Share your Impressions of TRD: Toko, Episode 0

[Tay]

“When a human is destined to die, the demons ferry their souls to the afterlife. ‘The Reject Demon: Toko’ is the story of Toko herself, a demon who has been kicked out of hell. Toko cannot ferry human souls to the underworld, and every day she stays on earth has her becoming increasingly human. Her troubles, however, are only just beginning.”

I liked TDR: Toko, Ep 0. It has flaws. I will tell you about them. But I liked it and I think the series is worth your investment. I don’t think I liked it quite as much as Fuwa’s official reviewer, Ryechu (you can read his review over on the Reviews Hub), but I definitely liked it enough to recommend you try it out. This post is meant to share my own impressions of the game and why I feel like the game deserved coverage.

The best reason to get this game:

Ginxhou. Seriously. Love her. Every moment of great hilarity involved Ginxhou, so should Lupiesoft ever sell a Ginxhou fandisk – oh please oh please oh please oh please -- I will so be there.

Ugh. Fine. A little more info:

I’ve called Ginxhou a show-stealing side character in other online spaces, and I stand by that. Ginxhou’s lines to fast food workers, deadpan sense of humor, wry wit, and innate fabulousness (manifested externally by two little glory-stars, shown above) made the game a pleasure. I genuinely looked forward to her next scene, time and again.

At the end of episode 0, the two characters I came away caring about were Toko and Ginxhou. That’s not to say the other characters aren’t well-written (in fact I think Lupiesoft did a great job in writing reliable character voices), but the two of them convey their personalities more effectively than the rest. If you take a look at our interview with Lupiesoft, you’ll see that the Lupie team knows they’ve got winners in those two characters – so here’s hoping we get a lot more of them.

World-building:

I like the TDRT universe. It’s got an engaging cosmology and manages to intertwine a lot of great (and multicultural) folklore. Its very structure is intriguing: “Stanzas” as demon lords of hell, parasitic demons whose existence is given meaning from the human souls they ferry into the afterlife, hell being the true origin of Rock ‘n’ Roll, and hell-Earth parallel spaces. Doesn’t that make your imagination turn? It does to mine, and my second-favorite part of the game (after Ginxhou’s scenes) was when I started gaining glimpses into the structure of hell and the milieu of the series.

Pacing:

The game’s pacing is a little awkward. The first half of the game leads up to an engaging climax, but to my surprise (and, eventually, a little confusion), it turns out that wasn’t meant to be the episode’s true climax, merely a halfway-there point. The “true” climax comes at the end of the game, and to be honest, it feels rushed and a little forced. In the last half hour of the game you encounter new, key characters in rapid succession, and Nadia is (too) rapidly re-cast into a new role to prepare her for future episodes. I got the feeling that the Lupiesoft team was preoccupied by (and more interested in) the next episode (or two), and decided to power through the second half of Episode 0. That’s not to say it’s not interesting or worth reading – remember: I think you should buy this game : P – but it felt like a shame. I was starting to connect to the characters, and the change of (/inconsistency in) pacing was… weird.

Music:

I had a lot of fun with the music. It’s a serious draw for the game. If you decide to take the plunge, my advice is to pull out your headphones, turn up the volume a little, and jam out to the tunes. The soundtrack (available on Steam, as well) is really tempting me. I haven’t bought it yet, but I probably will. The idea of walking to school with the guitar-heavy version of the game’s theme is just too tempting to pass up.

Self-Awareness:

I think self-awareness is one of the game's greatest strengths. During the course of the game you'll get funny jabs at visual novels, the game itself, character designs, and even a little at the plot. The game doesn't take itself too seriously, and unlike a lot of VNs which try this and end up feeling campy, TRDT manages to come away feeling fun. TRDT may not be perfect, but it is fun. That's worth a lot, by my measure.

