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AIRIS (free otome VN review)


Plk_Lesiak

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airis_1_by_szafalesiaka-dbxhmmd.jpg

Although a significant portion of VNs produced in the West is published for free on platforms such as Steam or Itch.io, most of them are very short and simple projects, often made by starting-out developers or as quickly put-together entries for contents such as Yuri Game Jam. Still, from time to time, it’s possible to find a VNs on a completely different scale also available as free-to-play releases – AIRIS, created by Ebullience Games for NaNoRenO OELVN event and published on April 2017, is definitely among the most expansive games of this kind, with proper route structure and impressive story variation, that will require you many hours to fully experience.

            While at first glance this otome might look like a generic fantasy romance, it offers a few fairly unique ideas (which I will not spoil in the review) – and those go far beyond its loudly advertised inclusivity, expressed through various LGBT+ themes. While not straying far from the typical formula of the genre, AIRIS indeed offers both a fully-fledged yuri romance route and another one focused on a non-binary character. More importantly though, it takes the somewhat overused trope of MMORPG and gives it an amusing spin – one which created some really interesting storytelling opportunities, even if their execution often left something to be desired.

Read the full article at evnchronicles.blogspot.com

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Guest

Posted (edited)

YEAH ONE MORE 2 MY GIANT BACKLOG, ALSO IT IS MRM (Multiple Route Mystery) VN SO, YESSSSSS!!!

Noice review, it is nice to see ya' getting along with Otoges. VNDB states that the game is a 2-10h experience, so that is curious...

The only disappointment here is that you can't date the bear. ;_; THAT IS BEARPHOBIA!!!

EDIT: BTW minor typo on the phrase "Diversity of the cast and possible romance options is definitely one of the game’s selling points – thankfully, all of the characters are solidand there’s no obvious agenda present in the storytelling (no, the bear is not romanceable)" "solid" and "and" should be separated, sorry for the whining.  xoI

Edited by Guest
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49 minutes ago, SeniorBlitz said:

YEAH ONE MORE 2 MY GIANT BACKLOG, ALSO IT IS MRM (Multiple Route Mystery) VN SO, YESSSSSS!!!

Noice review, it is nice to see ya' getting along with Otoges. VNDB states that the game is a 2-10h experience, so that is curious...

The only disappointment here is that you can't date the bear. ;_; THAT IS BEARPHOBIA!!!

I think VNDB length is often set as the time you need for a single playthrough, rather than how long it'll take you to 100% the game. So it is 5-6 hours to get to your first ending but the route variation is pretty significant. :]

And yeah, I very much like the more casual/tame storytelling that most otome games offer. I don't enjoy the romance itself as much as I do with yuri, but everything I've read for the "Otome Month" posts was very much enjoyable. I like using the blog to force some more diversity into my reading schedule BTW, it makes things more interesting. ;)

Quote

EDIT: BTW minor typo on the phrase "Diversity of the cast and possible romance options is definitely one of the game’s selling points – thankfully, all of the characters are solidand there’s no obvious agenda present in the storytelling (no, the bear is not romanceable)" "solid" and "and" should be separated, sorry for the whining.  xoI

Thank you, I'll always leave a few of those between edits, so pointing that out is helping rather than whining. :P

Edited by Plk_Lesiak
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33 minutes ago, Plk_Lesiak said:

I think VNDB length is often set as the time you need for a single playthrough, rather than how long it'll take you to 100% the game. So it is 5-6 hours to get to your first ending but the route variation is pretty significant. :]

Not really, since the VNDB length normally counts all routes (if you would apply the single-play logic F/SN would be a 10-30h game, since the fate route takes around 24h).

35 minutes ago, Plk_Lesiak said:

And yeah, I very much like the more casual/tame storytelling that most otome games offer. I don't enjoy the romance itself as much as I do with yuri, but everything I've read for the "Otome Month" posts was very much enjoyable. I like using the blog to force some more diversity into my reading schedule BTW, it makes things more interesting. ;)

Yeah, I enjoy them for a similar reason, but, I also like more complex otoges like 7'scarlet. I'm looking forward to what are you going to post, since it each time you post my backlog gets bigger and bigger. xoS

37 minutes ago, Plk_Lesiak said:

Thank you, I'll always leave a few of those between edits, so pointing that out is helping rather than whining. :P

Welcome. :o)

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14 minutes ago, SeniorBlitz said:

Not really, since the VNDB length normally counts all routes (if you would apply the single-play logic F/SN would be a 10-30h game, since the fate route takes around 24h).

Yeah, I mean, I know you're right, it's just that people seem to do that often, I'm a pretty slow reader but I'm quite sure I've seen many titles that had heavily underestimated playtimes and I rarely remember to actually go to VNDB page and correct that. :P

Edited by Plk_Lesiak
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8 minutes ago, Plk_Lesiak said:

Yeah, I mean, I know you're right, it's just that people seem to do that often, I'm a pretty slow reader but I'm quite sure I've seen many titles that had heavily underestimated playtimes and I rarely remember to actually go to VNDB page and correct that. :P

I ended up changing it to 10-30h anyway. 

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I had this game downloaded from a long while ago and finally got to playing it. I loved the characters, with Kylan's route surprisingly being my most favorite. I loved the different endings, glad I got the romantic good ones first before the bad ones. I really am glad I got to play this game. There were some times that had me tear up, so well done! 

I can't find much out about what happened to this company and why the game got pulled from Steam, but I found this page and wanted to leave some sort of review so you guys (if you're out there) can see that we still love your game. 

 

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