Doki Doki Literature Club plays with the player’s expectations from the very beginning. Even the game’s trigger warning is almost impossible to take seriously. Written in cute bubble letters and framed in a pink textbook it appears almost as a joke or an exaggeration. The first section of the game seems mostly normal, further encouraging most players to let their guard down. Even as someone who came into the game with more knowledge than perhaps recommended for a fresh playthrough, the dissonance created by the game was so effective that my experience was not really diminished by this. If anything, it was enhanced by allowing me to more carefully examine the text. One of the things I noticed most of all against my expectations was… the player character’s lack of choice.
Monika seems obsessed throughout the game in pointing out how many choices the player can make, emphasizing the inability or decision to not spend time with her. However, the truth is that unlike most VNs or dating sims there is a noticeable lack of choice in Doki Doki. Even the choices you DO get to make often do not matter. If you try to choose to spend the afternoon of the last club day with anyone other than Yuri or Natsuki, the game forces you to pick one of the two. Against the popular notion of “what is the best order to play the routes in”, the game pushes the player into a specific route or “end” regardless of choices made if you play the game normally. As the game becomes more corrupted, Monika begins to manipulate the player’s choices herself. Even the choice to “savescum” and reload is taken away as the game resets your saves or has Monika manipulate the scripts.
The only place where the player seems to have a significant amount of control is in the poem writing mechanic. This mechanic serves as a clever way to learn more about the girls. The player has the expectation that the poems matter to which “ending” you get, so they are motivated to pay attention to each chibi girl’s reaction to selecting certain words. Having Sayori unexpectedly react to words like “suicide” or “graveyard” and Yuri react to “lust” and “blood” can begin to set the stage and warn the player that the real themes of the game are much less cheery than the aesthetics suggest.
Doki Doki masterfully toys with the expectations of the reader throughout the game, even going so far as subtly removing the player’s power. The real “game” in so far as the effect the player can have in the world of Doki Doki happens more outside of the game than really in it, where you are reduced to clicking through Monika’s scripts as her piano theme warns you of her influence.
I also felt the same sense of uncontrollability. It's almost ironic how Monika expresses her disdain for these artificially programmed personalities, because within the confines of the game, the player is not that much less constrained. Even the poem writing mode doesn't really open the player up to much freedom - the choices you make don't really matter in the context of the game. And when Monika says she's in love with the player, its ironic because as a result of this lack of freedom, she doesn't actually know us that well - maybe her love itself is artificial as well?