Conclusion:

I’m not very interested in game scores. For me, the more important question is whether or not a VN is worth the investment of A) my time, and B) my money. Toko gets a “Yes, you should try it” from me, and I’ll tell you why: despite its flaws, the game is fun, the series has a truly cool milieu, and they end episode 0 with each character prepped for an intriguing role. I am legitimately intrigued about the next game in the series. I even care about a few of the characters. The game lasted me ~2 hours played across two sessions, and I consider $2.50 per hour of engaging entertainment which sparks my imagination to be a reasonable value proposition.

The game is fun. And sometimes silly. And it has Ginxhou in it. On the whole, I think it earned its recommendations and positive reviews.

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Play the game? What were YOUR impressions?

[sanahtlig]

The game lasted me ~2 hours played across two sessions, and I consider $2.50 per hour of engaging entertainment which sparks my imagination to be a reasonable value proposition.

Finally.  Someone who actually considers value in their evaluation.  Too many games with low production values or that were cheap to localize are marketed as being budget and/or value titles, when in fact the value proposition is pretty terrible.  I would however like to remind everyone that Saya no Uta, possibly one of the defining VNs to ever see an official English release, sells for $25 and clocks in at ~10hrs.  That's about the same "value" as this game (and I still regard that rate as pretty steep, even considering it was Saya no Uta).

 

Is this game better than Saya no Uta?  You're going to have a hard time selling me on that.  And that's the argument I'll continue to make until the English scene manages to release a true masterpiece (or 10) that shows it can stand toe-to-toe with the Japanese VN market.

[Stray Cat]

Looks interesting, I really love when games have a good soundtrack.  Will definitely pick it up during the Summer Steam Sale.  Thanks for the review/recommendation! 

[Zalor]

Is this game better than Saya no Uta?  You're going to have a hard time selling me on that.  And that's the argument I'll continue to make until the English scene manages to release a true masterpiece (or 10) that shows it can stand toe-to-toe with the Japanese VN market.

 

I don't think English VNs can really stand toe-to-toe with professionally made Japanese releases simply because of budget. And even for smaller Japanese VN developers, at least they have a far larger potential market. Regarding OELVNs, without a real market for this stuff, I think the best we can hope for are interesting amateurish/semi-professional VNs. Basically I view most good OELVNs as sort of avant garde VNs that digress from the cliches of Japanese titles. Which is exactly why I am interested in this title.     

[Ryechu]

If the review didn't give it away, I really did enjoy this piece, and for the price tag it was definitely worth picking up.  Even if I hadn't received a review copy, I still would have dropped five bucks to grab this.

 

My primary reason for enjoying this is the genre itself.  I love music, and VNs that have it as a primary theme I tend to enjoy.  I actually am going to sit down with one of the writers and have a nerd session with them - I'm really looking forward to it!

 

I already voiced my dislikes - primarily the writing style and the character sprites, but after playing through the Prelude a second time, I can say that my list has not increased.  I did catch a few things on my second playthrough that I really liked (namely some of the lower-key jokes), though my favorite girl is still Toko, with Ginxhou following closely behind.  I just like Toko's reactions, and while I find more deadpan characters amusing, I do like characters who typically overreact to every scenario.

 

I'm under the assumption that this price will remain the same for the remaining games, which would put the full thing at $20 for what I can assume will be around 10 hours worth of story.  That's a solid number, and a great place to be.  Though if they do add voice acting (there's discussion about it), I can see this number going up slightly.  But even then, $10 a chapter is still a price I would be happy to pay for the entertainment.

[Darklord Rooke]

Regarding OELVNs, without a real market for this stuff, I think the best we can hope for are interesting amateurish/semi-professional VNs. Basically I view most good OELVNs as sort of avant garde VNs that digress from the cliches of Japanese titles. Which is exactly why I am interested in this title.     

 

The market comes once you combine the VN structure with gameplay, ala The Banner Saga. VNs don't appeal to book readers, because of technology and other reasons, and the easiest way of appealing to gamers is by incorporating gameplay. It would be awesome if VNs could appeal to novel readers one day, but that's going to be hard when they're chained to the PC.

