There’s something oddly satisfying about watching Monica lose her grip - like seeing a queen forget her crown in the middle of a party and pretending she doesn’t care. The game doesn’t beg you to like her, which makes it even better when she starts slipping. I didn’t expect to get so hooked on her attitude, that smug smile before everything goes downhill. It’s not even about the sex at first (though let’s be real, you don’t play this kind of thing for philosophy). It creeps up on you, the way she looks at herself in the mirror after the first time she crosses one of her own lines. I kept thinking, “nah, she won’t go *that* far,” and then she does, with that lazy smirk like she’s been planning it all along.

The voyeur stuff hits harder than I thought - it’s not just some random camera angle, it feels meaner, like the game’s winking at you while she pretends not to notice. There’s this scene where she’s supposed to “teach a lesson” but ends up bent over a desk getting spanked instead, and the sound design there is too good. Like, uncomfortably good. Tiny details: the breath hitch, the crack of palm on skin, that stutter in her voice. I laughed right after, not sure if it was hot or pathetic. Maybe both. The sandbox part almost ruins it though - you wander around too much, trying to trigger scenes, and half the time I was checking my phone mid-dialogue because nothing was happening except her chewing someone out. And yet when the corruption bits kick back in, it’s like an entirely different game. You forget how slow it felt two minutes ago.

I don’t even know why I liked the lesbian arc as much as I did. Probably because it felt softer, less performative. Or maybe because the other girl looked genuinely into it - rare thing in these games. There’s this one moment with a toy, some teasing, and then Monica laughs in a way that’s half humiliation, half relief. It’s stupidly human. I almost wished they’d ended it there, but then came the blackmail twist and suddenly everyone’s dirty again. Somehow that’s exactly what I wanted.