Katawa Shoujo is a funny one. It gives a really, really wrong impression of itself just by... well, just be existing. It sounds like a despicable, nauseating concept. It sounds like some sick pervert's horrid fantasy. It's a visual novel/dating sim... about disabled people. The genre does it very little favors outside of certain circles, and the subject makes people nauseous.
And yet, strangely enough, it pulls through with a startling grace. It's a really, really tasteful game and a mature take on a very, very complicated and hard subject. It's not pandering, it treats everything with respect it deserves. The characters aren't defined by their disabilities, but neither are they ignored or made inconsequential. Things are actually well developed (how often do you actually see a visual novel type of thing where things, for some characters, might not go so peachy and there might not actually be a flowery, happy ending?), the characters are intresting, and it carries some respectable weight behind its narrative.
I honestly feel the whole thing is doing itself a large disservice by even pretending to be a dating sim. It's so easy to dismiss it as some fetish porn, while there's actually very little erotic content from what I've seen after two character paths.
It's a weird one. It's basically an anti-disaster. Instead of having all the right ingredients for something great and failing, it has all the wrong ingredients, headed for a goddamn catastrophic failure, and somehow ends up being a very, very good game.
I love it, and for none of the reasons the initial impression upon hearing of it might make you think of. Try it, there's even an option to skip all the naughties if you feel like it. It won't be any less good for that.
