Foreword: Game has a very strong start and intriguing concept which made me play to the end. It differed from my initial expectations, but it's a very original and good-looking game, so I don't regret playing it.
Title: Angel Halo
Developer: Active
Date: 1996-10-25
VNDB link:https://vndb.org/v6958
Youtube walkthrough:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c39QbpcwcZs&list=PLENAECnNmAq-m-9QhCmoIlz4DWBEqTwHq
Synopsis: The protagonist, Kusakabe Makoto, is living a normal school life without knowing he is the reincarnation of Lucifer. One day an angel named Sofia and a demon named Lilith come to him. They are the messengers of Heaven and Hell. The day of Lucifer's judgement is approaching.
Structure: Two routes depending on choosing Angel or Devil side with total number of endings being 5.
Length: 5 hours
Game type: AVG
Difficulty: Branching is actually very easy as only 2-3 first choices determine the ending, but there are many fake choices, so it can look confusing.
Character Design rating: 6/10
Protagonist rating: 5/10
Story rating: 7/10
Game quality: 7/10
Overall rating: 7/10
Rating comments: Game barely makes it to 7 which is still considered a masterpiece by me. The first route story was really impressive worth 8 or 9, but all the others were the very same route with some minor variations, mostly just before the ending. Characters are good-looking, but aren't developed. Protagonist is a pushover, as usual. But naked angel girls with gorgeous wings help the evaluation a lot. And there's some charm in seeing all the endings.
Protagonist: Makoto is an ordinary high school student who gets to know from one of the transfer students Lilith that he's an incarnation of the Satan and is going to destroy all life on the Earth in two weeks on Christmas Eve of 1999. And another transfer student Sofia says that Makoto is a savior of humanity. He does not believe either of them. But Sofia shows him her wings and Lilith introduces him to the world of pleasures, so he ends up taking one of the sides. I did not like protagonist since he was just killing time in school. He was hating his dull life and wanted for this unexciting life on Earth just perish one day even before meeting transfer students. He has an osanajimi Marimo in the same class and with all the otherworldly business he just forgets about her completely only stumbling upon her by pure chance in one of the routes. In Angel route he's passive, in Devil route a total dick.
Characters: There aren't really character routes, so individual characters aren't developed. We get an angel Sofia, a devil Lilith, a childhood friend Marimo, a teacher Ruida who comes from the descendants of angels and male friend Shinichi. The rest of the characters are one-time thing and no female character stays without a H event. Ruida is actually a character who undergoes a lot of development. She's a natural ally of Sofia, but gets seduced by Lilith in the beginning who amplified her lust. So Ruida gets into a difficult position where she does not want the world to end, but can't resist Lilith's will as well and that leads to unexpected results in some endings. Shinichi is also worth mentioning as he's a stoic and benevolent character - he acts as a sempai in relations with Makoto.
Story: There's actually not much in the story department after the opening sequence. Both Sofia and Lilith invite Makoto to their houses in the evening and this choice determines the side while following sub-choice determines the ending. Then for about two hours goes a fixed part of the story with Makoto finding indecent activities at school and in the part and also discovering a bonded missing girl in the church who craves for intimacy. Only being able to repress this temptation opens up the best angel ending. And the second half of the story depends on the chosen side. As a devil apprentice Makoto is encouraged just to do as he likes and wait for the world demise and following an angel path he needs to get intimate to several school girls who have are angel descendants. Doing that is supposed to restrain the Satan in him from breaking loose. This part is good as girls have their own wills and require some evidence or persuasion. But Makoto is such a failure protagonist that he can only whine. Sofia encourages him to use his super messiah power to make girls believe he is the Chosen one, but she does not know how that works and Makoto is not able to find that out, so the fate of the world depends on a chain of random events mostly. I hope I did not spoiler too much by now, but I also need to emphasize the endings. I started with the devil ending and it was impressive. The second devil ending was of the same pattern, but Makoto got his own malicious will to aggravate things even more. But finishing angel route I also got a bad ending... WTH? Second angel ending was also a failure. I'm glad I left the final best angel ending for the final... and it was impressive and impactful - that's all I can say without spoilers. Since I got a video of playthrough up, it's not difficult to see for yourself now.
CG: I absolutely liked this dim retro palette and gothic uniform. There's a lot of attention to the dressing and those corsets, black t-shirts, long stockings and church-like gowns impress indeed. There is a substantial number of CG.
Sound: Game is fully voiced (apart of the narrator). I found some exceptions to this rule when Makoto tells a long history of one city district and he's not voiced at that time. But it was really exciting to find a 1996 game with full voicing. BGM are actually nice, but the level can't be adjusted. I had to turn it off at times where the dramatic loud melody prevented from listening to the characters. BGM volume is not adjustable and it's a bit too high to my liking.
Themes: Game's based on thy hype over millennium shift. I personally like apocalyptic theme in visual novels - I liked Subarashiki Hibi, Shuumatsu no Sugoshikata and will definitely review Tsui no Sora one day.
There is also a nice fallen angel theme with its logical realization in one of the endings.
Overall comments: Game of big unrealized potential. My biggest complaint that there is no action in the game even though there all prerequisites for it. For example, there's this Lilith butter servant with a sadistic face. He's destined to be a villain, but he only participates in on rape scene and then shows up several time in Lilith room and... that's all. But Angel Halo also failed as love drama. There this supercute Marimo childhood friend who loves the hero, but she only plays a very episodic role literally occasionally bumping into the hero in one of the evil routes and thus getting her ending by pure coincidence and inside an evil devil route. So it all gets down to listening the explanation of Makoto role and just waiting or trying to fix his fate by mating with angel descendant girls. And Sofia with Ruida act more like pimps to drag girls to Makoto and threaten the girls with the end of the world in case of resistance. That's hardly much different from Lilith approach especially in the light that Sofia uses her body to attach Makoto to the light path and not the Heavenly means or reasoning. But as this unnatural situation gets underlined by all 5 endings the game gets some charm over it, not a logical conclusion type of charm, but that of the chaos solution for the chaos situation. And we also love Japanese visual novels for this impactful and affectionate chaos.
Foreword: Game's obscure, but it has one absolutely overwhelming Japanese review (giving 8/10 score btw) which claims that the game has references to dozens of media sources. I'm not good with media of 1996 year and earlier, but even I could discern 5 sources. Visual novel is easy to read and it's a great laugh at times while preserving a solid and intriguing plot with lovable characters, tonns of CG and almost full voicing. I say it's a neglected masterpiece.
Title: Bounty Hunter Rudy
Developer: Scoop
Date: 1996-10-25
VNDB link:https://vndb.org/v7168
Youtube walkthrough:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUUFqi-M6JU&t=0s&list=PLENAECnNmAq_3TQ0rXcu0n95aygm3PPQU&index=46
Synopsis: Rudy is a famous space bounty hunter with top notch skills. But she's famous mostly for her ability to fall into troubles because of uncontrolled destruction power. In order to deal with the debts she goes to casino, but drenches down into even deeper debt. She undertakes a top secret military case as her last resort to get big money fast.
Structure: One route
Length: 4.5 hours
Game type: AVG with dialogue choices
Difficulty: Game does not have branches, but getting 100% CG is not easy.
Character Design rating: 7/10
Protagonist rating: 8/10
Story rating: 8/10
Game quality: 7/10
Overall rating: 7/10
Rating comments: Can't really call it the game for 8/10, but it's decent enough to be called a masterpiece. Main heroine is impressive, characters charming (yet not developed), space opera story grappling and numerous CG and almost full voicing make up in the quality department. It has flaws, but I shall elaborate later.
Protagonist: Rudy is our hermaphrodite strongest in the universe space bounty hunter. She blames in her failures anyone else but her and picks fights in dialogues with everyone. Being of simple and cheerful mind, Rudy enjoys drinking, money, a good company and space adventures.
Characters: The only other significant heroine apart of Rudy is Anna who is an alien taking human girl form and who is waiting patiently for Rudy to drop her home. But Anna appears quite late in the story, after a third of it passed already. She's helpless and exists mostly as a comic relief - she always acts straightforward and answers honestly ruining Rudy's sly schemes. Other characters only make episodic appearance, although all of them are a colorful bunch and fun to have around.
Story: Much of it is in the synopsis. Rudy gets into a huge debt after a passionate mafia boss chase around the city and being outwit at the casino house. She's only offered poor jobs by the bounty hunter guild leader, so she decides to steal the big job from another guild member Reike. That involves investigating anti-planetary missile weapon. And while on the task, Rudy comes upon an alien in cryogenic chamber who takes the form of human girl Anna. The whole game adventures actually only start from here, but as game adapts to the role of bakage events start to lose ultimate aim. That's the best part in the game - you don't wait for the ending, but just enjoy crazy funny dialogues. And my deepest regret is only that I failed to trigger all the foolish CG and all the extra dialogue lines.
CG: Game lasts around 5 hours and does not use sprites for the characters... yes - it's all done in CG only. Hundreds of CG! Sometimes such CG would only last for a few seconds! I was really favorably surprised by the effort.
Sound: Protagonist is a woman and all women in this game are voiced. That actually means that almost everyone is voiced considered that game only has bounty hunter guild boss and robot Freddy as male characters as well as some nameless episodic characters. At times I forgot it was partially voiced since only scenes with girls proceeded. Voicing is done here very well and helps a lot the playful mood of the game.
Humor: It's just everywhere. Mostly in form of verbal insults and crazy dialogue lines. But I really like it when the game breaks the 4th wall and Rudy does it quite often in hilarious ways. Here's one moment where I laughed out loud and could not stop laughing. Rudy faces a military robot and is presented with three choices. I choose third one with ridiculous phrase "Once upon a time there lived a grandfather and grandmother". Next lines showed on the screen: "Grandfather went to a sauna, grandmother went to a host club". Next we see Rudy getting punched and she shouts "Do not pick this choice"! Then I picked the same choice again. What I got was "Then grandfather went to refresh". And next we see Rudy punched and she shouts "Reality is severe"!
Overall comments: I have not enjoyed a bakage that much for a long time. The best thing is that you don't need to care for the plot much or for branches or saves - just enjoy what's happening on the screen at this very moment and that's it. It's a game for relaxation. I feel like some of the spice is lost in machine translation and some cultural layers lost since I am not a Japanese native of the 1990s. Also I appreciated that H events are playful, short and totally forgotten a second after. Well, H events aren't usual as well - they are fun and memorably inventive. It's rare to see a game that puts a player first and everything else second. It's a game that leaves a lasting warm impression and is worthy to be called a masterpiece and a hidden gem.
Foreword: Who does not know of Leaf company? Who does not know that its games Shizuku and Kizuato are considered the first modern type visual novels? But how many of us actually played those? There are some good English reviews of those (1 2 3 4 5 6 7) and I initially only relied on those as well. But the historical significance of Kizuato made me change priorities. Throughout the rest of 90-s and the first half of 2000-s I encountered quite many story-focused visual novels that are described by Japanese reviewers as "degraded version of Kizuato", so I really needed to see the original myself to get the proper idea. As for Shizuku... it came first and is a curious blend of old and new types of visual novels. Why did Leaf bother to make two remakes of it if it's a plain nukige about radio waves? Or maybe it's a dark-themed masterpiece akin to Moon by Tactics? I hope to answer those questions here. And I decided to make a comparative review to spice things up. Screenshots on the left belong to Shizuku, on the right - to Kizuato.
Title: Shizuku | Kizuato
Developer: Leaf | Leaf
Date: 1996-01-26 | 1996-07-26
VNDB link: https://vndb.org/v235 | https://vndb.org/v184
Youtube walkthrough: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4ivg044iMI&list=PLENAECnNmAq-I8SGBuae4loVKdMDk6axP
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ixMxD4DBko&list=PLENAECnNmAq-5p0JujfLT9jK9_CSDAulN
Synopsis: When one of his classmates suddenly gets mad in the middle of the class, the protagonist's uncle, one of the teachers in the school, asks him to investigate this matter after school. He starts the investigation with the help of one of the girls from his class, an investigation that will lead them to many horrors...
The protagonist is visiting his four cousins' home. He starts to have weird nightmares. Soon, he finds out that their family has non-human genes and the beasts in them want to hunt, and the ones who hunt are the males. Will he be able to help his cousins, will his love be enough or will he be devoured?
Structure: Three routes + Omake with total number of endings being 12 | Six routes + Omake with total number of endings being 26.
Length: 25 hours | 40 hours
Game type: NVL AVG | NVL AVG
Difficulty: Easy as there are few routes and branches, but to get all 12 endings best to follow walkthrough | Moderate as there are many routes and endings and it's easy to miss some of bad endings and some omake routes
Character Design rating: 5/10 | 9/10
Protagonist rating: 6/10 | 6/10
Story rating: 5/10 | 8/10
Game quality: 7/10 | 9/10
Overall rating: 6/10 | 8/10
Rating comments: Nukige-like story really hurts Shizuku. All the main events happen during just one day and there's not even remotely enough time to get to know the girls. Girls also aren't too cute or interesting. Protagonist is a faceless embodiment of the player and we make all the decisions for him, so his presence is not felt at all. Still the game manages not to fall into nukige category and maintains its storyline which is worth praising.
Kizuato characters are totally adorable - every one of them! Each route follows a different pattern. Story is a fascinating one and each roots adds new details to the overall story. Protagonist is a faceless one and without much presence, but a good game does not need the protagonist to be great. So the question hangs in the air - why not 9 or 10 score then? As for me the routes are rushed and follow the same pattern - general route up to the half of it, then getting to know one of the girls better, then something bad happens and we hurry to help. And even though some details are added in consequent routes, those don't add much to the story and after first exciting route - second, third and fourth routes look really plain. True route was also disappointing for me as it added finally something new to the story, but failed to present a satisfying finalizing mark just freezing the state of events as it was.
Protagonist: Nagase Yuusuke is quite a failure as protagonist and being called Nagase-chan by the girls makes him even more humiliating. A totally generic high school student.
