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Keinart

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    Keinart reacted to Dergonu for a blog entry, OTL (One Thousand Lies) review   
    So I know @Deep Blue made one of these a little while ago, but I really wanted to get one out myself as well. (I am also including pictures. You are too lazy man!  ) Now that the game is released, I feel it really deserves some coverage! 
    (Note that I read the beta version, and so some improvements will have been made to the final release. Also, I wrote this review in a littel bit of a subjective style, really because I want to get through my personal feelings that I experienced when I read the VN. It might make the review seem slightly biased, but I hope this doesn´t make the review seem less serious. I played the game with a completely objective state of mind, and this is just my honest opinion of the game. Anyways, on to the review:) 
     
     
    One thousand lies is a 5-10 hour OELVN made by Keinart Lobre, (@Keinart.) The VN is about a group of friends goofing around as they get closer to graduating from high-school, though there is a lot more to the novel than what initially meets the eye. 
    (Note, the novel has both a Spanish and English version. I read and proofread the English version.) 
     
    In One Thousand Lies we meet Ciaràn Endyein, a slightly delinquent-like teenager who, along with his best friend Ausse Ealdwine, pull of silly yet harmless shenanigans that always end up getting them in trouble. The two are also accompanied by the pretty and intelligent Ziva Shani, who constantly try to psychoanalyze Endyein. 
     
    At the beggining of the story, Endyein recieves a strange, mysterious email, telling him to go to a certain place without any more detailed instructions. The sender appears to have stolen a package Endyein was waiting for, so confused and angry, he decides to do what the email says. (With some persuasion from his friends.) This sends him down a fairly heavy psychological, yet heartwarming and slice of life-like journey. 
     
    Story and writing
    The story in the game starts of really light and funny. It´s a slice of life story that has refreshing and entertaining humor; it doesn´t use overused clichès that you have seen 100 times before. As you get further into the story, you will start to notice that not everything is exactly how it seems. It´s hard to talk about this without spoiling the entire story, so we are going to keep it short. The story is well written, has pretty good pacing and does a good job of hiding the real kicker until the very end. 
    The writing in the novel is, like I´ve already mentioned, really good. It is every editor´s dream, going through a novel that has essentially no mistakes, and that doesn´t repeat itself over and over, but instead offers new, refreshing words and phrases for each sentence. The language was almost a little bit too complex at times, as I felt it was unnecessary to use such big words for a normal, every-day setting. Still, the novel does use a lot of psychology terms and the likes, so it´s not like a complex language is a bad thing for it. 
    There isn´t much else to say about the story, as the novel is quite short, and giving any more information could possibly spoil it. All in all, story and writing is very well done, and deserves a good 9/10 rating. 
     

     
    Characters and art
    The characters in the novel are all diverse and interesting in their own way. You have Ausse, the slightly dumb but lovable rich kid who might or might not be the MC´s friend because of his financial situation. 
    Ziva, the beautiful and determined female friend who constantly gets on the MC´s nerves when she tries to diagnose him with different psychological disorders.
    Claire, the cute and shy girl who only opens up when in the presence of Endyein. 
    Luce, the playful and energic joker who always has a funny remark that will put the MC in his place. 
    And finally Diniz The Sloth. (I think that title should be sufficent in describing him.) 
     
    Each character has nice and well drawn sprites with several facial expressions that feels natural. 
    The CG in the game is very pretty, though certain facial features gets a little less "natural" in the CGs compared to the character sprites, especially Luce´s. Regardless of this though, the CG is very nice and well made. 
    The backgrounds are kind of like a painted sketch, which is a unique but interesting style that I personally found quite enjoyable. 
     
    The only complaint I would have about the characters is that Diniz seems to have very little screen time compared to the others, and therefore he has little time to become a part of the main cast. 
    Characters, 9/10, 
    Art 7.5/10
     
    Music and atmosphere
    The music in the novel is pretty good overall and seeing as the game is not voiced, this is a good thing. There are several comfortable soundtracks that helps bring out the emotion reflected in the scene, especially during the more enigmatic and mysterious situations the novel has to offer. 
    The music did not take me by storm, but it still did its job very well in filling the "silence" when playing the unvoiced game. 
    Not much more to say about it. Music gets a 6.5/10 score from me. 
    The atmosphere in the game is quite hard to put into words. During the reading experience, it is obvious that there is something there that is more than just a few teenagers messing around. There is some kind of heavy undertone in the writing that clearly tries to tell you something more, but its written in such a way that what exactly that is, doesnt become apperant until the very end. I think that the way this was done is really quite impressive. Each character has a part to him or her that helps hint to this, and each scene does put out tiny clues, though in the end, figuring out what the cause of such an atmosphere is before the credits roll is not easy. 
    This part of the game gets a clear 10/10 rating from me. It was quite the ride. 
     
