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Nukige: Grimo Love and some comments on the beginning of Jeanne

Clephas

Entry posted by Clephas

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Grimo Love is a nukige.  Now, you'll notice that I generally don't bother to rate or comment on nukige... because most of the time I drop them inside of ten minutes.  However, Grimo Love has this sort of dread fascination to it that kept me playing right until the end (incidentally, it wasn't the story or the characters that kept me going). 

I'm going to be blunt.  This VN doesn't really have a story.  Oh, there is one in there that probably would have made for a ridiculously good charage with story if they'd bothered to develop it properly... and the sheer amount of detailed sprites in this VN makes me want to ask why they didn't.  However, this is ultimately a nukige and it has that ever-so-familiar 'sex under the necessity' trope going for it.

In this case, the protagonist is a member of the student council and the Second Literature Club (descended from the ancient Occult Research Club, whose leader died ten years before).  This VN is so full of supernatural incidents that they actually overwhelm the nukige H by a ratio of 10:1... and that's just weird, for a nukige (and it is one, from the feeling).  The school in this VN, its characters, and the constant incidents are comedic and feel unbelievably surreal... and virtually endless.  This VN is seriously long.  It took me twenty hours to finish, and most of the time I was either smiling or outright laughing.

If you asked me whether this was a pure comedy, I'd say no... but despite all the horrifying incidents that supposedly occur or almost occur around the characters (with a witch teacher who loves evil grimoires constantly causing trouble, ghosts and youkai attracted to the school like moths to a flame, and a vampire True Ancestor sleeping on the emergency stairs, how could it be peaceful?  lol) it never quite manages to be serious.  Sure, there is a really half-hearted attempt to make certain parts serious... but the characters and their reactions are so silly and blase that it is impossible to take even zombies, ogres, and evil gods seriously.  The protagonist's blase reaction to everything that happens around him is what defines a lot of the VN's atmosphere, and since he basically has sex with all the girls as a result of such incidents (or the girls' whims) it is kind of hard to take anything in this VN seriously.

In other words, I laughed but I never cried.

 

Anyway, now down to my thoughts on Jeanne... Liarsoft's new game.  I only started it about five hours ago, but I'm already ready to drop it.  Sorry, I just have trouble with Alice in Wonderland-type down the rabbit-hole stories.  Mixing it with chuuni-ism and a former French Resistance fighter doesn't actually help as much as you might think, at least for me.

I'm sometimes surprised at how intolerant I can be of this kind of stuff... but it doesn't really help that the writer is making it out to be a huge mystery when what is going on is blatantly obvious to anyone who has read a little bit of history and surrealist fantasy.  As a point of reference, I just have unforgiving tastes when it comes to serious fantasy in general.  My dislike for surrealist fantasy (I like down in the dirt fantasy much better) is an inevitable result of having outgrown that kind of crap when I was in second grade, lol.  Just making it  more mature doesn't make it interesting for me.

Anyway, I'm going to play a random VN until I can get into a mood to forgive this VN for being a part of a sub-genre type that I generally avoid like the plague, so don't expect another post on it for at least a few days.

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ChaosRaven

Your description of Jeanne sounds more like the title isn't really your cup of tea and less that it would be necessarily bad. The last title of the writer was Fairytale Requiem which is probably the pinnacle of surrealistic fantasy with its 'Alice in Wonderland on steroids' scenario. Certainly a bit too much for my taste, but Jeanne seems to be toned down quite a bit, which would be about right for me. The mystery part doesn't sound that bad to me considering you once said that you're not a big fan of mystery if I remember right. So, ironically your description doesn't sound that bad to me since I do like mystery and I'm more tolerant if it isn't perfect. At least as long as the story doesn't get too ridiculous or the characters are total failures.

BTW, what happened to your play-though of Gears of Dragoon 2? Was it that bad for you that it wasn't even worth rating?

Ah, and speaking of RPG/ VN hybrids, do you intend to try Eushully's upcoming Sankai Ou no Yubiwa? On first sight I wasn't exactly overwhelmed, but apparently you can start the title with 6 different protagonist characters, 3 male ones and 3 female ones, and each one has a different story. I think that's almost a novelty, not only for Eushully but for VN's in general. Character selection at the start reminds me more of western RPG's. I'm curious what they made out of it and if the usually very long play-throughs are shorter because of that.

