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Lamunation! Review - It's A Mad And Brilliantly Shining World


Pallas_Raven

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This is a condensed version of the full review which can be found on my Main Blog Here.

Genre - Comedy.   Play Time - 15 hours.   Developer - WhitePowder   Steam   VNDB

 

Always Be Happy!

 

Most visual novels use comedy in some form, be it a joke to break tension or a scene to make the player empathise with the characters, but few commit to it as the single focus of their identity. This is for a good reason, humour is subjective and as such making a comedy game with a wide appeal is a difficult feat. Lamunation comes along and says ‘but what if we just double down on our style, twice the intensity should mean twice the appeal’. It makes for quite a strong statement of uncompromising vision and it is this which will either enrapture you or turn you off the experience. However, does this gambit really work to draw you into its humour laden world? Let’s find out.

 

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So I Hear You Like Ramune – Narrative and Themes

 

Lamunation has a surprisingly diverse set of narrative tools and tricks to break up its comedy into manageable chucks while offering something substantial to chew on. This a game which knows how to lean into the emotions it draws out through its humour and utilises them to create a bond between player and characters. However, this approach is not without its issues and these force a strange balancing act with the game’s writing.

 

When a game opens with the cast skydiving with no safety equipment just to get the perfect photo you know what sort of experience you are in for. Setting the tone for the type of humour the player will be presented with and acclimatising them to this content is one of Lamunation’s greatest strengths. While it opens with a bang there is a concerted effort to make sure that future jokes and events have some basis in what has come before, and in doing so establish the boundaries of this humour within the player’s mind. This is cleverly used with a selection of delayed pay offs to keep earlier moments of the narrative in the front of your mind in a manner that does not detract from your enjoyment of the immediate joke or scene. These work in tandem to ensure a coherency throughout the entire game which is surprising given how off the rails it gets.

 

As for Lamunation’s particular brand of humour itself, it sits in the Pop Team Epic end of the spectrum rather than the more traditional Slice of Life humour found many other visual novels. What this means in practice is a parade of increasing improbable and elaborate situations which serve as the focal point of whatever joke is being made and it is interested in having its characters be both the straight man and the advocate of this madness, often at the same time. However, it never reaches the disconnected segments which define Pop Team Epic and instead structures them along character route lines with certain through themes for each which are a constant presence for the player to latch onto. As such this is a particular friendly example of this type of humour for newcomers, it never ventures into complete nonsense and meets them halfway by offering a familiar route based core so its tendrils of humour can wrap around you.

 

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If there is one noticeable weakness to the narrative of Lamunation it is the lack of a plot centric driving force, outside of Corona’s route, to propel the player and keep them hooked. There are forces at play in each route to keep the narrative going but they lack any overall direction and are only relevant in that single moment. It is hardly a unique feature of Lamunation as many other visual novels use similar techniques, but it is a problem here due to its combination with the focus on humour. As you might imagine this can lead to the story feeling like a string of jokes which are going nowhere in the grand scheme of the game. Thankfully this is only something which comes to the front in retrospect after a route has been completed, but it does hurt player retention since it might make them feel as if there is no point to playing another route since they have seen all it has to offer. A stronger foreshadowing and focus on building up Corona’s route would have gone a long way to alleviating this issue and it is a shame the developers did not choose to play up an overarching narrative.

 

While the character routes might lack a strong plot through line they make up for with the focus on making each scene as memorable as the last with a gradual escalation in their quality. Lamunation understanding how to get the most out of every single screen of the game and milk it for as much humour as possible. It manages to make sure that this constant barrage of new content is not overwhelming by ensuring it never puts two events which are too different next to each other, which help to provide a sense of progress and continuity to what would otherwise be a seemingly random series of encounters. Helping this along is the core of most visual novel routes, a focus on a small subset of the cast. This trick is especially effective in Lamunation as it gives it an otherwise absent bedrock for the player to identify with and invested in. In combination, these traits create an extremely impactful experience in the moment supporting the humour at the core of the game’s presentation.

 

Bring Smiles To Their Faces – Characters

 

Lamunation is a highly character focused visual novel and without its strong cast the humour would not be able to land properly. Their banter and bonds serve as the basis of everything which happens in the game, so it is a good thing that they are utilised to their fullest extent by placing them in strange circumstances and having them react appropriately.