Kashiwagi Kouichi is a young adult, so he is at least mature. He's also not really a generic protagonist since he has quite a background behind him. He comes from an ancient Kashiwagi clan and his father mysteriously died as well as the girls father. So he has some mystery behind him, but I don't remember his face being shown and he does not show special personality traits in the dialogue, so I'd call him generic protagonist.
Characters:
Saori is a red-hair cheerful volleyball team member. Her route comes first and it's a really good route. And not just because of novelty as we see the carcass of the story for the first time. First - Saori has a bright personality and laughs a lot. Second - there is only one H event in her route and it's a voluntary one. Third - her route has the most of life essence as Saori and Yuusuke openly oppose the enemy, put up hell of a fight and emerge victorious from it. If only the other routes were similar. There is also one strong and shocking moment in the route bad ending, but it's the only bad ending that has nothing to do with H events, so it's really nice.
Mizuho is short brown-hair student council secretary. Being the filler mid-game route it is the most miserable route. Mizuho cries often, feels miserable about herself, admits lying all the time and is drawn as a totally self-insufficient personality. She has no friends but Oota and was dragged after her to the student council. Mizuho has no motive to help with the investigation but to help Oota. And on top of that the route is full of helplessness and rape with it ending only thanks to external factors, but not the heroes.
Ruriko is a mysterious short blue-hair girl who turned from a school idol to a weird goofy girl a year ago. She's more like a robot than a girl, but she has a very strong sixth sense, a mysterious aura around her and she gradually gains human traits throughout her route which looks really satisfying. Her route is a true one answering many questions, but it's also a route that features a lot of bad endings with all of the three girls and in that regard is very tiresome to get through.
I would also like to notice the absence of sub-characters in this game. There aren't friends, schoolmates or some external characters. All we have is Yuusuke's uncle and the three girls under influence of radio-waves - one of them being Oota and the others aren't even given names.
Chizuru is the oldest of sisters and the route is the most exciting one as it's full of action and cool-looking CG. Many other people as well as myself call this route a favorite one.
Azusa is a tsundere and has a misfortune to present one of the middle routes - and the result is truly grievous - route is full of H events and adds nothing to the story.
Kaede is a cold-hearted calm sister who devotes her life to a shire. And for the whole route we try to reveal her human traits. Her route tells us the clan story and gets to understand the routes of the problem.
Yumiko is a side-character who works as correspondent. Her route is a very short one (just one hour long!) and is basically a single long H event.
Hatsuno is the true route to my deepest regret. She's the youngest loli sister with bright personality and affection for her onii-chan. I really hoped she would not have her own route, but I guess developers needed an imouto route as well - and Hatsuno makes a great imouto.
Rikka route added only in the last remake of 2009. She's a totally new - maid - character that comes with a totally new after-story with a new villain. And it's a totally good route that adds lots of new cool everyday life scenes for old characters. But just remember that it was not meant to be in the original game and should thus be treated as a sequel with old characters, but since it's just one route it was not wise to release it stand-alone so it was released together with original.
Story: Shizuku story is almost entirely retold in the synopsis. Oota gets mad one day and goes to the hospital. When uncle asks us to investigate strange gatherings of students at night school we can either investigate it or ignore it. If we choose to ignore, we're showed the graduation ceremony that becomes a huge orgy because of commands passed by radiowaves. So radiowaves use is not the mystery of the game - it's showed in the very first hour of the game. Only the mystery of personality of the villain persists, but it also becomes soon uncovered as we come with one of the girls to the night school to bear witness of the events happening there. Each girl has her own reasons to accompany the hero to the night school, but those don't change anything - a confrontation happens followed by game's end. So the game has no mystery, no story and no likable characters (maybe apart Saori) - what's the game for then? My guess is that the game is a thrilling eroge in unusual conditions, nothing more. It barely manages not to fall in the depths of nukige and presents mostly a historical interest.
Kizuato story is not really special. First half of each route takes nice and warm slice of life with only distant sings of the beast living in Koichi. In the second half something happens - either a mysterious enemy shows up or someone gets kidnapped or like in true route we just get to find an ancient cave and explore it. So it's a simple enough composition. But through the dialogues we get to uncover many secrets of the past and get to know the girls well. The most intriguing question is what about the beast part? I'd say it does not have that much emphasis in the game, actually. We get to have strange visions and people torn apart, but there's no telling if those are of Koichi doing. And thankfully beast instincts aren't used as a pretext for rape scenes - that happened only once. There aren't bad endings when Koichi would wreak havoc and kill everyone. Mostly beast instincts only show up during confrontation scenes. And the main theme of the game is learning to control those instincts. So as I see it Kizuato is more of a charage with a fancy intriguing plot rather than a full-scale action driven story. Rikka route is so big that it can easily qualify for a different game. It has a new serious story with some new characters and and presents a very satisfying development with a lot of interaction with all the heroines.
CG: I only played the remastered version, and there are only some 10 non-HCG there which is a dreadfully small number. But what I really liked in Shizuku is the use of camera focus and animated camera shifts. Those really help to put emphasis on dialogue situations and show better what's going of from hero's perspective. Overall there are few outdoor daytime scenes in Shizuku and omnipresent dark areas make up for the gloomy pressure atmosphere.
There is a moderate number of non-HCG in Kizuato, but both CG and HCG look great and really refined there. Most of dialogues take part in well lit areas or on sunny days outdoors which contributes to good impression.
Sound: BGMs are very few and I grew tired of listening to the same main tune each time something important happened. Voicing is good, but due to the game nature those moans really get stuck in the head.
BGMs are sufficient and pleasant, but not special. I totally liked the voicing since the four sisters have very different personalities. Hatsuno voicing is just perfect and always enjoyable to listen to.
Themes:
Shizuku is not a too complicated game, so it's useless to search for concealed meanings there, but I liked that each character route had a different theme. Saori route has the power of reason and overcoming even hardest obstacles for the right thing. Mizuho route is based on friendship with Oota and has a nice resolution of friendship prevailing all the odds (even though it's the the most weird ending as everyone just forgets about the villain). Rikka route is centered around the inner connection of two siblings.
The curse makes the make theme of Kizuato. The whole clan is cursed with transformation affinity, but the males of the clan also subject to madness at some point of their lives. Koichi is the last male descendant of the clan with the rest of males taking miserable deaths full of suffering. Noone was ever able to cure it or control it. This desperation makes the theme of the game, but on practice the beast problem does not stand as grave in the game.
Humor:
So Shizuku is not our usual galge, but it has an absolutely awesome part. That's omake. Main game suffers from lack of slice of life part and omake makes up for it. It's a total bakage that breaks the fourth wall constantly. It looks like seiyu and scenarist just wanted to fool around and had their full at it. Basically heroines discuss the game and what kind of character everyone is which leads to forcing Yuusuke to choose the girl he likes the most. And since he can't make a decision girls participate in sport and cooking competitions.
There was some humor in 2009 Rikka route, but can't remember any of the original. But that awakening scene with two sisters getting embarrassed by the state of Koichi body was nice.
Overall comments: So here are first Leaf visual novels. What makes Kizuato a contemporary visual novel?
Different long route for each heroine
Long enough main part with heroines introduction
Heroines aren't isolated in their routes but act alongside other heroines in the main course of the story.
Text-heavy narration for which NVL system was introduced
Has erotic content (which distinguishes from sound novels).
Rich sub-character cast.
Branched routes and multiple endings including bad ones.
And here's what's wrong with Shizuku:
Almost no sub-characters
No introduction to heroines (no slice of life part)
Too short time period taken
Abundance of H events
Each girl route follows absolutely the same pattern
Game has 12 endings (10 for main game and 2 for omake) and a lot of parts are shared between them, so it gets very repetitive and there's a constant deja vu feeling.
Repetitiveness is aggravated by the use of same phrases for countless times with different intonation. There were at least 5 such spots in the game when the characters may repeat the very same phrase for over 10 minutes. It may look fresh for the first time, but later on it only irritates.
Both games systems remind contemporary visual novels, but Shizuku as the first test bullet contains numerous flaws. My plank for masterpiece games is a bit low - 7/10 is enough to get there, so I consider Kizuato with 8/10 a masterpiece. It has great heroines cast, solid intriguing story and it surpasses nowadays charage a long way.
As for Shizuku, it holds mostly a historical significance, but it still a worthy game if only read Saori route, then the very end of Ruriko route and the hilarious omake, of course.
1995 did not bring as many masterpieces as previous years while increasing the total number of visual novels significantly
First of all, let's prolong the chart
VN per year
Year
Total
1991
75
1992
80
1993
121
1994
155
1995
180
There's been a steady increase in total number VNs by 16% compared to year 1994.
The aftertaste is bitter as if I witness an overall decline in quality.
So let's see what year 1995 brought:
The number of VNs with high difficulties and genre mixes increased steeply
Command selection gets almost extinct being substituted with either point and click or ADV
Moe first focused on in Classmates 2 started its victorious march through the time
Conception of time showed up in several games at once after success of Classmates 1 and 2
First Windows VN - Sinkha
Let's count the masterpiece level games of 1995:
1. Bunny Hunter Zero
2. Eve: Burst Error
3. Isaku
4. Kuro no Danshou: The Literary Fragment
5. Lilith
6. Mime
7. Mugen Yasoukyoku
8. Ryouki no Ori
9. Romance wa Tsurugi no Kagayaki - The Last Crusader-
10. Tokyo Twilight Busters ~Kindan no Ikenie Teito Jigokuhen~
11. True Love ~Jun'ai Monogatari~
12. Youjuu Senki 2 -Reimei no Senshi-tachi-
Just twelve works? That's a definite decline from 1994. Eve: Burst Error is an unbeatable giant this year. It is the best known old game that has not lost a grain of its charm to our days. It has all the rights to be the VN of the Year 1995.
Oh, and some final words. The era of pc-98 is actually almost gone. Year 1996 will the transition one and 1997 will have only some leftover slowpokes on pc-98 systems. So let's say thanks to the magnificent beautiful world of pc-98 and dive into... very crude and ugly works of beginning of windows era...
Foreword: Game's totally obscure and there just one quite shallow Japanese review exists, so I'd probably miss this wonderful game unless saw Four-Nine as developer. And I'm really happy I did!
Title: Lilith
Developer: Four-Nine
Date: 1995-12-16
VNDB link:https://vndb.org/v8949
Youtube walkthrough:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_1nGf0P0-M&list=PLENAECnNmAq8obEJUzYJkNq8XOxyNZ-0s
Synopsis: An intense night battle between kunoichi clan leader and evil biblical spirit Lilith ends with kunoichi falling into coma state.
A cat gets into an ordinary student Koketsu room, transforms into a girl and claims that Koketsu got her master kunoichi spirit and must help her master and defeat Lilith. The problem is that nothing is known about Lilith but the name and together they set to uncover its secrets.
Structure: One route
Length: 11 hours
Game type: Command selection adventure
Difficulty: Challenging since there are gameplay elements introduced with walking on schematic map and triggering events including traps, some of which result in game over. Once I even managed to trigger game over during a H event! And there is no scene replay - you'll have to replay from the last save game.
Character Design rating: 7/10
Protagonist rating: 8/10
Story rating: 9/10
Game quality: 8/10
Overall rating: 8/10
Rating comments: I can't praise this game enough. Lilith came a year after Gao Gao 3rd and it fully inherits the spirit of Gao Gao series, just with a slightly different setting. The story is surprisingly solid and long. Protagonist is the strongest compared to all the Gao Gao series games. Characters serve the story purpose mostly, but they spend so much time with Koketsu that we get to know everyone very well. The gameplay elements are really annoying when encountered, but those get easier and easier as story goes on, so the impression gets balanced. Being PC-98 exclusive, game is not voiced and can feel monotonous at times and only for that it's not a perfect score.
Protagonist: Koketsu is a normal student proficient in Kendo. And I can only admire how he manages to beat all kinds of beasts, demons and undead all by himself with his wooden sword! That kitten girl is absolutely useless in battle and strong allies join up quite late in the game. There are strategic retreats at times, but mostly he just beats crap out of anything! It's been a while since I encountered protagonist that strong. He's funny, cool and takes decisions himself. He reminds Wolfy from Gao Gao 3rd-4th a lot.
Characters: I'm not really sure for transcription, but cat-girl is Miya. There is also childhood friend Minoru. Eventually a fox girl comes into stage and kunoichi Sasame comes out of coma, so we get quite a harem here! And most of enemies are girls, of course. What actually delighted me is that not every female enemy gets a H event unlike Gao Gao series. There are also numerous neutral/episodic female characters in the game, so there's not enough time to devote to separate heroines.
Story: I absolutely liked the story since it was absolutely unpredictable and full of great enemies, battles and blood. There are so many civilians and enemies killed violently that Gao Gao does not come into comparison even remotely on the matter. I also liked that at some point story got some structure as heroes needed to get all three spiritual stones. So each of these spirit stones parts and next fighting parts have each a beautiful legend in the core. Some of those stories are even about our enemies which totally blasts. Since I divided the videos by structural parts, it's well worth to mention those when talking about the story, but without too many spoilers, of course. So Koketsu with Miya just gather information about Lilith from various sources and work out a course of actions in introduction. Then gathering of three spirit stones follows. And second half of the game is devoted to numerous encounters with old and new enemies. That's the gist of it, but there there is a lot of content for 11 hour story.
CG: Relatively big number of CG, but as usual for Four-Nine, only HCG are full screen size. What I especially liked is that there aren't many H events in the game. And H content is filled by inserting many random H events that are peeped while investigating some locations. Quite a lot of H events with Koketsu are packed by the end of the game since he needed to restore a lot of energy and we know an absolutely best way to give an injured bleeding hero energy!
Sound: About 10 tracks, but those are totally different and very nice non-mechanic. BGM really adds to the charm of the game.
