Pesterquest

surprisingly nice for most of its runtime...? i wasn't expecting the "plot" here to occur so directly in a specific moment in homestuck's narrative (directly before anyone manages to play sburb/sgrub) and that decision leads to both fun, goofy activities and the occasional well-considered meta-narrative moment. while i at first lamented losing out on the more developed personalities these characters would later become, it's enjoyable to, for instance, see early-dave's ironic facade quickly melt in the face of gay thoughts and olive garden. and giving the main character the powers to just jump around time and space willy-nilly is just plain fun, and exactly the looseness i'd want from an overall unimportant spin-off like this.

unfortunately, i think the weight of this being both a sequel to a mostly unrelated other friend-making homestuck-adjacent visual novel AND a connection to the post-canon homestuck epilogues/homestuck 2 drags it down, as almost every callback (and call-forward) feels either uninteresting or unnecessary (seriously, i do not remember any of the friendsim character names, why does it think i will!). there are moments where it works... dirk's route, up until it hits the epilogue, has a surprisingly strong first half breaking down his controlling and cool attitude before ratcheting it up to 11 by involving the epilogue's adult dirk and dave... but overall, it's hard to find it all worth it, especially since i can't recommend this to any friends who have read the original homestuck without telling them they need to read 18 volumes of generally middling troll friendship stories just to get into this one (... i did like how often they talked about marvus and his armpits though).

some episodes though... they feel rushed. it's particularly noticeable with "problematic" characters like vriska and eridan: the story itself comments self-justifiably on how difficult befriending/rehabilitating such awful people is in around 20-30 mins each, but it doesn't make it any more satisfying than it is to do a rough job at it and call it a day. you connect with vriska on an emotional level over her personal stresses, but she's still an awful person to everyone around her in every other route. you basically give up on eridan but tell him to do his best, and.. you hope that he does! it doesn't help that eridan's feels the most awkwardly written in terms of introducing more lgbt elements to the homestuck universe. i like that the writers are doing this, i really do (trans vriska yay!), but when eridan's route is already as rushed as it is, pausing for him to say a bunch of uncharacteristically progressive things about wearing dresses just baffles my mind, and the followup joke about how he's still troll racist (god i do not want to talk about troll racism) does not help matters.

other times it feels like the writers had a lot to say but just didn't get time to do it. jake's strikes this particular note, and once again, the meta-commentary on how you don't have time to fix him doesn't make it any less uninteresting to just leave him how he is. it's also weird when you have some characters get given up on like that, while others with just as if not MORE complex baggage get a surprisingly in-depth dressing down... dirk's route is literally right after this!

mostly though, i had a... surprisingly good time! john, rose, dave, jade, karkat, kanaya, terezi, aradia, and nepeta were all uncontroversially fun routes in my experience. others, like tavros, roxy, or dirk, feel a bit more serious or had moments i wasn't sure on, but ended up positively for me. that leaves a (not insignificant) minority i thought were a bit dull (gamzee, equius, sollux, jane), underwritten considering the character complexity attempted (eridan, feferi, jake), or vriska (vriska) ((seriously though it's so hard to talk about her considering how her route does her best to frame her sympathetically but then every other route still shows her being an asshole and like yeah i mean that's vriska but like how do you account for this landmine of a character)).

and the epilogue... it's difficult to know what to say. i hate the author insert (i think you're meant to..??), especially because the whole t-pose thing just felt annoying for the whole game, and it just felt like someone realizing they could be hussie while hussie was gone and it's super annoying... BUT.. having a true ending where you can just go "fuck actual homestuck, i'm just going to let these characters chill out in non-canon where they are my friends" is just like.. cool? i like it! it's a nice sentiment!

i'm still not really sure what to rate this. i had it at a 6-7/10 in my mind and was going to set it at a 6, but then i was like, "i gave friendsim a 6, and it's worse than this, but is it as bad as a 5/10? but i can't give this and friendsim the same score.. and this WAS enjoyable..." so all that's running in my mind. who knows what i'll end up on!

... oh and the art is mostly good. there are a few sprites i don't like (roxy, sorry, i just don't understand it. vriska neither) and there are a few i think are great (karkat, nepeta, kanaya, terezi, rose, probably some more...) while the good/bad ends pictures are always amazing. and the humor hit more than i was expecting! i took a ton of steam screenshots of bits that made me give a little laugh. mostly aradia. and olive garden.