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Sweet Volley High (failed VN)


Plk_Lesiak

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Outside of new releases, I usually try to avoid reviewing bad OELVNs in-detail, unless they’re especially interesting or notable despite their failures – after all, in any semi-amateur game development scene, the poorly-made, misguided or horribly iterative titles will be far more numerous than those actually worthy of your attention. Writing that much about the former, especially when my goal is to promote OELVNs as a niche worth exploring, is arguably a waste of time and possibly even counter-productive. However, just like Carpe Diem: Reboot, today’s game is a great opportunity to look at some problems and tropes very characteristic of the Western VN scene, in a game that actually had the production values and traces of genuine effort that should at least make it an average, reasonably enjoyable product. And the sin that made it ultimately fail was not silly writing that plagued Carpe Diem, but something arguably even worse – boredom.

            Sweet Volley High, developed by New West Games and released on Steam in October 2016, was marketed as a “yuri/otome Visual Novel”, featuring a female protagonist and both female and male romance options. While some might already feel unease about such use of the terms "yuri" and "otome", both of which usually denotes a bit more than just romantic configurations available, it hints at a much deeper problems – game’s utter lack of personality and very poor use of the themes it tries to tackle. While trying to appeal to a broad audience, in reality, it wasn’t able to replicate the appeal of neither yuri nor otome games, just as it didn’t manage to create a satisfying alternative to those formulas. But, why exactly is that the case?

Read the full article at evnchronicles.blogspot.com

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3 minutes ago, 1P1A said:

Has there ever been a sports-centered VN that was actually good?

Little Busters I guess? You can argue whether it's really about sports, but here the use of the theme is super-shallow too. :P

And there's actually another volleyball OELVN on Kickstarter now, don't have time to look up the title now, but I wonder whether the curse will hold or that new one will be decent after all. ;p

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1 minute ago, Plk_Lesiak said:

And there's actually another volleyball OELVN on Kickstarter now, don't have time to look up the title now, but I wonder whether the curse will hold or that new one will be decent after all. ;p

I'll keep my fingers crossed for a Haikyuu!! of VNs :P

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Yup, one more VN out of Endless backlog Works™.

Sad to see that the Otoge/Yurige Hybrid I Was looking for is Just as generic as NOBY. I guess I'll keep awaiting for a good one.

But as always you're doing great Reviews and I'm here to be a douche and nitpick a typo. xo/

On the first pharagraph I Think you meant "Interative" and not "Iterative".

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18 minutes ago, SeniorBlitz said:

On the first pharagraph I Think you meant "Interative" and not "Iterative".

For a moment I've got scared that my whole life was a lie and I've been misspelling or misusing a very important word, but thankfully I did mean iterative there. The grammar was messy though, I hope the sentence makes more sense now. ;)

And yeah, I've seen some otome games with decent yuri routes, but probably not a real hybrid. Because this game is not a hybrid, it's just the Generic Romance VN incarnate, just with a (poorly done) female, bisexual lead.

Edited by Plk_Lesiak
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