Themes:
1) Lilith is the supposed first wife of biblical Adam, so religion has an important role in the game.
Humor: I was surprised to see so much mild humor in the game. It's totally the Gao Gao type. Some cases that come to mind to get a taste of it:
1) Christian priest says he studies Japanese culture and he already knows of ninja, geisha and hara-kiri!
2) One heroine was found in the bushes and she just can't excuse Koketsu for stealing her first breast! As it turns out it's the the same thing as the first kiss, but about touching a breast.
3) An exchange student is asked if she knows something about Lilith. It's a girl who went through a mirror to the wonderland (No, it's "Alice")! It's a game where you turn blocks and stick them together (No, it's "Tetris")! It's a fighting game between monsters where king is the mummy (No, it's "Anakaris")! It's shameful to say it as a girl, but it's what men have between the... (PLEASE STOP RIGHT THERE!)
Overall comments: This is a masterpiece and the exact kind of hidden gem that I would like to find in visual novels. A rich event-driven story with very unusual, but appealing characters (most of characters are half-bests as in all the Four-Nine games). So why is it so obscure then? There are many versions: command selection gameplay, trap/puzzle sections, bad endings, slow start of the game. But I also blame December - there are so many visual novels issued each December that it's sometimes difficult to find the place in the top 10 and the rest are deprived of attention.
Foreword: I keep exploring the vast vaults of Silky's games. This time it's even more suspicious work - a full scale yuri game. But it has many SF elements and even has genetically modified mutants - knowing Silky's they would not settle with an ordinary yuri work.
Title: Fermion ~Mirai kara no Houmonsha~
Developer: Silky's
Date: 1995-12-22
VNDB link:https://vndb.org/v5903
Youtube walkthrough:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Btt7mlj8_rI
Synopsis: The future isn't so bright. Pollution has severely weakened Earth and all of it's children, including humankind. Human DNA is too weak to reproduce itself and scientists are desperately trying to revive the human DNA. But every attempt fails, even the desperate attempt to fuse Human and Animal DNA turns out to create mutants that run amok.
Everything seems hopeless. But suddenly, scientists detect a space-time displacement, a gap in time. The gap will hold for a couple of days, and during which people may be sent through time.
Your mission as a Half-Human, Half-Feline, mutant-hunter Conny, is to back in time to the present (the late 20th century) and recover samples of healthy human DNA.
Structure: One route
Length: 5 hours
Game type: Command selection adventure
Difficulty: Easy since there are maximum three commands to select from at any time.
Character Design rating: 6/10
Protagonist rating: 5/10
Story rating: 6/10
Game quality: 6/10
Overall rating: 6/10
Rating comments: This is not a masterpiece, so it can't be 7 or higher by my scaling. Well, the rest depends on whether you play yourself or watch my playthrough with scores of 4 and 6, respectively. Original game has too many (10+) H events and has a very time-consuming and boring ventilation system maze crawler. I've cut those in my video reducing overall length almost twice without hurting the story. The whole first half of the game is packed with H events so densely that I really started to think Silky's made a plain ero-centered yuri game. But after two hours of such struggle finally story showed up making it a worthy Silky's title. Heroines in this game are quite memorable and well done, so characters get a high score. Protagonist Conny has a lower score since she does not even try to think for herself - first she follows orders and then her emotions.
Protagonist: Conny is a so-so protagonist since she has a strong sense of loyalty as a mutant towards humans. She can turn to a cat voluntarily, but she only uses that to prove that she comes from future and to get into other girls beds - only very late in game she actually it appropriately to travel through the vent system (and she manages to carry fuel canisters with her through the vent in cat form - don't ask me how). It's ok for a protagonist to be dense, but this time I felt no sympathy towards protagonist.
Characters: There are two casts of characters - from year 1996 and from year 2296 - first represented by Kanako, her mother and sister and second comprised of military base crew. There are too many H events in the game, so most of dialogues are scrapped or serve as a prologue to next H scene, but still characters are solid here and dialogues feel alive.
Story: That's the difficult part. Conny arrives to Kanako family backyard in the form of a girl and is brought home by Kanako. During the whole first half of the game only gathering of genetic material happens. First the whole Kanako family cooperates, then Kanako invites a friend and then Conny manages to get into the school as a foreign student and gather genetic material in form of women fluids there. But the second half of the game brings much more in the story department. Conny's superior Dr. Kanzaki suddenly arrives to 1996 and kidnaps Kanako. When Conny flies back to future to save her new friend, she finds herself trapped in a cell-like room without freedom of movement. What's going on there? Why future military needs Kanako? What can Conny do about this situation? There are a lot of mysteries uncovered closer to the end of the game and some of them are totally unexpected and fascinating.
CG: Again, quite few normal CG and too many HCG. At least palette now is much more bright and vivid.
Sound: Not too many tracks, but I liked how in crucial story moments all the music stops and couple minutes are spent in a total silence - that benefited the atmosphere.
Themes:
1) Time travel. As far as I understand the game violated all the logical laws of time travel like meeting yourself in the past. No big complaints here, but it gets an amateurish touch to the story.
2) There are no men in the game. The single time I saw man mentioned is when Kanako wanted to invite her friend and Conny asked whether that friend was a man or a woman. It's pretty weird to have a good dozen of characters with all of them being women.
Overall comments: This is mostly a yuri-intensive work, but the story turned out to be surprisingly good considered limitations of the setting. It's only disappointing that the action part of the story is hidden closer to the end of the game behind the wall of numerous yuri events and then the maze of vent system. It's an interesting and beautiful game with very nice characters, but I would only recommend watching my edited video version of it if you're interested in the story like myself.
Foreword: There is a negative English review, but VNDB voting shows a decent 6.72 score atm and this is Silky's story oriented work, same Silky's that I praised multiple times for Kawarazaki-ke no Ichizoku, Reira Slave Doll, Ushinawareta Rakuen and Koihime. So I decided to make it to the end of Jack ~Haitoku no Megami~ no matter what.
Title: Jack ~Haitoku no Megami~
Developer: Silky's
Date: 1995-11-30
VNDB link:https://vndb.org/v6387
Youtube walkthrough:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3px7_N_hFY Synopsis: You are Jack Martin, a drunken, selfish, sex-driven bastard of a detective. You recently received a job to capture the inter-galactic terrorist "Phantom". The Phantom has been confirmed to be heading toward a galactic convention on a transtellar shuttle. This is where you come in.
Structure: One route with four Bad End branches.
Length: 3 hours
Game type: Command selection adventure
Difficulty: Branching is difficult and following walkthrough is advised in order not to waste time on meaningless endings.
Character Design rating: 4/10
Protagonist rating: 5/10
Story rating: 6/10
Game quality: 6/10
Overall rating: 6/10
Rating comments: Pretty high score still. The introduction was very shallow followed by meeting meaningless characters having meaningless talks and then I entered the wrong branch where Jack just dozed off after drinking session at the bar oversleeping the important meeting and missing the whole murder case at the ship bridge... then there were some random girls encounters and then just something hit him in the head killing him after over 2 hours of play... wow, I felt really miserable at that point and that first impression really hurt evaluation. Then I followed a walkthrough and finally remotely understood what was going on. Other complaints are to be touched in corresponding sections.
Protagonist: Saying Jack is a bad protagonist is saying nothing at all. He's horrible. He does not have a single plan. All that he's doing is drinking in the bar and then drinking in his room occasionally having other girls drinking with him in the bar or in his or their rooms plus occasionally meeting some faces in the corridor. And if he drinks with the right people the story manages to unwind by itself...
Characters: Characters are my biggest complaint in this game. There are a lot of girls, but they just flash here and there, throw a few dialogue lines and disappear in order to reappear in some spontaneous even leading to a H scene. Reni is the main heroine of the game, Jack's partner. She's an island of sanity in this asylum, but there's an impression that she just sits in the room all the time, so she never actually follows Jack. She does provide some insight, but apart of that she ain't much supportive.
Story: There's little in the story department. Main heroes hunt for mysterious Phantom, then a murder happens and they start investigation which does not bring any results, really. At some point Phantom just pops up and a swift resolution follows. I was greatly misleaded by the line about the dragon in the English review - actually it's not a normal dragon, but a space dragon that hatched from a huge space egg, so there's no shift in the setting.
CG: Nice, but few'ish - but lots of HCG. Colors are kind of dim like in Reira while I'd prefer something more bright like Ushinawareta Rakuen.
Sound: Tracks are pleasant, but there are some 8 of them which is not enough.
Themes: Ok, this game actually does not have a symbolic theme, but why not mention couple repeating features
1) Oh, what time is it? Let's check the watch. It's 14:10. There is still a lot of time left. Those lines with slight variations are repeated so often, but I don't think there was some deadline ever so all that talk along with the clock integrated in the interface have little meaning.
2) The throat's got dry. I want to drink alcohol... Those lines are repeated over and over at those rare moments when Jack is not actually drinking. At the culmination point of the game in the mids of battle with Phantom he repeats the very same lines... That might be a nice feature of a cool protagonist, but Jack is not cool. He's rather miserable.
Overall comments: I seem to be bashing the game in every section, so I'd like to focus on good sides in conclusion.
1) First of all, the game plays as a contemporary visual novel with just clicking through and occasionally picking lines of choice.
2) Secondly, the constant drunkenness of protagonist opens up new opportunities like distorted consciousness and free flow of thoughts.
3) There are some nice to observe archetype characters like a homo, an obviously super suspicious mechanic, an esper.
4) Jack himself actually gets some character depth by the end of the game - we get to know the circumstances that caused him to drop from an elite military unit and start to drink.
5) The SF setting is quite interesting, actually, with postwar spies hunt and mysterious space events like that space dragon.
So it's not a masterpiece level game, but a solid Silky's experimental game. I like works with an SF touch Silky's is smart enough to provide an entertaining product. I'm looking forward to reviewing their next game Fermion ~Mirai kara no Houmonsha~.
First, some statistics. Here's the chart of total number of VNs, number of listed VNs in this blog and number of blocked VNs for the years 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994. Number won't change significantly since for the moment these are all the VNs that vndb.org has for the noted periods.
VN per year
Year
Total
Listed
Blocked
1991
75
1992
80
1993
121
1994
155
As you remember, year 1992 was to my liking since, due to harsh censorship, works were more story-oriented. And with almost the same number of total VNs compared to 1991, in 1992 there were much more works that made it in the list and even smaller number of blocked ones.
The total number of works increased further by 28%, but the correlation of quality story oriented works improved slightly in comparison to 1993.
So let's see what year 1994 brought:
Dating SIMs showed up and pushed Raising SIMs back
RPG weren't too numerous but there are surprisingly many very high quality RPGs in 1994
There's the first Otome game Angelique
There's the first Yaoi reference in Uchuu Kaitou Funny Bee
Gao Gao 3 presented a new model of game - party interaction based.
Let's count the masterpiece level games of 1994:
1. AmbivalenZ -Niritsu Haihan- AmbivalenZ
2. Crystal Rinal - Ouma No Meikyuu -
3. DESIRE - Haitoku no Rasen
4. Dragon Knight 4
5. Gao Gao! 3rd ~Wild Force~
6. Fuzoroi no Lemon
7. Mirage 2 - Torry x Neat x Roan no Daibouken
8. Nooch 3 Saigo no Seisen
9. Policenauts
10. Team Innocent: The Point of No Return
11. Tokimeki Memorial
12. Toushin Toshi II
13. Urusei Yatsura: Dear My Friends
14. Wedding Errantry -Gyakutama Ou-
15. Welcome to the Cinemahouse
16. Zatsuon Ryouiki
And five of those 15 are RPGs, pretty insane. I guess there was no competition from the beginning - I'd put DESIRE pretty much above any game put beside. So DESIRE is the game of the year 1994.
Foreword: Silky's company and Slave doll in title inevitably make us think it's a nukige, but actually it's a scenario oriented game. Moreover, that's retelling of a classic cyberpunk story about an android hunter - the story that was already told in visual novels by Imitation wa Aisenai and Snatcher. Did Silky's ruin the classic concept or was it able to produce a masterpiece? You'll find the answer in this review. That's actually infamous Raira on the screen.
Title: Reira Slave Doll
Developer: Silky's
Date: 1994-04-28
VNDB link:https://vndb.org/v9053
Youtube walkthrough:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUzNdzCXyhc&index=1&t=0s&list=PLENAECnNmAq8rNJQkjudialEIFqA335Pu
Synopsis: Early 21st century. The crisis situation created by mass production and mass consumption of the 20th century has aggravated. Extinction of ozone layer caused environmental disasters including acid rains over the cities. Natural resources grew scarce due to explosive population increase. Humanity started space exploration.
The shortage of labor force motivated scientific society to invent and produce bio-androids.
2050. A quarter century has passed since start of practical use of androids. Fierce competition among android producers allowed advanced models to be sold for moderate prices affordable for average households. With that increased the number of runaway androids and crimes done by androids. Government obligated android producers to register all the units and new police units involving android crimes were created. Its police officers were commonly known as "Hunters".
This is a story of hunter Kano Ryo. He is looking for a female slave doll serial killer Reira. Out of two weeks given for the task only three days remain. Since android needs maintenance, the only place suitable for living for such a long time is some android factory. Ryo locates a factory near committed murders and just goes inside to conduct a full-scale investigation at the spot.
Structure: Single route, no parts division.
Length: 7 hours
Game type: Command selection adventure
Difficulty: It was easy for me since I'm used to brute-forcing all the commands.
Character Design rating: 7/10
Protagonist rating: 6/10
Story rating: 7/10
Game quality: 7/10
Overall rating: 7/10
Rating comments: A very high score for a PC-98 game. Girls are the gist of the game and they are surely lovely drawn and depicted. They have different personalities and are memorable. But it's impossible to imbue them with depth in a not-so-long game, so it's high score as it can get. Protagonist is an ok guy - not a maniac, but not without perversion if the situation cries for it. He does not force himself on anyone, but does not decline any invitations to H either. My biggest complaint about him is that we're not given his image - and that's supposed to be the coolest thing a cyberpunk story! Story is with a twist, so I was pleasantly surprised. The quality of the game is very good, but greatly degraded by lack of non-H CG and constant command brute-forcing.
