Jump to content
  • entries
    766
  • comments
    1836
  • views
    478992

Hoshi Furu Yoru no Farnese and VN of the Month September 2017


Clephas

1042 views

Farnese

This review was written by fun2novel and edited by me.  fun2novel's tastes run to complex settings and stories, with a strong preference for mysteries and a fondness for chuunige.

Let me start of by saying that Farnese is a good game. It has all the elements that make a great Phoenix Wright style mystery game. Much of the story is inhabited by murders, corpses, clues, trials, murderers, witnesses, and other characters involved. The game is divided into several chapters with route splits at certain points. So the game is above average to good.

On the other hand, the game doesn’t do anything different or even better than any other game with a similar bent. The problem is especially compounded by the fact that many other very similar games that were already released this year. 2017 is definitely not a good year for Farnese to come out, as the market is already a bit glutted for this type of mystery. From an objective perspective it’s a fun and good game, but if you'll forgive me being subjective for a moment...  I have to say is that I feel like I’m already burned out when it comes to these these murder mysteries and Phoenix Wright style games, and, at the end of the day, Farnese is as basic as they come.

To be fair, the characters are pretty fun and there’s some funny comedy in Farnese. Though, very little of it actually made me more than smile slightly. If all you want are some fun characters you could do worse than Farnese. Each of them are voiced by good voice actors as well, which makes the experience of hearing their voices very pleasant.

Like any other game of this type the game starts to tell a story, then murder happens, you gather clues by clicking around the crime scene, then go to trial and present your case. Which will hopefully help you convince that the witness is lying or telling the truth and win the case. The more you progress with the trial and get closer to proving your case the more undressed the witness gets until she is (or in one case she and he) completely naked (Clephas: I thought he was joking when I first read this). While they are naked you get to touch them in various places, yes, you heard me right. In the middle of a court, a witness, depending how suspicious they are, will be in various stages of undress until they are completely naked and you get to touch them (Clephas: Yeeew... I am glad I left this to him). Now, to be fair, you need to do it to find a certain mark on their body. However, you are also allowed to touch their tits, pussy, and asshole. The places you can touch depends on the character but… WTF?! REALLY??? The developers couldn’t think of anything ELSE?! Trust me guys, it sounds better than it really is. It really isn’t worth to play the game just for those naughty moments. It’s more shameful than arousing.

The game also has a TIPS system, called Astropedia here, with information about items, terms, people, and the constellations. You’ll need to use the Astropedia to solve some mysteries and answer the questions correctly.  The game also has system voices. System voices are a voices that play whenever you do things like save/load or turn of the game. In games like Grisaia the voices are quick and short. Games like Vermilion and Electro Arms also used system voices but the developer decided against that in their subsequent games, even if the voices were very short and unobtrusive. In Farnese on the other hand, the system voice talks for far too long and it gets very annoying, you save a game and the voice talks for like 10 or 16 seconds while you want to continue playing and listen to what the characters are saying, but you are forced to either wait or hear both the character and the system voice at the same time. Same thing if you just loaded the game, the system voice keeps talking for a few more seconds, you're just forced to sit there and wait for the voice to finally shut the hell up.

The presentation isn’t that good either. The main characters are well designed, but they still don’t look that great. However, if the main characters are passable then the other characters are just hairy ass ugly trolls. The designers didn’t even try to make them look presentable, and, in fact, I don’t think they ever drew a human in their life. The difference between the main and non main characters is almost like the difference between night and day. The backgrounds are ok, not bad but nothing that stands out as special. 

The music on the other hand is good... but it also sounds like a generic copy of something from Phoenix Wright.  To be specific, the music during the court scenes.

Farnese is not a bad game. In fact, it’s average to good. If you hunger for more of this style of game and you already played Ouka Sabaki then you should go ahead and try it. But if you haven’t played Ouka Sabaki yet then go play that first... and if you still want more, you can try Farnese.  However, there are much better alternatives out there.

VN of the Month, September 2017

First, to address the two VNs reviewed by fun2novel... I'm going to be blunt.  His reactions, both in private and in the reviews were lukewarm at best.  Mono no Aware suffers from ambitious overreach and Farnese from the Japanese 'virtue' of complimenting something by imitating it.  As such, I more or less eliminated them from the running after reading their reviews.

The three main candidates that survived to the final choice were Omokage Railback, Yuganda Uso to Koi no Letter, and Oni ga Kuru.  To be straight with you... I knocked off Yuganda Uso rather early on.  While I rated it the same as Omokage Railback on vndb, my opinion of Omokage is somewhat  (clearly) higher.  I did rate Oni ga Kuru higher than Omokage on vndb... but I did so because it gave me precisely what I wanted... a nostalgic trip into my early days playing untranslated VNs.

Now... there are reasons that could have pushed either one to the top, but there is one huge reason Omokage falls somewhat behind even when I set aside my rather perverted preference for the incestuous oneechan and onigami girl of Oni ga Kuru.  To be blunt, I never did figure out what Omokage Railback's protagonist was thinking.  No internal monologues, very limited speech from him, and a general lack of insight into what lay behind the eyes of the characters were reasons to be both attracted and repelled by the VN.  Oni ga Kuru, on the other hand, takes what the charage genre does best - slice-of-life - and combines it with some seriously twisted heroines and a protagonist who has enough issues to make him interesting.  Moreover, the entire setup is almost constantly hilarious, save for when it goes completely insane at a few points along the way.  As such, Oni ga Kuru. ~Ane ga Hinshi de Pinchi Desu~ is VN of the Month, September 2017.

0 Comments


Recommended Comments

There are no comments to display.

Guest
Add a comment...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...