LATEX, LEATHER, LIPSTICK, LOVE, LUST

After my my first hour with LLLLL, I became convinced that this was one of the most special stories I had read in quite a while. A few hours later, after finishing LLLLL, I had trouble reconciling my earlier opinions about the game with the indifference I felt after finishing. Had I played a brilliant game that took a few stumbles, or a boring one that managed to pull off some genuinely incredible moments?

My highest compliments go to the visuals of LLLLL and to a certain enthralling character to the writing that is especially prominent early on in the story. There were a handful of very cleverly done moments where I was amazed at what the narrative was able to pull off. At one point I was so invested in what was happening that I had to take a ten minute breather to compose myself before continuing. Unfortunately, I do not think this quality of the writing was able to cover for some larger underlying issues I had with the story.

LLLLL, in my view, bills itself as a game about messy characters in messy situations. A scene-by-scene analysis of what happens would probably show this to be true. It's somewhat confounding to me then how this ethos never extends to the characters in the narrative, who felt flat. The main character, L, and their eventual love interest, were depicted in such a way that left me wondering if they had ever done anything wrong in their lives (no, awkward social interactions and poorly thought out decisions do not count). Conversely, the antagonists act cartoonishly awful in almost every circumstance.

In most stories, I think this would be boring, but these aspects of the characters interact with the subject matter of the narrative in ways that I found unpleasant. When almost everyone in LLLLL is neurodivergent and/or has mental health struggles, the black-and-white treatment of many characters felt like it reinforced a number of negative views about the aforementioned groups of people. Some symptoms/behaviors of the characters (specifically, of L) were presented as being relatable or at least worthy of sympathy, whereas other behaviors were presented as being inherently unreasonable, or even cruel. My own distaste for this aside, I do not believe this was a particularly interesting or novel way of approaching the subject.

These kinds of issues became more pronounced to me as the story progressed into its final hour or so. Despite this, LLLLL still has many interesting ideas and some genuinely great moments, even if I think some of them were muddled by the kinds of issues I mentioned above. If you're willing to meet it halfway through some awkwardness in the characterizations and pacing, I think LLLLL has something interesting and worthwhile to engage with.