Protagonist: It's actually difficult to say anything else about Ryo. Oh! He has a ray-gun, but he only remembers about that at the end of the game when he desperately needs to open a door. If he remembered about that earlier, I would not have spent 3 hours looking for ways to open previous two doors in the game! Anyway, there are only girls CG in the game and thus poor Ryo looks blank.
Characters: So, yes, it's a game about girls mostly. But there aren't girls roots and the whole interaction with girls is presented by normal communication with them or finding them in different peculiar situations and reacting by the circumstances. So I don't feel the need to speak about them individually, but here are the names and occupations. Glasses wearing blue long hair Eleanor is an office section manager. Red long hair Alicia is responsible for scrap station. Short green hair Anise governs the warehouse. Medical department has two similar looking nurses - Silk and Cotton (I know, I know...). Long blue hair Sofia is the boss of a sorting center. Short curly brown hair Mei is in charge of the furnace. Long blond hair Karin governs the chip processing section. So that's it - just 7 divisions and so many girls. But a nice thing is that few of girls are amicably set towards the detective. But still there is at least one H-event of each of them with the protagonist and there is more without Ryo. Oh and there is factory owner who does not get another name, but Owner. And that is because he owns.
Story: Finally, the story. It's the part that should reinstall the game from a nukige to a decent cyberpunk story if it's still redeemable at all at this point. So Ryo gets a permission from factory owner to explore the factory with the guide Alicia. After the tour Alicia seduces Ryo saying that it's a direct order from the owner that she can't disobey. Because of that attitude a rebellion movement is threading among the staff against the owner. But there are also collaborators who obstruct the investigation and prevent Ryo from entering some areas. Ryo soon finds the traces of illegal android trade, but how is it linked with serial murders and runaway slave doll Reira? You won't know without watching the video walkthrough.
CG: Too few! But at the same time HCG are in abundance.
Sound: BGM tracks are very pleasant, but not memorable.
Themes: As pretty much every game about androids, Reira Slave Doll tries to keep with the flow. The main question is whether androids should have rights if their intellectual level outgrows that of a human.
Overall comments: So it's definitely an ero-centered game. But at the same time it has a serious intriguing plot. So why not have both? The balance here is tilt towards H and the situation is aggravated by command bruteforcing, but the story behind it is satisfying. Recommended for all cyberpunk fans or just for anyone who wants a light cheerful game with beautiful characters and CG in Sci-Fi setting.
Foreword: It would be weird if I reviewed only three games of the serious out of four. So here is the leftover piece - and again a worthy one.
Title: Gao Gao! 2nd ~Pandora no Mori~
Developer: Four-Nine
Date: 1994-04-16
VNDB link:https://vndb.org/v8695
Youtube walkthrough:https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLENAECnNmAq9jc6oE6uhjsWcOoBDaZg2h
Synopsis: A biological experiment that began in 1993 led to a terrible disaster in the beginning of 21st century. A virus that turned living beings into mutants and monsters has been unleashed. Soon the Earth turned into a terrifying place of chaos, as more and more human beings became infected. Unspeakable violence obliterated human civilization. Within a few years, humanity was on the verge of total annihilation. The Era of Darkness began.
But not all hope was lost. Humans began building cities known as "Domes", isolated from the wilderness, protected by glass from all sides, cut from natural resources. It was possible to start building civilization anew.
On one fateful day, the famous scientist couple Mizuhara were killed in what looked like an accident. Their project, which showed new ways of fighting the virus, descended into the grave with them. Their two children were separated and for a long time were unaware of their origins. But the wheels of destiny keep spinning, as the young Mizuhara is about to discover the truth about his parents, and perhaps bring new hope to humanity...
Structure: One route with 8 chapters.
Length: 7 hours
Game type: Command selection adventure
Difficulty: Easy - there were only couple moments to bruteforce - apart of that the pace is good.
Character Design rating: 7/10
Protagonist rating: 4/10
Story rating: 6/10
Game quality: 7/10
Overall rating: 6/10
Rating comments: Huh, the worst rating of all games in the series. The biggest complaint this time is absolutely spineless and useless protagonist. We see his crying face so many times that the desire to hit him arises. Luckily, his female cousin Lucia hits him so many times during the game that even desire to hit him vanishes. Another my complaint is that the game gets very ero-centered by the end of it sacrificing some of the story for the sake of it. I'm glad it was fixed in later installations, but here it left a negative impact for me. And that brings forth my complaint about the story which I'll explain in the story description. Overall game quality stays on the same level as other games of the series which is very high.
Protagonist: Jackie makes the worst protagonist in the series and I'm very glad I did not change his name to mine (there is such menu option). He can't make his own decisions, complains and cries all the time. His female cousin Lucia who accompanies him for the most of the game is a typical tsundere - basically it's a less funny version of Rabby from Gao Gao 3rd. When by the end of the game she's asked why she's that much of a tsundere, she answers that she does not really understand herself often and does not know what she wants... jeez. Jackie can't make his own decisions, so Lucia does them all the time! And she chooses kind of the worst options, so they always get into trouble. And both protagonists are powerless, so they are abused for the whole first part of the game and it does not look funny, to be honest. But to compliment the developers there are nice sub-characters here and amplified humor part.
Characters: As usual, there are lots of sub-characters. The funniest one is Laila who is the genetic parent of Ilia from Gao Gao 3rd which means that they have totally the same personalities, but different memories. Another curious character is glasses wearing Meg who is a friend of protagonist Lucia. The beast girl protagonists encounter first is Lia, but she does not say anything but "Mi" and thus is almost useless for the story. And there's also a half-mermaid girl Nagi. Phew, that finishes the harem of Jackie. As if it's not enough - there also other sub-characters with H-events.
Story: Jackie was separated from his female cousin Lucia 10 years ago after death of their parents. Now Jackie goes from Pluto-city to Aristo-city to meet his cousin. She meets him at the station, but treats him as a dog which role Jackie joyfully accepts. She is foolish enough to fall for a nanpa and Jackie whines so much that he's taken along on a car ride. The nanpa guy Roy brings them to a forbidden area infected by virus and attempts a rape. The cousins flee from the car and get lost in the forest where they eventually meet mutants and the real story begins. But forest part of the game does not really last long and 6 chapters out of 8 take place at Aristo-city upon their return. In order not to spoil much I'll only say that their return does not really happen smoothly and that the laboratory under the city holds all of its secrets (same as in Gao Gao 3rd and 4th, actually - so it's hardly a spoiler). I actually hoped for a better story - not just a walk to the forest and return back with the remaining story happening in the same city. But Gao Gao series is characterized by some facilities investigations in a company and that's presented here in full volume. Moreover, first two chapters were too boring thanks to featuring only two failure protagonists. But as more characters come to stage the flow gets its usual pace and the game becomes a worthy species of the series.
CG: As usual, all the full-screen pictures are reserved for HCG which are rather uneven. But half-screen CG are very nice, yet as usual reserved only for event scenes.
Sound: Great! But I actually think that Gao Gao 3rd inherited too many melodies from this game.
Themes: It's not really a theme, but a complaint over the plot. At some point we get to know that virus is already extinguished and the governing circles just conceal this information as it's convenient to govern the isolated communities under the domes. But in Gao Gao 3rd and 4th we get a different picture as humanity is eliminated save for very small nucleus communities. And whatever the explanations for that are, I still see a contradiction here. Such big cities as Aristo-city can't just vanish over couple hundred years. The only answer to that might be reproduction problems, but Canaan protagonist human boy Kite was born in the vault without problems, so I doubt that's the case.
Overall comments: So it's the weakest game in the series, but does it mean it's bad? I consider Gao Gao series to be the best visual novel series in the whole pre-Windows period. Thus Pandora no Mori surpasses a vast majority of pc-98 era games. And it holds much value for the fan of this series. First of all - most of jokes that keep repeating through following games are originated here (like in example "Information is transferred to the central host" "Oh, host is a man who is dating women!"). Here we finally get to know the origins of the mermaid story that goes through 3rd and 4th games. There are a lot of other symbols that get into following games (like Laila comes to a computer and exclaims that it's strange that it has not broken down after her approaching - and that theme repeats a lot for Ilia).
Foreword: I did not expect much of the first game in the series, but was pleasantly surprised. It's a really long scenario-centered game that stands on the same level as Gao Gao the 3rd, just in less intriguing environment. It's well worth a review!
Title: Gao Gao! 1st ~Radical Sequence~
Developer: Four-Nine
Date: 1994-01-07
VNDB link:https://vndb.org/v8694
Youtube walkthrough:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik-oCR-wj2E&t=0s&list=PLENAECnNmAq8SX_gfftcaJs33UPCvY_Lv&index=1
Synopsis: The protagonist of the game is a college student named Yuuji Shibata. One evening, just after hearing on the news that someone has stolen a tiger, he goes out to a convenience store. On the way back, in a dark alley, he notices a strange creature, a young girl with cat ears and tail. She doesn't seem to remember anything about herself, except her name beginning with the syllable "Mi...", which afterwards earns her the nickname Mi. Yuuji brings her to his house and tries to introduce her to the world of humans. (which, naturally, also involves techniques of human procreation). But will Yuuji be able to keep Mi as his companion (sexual and otherwise), or will he have to face her mysterious past?..
Structure: One route with 8 chapters.
Length: 8 hours
Game type: Command selection adventure
Difficulty: Easy, but triggers aren't clear and bruteforcing required. There were couple very painful moments that took a while to bruteforce.
Character Design rating: 7/10
Protagonist rating: 8/10
Story rating: 7/10
Game quality: 7/10
Overall rating: 7/10 Rating comments: First three games were released almost the same year and they all share the same drawbacks that were partially fixed in 4th Canaan. Those are bruteforcing and obligatory interactive H-scenes. And again hero scores with every female heroine he meets sooner or later - I'm not a fan of such approach. But apart of that I'm really satisfied with the game. I was afraid of abuse of H events with Mi, but there were only two obligatory ones, quite the same as with some other characters. And the scale of the story is much bigger that's presented in the synopsis with a lot of characters to take part. Add here the fact that we're being the witnesses of the very beginnings of virus H1 outrage and I'm sold. I rated protagonist higher than other heroines, because he's truly a great guy - the following section is about him.
Protagonist: Yuuji Shibata is a normal college student... at least we're told that. But he only attends library to prepare for the test in the game. He's funny and brave. There's a lot of charm about him. Gao Gao series protagonists have personalities, faces and none of them are of perverts. That's a great advantage. There are about 10 H-events in the game, but all of them have decent explanations and are results of some events and conditions. That's really fresh since girls don't really force themselves upon the hero and thus don't have their personalities devalued. Yuuji is the only fighting force till very late in the story (catwoman Mi is totally useless in fights) and I was really astonished by the fact that he defeated several ninjas all by himself and was the only one to effectively oppose virus beast - that's your normal college student! There's a lot of charm in the protagonist and Yuuji's the best human protagonist in the series (he can't beat half-wolf Wolfy, of course ^^).
Characters: There are really many characters in this game and even though the game starts normally, it soon becomes a two-man party and eventually even three-man party, so it has the roots of the party heartwarming adventure feature that's the feature of the series. It's useless to speak of heroines, because there are only two main ones - Mi and another college student Hanako. Those girls usually accompany Yuuji and thus are able to contribute to many scenes. Other heroines have episodic part in the story.
Story: So Yuuji finds Mi at a waste depot and brings her to his room. From then on they just wander around the town for several days trying to help Mi recover her memories. At some point they start to be followed by different suspicious persons who demand to return Mi, but heroes just run away from them each time. With some of the memory threads linked together, Mi finally recognized the house that used to be her home. But getting to that house does not even cover a half of the story with the most exciting part hidden in the mansion's inhabitants. Things get violent soon with some unexpected allies joining in. But you won't get the real answers till you watch the video walkthrough. CG: Somehow I found CG here superior to Gao Gao 3rd. And I did not feel as if I was retrogaming at all. But still rare... only for plot important scenes and thus are packed close to the end of the game.
HCG: Compared to Gao Gao 3rd HCG are finally beautiful with few distorted face features. Sound: Great! I like it how the themes of the sounds transfer to the next games, but transformed so that those would not irritate. Themes: I can see one theme to be lingering throughout the game. There is no good and evil, allies and enemies. There are only persons that can be reasoned with as long as they possess intelligence. So far it's the kindest game in the series with pretty much noone dying apart of very episodic sub-characters. Overall comments: I've already reviewed two other games of the series and thus don't have much to say here. That's a very strong start of the series and characters-wise Radical Sequence does not really fall behind its older brothers. We only get semi-fantasy environment here and semi-party experience, but it's the same stamp of quality that's shared among the games of the series. If you liked Wild Force or Canaan it would not be a waste of time to try Radical Sequence. And no game of the series gives virus origins and development explanation as good as Radical Sequence.
Year 1993 was... strange. Most of praised games of the year were blocked by me due to nukige nature of the games. Those games include Kawarazaki-ke no Ichizoku, Rance 4, Viper series, NOVA, Ayumi-chan Monogatari, Kindan no Ketsuzoku. And a lot of quality representatives that I don't even want to mention here are purest brainless nukige. It really looked to me as if the world got mad after the strict censorship of 1992. The number of VNs that made into my list slightly decreased from 4.08 in 1992 to 3.75 in 1993 due to increased nukige tendency.
The notable features of year 1993 included:
- Hard disks come as an early substitute for FDD, e.g. Rance 4 was released only for hard disks.
