Hayes and Winkel are great narrators throughout but James often sounds bored reading his parts (at least the parts with Vincent), I’m not sure if that was the direction he was given, but it was very bland and I often zoned out during Vincent’s scenes.
The bad guy in this is super cringe-worthy and at times felt way over-the-top.
Time compression is always one of my least favorite parts of Gamelit genre that for some reason many authors want to include, this ramped it up to the extreme and made it feel weird, but focused on it as part of the mechanic of why things went the way they went. I enjoyed the story for what it was and want to hear the rest of the tale, but I wish gamelit would move away from this mechanic in general.