As everyone knows, the Japanese galgame industry is on its deathbed lately — August didn’t even have a single big release worth playing — so out of boredom I had to go find something else to play. That’s when I happened to see someone on a blog hyping up a galgame called Hallucination (幻觉). The funny part: the studio behind it, Ash Heaven (灰烬天国), had a previous game called Old Watch (旧手表) that was pulling in a lot of positive reviews on Steam. Most Chinese-made galgames on Steam have high ratings anyway, except the ones that shitpost themselves to death. Considering Old Watch was especially praised for its story, and considering I literally had nothing better to do, I bought the Old Watch + Hallucination bundle and started playing. Old Watch first, naturally. The playthrough wasn’t especially long, wasn’t especially short. Honestly, Old Watch far exceeded my expectations. Compared to the games I ran into years ago where the “anime-nerd concentration was high enough to make me vomit,” Old Watch actually has a shadow of what a real “Chinese-made galgame” could be, and its strengths and weaknesses are both very obvious. So I figured I’d write something about this game and its sequel, plus my own views on the endless stream of “Chinese-made galgames” coming out these days. No plot summary this time, and no savage roasting either (I heard bashing Chinese galgames gets you flamed?). Just an essay, writing wherever my thoughts go.