- Games featuring 2 or even 3 screen CG scrolling got frequent
- Multiple games heavily introduced animation to look like TV anime
- Several works included percentage of watched CG and it stimulated pursue of CG rather than developing story
- As games increase in volume they start to feel uncomfortable withing Command selection formula. Command selection is generally simplified even further to such extremes as three icons or 2-3 unique variants for each selection, sometimes merging with contemporary ADV system.
Let's try and count what masterpiece level games we ended up with in 1993.
1. Bunretsu Shugoshin Twinkle Star
2. Can Can Bunny Extra
3. Cosmology of Kyoto
4. Demon City
5. HHG Heart Heat Girls
6. Kawarazaki-ke no Ichizoku
7. Nova
8. Marine Philt
9. Ooedo Tantei Kamiya Ukyou Vol. 2
10. Prostudent G
11. Rance IV - Kyoudan no Isan -
12. Words Worth
13. Zoku Youjuu Senki -Suna no Mokushiroku-
So if we talk about which game had the biggest impact on industry - it would be Can Can Bunny Extra. From this work the Swatty goddess became a meme and the game is the closest thing to a contemporary high quality charage. But I just refuse to give this nampa game the credit of being the best VN of 1993.
3x3 Eyes ~Sanjiyan Henjou~ is a nice gore game just to my taste, but it has lots of shortcomings.
Horror games like Marine Philt are one-time games that are only good while playing.
Bunretsu Shugoshin Twinkle Star is mostly fun only for first two chapters.
Cosmology of Kyoto is a gem, but it's too different from anything else to participate in the general race.
Prostudent G is a bakage that I refuse to give credit.
Words Worth is a great game, but it would appeal only to a very small percentage of RPG fans.
H.H.G.: Heart Heat Girls is an amazing story but it's from a relatively unknown developer Cat's Pro and its production values are greatly lacking. Dark palette, average character design and CG quality just can't be the BEST game of 1993.
So why not Demon City? It's quite a borderline game, but so is year 1993. It's from the same Cocktail Soft company that made most acclaimed Can Can Bunny Extra the same year, so it's only fair. Demon City has fantastic production values, very unorthodox setting, cool original protagonist, great shifting story. It's persistent, fun and never boring. It made the biggest impression on me and that's what counts.
Foreword: Game had already couple reviews, but those weren't too specific on the story, so I had to check it out myself in the end.
Title: 3x3 Eyes ~Sanjiyan Henjou~
Developer: Nihon Create
Date: 1993-02-05
VNDB link:https://vndb.org/v4547
Length: 6 hours.
Game type: Command selection ADV
Youtube walkthrough:https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLENAECnNmAq-kxnAJKmFd5cOYSn55q0UZ
Difficulty: That happens to be the main part of review. FM Towns/PCE version is perfect with difficulty level low, full voicing and nice interface. The PC-98 version is gamer's hell, but only this version is hookable, so I proceeded with it. It's the fullest version having extra parts the other versions don't have, but pc-98 version has clunky interface of multiple windows that keep jumping all over and horrible mechanics that demand multiple clicking on the same commands to proceed with the game. That much useless clicking forces to miss on important parts as well. And there was a pitch moment in the second branch that made me waste two more hours on clicking through every room and searching for capture information which did not really help me, so only bruteforce clicking through every possible variant in each room only helped.
Synopsis: 3x3 Eyes ~Sanjiyan Henjou~ is based on the manga and anime series 3x3 Eyes. Pai, a young girl from the immortal tribe of sanzhiyan, three-eyed demons of Chinese origin, wants to become a human again. She meets a Japanese teenager named Yakumo Fujii, whom she accidentally turns into a "wu", an immortal obedient servant of a three-eyed demon. Together, Pai and Yakumo try to regain their lost humanity.
This game can be considered a side-story to the series. The player does not control Yakumo, but an ordinary high-school student named Kenichi Yamamoto. Accidentally, Kenichi comes into contact with the world of demons, and now he needs the help of Pai and Yakumo to be freed.
Structure: None.
Character Design rating: 7/10
Protagonist rating: 6/10
Story rating: 6/10
Game quality: 7/10 PCE (2/10 PC-98)
Overall rating: 6/10
Rating comments: I actually expected more from the story and hoped for more gore. The characters only get interesting in voiced version and in PC-98 not so much. PC-98 version is so horrible that it's a miracle I made it to the end.
Protagonist: Kenichi Yamamoto does not really give a good impression. Pretty normal one for a fantasy story - positive, brave, curious etc.
Characters: Pai is a cheerful girl who happens to have her own secret. She and Yakumo don't really play an important role in the story - they just tag along and support. Sujin is the main heroine and love interest of Kenichi. She's a mysterious blonde with some superpowers and her true aims aren't clear. All the other characters get mixed in the swarm of children who get caught up in the blizzard and they go out of the stage more or less together at one point.
Story: Kenichi Yamamoto just happens to have some bug crawl inside his forehead - there's no story behind it - it just happens. And at the same time strange persons start to find him interesting and some supernatural events start to occur around him. He and a swarm of other children get caught up in the blizzard and find shelter in a wooden house. However, a murder happens and panic rises with part of children leaving to find the way out of the blizzard. And both parties get attacked by the killer. And the battle finally shows who is the enemy and who is the real friend. From then on the main heroes seek the way to get the bug out of Kenichi body and for that seek advice from a specialist researcher and from then on seek for the remedy in different parts of the world.
CG: CG are shown in a small window. That looks awful.
Sound: PC-98 has horrible sound support. No sounds - just BGM. And those BGM aren't always suitable for the event on the screen - it can easily be a merry tune during a sad event.
Overall comments: So the game starts with the longest clicking sessions and slowest progression ever. It would be easy to fall asleep for several times if you did not need to click furiously for 100 clicks per minute. Then there goes the short action part where the things settle - and it's the best part of the game. The second half of the game of searching around the world just does not have much in the story department - it's just defeating several lackeys of a bad guy and finally meeting the bad guy. And to make life more difficult there are two mazes implemented - one for each branching. I've only found the basic branching that actually coincides in the same story in the final part of the game. There should actually be a way to get the second naked body scene and even another ending. So it all comes to a poor conclusion - PCE version can't be read since it's not hookable and PC-98 version lacks the interest to be read attentively due to horrible mechanics. I would call the story eclectic since there is not much explanation for actions - like professor is lost and noone cares since there is little time left till mutation or like the light is blown out and four people can't find each other in a narrow corridor and just go separately without really trying to get together. There are some minor events that I fail to get the meaning of. So the main definition for PC-98 version is torture - both story-wise, mechanic-wise and even sound-wise. Quite a short story that would fit in a 40-minutes OVA is stretched mercilessly to 6+ hours of unsatisfying gameplay.
Foreword: I was quite intrigued by original Gram Cats concept - mutated humans fight with aliens and ordinary schoolgirl gets an ability to transform into cat and thus becomes a great spy. But the eternal maze of corridors prevented me from finishing that game. So I thought I'd have more luck with the second part to get acquainted with this SF setting.
Title: Gram Cats 2
Developer: Dott Kikaku
Date: 1993-01-08
VNDB link:https://vndb.org/v8889
Length: 4 hours.
Game type: Command selection ADV + RPG
Youtube walkthrough:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=655prv-IBI8
Difficulty: It's not difficult, but very repetitive. Till you trigger some flag, the rest of events would repeat over and over again. And the second RPG part has one huge pitch moment - I had to restart that whole RPG part for 4 times to find the solution. So upon entering the 2nd floor if you move forward there's a triggered scene where Sayaka falls down - you get to find Sayaka, but upon returning to 2nd floor there is new cutscene that takes away Marine from the party and you need to get to boss door alone. The problem is that from both sides of the door there are the toughest enemies that can only be taken down with two characters in party. You can turn into cat form and slip through the enemies, but to open the door you need to be human and you can't get to human form unless you attack that tough enemy and thus suffer a retaliation hit. And if you enter the boss room without the full hp - he's impossible to beat. So I've tried a lot of different approaches in cat form and running away in human form, but all of them did not work. So on my 4th try upon entering the second floor I did not step forward but turned left and killed the tough enemies while still having two characters in the party and then triggered the two cut-scenes - that finally made my day. But just imagine - the main feature of the game of heroine turning into cat turned totally useless here.
Synopsis: Marine and Sayaka arrive to the Scherer Island which is known as a luxury resort with a great hotel and famous nudist beach. Their goal is to investigate island secretly for the traces of an alien base.
Structure: None.
Character Design rating: 3/10
Protagonist rating: 3/10
Story rating: 2/10
Game quality: 4/10
Overall rating: 3/10
Rating comments: I'm very pissed with this game for stealing four hours of my life. So I thought I would waste an hour more to write a review. My greatest disappointment is that the synopsis is conveyed during the opening sequence that takes around three minutes. It stops at the moment when the girls dive into the ocean and find some structure underwater. And for the first two hours of adventure mode we actually just getting to this structure from the point of arriving to the island. That's just stupid - why showing it in the opening at all then. Heroines don't have individuality so I did even need to know who of them was Marine (red head) and who was Sayaka (blue head) till the point when they separated. I can't say that game is of low quality - graphics are nice, music is solid and there is animation at time. But combine poor characters, absence of story, repetitivity (and reusing of the same resources), abuse of eroticism, weak RPG part and this stupid pitch moment right at the boss and you get exactly a score "3".
Protagonist: Sayaka and Marine are poor protagonists. Their main difference is that Marine (red hair) is more shy and defensive type and Sayaka (blue hair) is kind of loose and for that she's the main heroine of the most voluntary H events - Marine gets coerced in her events. Sayaka was the heroine of the prequel, so it's natural.
Characters: The only side-characters here are girls that get involved into H events and one local salesman who turns out to be something more than a side-character... Apart of that, there's noone of notice.
Story: I've already mentioned that there's no story besides the synopsis. So let's at least mention the main steps till reaching the underwater base. Each day we need to go to the pool to develop diving skills. After that there's couple days of diving in the real ocean practice. At the same time there seems to be another goal - getting into the nudist beach! Marine does not have the courage, but after a few encounters in the hotel with other girls she gets able to relax a bit. There's also Marine kidnapping happens. That's it! And the rest of two hours adventure mode is visiting the same places over and over again hoping for some new event to trigger.
CG: CG are few or I'd rather say non-HCG are few. And because Sayaka transformation suit kind of is not supposed to cover nipples I can't even show those transformed mode nice CG.
Sound: Well, this time I found two BGM annoying. Had to even turn volume down. So not the best sound support.
Overall comments: I expected at least somewhat interesting SF story with superhero transformation mode. What I actually got was a yuri game with no story at all. The whole "gram cat" feature is only flashed at the very end and does not bear much meaning - that could be a game of any other franchise without any problem. Oh, well, at least there is one obscure game less now.
Year 1992 was much to my liking with few eroge and a great number of elaborate plots.
The notable features of year 1992 included:
- Implemented censorship rules resulted in private parts censored and at some cases companies set self-censorship to a degree when no private parts were ever on a screen or sometimes even to no nudity at all
- Regulations led to bigger emphasis on the story and experiments with the genres
- Horror mysteries with gore pictures started to appear as a genre
- Several sepia color works appeared to underline the warm atmosphere of the past events
- Pure romance works started to appear, but Nanpa games were still larger in number
- In several games individual endings for each heroine were implemented
- As for system, several games had very weird choices for text window and icon/command window
The number of good high quality games increased significantly.
Masterpieces of 1992:
1. Armist
2. Can Can Bunny Premiere
3. De-Ja 2
4. Doukyuusei
5. Dracula Hakushaku
6. Ginga Ojou-sama Densetsu Yuna
7. Joker II
8. Kiss
9. Koroshi no Dress 3
10. Kurutta Kajitsu
11. Martial Age
12. My Eyes!
13. Phobos
14. Shinjuku Monogatari
15. Sotsugyou Shashin / Miki
16. The 4th Unit - Wyatt
And there was a good number of works with good atmosphere and story. At first I was pretty sure that Crazy Fruit (Kurutta Kajitsu) must be the game of the year 1992 since the year born so many horror mystery novels. Then I got really intrigued by Shinjuku Monogatary. Doukyuusei (Classmate) and it struck me as a very bright and novelty game. It was supposed to be another nanpa game or dating seem and turned out to be a collection of stories that you choose yourself. It's a game of events as something keeps happening everywhere and it's up to you whether you stop and try to get to know the people there or keep on exploring. Game has very attractive characters and huge replayability potential. It's not a strategy, not an RPG, but the amount of freedom you're given makes you think it's an entirely new genre. And yet my personal preferences demand a story game for the winner. And I personally liked the story of Phobos the most among the visual novels of 1992.
Foreword: Himeya Soft and C's Ware are basically the same people, so it would really be a shame to miss their first cyberpunk game, father of Xenon ~Mugen no Shitai~ and grandfather of luv wave. How deep is the story? How much torture does it imply on players? Does it already have mind-screw elements? I'll try to answer all those questions.
Title: Phobos
Developer: Himeya Soft
Date: 1992-07-16
VNDB link:https://vndb.org/v9006
Length: 4 hours.
Game type: Command selection ADV.
Youtube walkthrough:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWumb25ixg4&list=PLENAECnNmAq8RWaOExpvkkUSuI3utIyp1
Difficulty: It's not difficult, but rather very repetitive. There's no telling when event is going to be triggered, so I had to make a full round of talks with each npc and return to the base each time. It would be more pleasing with a walkthrough.
Synopsis: In the future, mankind successfully colonized Mars. However, the colonists eventually wished to be independent from Earth's control, and as a result a war began. Martian colonists used armored combat androids in battles. Eventually an uneasy truce was achieved, but Martian economy was badly damaged by war, and the planet became de facto dependent on Earth to survive.
Half a year later, a young Tokyo-based private investigator named Ryuuichi and his assistant, the android Leyla, are contacted by the colonel of the former colonial army of Mars. It appears that someone has stolen documents containing top military secrets and disappeared with them. Ryuuichi is asked to find that man, whom he knew quite well during the years of war...
