Wayhaven Chronicles: Book One

The Wayhaven Chronicles series has wonderful episodic plots as well as an overarching plot that is still evolving, a main character that is highly customizable and is given lots of opportunities to grow and develop throughout the books, an amazing main cast of four romanceable characters (that all can be either male or female depending on the main character's sexuality) to make you swoon, and interesting minor and side characters to love.

Romance and character interaction is the focus. TWC is a detective mystery/thriller type series, but if you go into it wanting to flex your brain and solve cases you will be sorely disappointed. There is some minor opportunities to direct the detectives in solving the mysteries, but the solving really does happen by itself. If you like romance novels, visual novel dating sims, or romantic comedy movies this will definitely be worth a look for you.

There aren't really any wrong choices. Some choices might lead to failures, so there are bad consequences, but that's not a game over. In regards to romance there are no wrong choices that lead to you failing to romance your chosen character, which I absolutely love. It's been increasingly my pet peeve that games make you be the correct personality and make the correct dialogue choices to romance a character. In TWC you can romance a character with whatever kind of main character you want and see how the dynamics change. You want to romance the sweet character with a character that is stoic? Cool! You want to romance that same character with one that is flirtatious and bold? Awesome! It's all correct, meaning you get to play how you want without clinging to a walkthrough.

About Book One specifically...

Even if you go in without knowing anything, the secret is fairly obvious and hinted at early on and fairly often. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing as I went in knowing the secret but still had a lot of fun seeing the hints and characters slip up...in fact I think I had more fun knowing before hand than I would have, since the reveal is kind of lackluster anyway in my opinion. It's just not that intense of a moment given the setting and how it was done.

This is Book One and you've only just met the crew, but you do pick the character (or the love triangle) you want to romance throughout the series. I like that this choice is made so early in the series, though I understand this may not be to everyone's tastes. However just because you pick your romance doesn't mean that's the moment the main character and the romanceable character fall in love and start a relationship. Each character is different. Some are quick to show their growing affection while others are a slow burn or have major denial. None of them start a relationship with the main character in Book One, and all the romances are progressing naturally.

Outside of the slightly lackluster reveal I really don't have any complaints with Book One. Or maybe I'm just swooning so hard from the crew that I'm blinded.