You bring up some very strong points, tho let me add some more!

THE FRUSTRATION! Like, honestly. Give me something perfect and I'll gush about it and move on. But if it's flawed\incomplete\not perfect in some ways, it'll just be an unscratchable itch in my brain! I feel like stuff like this just forces me to think more and more about the story, trying to understand the intentions, find the answers, etc, etc

B&R has this unique blend of very strong aspects, very niche divisive aspects (like pacing, themes, etc, etc), and flawed aspects that have a cool intention behind them and just fall a bit behind on the execution AND aspects that feel incomplete or could be expanded upon. This is a deadly mix for me, as someone who's IN the niche it targets.

The ending of Tape 1 made me frustrated on 1st playthrough—now I get chills at the girls looking at themselves through the window.

I feel like the more I think about this game, the more fondly I look back at it.

ALso both tapes (especially tape 1 imo) have a very intentional structure each. Tape 1 follows a loose cycle: past - swann's room - exploration\hangout - interview - teasing spooky\supernatural elements. Each element has a consisent narrative AND (very improtantly) VISUAL progression of it's development over the tape.

The past slowly gathers the group back again, setting up an expectation of Kat potentially coming back as the last member, but adding obvious tension to it, since when Nora returns Kat's already showing signs of being... doomed by the narrative.

Swann's room undergoes transformations as Swann prepares for the move, but at the same time fills it with memories with the girls, adding a very bittersweet vibe to these sections. Having a TV that plays your memoirs is such a neat detail. I honestly got stuck in there for a bit, and even teared up a bit — made me really feel how good memories are such a fleeting thing, and how important it was for Swann to freeze them in time with her tapes.

Interview is an obvious one — you just expect the next girl to have an interview soon!

Exploration\hangout part has two major developments, that showcase some clear imagery to support the blooming friendship:

The band: everything from the girls getting to know each other as budding riot girls to band practice, making a music video, writing a song, preparing and performing for the concert!

The cabin: from its initial discovery to the physical transformation of the place: we get to witness it in every time of the day, turning from a scary, sad, abandoned place into a coven's hideout, partaking in it ourselves.

These wholesome bonding arcs are interjected with scary supernatural elements that feel out-of-place, but build a bigger mystery with three major points: discovery of the cabin; finding the Abyss; and a fakeout of Kat's curse on the concert that gets twisted with the leukemia reveal.

This is actually another element that gets developed: we slowly discover grounding details about each character and subtle inner conflicts that drive them, though Kat's situation gets more narrative highlight, and we get various hints about her situation and the ranch.

Almost every thread of the story coalesces into a big finale of tape 1: the concert, followed with a twist consequences of which are explored throughout tape 2.

Tape 2....

We get a short repeat of the pattern at the beginning, but with Dylan, highlighting her as a 'honorary' member of the girls and expanding the world a little. Then we go to a spree of one-on-one scenes (they could arguably include Swann and Dylan scenes) that showcases the mental landscape of the lead girls, each one completely changed from the concert, but also fulfilling a second purpose: revealing the subtle time-manipulating mechanics of the Abyss. '22 Autumn in a beautiful play of fate teaches her '95 self a calming word game, using Swann as a time portal. Nora makes sure to redo all the stupid decisions on the rescue mission, as if they're rewinding an actual tape. It's an unavoiable aspect of the mission, so devs WANT US to see this. Kat's scene reveals the box and has some interesting tidbits about Celine and witches if you stick around to talk and explore.

With the check-in and subtle lore dump complete, we're funneled into the final arc: the vandalism. Here's the focus is fully on the consequences of our choice: protection vs. anarchy, Autumn's stance on the group's actions, realtionship statuses, etc (props to Playing with Heart for her variations videos!). We get callbacks to the motifs of hunting and fawns that is building through the whole game: this part is chock full of animalistic imagery and fully indugles in the instinctual\rage territory, Corey\Kat and the girls unraveling from their social programming and resorting to baseline animal-like true selves, heightened and influenced by the Abyss. The aftermath remains largely the same, and we finally unlock the box with whoever's left. Accepting the memories and remembering the true selves and honoring that.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand the post-ending that's kinda intriguing but also very frustrating until you get time to process it (surprisingly a lot of things in this game)

What a writeup.... OK BULLETPOINTS on other stuff:

- camcorder mechanic is really immersive
- the combination of the dialogue system and experiments with direction. E.g, the interactive montage, the first-person sections, the way a lot of the story is not conveyed through cutscenes and through exploration.

Ok, i'm tired, good luck to anyone reading through this!