Sword of Convallaria. Its only (and admittedly massive) flaw is that it’s gacha, with all that entails. But the writing and worldbuilding more than makes up for it. Without spoilers, I suspect the Night Crimson storyline is modeled on 20s-30s Shanghai and the “true ending” route is similarly inspired by the anti-Japanese resistance. One of the major antagonistic forces is also pretty obviously an “anachronistic” fantasy US analogue, with a really interesting though underdeveloped take on how subjugated people get subsumed by empire; along similar lines, the primary gimmick of the setting is a really obvious oil analogue and the “protagonist” faction has a lot of very deliberate Arabic/Middle Eastern naming despite aesthetically being standard Euro fantasy kingdom, though unusually it leans more gunpowder fantasy than pseudo-medieval, and miners for example are a key faction/aspect of the plot and the backstory. And there’s even a route that’s basically “capitalism maybe works as a short term solution but not in the long run” lol.
Sword of Convallaria. Its only (and admittedly massive) flaw is that it’s gacha, with all that entails. But the writing and worldbuilding more than makes up for it. Without spoilers, I suspect the Night Crimson storyline is modeled on 20s-30s Shanghai and the “true ending” route is similarly inspired by the anti-Japanese resistance. One of the major antagonistic forces is also pretty obviously an “anachronistic” fantasy US analogue, with a really interesting though underdeveloped take on how subjugated people get subsumed by empire; along similar lines, the primary gimmick of the setting is a really obvious oil analogue and the “protagonist” faction has a lot of very deliberate Arabic/Middle Eastern naming despite aesthetically being standard Euro fantasy kingdom, though unusually it leans more gunpowder fantasy than pseudo-medieval, and miners for example are a key faction/aspect of the plot and the backstory. And there’s even a route that’s basically “capitalism maybe works as a short term solution but not in the long run” lol.
(apologies for OT/resumes lurking)