Structure: Ryuuichi is given five days till the new rebel war starts, but actually the game takes only four days and on the beginning of the fourth day the most important events to prevent the war take place.
Character Design rating: 6/10
Protagonist rating: 8/10
Story rating: 8/10
Game quality: 6/10
Overall rating: 7/10
Rating comments: I really liked the protagonist and the story behind him. But for heroines... they lack attention and thus depth. Android assistant Leyla is given much attention, but she hardly has any feelings apart of loyalty. The story is really tough and good with sudden twists and treasons. But overall high repetitiveness and somewhat spontaneous H events hurt the impression. It's still a masterpiece for me.
Protagonist: Ryuuichi is the real gem of the game. He participated in the martian war and three years later keeps seeing nightmares about those armdroids he killed. He does act like a perv at times, but that's to add comical effect mostly. His wife Leyla stayed on Mars and he remodeled one of the armdroids to serve as his assistant and named her Leyla as well. Ryuuichi story actually might be more important than the main martian guerrilla one. The game ends in half happy tones and half sad ones and the ring scene is touching and well-done. Describing it would be a spoiler.
Characters: Game has quite many characters. I've counted seven heroines with HCG. There are also some hard-boiled male characters. The peculiarity of the game is that only one heroine is of calm civilian type and the others have a violent character and are skilled in warfare. They're quite the beauties as well.
Story: So, we're only given vague instructions to find captain Konnor who killed one of the soldiers and fled with secret documents regarding martian guerrilla movement. We're not being too successful when we find some mysterious woman spying on us. Following her leads to East district where two suspicious organizations dwell - Sakuragi Heavy Industries and Club Kowloon. Both of them have only women as staff members (males still serve as guards) and for a good while we try to get inside those buildings. Still the most of plot events happen as encounters - our life is in constant danger with so many violent girls around. At the same time one of our hirers major Garrak is rumored to deal with drugs and conspire with martian rebels. Then suddenly everything starts to look not as it seems and friends get to be difficult to tell from foes. So, yes, it has mind-screw elements, even though in initial state. But the story is complex and inspiring, so it's well worth the time.
Title meaning: The title screen of the game says literally : "The "PHOBOS" is a satellite of the mars". And up to the very end the name never shows up. And it actually turns out to be the name of the secret military plan dealing with photon and nucleus. I really like it when the meaning of the title gets explained at some point.
CG: I can't say CG are good here - they're fine - the girls are mostly cute, the males are tough and androids are cool, especially when damaged.
Sound: There is a different BGM for each place and those are pleasant tunes.
Overall comments: Phobos is a serious mature SF story and adult elements suit fine here, same as in Imitation wa Aisenai. HCG are very modest and light since they serve the story and not otherwise. That helps to create a human dimension out of protagonist private life drama instead of being just a sales oriented adventure work like Snatcher. I really like it how Himeya Soft and C's Ware great games turn out to be underrated. In Phobos case I blame horrible and childish-looking box cover. The more the joy to discover these masterpieces.
Foreword: Fairytale is the main experimentation company of the early 1990s. And Shinjuku Monogatari is an attempt to go away from adult games for the sake of games that can keep the interest by the story and atmosphere alone. The history shows us now that it was a failure attempt from the start since adult titles with cute heroines are everything the populus wants. But was Fairytale really wrong in that intention?
Title: Shinjuku Monogatari
Developer: Fairytale
Date: 1992-07-23
VNDB link:https://vndb.org/v9083
Length: 2 hours.
Game type: Command selection ADV.
Youtube walkthrough:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0x1q4yO5Dk
Difficulty: Very few options to choose. Trivial.
Synopsis: Ibuki inherited an antique store, but to survive he takes side jobs as well. One day his frequent client Akemi offers him a job to fake kidnapping of a high school girl Megumi Naruyama, the only heir of Naruyama Real Estate group. Megimi herself is the initiator of the kidnapping. Since the pay is good - a million yen - Ibuki takes his younger partner Shinji and gets to the school gates. But Megumi's uncle Sakai has own plans for Megumi and he sets a yakuza gang on the children trail.
Structure: Game takes three days.
Character Design rating: 7/10
Protagonist rating: 7/10
Story rating: 6/10
Game quality: 7/10
Overall rating: 7/10
Rating comments: This is an experimental Fairytale work. It's a very realistic story about youth rebel state of mind. All the heroes of the game are as if drawn from modern life, just with weird haircuts. I'm probably too old to appreciate the values of youth independence, but overall it could easily be Douglas Coupland novel for those qualities. Overall it's an enjoyable piece of work, just only two hours long and I can't possibly rate a short game any higher.
Protagonist: Ibuki is a peculiar protagonist in that he is an orphan and he takes care of the antique store with his sister. He takes on different kinds on jobs and that's why has quite a net of informants around him.
Characters: Shinji is the younger partner of Ibuki and he's not the smartest kid. He wears an "Elvis" hairstyle and is there for support mostly. Megumi is the main heroine and she's one rich family spoilt brat. Her character is good, but she's sick of adults and she thinks that all the adults in her surrounding are liars and two-faced. She lost her mother long ago and her father took another wife. A month ago the father died at Chicago at very strange circumstances reported as an incident. Megimi's uncle Sakai took care of the company affairs. Megumi hates both her stepmother and her uncle. She orders her kidnapping on a whim - just to get a week vacation from the false adults around her. And the whole story is about her growing up and coming to terms with her past and the adults.
Story: The story is not the most important part of this game since it's a novel about growing up. The dialogues and thoughts are the focus here, so I guess I can tell the most of the story without much fear of spoilering. Ibuki and Shinji successfully kidnap Megumi and she plans the week of her vacations ahead - shopping, amusement park and then going somewhere far away from Tokyo. She's a rich one, so she easily buys a new Jaguar car for boys costing 13 million yen as well as new dresses. But partly she just wants attention, especially from her stepmother who is very distant from her since the company president death. So she instructs the boys to telephone to the company and demand a ransom so that her stepmother delivered it next day evening. But instead the next day noon children are assaulted by her uncle Sakai with his thugs. Boys just need the payment, so they are eager to exchange, but Megumi refuses to return categorically and they manage to run away together on a car. Ibuki is astonished by the turn of events - an easy job turned into a matter of life and death. Sakai thugs turn out to be real killers from Chicago. How will they manage in this perilous situation? Will Megumi accept her past and present? I guess I won't spoiler everything after all and the answers can be found in my video playthrough.
CG: They are quite uneven. At times Megumi is cute, but mostly her face is distorted in some manner. Shinji is the only one who looks ok, mostly because his face is drawn in a comical way all the time. But all CG are stylish in sepia tones and are very multiple, setting a unique atmosphere of the game.
Sound: Some midi BGM.
Overall comments: Shinjuku Monogatari was devised as a series of games and in the end of the first game we get the synopsis and intrigue of the second episode flashed. And for that reason we get to know a lot of side-characters who are a colorful bunch, but don't really get any meaningful role in the game. Would I really want to play another episode about Ibuki and Shinji? Actually, not. But was the game a failure? I don't think so. The game was a part of very strong movement to cleanse the newborn genre of visual novels from constant sex allusions and make it a genre for literary adaptations and talented scenarists debuts. But we got what we got.
Foreword: I did not intend to play Armist to the end, but its game system was indeed player-friendly and the story turned out to be quite a serious thing instead of being a bakage, so it's well worth a review.
Title: Armist
Developer: Basement
Date: 1992-07-03
VNDB link:https://vndb.org/v8564
Length: 2.5 hours.
Game type: Command selection ADV.
Youtube walkthrough:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRhArebnKUk
Difficulty: That's the most important thing in the game. There are few commands to select from and as soon as the topic is depleted the command disappears. This way repetition is eliminated almost completely. There are also some 10 "fights" in the game, but there aren't any stats and player can only choose means of attack for each of three heroes. That choice is mostly meaningless (only the toughest enemies are immune to physical attacks and should be dealt with gunfire).
Synopsis: In the future, advanced genetic studies opened unseen possibilities for mankind. After years of research, it finally became possible to create artificial human beings with animal traits, the so-called deminoids. The player takes the role of the head of a detective agency named Armist; two pretty female deminoids (with bunny and cat ears) are his trustworthy partners. Investigating a murder in a huge deminoid-producing company, the hero will eventually discover the truth about this scientific achievement and all its implications...
Structure: Game consists of moving between four floors and each of those floors demands a different diskette image, but overall it's just one day.
Character Design rating: 6/10
Protagonist rating: 7/10
Story rating: 6/10
Game quality: 7/10
Overall rating: 6/10
Rating comments: The governing attribute of the game is simplicity. Both main heroines Billy and Miria have straightforward characters. The gameplay is mostly about room investigation and the important information is given mostly in the end. There's no drama or treachery and game is short - that all prevents the game from being a major one.
Protagonist Rise is the name of the hero. He's the head of the detective agency. A cool guy who can both melee and support with gunfire. What's especially nice is that he's not a perverted type - but a pure professional.
Characters: Miria the bunny girl is the more sensible of the deminoids. She believes in negotiations and she's a cowardly one. Her weapon is a gun, aimed shot and quick shots. She's also blamed by Billy for wearing fancy dress. On the other hand Billy the catgirl is the close quarters fighter using claws from her fingers. She's the violent type and prefers to to fight, then think.
Story: We just come to the roof of skyscraper and investigate the rooms of the four available floors from 45 to 48 on with on average 5 rooms per each floor. One by one we get to find survivors in different states of mind, but none of them is perfectly sane. Some of them turn to be enemies, some happen to be helpful. Oh and of course we get to know who and why massacred the whole staff of deminoid production company and put an end to the incidents.
CG: CGs are of beautiful retro-style, but are mostly packed at the beginning and close to the end of the game. The only HCG in the game are couple shots of enemies without upper body dress.
Sound: Sound is merry and couple of bgm REALLY reminded me of Gao Gao series music.
Overall comments: So the reason I even decided to write a review on this game is how much it reminds me of Gao Gao series. Same animal ears mutants, same heartwarming party talks while exploring, same numerous rooms and floor investigation (and some rooms looked very familiar to me), same merry atmosphere with occasional drama crumbs, same heads icons on the bottom during dialogue and even bgm at times sounded much alike. I honestly believe that this little bright game inspired Four-Nine for creating a whole world based on the same premise. But here there's little mystery behind deminoids. Four-Nine, on the other hand enveloped the whole mutants appearance in the myst and added the whole new layer of humanity extinction (to a different degree in different works of the series). Game is hooked well and the received text is without garbage, so I'd recommend to have a look on the game for all Gao Gao fans and just all admirers of retro CG and music. My video walkthrough is in a bit too fast tempo since I did not intend to get to the end of it, but it's still watchable, either with pauses or with just reading dialogues as there are always pauses for dialogues.
Year 1991 was the first with monthly issues and for that reason the hardest. Let's first try to determine its prominent features for VNs:
- Number of adult games increased greately to some 100 titles overall
- PC-98 era arrives with mouse support and the older systems finally lose support
- RPG percentage remains high at some 20% while ADV grows significantly to some 50%
- New sub-genres appear - point-and-click, quiz, board game.
- Some games start to use action icons instead of command selection thanks to mouse use.
- It's the last year without any government regulation. After November 1991 shoplifting incident regulations being created.
Masterpieces of 1991: 1. CAL II 2. Cosmic Psycho 3. Cybernetic Hi-School Part 4 ~Ape Hunter J~ 4. ELLE 5. Gidyy 6. Jesus II 7. Nike 8. Nostalgia 1907 9. Psychic Detective Series Vol. 4: Orgel 10. Psychic Detective Series Vol. 5: Nightmare 11. Rance III - Leazas Kanraku -
Those were the games with great stories and a professional touch. And I'm biased here towards ELLE since it's the only one that got renewed version in 2000s. Otherwise it might be a serious competition.
Foreword: Again, C's Ware game and EVE on top of that. I actually played it before EVE Zero as a substitute for EVE:Adam Doublefactor, but decided to to keep it for a later time since it has some imminent spoilers for EVE Zero.
Title: Eve: The Fatal Attraction
Developer: C's Ware
Date: 1999-12-02
VNDB link:https://vndb.org/v6108
Length: 22 hours.
Game type: Point-and-Click ADV.
Youtube walkthrough:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBhsyk1jhDw&list=PLENAECnNmAq_7odFKypHmj08DyKpfQfCN
Difficulty: More severe than the previous three EVE games that I played. At one point I needed to guess and move each of the characters to the location behind the Sun Mansions apartments to progress the story. In last titles the zapping moments were pretty evident since you got stuck at one scene and there were like only couple of actions available. Here you have 10 maps and lots of locations inside them, so you don't really know if you know to brute-force every object and command at all those locations again for both characters or look for a zapping spot for characters to meet. Another time I got stuck since at the old location you needed to click at lots of ambient objects for a new location (park) to open up. That was counterintuite at all and there were zero tips what needed to be done. Hopefully I found a very good japanese walkthrough and I'd strongly recommend to use it.
Synopsis: Detective Kojiroh receives a request to become a bodyguard for trading company director for seven days. But a lot of aspects of this task look fishy: director does not want to explain who or why is going to attack.
At the same time investigator Marina is tracking the serial killer who violently tortures their victims with a knife. How are those incidents linked with each other? What does the criminal strives to know from the victims?
Both plot-lines eventually come together only to reveal the grand scale of political game and conspiracy.
Structure: Game takes place during seven days with Marina part having a small continuation on 8th day.