 

There has been a concerted effort by the developer to keep the cast number down with most scenes involving a handful of the five main characters and maybe an occasional side character popping up. Each of their conversations mixes small glimpses of their various personalities with the humour in an organic manner by ensuring the lens of a scene never extends beyond that small group of characters. This enables an intimacy with them which the game can leverage to make sure you are laughing along with their antics as if you were part of the group yourself. The effect of this angle is that the strong and distinctive personalities of the cast are put front and centre as the main pole around which the humour can dance and bring the madness of proceedings into a more relatable format for a wider audience. Such an empathsis on characters is the corner stone on which Lamunation is based.

 

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Brilliant Moments in Bright Tones -Visual, Audio and Technical

 

Everything about the visual and audio of Lamunation pops with a vigorous and upbeat energy which is infectious in its aggressive positivity. The art style’s sole focus is making the humour and character moments have as much impact on the senses as possible. In order to achieve this it liberally utilises a strong light colour pallet and exaggerated character poses and features which shift and change to suit the needs of the scene. The music follows a similar vein with cheerful tunes that are designed to invoke the feel good vibe at the core of the game’s thematics. These songs lean heavily into synthesiser sounds and this lends a near future feeling to the setting while assisting in detaching Lamunation for the expectations of a realistic narrative. However, both sound and imagery suffer from a common problem in that they can feel somewhat standard at times. Most Slice of Life visual novels lean into similar aesthetic and musical choices for different reasons but the result for Lamunation is the sense that it is just another in a long line of such titles. It never escapes from this feeling over its play time and this is a shame as the visuals and audio are by no means of poor quality.

 

If Lamunation missteps in any serious way it is in the failure to lock Corona’s route behind the completion of the other two. This is a problem because as mentioned before Corona’s route acts as the finale to the game and wraps up all the previous routes, meaning that it simultaneously spoils those routes and references events which it expects you to already know while providing no context. It is truly baffling why the developers would think it is acceptable for an unsuspecting new player to be allowed to accidentally choose a route which could potential ruin their overall enjoyment of the game. Of course if you know about this fact it is easy to plan your playthrough around it, hence why it has been brought up here, but this is not an issue the player should ever have to consider in the first place.

 

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Verdict –

Lamunation’s uniquely mad brand of humour coupled with its likeable characters creates one of the most compelling comedy visual novels.
 
 

Pros

 

+ A distinctive and insane brand of humour which always finds a way to surprise.

 

+ Visual and audio which invoke a brilliantly bright and memorable world.

 

+ Strong and easily identifiable characters who banter in a believable and funny manner.

 

+ Has some strangely cathartic character routes which work as a pay off to the humour.

 

Cons

 

- Can feel directionless at times with one comic scenario after another instead of plot progression.

 

- With no route unlocks it is possible to play Corona's route first despite the fact it is clearly intended to be the finale.

 

- The small cast is as much a curse as a blessing given how it limits the variety of interactions.

 

 

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I should note that there is very, very little description/narration in this story.  It is almost completely dialogue based, so in that sense it falls behind most other VNs.  However, since the entire point of the VN is making you laugh, it doesn't matter as much as it would in a different VN (even a charage).  I remember that this VN made me smile on numerous occasions, so I'm not going to go any further in saying anything negative about it.

 

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I should say that the art is quite easy on eyes even though the drawing may be a bit odd for some, and that the futuristic atmosphere there is quite neat. That said though, perhaps the author realize that this kind of VN is like soft drink (ie lamune), quite nice and yet it didn't bring something more than that. It also interesting to note that the bad vote on Erogamescape there may be because the author wrote the crude joke to female (I forgot the exact case), which obviously can be said as the sexual harassments. Lastly, while I understand that there's a license issue with the engine, unfortunately the engine for the English version is not the best to say it lightly with the most glaring flaw is that there's no voice playback in the backlog, in which it's something that even older VN provide.

To conclude this, while Lamunation here is obviously not the VN that would be something like WA2 or Muramasa, at least it's quite a nice VN on it's own, especially for it's fans.

PS - For the info, in regard of the opening I prefer the 2nd one.

Edited by littleshogun
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