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Random VN: Eien no Aselia


Clephas

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I recently got the impulse to go back and replay Eien no Aselia, which sat at the top (mostly by inertia and alphanumeric reasons) of my vndb votes for so long.  Eien no Aselia was one of the final games I played in English before I took the dive into Japanese untranslated VNs, and I hadn't replayed it since, though I played Seinarukana within a year of entering the labyrinth.

Eien no Aselia is one of those few 'oldies' I found hadn't lost anything vital in the years since I last played it.  I still immensely enjoyed the story (which is only mildly different in Japanese), and I still fell in love with Aselia on first sight (I'm a sucker for bloodstained fushigi-chan girls with big swords).  I empathized with Yuuto's struggles as he went from a somewhat whiny standard-issue eroge protagonist to a fully rounded out human being with a lot of admirable qualities.

Eien no Aselia is one of those rare hybrids where the gameplay is something you can pick up easily even though you haven't played it in almost a decade.  Oh, there were aspects I had to remember through trial and error, but I was using my old clear save, so I didn't have to bother with leveling or building anything other than ether gates... which made things a lot simpler.  I remember just how much pain I suffered on higher difficulties to get those maxed levels... and why I never went back after finishing all the heroine paths, hahaha.  The game is long, though it isn't nearly as long as Ikusa Megami Zero or some of the other strategy VNs.  Playing it from beginning to end seven times was more than enough for me in the past.

A few aspects of the game have aged poorly (though not really the visuals, which were great for the time it was made).  The aspect that bothered me the most was that more effort wasn't put into developing the non-heroine spirits that you fought with.  While you could access scenes that did develop them somewhat if you made the right dialog choices and didn't let them die in battle, there is definitely a sense that the writers considered them disposable, despite giving them really distinctive personalities that came out on first meetings. 

Spoiler

 

Another is that more wasn't done to make Shun a better antagonist... to be frank, his twisted mentality is only poorly explained, even with the extra scenes at the beginning that pop up on your second playthrough.  Spending some time with him in the Empire would have helped greatly to illustrate his fall from a slightly twisted teenager into true madness. 


 

Replaying Aselia made me remember why I was so eager to see a third Eien Shinken game, and I'm still eagerly awaiting the day when the TBA on the vndb page for Shinyaku Eien no Aselia turns to a real release date. 

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Another is that more wasn't done to make Shun a better antagonist... to be frank, his twisted mentality is only poorly explained, even with the extra scenes at the beginning that pop up on your second playthrough.  Spending some time with him in the Empire would have helped greatly to illustrate his fall from a slightly twisted teenager into true madness. 

 

 

 

 

 

Spoiler

Yeah, I agree. Personally I felt like the secondary antagonists were done a lot better. Especially Quedgin.

 

 

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Replaying Aselia made me remember why I was so eager to see a third Eien Shinken game, and I'm still eagerly awaiting the day when the TBA on the vndb page for Shinyaku Eien no Aselia turns to a real release date.

Last I heard, the rights for the franchise were sold to the writer since the new game was announced, and the project is very likely dead.

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8 hours ago, sanahtlig said:

 

 

Last I heard, the rights for the franchise were sold to the writer since the new game was announced, and the project is very likely dead.

I looked at his twitter... damn, he is really vague about what he plans to do. 

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Well just treat Seinarukana as the last series maybe, and yeah I agree with the sentiment that this VN is still good to me. Also the gameplay is still good and even challenging if you want to get SS mark (I need the walkthrough to achieve that), and I see that they'd improved the gameplay in Seinarukana with the number of skills was added there. I think it's still interesting to play, even though it's all age version instead of 18+ version (For localized version) and obviously it's almost 15 years here. If anything at least the reason for the censorship is better compared to both of Konosora and Miagete by Pulltop, because Dakkodango did chose the best version (At that time) that contain extra routes and yet it didn't contain sex scenes (The release with extra routes and sex scenes was released after all of Dakkodango work is finished). Lolicon censorship was probably the convenience for JAST here, because I still think obviously JAST wouldn't want to do more work by translating the complete version back then (And yet ironically I think that the extra work that Mangagamer did for Damekoi was unnecessary here (Just release as it is instead of implementing emote version on Damekoi)). I think that's all for what I can comment here.

Edited by littleshogun
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23 minutes ago, littleshogun said:

Well just treat Seinarukana as the last series maybe

There's also this thing. I'm not sure what this is though. Doesn't look like it's a game.

25 minutes ago, littleshogun said:

it's almost 15 years here

It was made in 2003, so it passed this point already. :unsure:

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7 hours ago, Dreamysyu said:

There's also this thing. I'm not sure what this is though. Doesn't look like it's a game.

 

It looks like a drama CD, music CD, and a book full of material related to setting up the plot and setting as well as artwork.  It's all focused on Euphoria apparently.

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All of those seiyuu were working in the anime, so maybe the writer will make it all age by using those casts simply because they use the real name. No idea though why the writer decided to get rid all of the sex scenes, but my guess is that the writer want to focus more on the gameplay and story if he manage to release Eternity Sword 3 there (I knew it'll be long time anyway). I have no idea though why the writer did release drama CD and art book first, but maybe they need money to develop the VN.

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