Character Design rating: 8/10
Protagonist rating: 9/10
Story rating: 10/10
Game quality: 9/10
Overall rating: 9/10
Rating comments: I tried to rate based on the weight of shortcomings noticed. I don't really have questions to character design - I rather don't like the style of the artist. He managed to make even good old characters ugly. Standing sprites for female characters don't bear comparison with the game prequels. Male characters are actually ok. Lots characters on CG are looking weird and sometimes just horrible. The happy face of Queen Prisia on Kojiroh's shoulder made me want to cry. Again, males on CG are mostly cool. Both Marina and Kojiroh lost a bit of their charm due to lack of humor or rather more drama. Kojiroh scenes are especially painful since protagonists only have their thoughts, but not dialogues voiced. So in dialogues his everlively nature gets lost and he becomes the guy who does not know what he wants. But after the event I hear his voiced thoughts and it gets much easier since this is our old humorous Kojiroh who's making sarcastic comments over the passed event. Still those aren't decisive faults to lover the score. What's important is that the ending day is rushed and for both Marina and Kojiroh it's just a series of flashbacks rather than coherent gameplay. There's a lot of new difficult to chew stuff poured on the reader without much explanation and that leaves the feeling of the ending being rushed with some loose ends.
Protagonist Marina and Kojiroh, of course! I've already said that they both lost a bit of their charm. Partly it's because both the protagonists have a new soul trauma. It was unusual for me to see those lively problems-free guys in depressed state at times.
Characters: Well, first of all I'd like to notice that the opening is absolutely cool and I really awaited lots of gunfire, cool scenes and lots of new characters. However, the two characters featured in the opening (the blue-haired one and the yellow-haired one) never appeared in the game and that was really disappointing. The game also has veeeery few action scenes. But we're speaking about characters now. There are fewer cool female characters this time (again, lots of cool men characters). All I can think of is the head of secretary department of trading firm Ami and a very cool receptionist girl at the same company. But Himuro Kyouko character even turned for the worse. She is the source for lots of jealousy and drama in Kojiroh's office (she's Kojiroh assistant in this game) and the only time she's actually useful she features a huge explanations over the most trival pc topics so that I started to guess whether she was good with computers at all or just bluffed about it. But overall there's a great cast of characters, as usual. Nothing to complain, really.
Story: Finally, the story. Well, I actually told too much of it in the synopsis. The structure of the story does not really innovating. Kojiroh becomes a bodyguard and actually Marina becomes a bodyguard of one surviving girl Yuka as well. And this part looked actually very similar to Burst Error. There was Mayako - now here is Yuka. There was 50/50 split of the time with the guarded person and it's roughly remains the same. There is also a scene of alcohol party with Marina+Yayoi+Yuka that looks almost identical to that of Burst Error with Marina+Yayoi+Mayako. It follows absolutely the same pattern and happens in the same apartment. The only difference is in Yuka lively attitude compared to reserved one of Mayako (Yuka has short yellow hair, she is featured on two pictures in this post). And the structure of the plot is not as difficult as in prequels. Basically, both protagonist just guard the target person and wait for attacker to make his move. The do get to know a lot of details about their protected person and their shady dealings. Marina has more screen time in this game and she actually investigates other leads, but in the end what only matters is the aggressor move, not her activity. The game had a very cool action opening. In the very first animated intro of the game Marina and Kojiroh cooperate to prevent Prisia assassination by a sniper. And there was a lot of talk that the town got flooded with illegal weapons. Those three factors made me think there was going to be lots of gunfire and cool scenes. But actually the main weapon of the game is a knife and no the only time something other than a handgun is featured - UZI - it never gets to be used. That sniper episode is not returned to till the very last minutes of the ending when we seen the short resolution of that incident. The only meaning of it seemed to be in that we get to know the face of the sniper, but it was not familiar to me - exactly because I have not played EVE Zero yet at that time. There are quite many references to Eve Zero and only couple really to the events of Lost One. Overall, I don't have complaints over the story apart of the rushed ending. It just looks that they wanted this game to be much bigger initially, but it was growing to a long playtime already so some things were scrapped. It's still our EVE and its story is still intriguing and totally unrivaled by any other companies of that time.
CG: I already complained about the artist in the ratings. So i'll mention only HCG here. There are TWO HCG in the game. Yes, just two HCG of bare chest and that's all. I was relieved to learn that since EVE Lost One and EVE Zero are all-age ones and thus there aren't sudden shifts here.
Sound: Everyone is voiced apart of the current protagonist dialogues (well, there were actually couple places without voicing). Protagonist thought monologues are voiced, actually. No complaints here.
Themes and symbols: Well, game's not thought-provoking, but here are couple themes that I can discern:
1) I will live by my own rules. That thought appeared several time from both Marina and Korijoh. I don't think there's any special meaning apart of that they really break some rules sometimes there are moments of doubt where they turned into bad guys.
2) EVE theme lives on, naturally. By now everyone must know that EVE theme is cloning. In EVE Lost One there were quality developments in that field, but here in EVE:TFA there's rather a quantity development. Clones get numerous and that rises several questions. Some demand equal rights with other humans. Some demand freedom and isolation from the humans. Some just try to hide among humans. But the question remains : what to do with clones if their populations rises? This question does not bear much meaning nowadays though since human cloning experiments are forbidden worldwide.
Humor: I skip this part when there's noting to talk about. And this game is rather a serious one. But I totally adored the receptionist at president Ando (Kojoroh's client) company. That's a very stingy woman with a very formal attitude. Every time Kojiroh visits the company she asks of his name and the purpose of his visit. And every time there's a very amusing word battle among them. Kojiroh refuses to tell his name or purpose and she keeps asking. She looses temper and all her formal attitude in this arguement. Finally she gives up and gives a call to the director without knowing the name and purpose and Kojiroh is let in. That's fun enough, but the next day everything repeats itself. She refuses to acknowledge that Kojiroh visited just recently and keeps asking the same question. The argument vocabulary is different for each new fight and each following time there is more fun.
Overall comments: It's a new EVE game and I totally like it! If it was issued in the same format in 1999 instead of ADAM - that would be the game of the year 1999 right away for me kicking Kanon. And - who knows - maybe it's going to be the game of the year 2001 for me. As every EVE game so far it has entertaining and thrilling scenes, serious development, great characters and lots of interesting to read dialogues. The characters have become most dear by now and they stay true to to their personalities. It's like a new season of your favorite show. There are ups and downs, but that's natural since characters can't stay the same and they constantly develop. Those are your favorite characters and you can't stop loving them.
Not really a post. Just an overview of recent events and their consequences.
I tried to add a certain extension to my wiki which caused a bug (even though it was reversed a minute later) which led to 100% cpu load which led to suspension. I had everything backed up with standard mediawiki .xml export, but my wiki had just too big number of pages (some 23,000) to import properly back which led to loosing trust with semantic mediawiki. It used to be ok, but it's way too unstable, that's why no wiki farm uses it (.wikia allowed using it in 2013 just to shut support later in the same 2013, .referata declined and .shoutwiki no longer installs it). It has big problem with performance, background works and scaling.
I was mesmerized by discovering reddit vn hub lately. It has impressions on some 1,500 different vns gathered over some 10 years - that's a huge base that I'm very excited to use as vn reviews collector. Its policy emphasizes quality of text over personal expression, so it's not really a suitable environment for me to participate though.
I'm really startled by the fact that the most popular pages of my blog are of 1980s years vns. And that's really embarrassing since those are very low quality posts. I've also got some feedback that eroge should not really be put together with the nukige. Additionally Micchi april fool day's blog post actually showed that it tackles some very dubious eroge from time to time.
That all led to the following horrible decision - I'm getting back to the 1980's. This time I'm going to unblock all the eroge (except for nukige, but 1980s-1990s had very few pure nukige), multiple stories and all the under 2 hours works (till 2000s). Moreover, I'm going to try to present synopsis of every blocked work as well - together with all the reviews found for those works. That's going to result in very long cumbersome posts since it's not rare for a single month to have over 100 vns issued in 2000s.
I'm getting to it after I've indexed all the English reviews for untranslated vns and rare translated vns. I'll post all the indexed sources and reviews links probably at this free wiki where I've set just bare carcass. But this time I'm keeping the original in excel file only since it's the fastest way to find and edit a really big set of items.
So I'll get Eve Zero and Eve The Final Attraction reviews set and then start my back to the future quest.
Why am I doing this now when I've finally approached interesting vns? Do I really like old games? Actually, I don't like them much. What I like is the order where every piece is categorized and described. I can't really move on if I'm not satisfied with the result.
Meet those of you who survive this long ride of exhaustion in the future!
1990s are over. And to commemorate that I've made a video playlist of all the openings/demo/endings with singing/energetic instrumental from 1990s here
I'll be making such playlists for each new year starting with 2000 since each year is going to have over 100 such opening/ending/demo themes. Second Windows era year is behind. It failed to bring such a game that I'd announce Vn of the year 1999 right away. Instead, it brought a number of quality galge and some quirky cryptic games that I personally had a good time unwinding.
Let's prolong the chart.
VN per year
Year
Total
Listed
Blocked
1991
75
40 (53%)
35 (47%)
1992
80
49 (61%)
31 (39%)
1993
121
46 (38%)
75 (62%)
1994
155
61 (39%)
94 (61%)
1995
180
58 (32%)
122 (68%)
1996
183
83 (46%)
100 (54%)
1997
202
91 (45%)
111 (55%)
1998
303
133 (44%)
170 (56%)
1999
441
164 (37%)
277 (63%)
Windows years show a rapid increase in number of games, almost 50% total growth overall compared to 1998. In 1999 there's a shift towards blocked games, mostly because of nukige number increase.
Let's look at year 1999 highlights:
It becomes a habit to issue first press edition with some omake inside and then regular edition.
Doujin fan games make an appearance. Notably there is one doujin game for "One" and as many as three doujin games for "Kanon" in 1999. And Comic Party is notable for this movement.
There was a short momentum of console games transition to PC with H scenes added (Kiss yori...), but it did not gain much continuation.
In 1999 child pornography law came into force in Japan and from that time every single heroine in the games suddenly turned 18 years old. But appearance might suggest otherwise - such heroines started to be called loli.
Year 1998 was notable mostly for graphic advances (thus the small number of masterpieces), but it hit the limit and in 1999 there is much more attention to the scenario.
Nakige as class did not exist till 1999. But throughout the year it gained a universal spread and multiple magazines were making the list of the best nakige of 1999.
Command selection ADV is almost extinct this year. Even Adam:The Doublefactor went for point-and-click instead.
To choose the game of the year 1999 let's observe the masterpieces presented:
Captain Love
Comic party
Elemental Arts
Green
Kanon
Kazeoto, Chirin
L no Kisetsu: A piece of memories
Mamatoto ~a record of war~
Memories Off
Refrain Love 2
Silver Jiken
Spark!
Tokimeki Memorial 2
So, thirteen. A very solid selection. I don't really have a personal favorite here. And there is no such work that I'd say - yes - it' perfect. Taking out cryptic, simulation, rpg, bakage and ero-centered works we basically left only with Captain Love, Kanon, L no Kisetsu, Memories Off, Refrain Love 2 - a bunch of pretty normal galge. And among those Kanon quality level is significantly higher and thus Kanon is the Vn of the Year 1999.
It's going to be pretty much my first off-topic post, but I feel the need to inform on the matter why all the links are inaccessible.
My free hosting (http://tigrimigri.com/) died on me on November 6th and I've been waiting for it to show up ever since. I can't do monthly overviews without it since I initially fill in data through the wiki.
I don't really have any backups save for very early crude version so I felt reluctant searching for a new home. But it's finally the time and I've tried some free services only to find out that I need a paid hosting.
First my requirements. I needed Semantic Mediawiki with a bandwith over 5gb. Here is my list of free services with evaluation why they did not work for me.
1) http://www.shoutwiki.com - they provide semantic mediawiki extension only on request, but I sent that request over a week ago and there's still no answer and ticket status directs at 404 error since the very beginning so I guess that's it.
2) http://referata.com/ - it returns error on the very basic create template choice so it looks abandoned for some time
3) https://www.gamepedia.com/ - has Semantic Mediawiki in its extensions but hosts only wikis on one certain game, not other around gaming wikis
4) https://byet.host - is actually the only service that I was able to comfortably test semantic mediawiki after the collapse, but it has quite strict policies and my fresh semantic mediawiki has been banned twice already - for load spikes (I ran shell scripts to upload pages from .csv files faster) and for some 2ch/4ch content (I guess links to vndb.org were considered as that since there is literally nothing else on that wiki). There are tonns of noname other free hosts who actually are byet resellers. They are easily identified by unlimited everything for free, the same signup pattern and nameservers actually looking at byet.
5) https://x10hosting.com/ - can't say much about it, since it says right away at signup that signups from my country are not allowed, unwise to try and violate that.
6) https://www.heliohost.org/ - i tried to register on both available servers and it's it's just unmanagable with very slop operating speed on a fresh installed mediawiki
7) https://viewen.com/ - they look legible, but they demand to like and share them every month on facebook and stay constantly in touch. Upon registration they provide a list of eight (!) segments where you need to give out pretty much all your personal data, vow to worship them as facebook god and some other sections that I did not read up to. Can't stand that much intimacy from a hosting. Their TOS is quite strict as well, so such site as vndb on semantic mediawiki could fall under child porn, scripts abuse and copyright infringement.
8 ) https://aws.amazon.com/ - they refused to accept my card information - guess it's because they are USA-centered.
9) https://www.000webhost.com - they're well known for leaking millions of private data records recently but even without noticing that there are some obvious shortcomings. There's an automated script only for wordpress site, otherwise manual uploading the site and configuring database needed. There's a lot of negative feedback about sudden violating the terms of service notices, so Semantic wiki with its background data update services would be in the vanguard of violation.
10) http://www.host-ed.net/ - company is an old one and there are a lot of issues piled up around it - the most pressing one for me is that PHP version is as low as 5.4 and only quite old mediawiki versions would be able to start here.
11) https://www.freewebhostingarea.com/ - php version is only 5.2.6 and most of pages go into 404 redirects
12) https://www.5gbfree.com/ - site's down for last few days, probably dead. In past I tried it and I remember some severe limitations like inability to have own domain name.
