The VIG Review

You pay as Xie En, who was wrongfully imprisoned for years after his boss set him up to take the fall for shoddy work practices. You assume the identity of Wu Wei and aim to embezzle millions of dollars from the boss’s company as payback.

The narrative is clear and well structured. Choices feel significant and the story branches nicely. The game does not treat the audience as idiots; those with a keen eye will fail less. Even toward the end, when main objectives are complete, it has a few tricks up its sleeve. Early choices filter into future chapters, like when you pick up some lipstick. And bad decisions cause early endings. The primary way to gain seniority at the company is to exploit colleagues. Don’t be shocked if you catch feelings.

There is a surprisingly large amount of awesome romance, with three main love interests. Two are colleagues, working in the same office, and the third is the company president. Guan Xinling is a young and kind colleague, and she is one of the best love interests the genre has seen. Chen Xiaoman appears to be a cold opportunist, but her back-story and mannerisms make her almost as good. Your boss, Zhang Yun’er, is domineering but not made of ice.

At predefined points, you go on ‘dates’ with either of the two colleagues. These have branching choices, but such options are not shown on the timeline. Maintain good rapport with both and you can go on a hilarious dual lunch date. Romance with the boss is baked into the story, and not as casual. While the game has good endings, Yun’er’s best is text only and the others are too brief.

Even though most scenes are filmed in third-person, the romance parts frequently use first-person close-ups. This is a great way to intensify connection and make it appear a bit more like a typical dating sim, while having all the third-person benefits.

Sadly the game has a few too many technical quirks. The worst is that it doesn’t reliably save progress; it might forget you got an item or change favor values. This meant having to play things several times to access certain branching paths. There was also an infuriating audio sync issue that seems rare. Such a shame when the majority of audio is live from on-set.

The game take approximately 4 hours to finish and under 11 to see everything. Video quality is very good and translation is above average, with English text on props, despite choice-text problems. Even though it is not quite perfect, The VIG is packed with flavor and absolutely worth tasting, hot or cold.