A very fun visual novel, recommendable to all

This isn't necessarily my first visual novel, but it is the first one I'm aware of where you play as a Marvel-esque superhero.

I hate live-action super hero movies generally, something about them just doesn't suspend my disbelief. When that stupid Archer guy played by Jeremy Renner is seriously being sat next to Thor I just freaking lose it. GET THAT GUY OUTTA THERE HE'S GONNA BE CRUSHED TO A PULP.

On occasion, like when I watched Thor Ragnarok for the first time, I enjoy the superhero marvel tropes:

Quippy, smart-alec characters

Your power level is tied, on an exponential axis,
to how high the stakes are (a.k.a. a soft magic system)

Hero's using basic moves and gradually building up to
their giant nuclear-fuck-bombs despite the fact
that they really should probably be using them ASAP
as its never really described how tiring these moves
are

Friendship is magic

Though I think that there is something to be said for the narrative, linguistic and visual language of the American superhero to be so strong that it can be utilised by a talented team like Adhoc Studios to create something of artistic merit.

It makes me think of the fact that in order to push the envelope on media, you need a bunch of shoulders to stand on. If you didn't have Bruce Lee, Buster Keaton (and Harold Lloyd), and Chinese opera, you wouldn't have Jackie Chan in the 80's-90's.

And thus now do we have an AA visual novel in a comic book art-style centered on a fresh world shrunk to the pin-head of Los Angeles.

I never really stopped finding it funny that these super heroes antics where completely relegated to Southern California, and I want to also say that in general, I have found that grounded stories of limited, non-world-ending scope tend to hit a lot harder than ones about saving the literal world.

You can see this in S1 of Silicon Valley, or the earlier seasons of Breaking Bad (though its a great show all the way through).

Humans don't really get to operate at large scale and maintain a sense of self. And so there's an obvious tension in large-scale stories, how much can this individual really do unless they're the chosen one? And IF they're the chosen one, how do we keep them relatable and grounded?

Dispatch doesn't have this problem. Our guy is a regular white guy with brown hair and his love interests are blonde or ethnically ambiguous women who are super into him for no particular reason and the stakes are like... Los Angeles?

One thing that does amuse me is surely, within the relative powers of the story, if supervillains really did start to take over this city, the national guard would be mobilised. It wouldn't be left to a ragtag team of corporate small-crime fighters? And with superheroes who can fly at speeds fast enough to get directly from work at 5 in Southern California to your dinner reservation in Japan on the same day (12.5 hours nonstop via plane), your plans as a supervillain would have to stay very small lest they be crushed by presumably WAVES of ultra-powered military-super-heroes who could be deployed to your location in MINUTES (NYC to LA is 5.5 hours by plane).

Anyway, that is to say, its good. I recommend it. I didn't really care about any of the things listed above whilst playing it, I was just gunning for the Invisigal romance option and trying to be the best leader I could be.