Doki Doki Literature Club Plus Side Stories """Review"""

Spoilers, of course.

I recently finished DDLC+ (full 100% btw fuck the rng mechanics in this game) and, not very suprisingly, the "Side Stories" content actually ended up being pretty good. like, REALLY good. I thought about doing a proper review at first but im fairly tired as i write this (9am with no sleep haha) and I know if i dont put down my thoughts somewhere before i go to bed ill forget, but if i stay up any more writing a proper review it just wont be good.

So instead im just going to post the few notes i did take (i wrote after finishing both self-love and equals.) Sorry if i dont do a good job running over what happened while im talking about, spelling mistakes, grammar mistakes, contradicting myself, or anything else of the sort in these notes. i was starting to feel tired writing the later ones and im even more tired now. I just dont want these notes to die alone on my hard drive like many of my other ""review"" notes i take do. Also, if you havent noticed already, there will be spoilers for both DDLC and the DDLC+ Side Stories.

"ddlc side stories review notes

• A fair few of them got me very choked up. monika and sayori's def got me suuuper close, and i think it probably has one of the best looking cgs in the whole game, and DEF the best looking one in the plus expansion. satchley's art is just super fucking hard to beat tho
• Some stuff doesnt quite make sense plothole wise (think natsuki saying she wishes she could be "closer friends with yuri sometimes" despite them being arguably ((maybe monika and sayri are a little more)) the two that get the most emotionally vulnerable ((wrong term methinks)) with each other in the bonus stories) if you're playing with the mindset of them being prequels, but knowing (post mail stuff) that its a control simulation to compare against the version of the simulatiuon with monika having kernel access it makes much more sense.
• So glad natsuki finnaly got a little time to shine. this is for sure personal bias showing (shes my favorite) but i always felt like she never got too much room to shine in the original, so her being a bit more fleshed out is really nice. i also related to her and yuri's issues a fair bit, altho i kinda related to all of the different doki's issues so thats not really unique to them.
• The scene in natsukis and yuri's part 2 where natsuki has a panic attack and yuri helps her through it made me cry ngl. its a very well written portrayal of panic/anxiety attacks which is very appriciated as i feel they dont get treated very seriously in a lot of media. also how well yuri handled the situation i think made me just as emotional as natsuki actually having it did. i wish i had friends like her in school.
• continued on that section, the two themes of self-love/looking out for yourself and also them both having trouble communicating between each other when they're in a tense situation hit very close to home for me (moreso the second one. im awful at communicating my feelings, especially under pressure.) i think theirs was overall my favorite specific episode, with maybe sayori and monikas being a close second.
• the music in the bonus stories is honestly better than the original game's, and i like that it uses the motifs from the original without just re using the original music. really shows that they were trying to respect these characters and the merit that they had outside of the horror context, which was something i was worried about going in.
• overall like a 9/10. i would argue its required reading for new players despite being technically non-canon to the original experience."