    Conclusion:
    In conclusion, OTL is an entertaining and innovative OELVN that doesnt try to do all those things we have already seen in Japanese VNs, but instead it uses original humor, exceptional writing and an interesting and thrilling psychological aspect to make the entire reading experience a blast. 
    I had no idea what I was getting into when I started reading this, and simply voulenteered to proofread / test the game because of Deep Blue´s interest in it. Needless to say, I was not dissapointed. 
    Final rating: 9/10. 
    Here is a link to the thread for the game here on Fuwanovel:

     
  2. Like
    Keinart reacted to Deep Blue for a blog entry, One thousand lies Review   
    So this time I will review this doujin freeware kinetic visual novel created by Keinart Lobre which I enjoyed it a lot and I thought it needed a review for how good it was. I'm kinda lazy so this will be a pure text review and nothing more (sorry maybe I'll add some pics in the future xD )

    The story follows the life of Ciarán Endyein and his friends, Ciarán is in last year of high school, a few month from graduation. He spend his time doing jokes and pranks with his friends Ziva Shani a wanna be psychologist transfer student girl that constantly tries to psychoanalyze Ciarán and his long time friend Ausse Ealdwine a pervert guy who only thinks about women all the time.
    Ciarán is what you can call a pragmatic person, one that is constantly saying witty comments or full of irony, teasing his friends, doing crazy stuffs, starting speeches for no reason which always end in a comical way, he calls himself the Joker or clown of the class along with his friends. He reminded me a lot to Morita Kenichi from Sharin no Kuni and that's always a good thing because there is a serious lack of those types of characters in visual novels. 
    He is also a writer, he usually writes things in his little notebook that is always carrying around with him and because of this Ziva is always trying to analyze the reason behind that.
    Little spoilers ahead:
    The story really begins when he tells his friends some story about certain figure that he bought and got lost in the middle of the delivery and someone sent him an email about it, a really weird blackmail email which is not clear if it is actually a threat , some kind of joke or actually someone crazy writing nonsense.
    End of spoilers
    In the process of finding the real culprit behind that email Ciarán meets two new characters, a little girl (the loli) called Claire Argyris which is an airhead, a bit shy, constantly lost in her own world, saying things out of place but that from time to time will leave Ciarán speechless because she is not what it seems and last Luce Aurea, she is a kinda a tomboy but not to an extreme, I don't want to reveal too much about this character or Claire either. (There is another character but I can't say anything about him xD )
    So far you might think that this is your typical visual novel, some slice of life with comedy but there is more than meets the eye, aside from the excellent comedy (yes it is actually really funny, most of the time with good humor) and the good pace that this novel has because it doesn't get boring through out the 10 or more hours that the novel last, there are times when the characters have this conversations about life, happiness, things they want to be, expectation from others, a bit of philosophy in the middle that reminded me a lot to subarashiki hibi WARNING: RANTS ABOUT SUBAHIBI AHEAD (if you don't like to read bad things about it don't read it.) XD  this time it made sense and it wasn't forced than your throat in the most boring and weird way with scenes that went on and on and on just to get to the freaking point >_> END OF THE RANTS. The characters are well developed and all of them are very interesting, all of them with their own motivation and purposes, they are not there just to fill the gap, for example Claire is not the "loli" type just because the writer wanted a loli type between the girls.
    The music was good I think there are like 33 tracks and some of them are really good and stuck with me even after I finished reading the novel.
    About the art it was good too, maybe it lacked on the GCs a little bit but it is understandable, still the few once that you will encounter are really well done and they are in my opinion perfectly placed for moments that really deserve it. The sprites of the characters are good too, the artist is Bonkiru he is really talented ( image not from the vn xD ), so you can expect to see some good art.
    After reading the novel I had to re-read it again, yes it is that type of novel where you need to read it a second time because you discover new things that you missed the first time(specially to make sense some parts of the plot) and since I read it in Spanish the first time I did it in English the second, which brings me to the language topic, the translation was done pretty smooth, there were some jokes here and there that they didn't translate 100% but they were still funny.
    Overall I think this is one of those few exception to the OELVNs, it doesn't try to copy or mimic the Japanese visual novels, it's not about a Japanese boy (thanks good!) and even if the main character is in high school you wont find the cliche plot from the jap vns, it's also not a harem, yes even if it looks like one it is not.
    Right now is on BETA but the developer is asking for some help (he needs proofreaders) so maybe you want to wait until it's release or read it right now, either way I'm sure it wont disappoint you.
    Link to the thread of the novel
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