be
with Miyuki without any fear of being cucked.
Once you go through the remainder of the run, you go to Miyuki’s play,
take her virginity for your birthday, and then (presumably) live
happily ever after. Also Miyuki gets a new phone at some point
through this, which is a weird detail to point out isn’t it?
Right?
Run Two: The Boy Who Would Not Be Cucked
But what about those times where Aoi said she could be a romance
option? The game’s short, and you can always skip the stuff you’ve
already seen. She seems sweet, and you’ve kind of grown to like her.
So you start a new game.
And this is where the game truly begins.
You play through again, mostly skipping, but you still get a few new
lines of dialog occasionally. Near the end you start getting closer
to Aoi, even though she desperately tells you not to. God only made
her to fall in love and have sex with everyone, so why would you, a
very jealous man who she reprogrammed the universe for, want to be
with a slut like her?
But you do. You so desperately do.
Eventually you do. She cracks, and admits that she does love how
sweet you are. She’s admitted this before, but that was in a past
life. Something only YOU would remember.
And she knows YOU do.
Miyuki starts acting weird after this. It’s just that she has
feelings for Shinichi, right?
Shinichi eventually get confronted by Miyuki. She wants to tell him that
she and your friend, Yuutarou, have evidence that Aoi is cheating on
him; a security camera feed showing her making out with Yuutarou’s
brother in the store their family owns.
Shinichi is devastated. But his birthday is coming up, and he knows
how to handle this. He’s going to confront her during his birthday
party. Shinichi also goes to Yuutarou’s brother’s house to collect
evidence, which he finds: The hairpin he gifted her. The one that
cost him so much he had to go without lunches for a month in the first
run.
Everyone shows up, just as expected. There’s even a fun little joke
here: Miyuki asks how old Shinichi is, and Aoi responds with “You’re
legally obligated to be at least 18″.
Then you give Yuutarou a signal, and his brother comes in. He hands
Shinichi a tape, which gets put into the VHS player, and shows
everything. Aoi doesn’t know how to respond, and YOU’re given the
option to accuse her of lying, or accept that she’s telling the truth.
If YOU accuse her of lying, she and Shinichi go up to the bedroom to
have an argument.
In the end, Shinichi forgives her, and ends up having a threesome with
her and Yuutarou’s brother.
After this, they decide to cuddle for a while. Miyuki comes in,
covered in blood. Who’s blood? The cat YOU adopted, once on YOUR
own, once with Aoi. She then walks up to the bed, and kills Aoi while
she’s still in your arms. When Shinichi tries to intervene on her
repeated swings at the now-corpse, she proceeds to break all of his
limbs with said bat, while singing happy birthday to him.
She then proceeds to call God, ask her to patch the game with the
special patch she made.
Run three: Miyuki Hell
This part is admittedly kind of weak summary-wise. The same thing
happens every day; Shinichi is woken up, YOU’re asked if YOU love
Miyuki, and then Shinichi and Miyuki go on an activity. YOU can
either let Miyuki decide, or YOU can choose the activity. YOU have to
pay attention though, as there is a test, and what’s at stake is
Shinichi’s future. Miyuki is full well broken. She realizes she’s in
a video game, and knows full well how YOU betrayed her. How YOU
couldn’t let her be happy with the boy of her dreams, so now she has
to drug him every night so he doesn’t remember anything. She rarely
speaks to Shinichi, mostly directly to YOU, and Shinichi no longer has
his own opinions, mostly falling back to YOU for what to do.
Eventually YOU earn enough trust from Miyuki to get the opportunity to
drug her, and take her phone to call God to reset the universe. This
starts a chase scene, where YOU get Aoi back for the briefest moment
before she begins to fade. You then need to input a code, which you
get by subtracting how many times you’ve slept with Miyuki, and a
number from the game’s manual, from God’s phone number, and then God
patches the universe back to how it was.
You’re then given the choice of who to go with. I went with Aoi, and
I’m glad I did. Her ending is very sweet.
Final thoughts
I absolutely adored this game. The friendship between Shinichi, Aoi,
and Miyuki is heartwarming right up until it isn’t anymore. By the
end I hated Miyuki, which wasn’t intended, but was deserved. I like
the fourth-wall breaks, and the softer horror elements (by my
standards).
My favorite route through the game was definitely Aoi’s route. I’m
polyamorous irl, and it… really felt like how the early days of
polyamory feel? You learn to love your partner’s love for other
people. You learn to feel joy when they find someone new, and when
they’re happy with having sex with someone else. The cuddling
afterwards, where you could tell Aoi was just. Happy that she could
finally be who she really was with someone who would love her anyway,
it just made me so happy.
I definitely did feel sorry for Miyuki. I do love me a good humanized
piece of shit, and she was very much a piece of shit, and you lived
alongside her becoming that piece of shit. You created the situation
that led her to snapping, even if it’s not your fault that she
snapped.
Also with the NSFW scenes enabled there’s one where Miyuki has sex with YOU, and it’s… It made me feel things. It really showed how broken she was as a person, which makes sense given she’s just figured out that her world is fake and only exists to serve YOU. I didn’t have the NSFW scenes on my first playthrough, and this really
Especially with Miyuki, the game focuses on feelings of betrayal.
Contrasted by Aoi, which is mostly focusses on learning to feel, and
learning to love, and be loved, which always hits me right in the
feels. You teach the program how to be a person, and I love that.
Overall I’d say the game is well worth the praise it’s gotten