Finished Grisaia Phantom Trigger 5.5 to 08.

For those unfamiliar with this series of Visual Novels I left a small explanation about it on the second half of a comment a few weeks ago.

Episode 07 ended up rather disappointing. Given it's the second-to-last episode and we already went through introductions for all the heroes and the main antagonist I was expecting the story to ramp up, but after the decent start with Shiori we go into the warzone and.... get even more setup, with a very late introduction of a bunch of smaller villains alongside the early stages of the war.

Then we start 08 and... somehow there's a brand-new PoV character? This late in the story? But this turns out to be one of the best parts of this VN as you read the grim tale of Patrick, a civilian among the enemy forces trying to survive as the war rages on. The story keeps switching between Patrick and the main character group for the first half, then switches back entirely to the main cast for the action-packed finale.

Overall a decent VN, but nothing exceptional. I wouldn't recommend it for someone starting with the genre as there's much better things to read, but it's a nice "confort food" read if you're a VN fan looking for something new.