 

Or you could have the production values to make it an interactive movie-telling experience, ala Telltale studios.

 

I'll give this game a whirl very soon. Looks interesting!

[Ironstorm]

I don't think English VNs can really stand toe-to-toe with professionally made Japanese releases simply because of budget. And even for smaller Japanese VN developers, at least they have a far larger potential market. Regarding OELVNs, without a real market for this stuff, I think the best we can hope for are interesting amateurish/semi-professional VNs. Basically I view most good OELVNs as sort of avant garde VNs that digress from the cliches of Japanese titles. Which is exactly why I am interested in this title.     

 

I agree on a budget level and time input level. Many of the popular titles/teams/circles/studios, we're(evn) compared to have been been producing content from anywhere between 3-11 or more years ago there is a real paying market for talent on various projects in Japan. Where as the EVN scene is a pretty mixed bag of many projects starting and not always finishing. Many of those that have seen some degree of success are actively working on multiple projects rather then just the one to get by. 

 

In Lupiesoft's case the original Toko may of been produced in around 1 month, and the remastered version in around 2 and half months but if we think about it. Beyond Taosym himself (The Artist) how much time did our writing team really have to work on it if each one is only free for a little bit of time each day/other day. Does that mean if we had the budget of long running Jp studio that'd we produce the same title in 3 weeks instead ? Well No but it'd probably of mean't we'd of had 3-4x times the amount of time to work on the written experience of the title, been able to afford an additional assistant artist, had the money to do the sfx effect design,voice acting? and then some.

 

I'm under the assumption that this price will remain the same for the remaining games, which would put the full thing at $20 for what I can assume will be around 10 hours worth of story.  That's a solid number, and a great place to be.  Though if they do add voice acting (there's discussion about it), I can see this number going up slightly.  But even then, $10 a chapter is still a price I would be happy to pay for the entertainment.

 

Whilst I'm pretty certain that we'd said the price would remain the same that doesn't mean the length will be the same with the future chapters probably having a little more length/development time spent on it. There will also be some more involvement from some of our newer writing staff as 2 current members were not involved in the original Toko so it was a little harder for them to make changes to  chapter 0

Having such a varied writing team is probably one of our teams more unique points as most teams normally have one definitive writer and not several. This causes different characters to get some really different flavours though we review things quite actively as a group.

 

The market comes once you combine the VN structure with gameplay, ala The Banner Saga. VNs don't appeal to book readers, because of technology and other reasons, and the easiest way of appealing to gamers is by incorporating gameplay. It would be awesome if VNs could appeal to novel readers one day, but that's going to be hard when they're chained to the PC.

 

Or you could have the production values to make it an interactive movie-telling experience, ala Telltale studios.

 

I'll give this game a whirl very soon. Looks interesting!

 

We'd love to take a more interactive approach then what we're doing now their are plenty of mixed titles we're interested in, some members of the team including myself having been involved in much different titles. I personally come from a background of 3d action games/side scroller titles & RTS to isometric rpgs. So I'm interested in exploring some of these possibilities in our current universes.

[Tay]

The market comes once you combine the VN structure with gameplay, ala The Banner Saga. VNs don't appeal to book readers, because of technology and other reasons, and the easiest way of appealing to gamers is by incorporating gameplay. It would be awesome if VNs could appeal to novel readers one day, but that's going to be hard when they're chained to the PC.

 

Or you could have the production values to make it an interactive movie-telling experience, ala Telltale studios.

 

Well, I dunno about that. I think mobile manages to bridge that gap pretty well. The selection of male-protag VNs is small (but growing) on the app stores, but there are hundreds of highly-rated Otome games on both iOS and Google Play, and otome readers are generally book-readers, too, from what I hear. tldr: I think even traditional readers would enjoy a VN on their phone/tablet throughout the day, but I think you're absolutely right RE: pc-tethered games.

 

/aside

 

Anybody else playing Toko?