I genuinely struggle to understand the popularity of ts. After playing it, I was left with the impression of a game that relies almost entirely on familiar aesthetics, familiar character archetypes, and the immediate appeal of obsessive love interests, without developing enough substance underneath them.
My main problem is not that the game uses tropes. Almost every story does. My problem is thatit rarely seems to do anything particularly interesting with them.
Even the atmosphere and premise, which are arguably the game’s biggest selling points, feel extremely familiar. The circus (boring n unoriginal), mysterious monsters performers, obsessive attractive men, dark romance and ordinary protagonist (who has no brain) suddenly becoming the center of their attention all feel like concepts I have encountered countless times before.
It reminds me of the kind of supernatural self-insert fiction that was everywhere on Wattpad and Tumblr in the 2010s. And unfortunately, I don’t think the writing gives these tropes enough depth to make them feel fresh.
The protagonist feels empty rather than immersive
The protagonist is probably my biggest issue with the game.
They appear to be deliberately written as a blank slate so that the player can project themselves onto them. I have absolutely nothing against self-insert protagonists when the game actually gives me the freedom to make that character interesting.
Here, however, it’s just bad.
The protagonist has very little characterization, but the player also has relatively little control over who they become. There is barely any customization, and while the game regularly presents dialogue choices, many of them ultimately feel like variations within the same predetermined story rather than meaningful opportunities to shape the protagonist or substantially alter the narrative.
So what exactly is the advantage of making the protagonist this empty?
If I am supposed to see them as their own character, they are nowhere near developed enough for me to find them interesting. If I am supposed to see myself in them, I frequently cannot, because the game still forces them to behave in ways I find ridiculous.
A flawed protagonist can be fascinating. A protagonist who repeatedly loses common sense whenever the plot needs them to enter another dangerous situation is simply frustrating.
Why is everyone obsessed with this person?
Pierrot illustrates another major problem.
I understand that obsession is the point. I am not criticizing an obsessive character for being obsessive in a game built around obsessive characters.
I am asking something much more basic:
Why the protagonist?
(Don’t pmo with the columbina shit)
Pierrot has barely met this person before developing an extreme fixation on them. Within an absurdly short amount of time, his interest escalates to following and stalking the protagonist.
But why?
Oh yes for the “Yandere” n that’s it only the cute naive yandere bait matters.
The protagonist is intentionally written with very few distinctive characteristics, which makes the problem even worse. The story wants me to believe that these bizarre and dangerous characters find the MC uniquely fascinating while simultaneously refusing to give the MC enough individuality for me to understand what they are fascinated by.
It creates the classic self-insert fantasy where extraordinary characters become obsessed with an extremely ordinary protagonist simply because that protagonist happens to be controlled by the player.
Again, this feels straight out of 2010s Wattpad fiction.
The world often feels built around creating romantic encounters
I had similar problems with the circus itself.
Some events feel less like things these characters would naturally be doing and more like convenient mechanisms for putting the love interests in front of the protagonist.
For example, the performers themselves being out distributing promotional material initially seems relatively harmless. But as the game establishes the circus as a much larger operation, the setup starts feeling increasingly artificial.
Basically bad world building
Why are these specific performers personally doing this?
The answer may technically exist, but while playing, the answer I kept feeling was:
Because the protagonist needs to meet them.
And once I start noticing the writer arranging characters rather than believing in the internal logic of the world, the atmosphere stops working.
This contributes to my larger problem with the setting. A creepy circus could be interesting, but simply putting mysterious characters inside a circus does not automatically create interesting worldbuilding.
The game contains plenty of choices, and some absolutely do produce different scenes or outcomes. I am not claiming that literally every button leads to identical content.
But the overall experience still felt surprisingly linear to me.
Some of my favorite stories could be completely linear. (+ my games are also linear I was just hoping more for the most popular vn on itch)
The writing makes everything feel even flatter
This is obviously one of the more subjective parts of my criticism, but I also found the writing itself weak.
The prose and dialogue often feel simplistic, and characters can come across more like collections of recognizable archetypes than fully realized people. Combined with the extremely familiar premise, this makes the entire experience feel strangely dated.
Here is the mysterious one.
Here is the dangerous one.
Here is the obsessive one.
Here is the protagonist.
Now everyone wants the protagonist.
That might be enough for someone who simply wants to enjoy the fantasy of attractive, dangerous characters obsessing over them.
“Dark circus” is already an established aesthetic. So are creepy clowns, theatrical horror, obsessive performers and carnival imagery.
Again, using familiar imagery is perfectly fine. Originality does not require inventing something nobody has ever imagined before. But if your individual ingredients are familiar, I expect the way you combine or develop them to give the work its own identity.
its shallow. That is probably the simplest summary of my problem with The Freak Circus. It’s bland, surface level writing, ugly art, unoriginal and highkey predatory
