I went into it just kinda trying to vibe and have fun and it was so easy for me to slip into it once the controls started to click for me. I beat the entire thing over the weekend. Something about being an evil bastard mercenary in a big giant robot just fucks with me and makes my brain go into the pure fun zone.

The game is shockingly tightly designed, particularly the way that the missions, shop system, debt, and all of those mechanics interact is great, especially with Human+ which is frankly downright inspired as a mechanic. (Although I didn't actually get it, I'm planning on trying a full Human+ playthrough later for fun and to check out the other missions I missed the first time). The story is pretty decently exposited too, leaving an incredible impression of the world on you without ever really telling you that much about it. It made it very fun for me to roleplay in it a little bit, which is something I always do in games but I always appreciate it when the game supports my roleplaying a little better.

On which note... My Raven was a transfem nb called Marin. I know the game presumes male for the character but I don't care, I learned how to read he/him as she/her in my head when reading VNs with self-insert male protags over a year ago. I decided for rp she was basically homeless and became a raven to afford food, but as she got better she eventually started to actually try to make a little difference with some leftist adventurism by destroying the corporations.

Her mech was Flora, a purple and pink quadleg that I jokingly call a murder spider. I kinda built this mech and just stuck with it for 90% of the game. I only changed it in lategame by swapping out the machine gun arms for laser cannon arms instead. I had tried some experimentatin around midgame with weapon types but that fucked me over and landed me in immediate debt so I switched back to the build and didn't experiment much past that.

I was surprised how much I felt like I related to her experiences. I mean, she's trans and I think I am too, but I feel very different from other trans people. I thought most of what I'd get out of this read was better understanding how other trans people work, which would obviously make me feel more comfortable if I ended up in a t4t relationship. But no, it was very helpful for me personally too.

I'm not going to go into any detail, but I thoroughly enjoyed reading the whole thing. Very informative, just the first few pages of anatomy was more then I got from school. I had not considered a lot of what she talks about.

One thing that really stuck out and hurt was her talking about touch on page 46. Just wanting to be touched and people not wanting to, presumably because she's trans. That just sucks, and I feel it. Fortunately I already don't get touched much so nothing will change One of the things she mentions is that maybe her partners/others don't want to cause dysphoria or something? So I'll have to remember to be clear that I want to be touched damn it.

Oh also early on (page 19/20) she talks about how you should only muff with fingers and holy hell would someone try and put their dick there? That caught me off guard a little bit.