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DS Dal Segno


Clephas

2647 views

This is a VN by Circus, the company that makes the Da Capo series, which I'm sure most of our resident moe-addicts are familiar with.  It is also based in the same universe (well, I'm pretty sure it is, since a Professor Amakase made an AI with emotions who likes bananas and who is the true heroine of this VN, lol). 

To put it straight to you... this is a very old style of VN.  It is a lot closer to the old Da Capo games and Key's early VNs than it is to anything else made in modern times.  Like Da Capo, it has its emotional moments... and some decent drama.  However, in exchange, the lateral relationships are almost nonexistent (character interrelationships other than with the protagonist tend to be weak to nonexistent, beyond a few templates).  This is the standard for this type of VN, and it was more than satisfying enough for me when I first started playing VNs... but now that I've experienced more fulfilling interactions between casts of characters, this VN feels startlingly dull at times.

Both visually and audio-wise, this is a VN that 'feels' like a Circus VN.  Almost all of the tracks are 'honobono' (restful) or playful in atmosphere.  Visually, it is a reasonably pretty VN... but it isn't near the higher end of things.

I feel a need to mention the ero simply because of the degree to which the spare (short and plain) h-scenes screw up the rhythm of a VN that doesn't have that good of a rhythm in the first place.  This is a VN that was definitely made with an eye toward releasing a console non-H version later on, and it shows.  As such, the ero is fairly meaningless and tends to be more of an obstacle to enjoyment than is usual.

One more little thing that had me peeved about this VN was the fact that the protagonist is nameable... and that is also the single element that caused me the most difficulty in enjoying the VN as a whole.  I don't say this to be an ass, but this particular trope has a singularly dehumanizing effect on the protagonist of any VN in which it is used.  Considering how weak and pale charage protags are in the first place, this is a really bad idea, lol.  In particular, when there is a blank spot in various spoken dialogue from the heroines where nothing is said or the name is changed to a pronoun, it feels really weird and breaks my engrossment in the story.  Style-wise, this is one of the most abominable tropes in existence, and it is the reason it took me five tries to get into and finish Hoshi ori Yume Mirai, despite the overall high-quality of the VN otherwise.

Now... this VN particularly shines in its heroine routes.  Those routes are done - as I mentioned above - in the 'older' style, where the heroines have a serious problem that only comes up when they are with the protagonist and the protagonist solves, thus affirming their bond (after some shakeups).  Now, I don't particularly hate this particular archaic type of story, and the heroine routes themselves are fairly high-level... but looking at the VN as a whole, the weak scenario design outside of the heroine paths (the lead up to the romance formation) is absolutely abominable to experience.  This, in some ways, makes the heroine paths an experience in the good slowly carving away at the negativity of the early game. 

Overall, this VN is a typical Circus experience... good in some ways, godawful in many others.  It is difficult to call most of the games by this company a kusoge, but this kind of BS is why this company isn't anywhere near a favorite of mine. 

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10 hours ago, Narcosis said:

Why you doing this, Clephas. Why? :amane:

Just what do you mean by that?  lol

I honestly saw it that way... as I said, the heroine routes were good, but the protagonist is terrible, character interactions were weak, and the protagonist-naming thing made everything worse, lol.

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In some vns if  you leave the default name, which is most of the time the same lol (they use what I guess is the equivalent of john doe in english xD) the heroines do pronounce the name without leaving those weird and awkward pauses in between...  I also hate it, I think that naming the protagonist is one of the most idiotic and annoying "features" a vn can have.

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The best system I've seen with customised names is Mass Effect. You can customise the first name, but the last name is always the same, and everybody addresses you by the last name. It was pretty cool, benefits of customisation combined with the benefits of a set name.

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Well I don't fully agree on that, at first it's ok if everyone calls him shepard, specially if he is in a higher position (like you're most of the time) but when you are having sex with someone or talking to a close friends and they still address him as "Shepard" is a bit weird.. specially because he calls them by their names in those situations, for example he doesn't say "lawsome" he says "miranda".
if you are between friends in some very casual meeting and they only call you by your surname it will sound awkward.
I think it wasn't a problem in mass effect because Shepard sounds really bad ass and so nobody really cared or paid atention to it xD

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