Maggot Baits (Yes, I played this)
Entry posted by Clephas
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I’m going to be frank with you about this VN. Maggot Baits is in no way, shape, or form a story with good guys. Everyone in this VN is a monster or scum. This VN has way too much guro, even for a VN focused on the grotesque, and it is actually made worse by the high-quality writing, lol.
That said… story-wise, if you skip through 90% of the H-scenes, this VN is actually pretty good. Unfortunately, if you don’t skip those h-scenes, it is very hard not to see this as one big snuff-film turned VN. Horror… it is that. It is definitely horror. Unfortunately, it is pretty obvious that the writers were just being self-indulgent with the sheer number of such h-scenes (was it really necessary to have multiple mind-break scenes for every single Witch introduced, even the ones who weren’t really significant to the main story?)
The writing in this VN, ironically, is first-class. The problem is, there is so much torture – sexual and otherwise – that it was pretty hard to maintain my interest through large parts of the early VN, where they kept digressing to look at h-scenes of witches that the protagonist never encounters. To be blunt, this is a failure of scenario design, despite the VN as a whole being very well-written.
Visually… the VN is about as high-quality as it gets. Unfortunately, that high-quality just means that those with weak stomachs will spend a lot of time vomiting.
The audio in this VN (I’m ignoring the voices, since way too many of them are h-related) is fairly high-quality, with a focus on death metal tunes and dark techno.
What’s most ironic about this VN is Ending 2, which is the closest thing you can get to a ‘good’ ending. Ending 1 isn’t a bad ending… but it is very much an Akiha from Tsukihime-style ‘normal’ ending. Well, in the sense that there really isn’t any sweetness and a lot of loss. There is a bad ending early on, but it is more like an ‘oops, you screwed up, time to die’ ending, and it feels kind of tacked on, considering you can only access Ending 2 after completing 1. On the bright side, Ending 2 is actually pretty touching, leaving a definite impression and a sense of salvation Ending 1 didn't have.
The protagonist... think of someone who has gone completely over the edge due to his desire for revenge and reduced himself to being a killing machine, willing to use anyone and anything for the sake of his goals, and you will have a decent picture of the guy. In Ending 2, he shows off a softer side, but throughout the path leading to Ending 1, he is a cold-blooded bastard.
Overall… what can I say about this VN? It is a party for those who like extreme guro, but for anyone else, this is going to be a high-stress VN that they probably won’t even get halfway through before dropping. This VN is tailor-made for a niche within a niche in the VN community that generally doesn’t see much high-quality work (that isn’t a remake of old stuff) anymore. That said, it didn’t appeal to me, except once I basically excised the h-scenes and thought about it that way. This VN is a major failure though, from a scenario design perspective, simply because too much effort was put into inserting extra gratuitous sexual violence scenes that just made the entire thing seem monotonous after a while.
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