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Why I'm going to drop Kadenz Fermata


Clephas

1757 views

Yes, I'm serious about dropping this VN.  There are a number of reasons... but the main one is a pet peeve that has recently become my primary one when it comes to VNs... and that is flowcharts.  I HATE flowcharts.  Making it worse is that Kadenz Fermata's flowchart is combined with an unbelievably annoying 'gameplay' system that requires you to take a really half-assed 'active' part in the battles to bring them to the best possible conclusion... even though that conclusion is often identical to the one that would have occurred if you hadn't intervened. 

I'm not kidding.  Every single battle scene - and there are a lot of them - requires you to 'intervene'

Spoiler

 

breaking fourth wall setup) and change the flow of the battle by picking a course of action to take... and without a walkthrough, it is pretty close to impossible to figure out.  Moreover, if you don't manage to get the best result, you get the bad ending... again.  I say again because the game takes you through one of the two protagonists' viewpoints to the end, where everything is irredeemably fucked over, and then forces you to start over from the beginning (adding a whole bunch of extra side-character events to the story, but essentially following the same path with a lot of extra battles and a newborn ability to 'intervene'). 

I never thought I'd run into a chuunige where I hated the battle scenes, but this game actually makes it possible.  Nachsten tended to play up the old-style chuunige 'endless powerups' to the extreme, and for that reason I named it 'the first true generic chuunige'.  In other words... Nachsten is to chuunige what Shuffle is to charage/moege... the 'average' of the whole mess.  Making an already stale formula tedious?  Did they really think that was a good idea? 

About halfway through my seventh battle scene in Kadenz, I realized I wasn't even enjoying the game anymore.  Do you have any idea how ridiculous that is for someone as addicted and biased toward chuunige as I am?  I adore chuunige battle scenes.  I love the over the top moves and CGs... but this is the first time I've ever encountered one where I grew completely apathetic about the battles.  A part of it is that I don't believe in breaking the fourth wall in VNs like this... I think it is a terrible idea, and the results are almost never good. 

Another issue is Freya... I never thought it was possible, but Lacryma managed to create a female protagonist who is basically a copy of the third-rate 2001-2005 'heroine who is a naive, unbelievably stupid and thoughtless tool'.  I never once wanted to root for her during the entire thing.  I hate fanatics/zealots who are incapable of facing reality, and she is pretty much the epitome of that.  It is barely tolerable in a heroine and enjoyable as 'side-character who dies horribly, suddenly, and meaninglessly just for kicks', but it is completely unforgivable in a protagonist, at least for me.

Last of all... I was never enthusiastic about them actually creating a direct sequel after they milked the original story so thoroughly before tacking that shitty/half-assed set of endings onto it.  Fortissimo isn't that great a story (though the setting is almost halfway decent), and I honestly thought it was a particularly bad example of a battle royale situation.  Continuing to use the same characters in Kadenz with an addition of yet more (bringing the cast over 20) just thinned my overall interest in them, and in the end I found myself not even the least bit interest in what happened to anyone. 

This VN also has some serious art issues... though I'll set aside characters who were obviously drawn (as in even to my less than discerning eye) by different artists.  However, the slipups with sprite proportions (one sprite suddenly being outright bigger than the rest for no real reason) drove me a bit wild at times... and the sudden shifting in some of the non-battle CGs to Irosekai's style kind of made me go 'eh, what?'  Of course, I also have to mention issues with sound... such as the fact that the voices are so low in this game as to be almost impossible to hear over the BGM even on the lowest settings at times... or the fact that sound effects will sometimes carry over to multiple scenes...

To put it straight to you, everything Nachsten did wrong, this also did wrong, while adding even more problems due to the designers getting 'clever' with their half-assed ideas 'to get the player involved'.

Edit: I really do think that this is a perfect example of an immense amount of money being poured into a 4th class game.  Where Nachsten is tolerable, this one strays into kusoge territory due to the tedium of completing it.

7 Comments


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3 hours ago, Maxel said:

+1 for minori next, would love to read wall of text about their newest title

I am going to play it... last.  Minori isn't something I should be playing while I'm as irritated as I am right now.

3 hours ago, Zakamutt said:

Uhh, you might want to not casually spoil twist-based VNs like that...

Fixed.

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Having to start over and over again in a title with gameplay sections sounds super annoying. Bit of a shame, the series actually looked quite promising.

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1 hour ago, Clephas said:

Fixed.

That spoler has no context though, so people are likely to click it... I'd rather just remove the reference to the VN in question completely - it's probably not going to make it much harder to understand.

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1 hour ago, ChaosRaven said:

Having to start over and over again in a title with gameplay sections sounds super annoying. Bit of a shame, the series actually looked quite promising.

Yeah, it is.  It ruined what was essentially the best part of the series... its battle scenes.

29 minutes ago, Zakamutt said:

That spoler has no context though, so people are likely to click it... I'd rather just remove the reference to the VN in question completely - it's probably not going to make it much harder to understand.

Done

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