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Clephas
38 minutes ago, ChaosRaven said:

Your description of Jeanne sounds more like the title isn't really your cup of tea and less that it would be necessarily bad. The last title of the writer was Fairytale Requiem which is probably the pinnacle of surrealistic fantasy with its 'Alice in Wonderland on steroids' scenario. Certainly a bit too much for my taste, but Jeanne seems to be toned down quite a bit, which would be about right for me. The mystery part doesn't sound that bad to me considering you once said that you're not a big fan of mystery if I remember right. So, ironically your description doesn't sound that bad to me since I do like mystery and I'm more tolerant if it isn't perfect. At least as long as the story doesn't get too ridiculous or the characters are total failures.

BTW, what happened to your play-though of Gears of Dragoon 2? Was it that bad for you that it wasn't even worth rating?

Ah, and speaking of RPG/ VN hybrids, do you intend to try Eushully's upcoming Sankai Ou no Yubiwa? On first sight I wasn't exactly overwhelmed, but apparently you can start the title with 6 different protagonist characters, 3 male ones and 3 female ones, and each one has a different story. I think that's almost a novelty, not only for Eushully but for VN's in general. Character selection at the start reminds me more of western RPG's. I'm curious what they made out of it and if the usually very long play-throughs are shorter because of that.

It is more like I prioritize my rpg-playing for Fire Emblem and Nights of Azure... I don't have the time to go back and finish Gears of Dragoon at the moment, especially with Langrisser coming out later this month. 

Sankai Ou no Yubiwa I intend to play.  It is Eushully and it looks reasonably interesting (hopefully it doesn't end up like Kami no Rhapsody). 

My opinions on  Jeanne are mostly based on my personal tastes.  When I say a 'mystery' it isn't in the deduction sense but rather a general story flow and setting sense... in that kind of VN, knowing all the secrets too early on is a mood killer.

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starlessn1ght

Hey, @Clephas, there's still something I didn't quite get. Last post you said that since there were way too many releases in March, you had to avoid some of them. But, we're not even past half of the month. Considering your reading speed, I don't think it would be unlikely you could play everything you were intending to. So why are you doing that? 

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Clephas

@starlessn1ght

The thing is, I really and seriously don't want to play everything from March... just because I have time doesn't mean that it is worth me using that time to do so.  I have other games to play, books to read, and work to do.  I might very well play them as random VNs during the summer, when I probably won't have anything better to do, but it is hard to get up the interest to play a lot of the VNs on March's list.  I don't want to read Maitetsu because Monobeno was my limit (actually over it) for lolige and Maitetsu is even worse.  I don't really want to read the new Dies Irae right now (and maybe not ever) because I honestly don't have a desire to revisit the Dies Irae world without a whole new cast of characters.  Jeanne is giving me headaches from trying to ignore how much I dislike what they are doing in the game.  My reasons for not wanting to play Shoujo-tachi were made pretty clear in the previous one, but I'll add another... I'm seriously bored with seishun drama now, and combined with my increasing distrust of anything by Takahiro that isn't Majikoi, I find it hard to get up the motivation to play it. 

Giga's newest 'Kiss' series game is just out of the question.

I might very well dig into Astronauts new dungeon-crawler... if I can decide whether I think it will suck or not. 

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starlessn1ght
9 hours ago, Clephas said:

 I have other games to play, books to read, and work to do. 

If you read any books, and if it pleases you (I mean to post not to read), please post your impressions.

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Chronopolis
18 hours ago, starlessn1ght said:

If you read any books, and if it pleases you (I mean to post not to read), please post your impressions.

Mm that would be good aside from VN's. I liked that review you had of that one book that was about a really shitty political situation or something.

Quote

I'm sometimes surprised at how intolerant I can be of this kind of stuff... but it doesn't really help that the writer is making it out to be a huge mystery when what is going on is blatantly obvious to anyone who has read a little bit of history and surrealist fantasy. 

Oh, that's how Jeanne already turned out. Aww, that's a bit unfortunate...When you surreal I think of Kusarihime, not sure if that's surreal or just a mindfuck.

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Veshurik

Supernatural nukige, hm, sounds interesting. Grimoire is a old book of magic, yes? So, the name of this game means... Ehem... I think, that Japanese choose random names for their titles. And they usually don't make sense (for example, Hanikami Clover; I didn't find any clover in this game). 

 

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