13) https://googiehost.com/ - actually a reliable choice, but I had my first Mediawiki there and once a month mediawiki was just dying with pages loading for 5 minutes/initiating an error. Support ticket improved the situation each time, but after several months of such torture I moved out afrom there.
14) https://www.atspace.com/ - has some real limitations on the MySQL database with just 30mb storage and only 15 tables allowed.
That's actually it. All the others are the resellers or/and offer too little disc space (I need at least 300-400mb) or severe limitations on bandwidth/database.
So far I've set up with one of the the cheapest possible web hosting (and I'll be making .xml exports of all pages periodically) and I really hope I would not ever need to make a 1$/month web hostings review after this free hostings review.
Foreword: It's a C's Ware story game so I'm in. I have not read reviews prior to playing the game. I followed three different walkthroughs though - and still failed to get even a single happy ending. You can read about my torments below.
Title: Vist
Developer: C's Ware
Date: 1999-12-02
VNDB link:https://vndb.org/v6108
Length: 20 hours.
Game type: Map selection ADV.
Difficulty: Pretty insane. Some mazes are ridiculously difficult and twice I failed to find a way within an hour and had to precisely follow walkthrough. Another my huge disappointment is that I failed miserably to get any happy ending. So here how it was. I followed walkthrough accurately for the first time aiming for Rin ending. For some reason I got only a normal one no matter how many times I reloaded the last two battles. Then i dug two more walkthroughs and one said that simultaneous capture was possible so I flagged every heroine twice and saved before the final 3rd flagging... and no matter how many times I followed that choice to the end I still got only same normal ending. So my guess is that
1) simultaneous capturing is impossible and it's needed to strictly not flag any other girl
2) you probably need to make sure you win all the battles (it's very unclear in the game whether you actually got hit or made a successful counter-attack)
3) C's Ware turned into complete sadists after very very torturing Kazeoto, Chirin. There are a lot of choices and hundreds of map and items interaction so even with skipping whole playthrough for the heroines ending scene is going to take at least two hours (more like three). And there are EIGHT heroines! There's just one CG for this final scene so it's a very short one. After a full day of replaying trying to get good ending I just got so sick of the game that I don't the will to keep trying.
Synopsis: Takuto, the protagonist, is a sickly highschool student with a heart disease. His father is a scientist and researcher who is traveling overseas. Even thought he is alone in home, his neighbor and university student Rin come visit him every day, and every night his father call him and they talk by phone.
But one day, his father stops calling and they lost contact. Takuto wonders if something happened to him and contacts the laboratory where his father works. But the staff members dont' know anything.
Takuto is worried, until one day a strange girl called Eryu appears in his house with a letter from his father.
"I'm sorry ------" - Says the last words of his father.
And something who don't look to be human starts to approach the hero, who little by little get caught in the case of the bizarre murders.
Structure: There are 5 chapters each containing on average 8 days.
Character Design rating: 8/10
Protagonist rating: 8/10
Story rating: 7/10
Game quality: 8/10
Overall rating: 8/10
Rating comments: I'm biased here since watching all the good endings could melt my heart a bit. But overall characters don't look too likable. Out of 8 heroines I liked Reiko the scientist woman the most and she's pretty much a standard office lady. So there aren't really likable characters. Protagonist is too weak at first and in the second half he fails to control himself repeatedly and looses memory of what happened more than once. Can't really say that he's moving the flow of the story. Game looks and feels quite cheap - mostly thanks to character design and only female cast voicing. Don't get me wrong - CG and interactive part are awesome. Game also has a number of very colorful enemies and side-characters... but they are males and thus not voiced. Story was a firm 9 up to the last fifth chapter where it suddenly changed the location and got too cryptic leaving a lot of loose ends behind.
Protagonist The transformation from a weakling into superhuman was quite well done. He's beaten bloody for the first half of the game by other hooligan students and is only occasionally saved by girls who happen to be around. What differs him from other students is his high metabolism and ability to stay close to the infection fog without being infected. What I like about him is how he takes the beatings by the hooligans. He hardly says a word and just tolerates everything with the thoughts "If I do as they want the beatings will only get worse". Apart of that he hardly knows and does not have his own will - it might be for the best since it's easy to associate oneself with him.
Characters: As I've mentioned there are a lot of cool bad guys in this game. Later game is based on fights, but there is only one capable of fighting heroine.Apart of the bad guys there is one very impressive "Scarred man" - he's basically of the same source as yourself and thus he just terminates his enemies. You hardly manage to fight one beast and then just walk and see rivers of blood and guts left behind that person. He showed up at different moments in the game and was a great guy to look up to. But again, last chapter prepared a hasty resolution for him as well and this trump card was poorly played. Since there are 8 heroines it's supposed to be a gal game? Well, absolutely not. Every girl has three flags and flagging is basically done by the end of 4th chapter. There are no girls in 5th chapter (well, almost), but after the final battle the girl suddenly appears and you see her ending with just one CG and some phrases. It can hardly be called a "route" and especially an "ending". It's a story game. What's nice in the heroines is that three of them are grown-up ladies in their 30's and the other half are of the same or close age to Takuto. So there is a childhood friend, a meganekko, a hooligan girlfriend, a mysterious girl who is sent to you from your father, a half-native african girl, scientific researcher, news reporter and some superstrong mysterious woman.
Story: So for the story. The most stunning fact is that first two chapters last for 18 days and literally nothing happens during that time. You just go to school and go to sleep at home, that's it. What's that - a slice of life? Whenever I got slightly bored with it I just rewatched the cool opening and and kept on waiting. Chapter 3 is where girls start to show up and story finally starts to form. By the end of Chapter 4 the story is over and heroine route is finalized. I would actually prefer finishing the story there with maybe one additional fight. But it goes on in some forgotten African country laboratory. But it's actually Chapter 4 that gives us all the answers. Chapter 5 throws genetics, superhuman entity, clones and superficial myths together and only tells us the story of our father (and mother?). There are only couple locations here, development is hasty and there's little meaning in what's going on anymore, then it gets even more confusing and - bam - battles - battles - the end. Battles are done pretty well so you only choose the part of enemy to attack or the defend action for each turn. Enemy may choose to block one of these three parts and counter-attacks if you choose the same body part. Saving helps, but there are also some tricks involving using special items against special enemies. Some enemies attack animations are pictured clearly, but some can't be seen in advance. Some don't have attack animation and they retaliate every round. It's quite ok as it is. So my greatest complaints are to the story and especially this final chapter. Also the first four chapters were quite lively for the most part with frequent mysterious events happening. Chapter 5 has a totally different, decadent atmosphere - grim music, cold pictures and the hero who does not care about his survival, but needs this last chain to break. Ending is the most important part of the game and here it's just wrecked mercilessly which inevitably hurts the evaluation a lot.
CG: Character designs are not too exciting, but CG truly are. Somehow HCG are especially beautiful.
Sound: Only female voicing. BGM is fine, at times slightly irritating.
Themes and symbols: As you might have already guessed, the story does not feel integral. There are a lot of actions and cool scenes, but there is not much talk behind them. And there is no afterthought either. The mind is blank and is helplessly trying to put the pieces together rather than think it over.
Overall comments: It's a good C's Ware game and I'm in no way disappointed. The impression reminded me the one after most of Nitro+ earlier games - WTH was that just now? It's not a bad way, but it does not suit C's Ware. Previous games had a satisfying resolution, but here I got only main answers while the fates of the side-characters and even their true nature remained in the dark. A true route would really fit here well. So I'll try to remember Vist and a colorful breathtaking game with a vast amount of beauty and gore.
Foreword: If you do not know of EVE:Burst Error, you better stop here right now and go watch video playthrough of that gorgeous game. EVE the Lost One is a direct sequel to that game and there will naturally be spoilers on the prequel content. That being settled - I did not pay much attention to the Lost One right away and did not review it properly while observing year 1998. Japanese reviews failed even to give an outline of the plot and were generally not too favorable. Only after playing it myself I found out the perfect answer "why" and that will be covered below.
Title: EVE: The Lost One
Developer: C's Ware
Date: 1998-03-12
VNDB link:https://vndb.org/v2708
Length: 21 hour.
Game type: Command selection ADV.
Difficulty: Easy but command bruteforcing required at times
Synopsis: 3 years after EVE:Burst Error. Prisia is the new queen of Eldia but her rule is challenged by radical nationalists headed by archbishop. Marina retired from investigator duty to become newcomers instructor. Kyoko is the newcomer investigator just after severe course of training and her first task is investigating circumstances of death of a young scientist.. Snake is a mysterious figure who is blackmailed to find "memories" of former Eldia king to bring back to life sleeping EVE/Mayako Mido. Somehow everyone hunts for the "memories" and the truth lies in Eldia.
Structure: Game takes place from June 2nd to June 6th, then from June 9th to June 10th with an epilogue on June 16th.
Character Design rating: 9/10
Protagonist rating: 9/10
Story rating: 10/10
Game quality: 10/10
Overall rating: 10/10
Rating comments: I like it when the game is easy to evaluate. I try to find flaws whenever possible and now just can't find anything. It's not a flaw, but my tiny complaint is that protagonists aren't as fun as Kojiro/Marina pair. Those two were just insanely charismatic. Kyoko compared to Marina is quite a plain investigator young woman and her messy hair really hurt her image. Snake does some very ambiguous action, but overall is not a bad guy - still compared to the endlessly funny Kojiro Snake does not stand a chance. But there is one huge BUT. The japanese reviews are mostly based on the initial Sega Saturn version and game evaluation is average. But Sega Saturn and PC version have one HUGE difference - PC version has Marina route crammed in from June 4th to June 6th. This is a huge 3-hour story that gets all the loose ends together and not only that! Marina investigates together with Kojiro, so we're provided with loads of fun scenes and awesome comments. Marina route flips the table and gets the game from just a good straightforward adventure story category to the perfect sequel and eternal masterpiece one.
Protagonist:Kyoko I already tackled on protagonists in rating comments so will elaborate a bit. Kyoko is ok, she is normal. She is a diligent investigator, but she does not mind quality girl-time going shopping and relaxing idly all day long.with a cup of coffee au lait. Her first case investigating the death of a young scientist gradually reveals that he was connected with the former Eldia mad king "memories" that everyone started searching. She's does not have that much sex appeal, so there are much less funny jokes and commentaries on the way compared to Marina in Eve:Burst Error. To the left of her is Yuji, a quiet student with a part-time work. He only wants a quiet life, but reluctantly helps her couple times and gets involved into a big game facing charges in crimes himself. For a good half of the game he gets to accompany Kyoko, so her side of the story gets a social boost and feels good.
Protagonist:SNAKE This picture is the best view we get of him during the opening and I would not like to spoiler his identity which remains unknown up up to the middle of the game. The first minutes of his route show us how he places a bomb and blows up clothes boutique in a big trade center. How can this monster be protagonist?! But almost right after that we get to know that the instructions to create a hand-made bomb that were sent to him were deliberately diminished the effect with the listed amount. It was supposed to break one chair at maximum. So SNAKE was contacted via pc by some ADONIS who showed him the recording of him setting the bomb in the trade center and blackmailed him into getting "memories" of the Eldia former mad king. It's still very difficult to sympathize with this character since he continues to take some
Characters: This is not a galge and there aren't character routes so there's little point in talking about characters individually. At first sight I thought they were overall less likable than those from Eve:Burst Error - it has very cute Mayako, libririan girl, young Himura, affectionate Yayoi, mysterious prime-minister Lloyd. Here there are less characters, but they are shown in development and gain lots of appeal as story unfolds - bartender student Mina, alcoholic Monica, Rena and her president mother, turned on dolphins Ayano, ever-young Natsumi - they are all a curious bunch. And of course the game shares a good number of common characters like Chief, Himura, Prisia, EVE, crazy ministry supervisor woman. They create a pretty cozy atmosphere.
Story: That may be considered a spoiler, but I'm going to draw a very faint structure of the work since I failed to find it in japanese reviews. Game is roughly divided into two storylines. The first half is about finding "memories" and discovering why everyone needs them (there is more than one reason, actually). The second half is three days after first story is over. It's about the sudden spread of biological infection all over the world and the key points here are also Japan and Eldia. Both stories are closely connected and second story relies heavily on the events of the first half. And in PC version there is also Marina story which takes the last two days of the first "memories" story. Marina and Kojiro get to find the real culprit over the caused crimes and even investigate the studies that laid foundation for the events in second story. Without Marina story it would not be really a coherent narration and I can totally understand Japanese reviews based on Saturn version.
CG: I've checked all the CG again and - surprisingly enough - there's ain't much to show since most of those 150 CG are for story related events or items rather than for characters to show off.
Sound: Everything is voiced except for the acting at the moment protagonist. BGM is very good.
Humor:
Actually, there's not so bad humor in here not even counting Kojiro funny streak. Humor is event-based and this type of humor I find the best. So here are the three occasions that come to mind. Oh and I did not find not a single Bill Clinton joke here! That's an accomplishment in itself! (Those who played EVE:Burst Error will get what I mean).
1) At some point of the story Kyoko has to hide, but she's greatly disappointing by the fact that her friends drew a beard over the wanted posters.
2) There's a small serious meeting discussing the ADD project and how it gets into effect. Yuji who is not strong into genetics adds the bottom drawing and when he's asked what it means, he answers: "anus". It was very unexpected ease of tensions and that's why it was pretty great.
3) Only the dolphin saw the criminal and it's invented how to transform dolphin thought impulses into an image to the fax (PC-98 game My Eyes! nervously smokes in the back). Now the dolphin lies in the bathtub and here's what we get when he ask him to picture the event he recently seen. Just awesome!
Themes and symbols: It's more of a straightforward game that tries to explain everything under the question so that there was no afterthought behind.
- One of the strongest motives of the game is that of the sacrifice. Eldia is full of patriots, that's one thing that does not change.
- There's a very nice developed theme of siblings separated in the early childhood.
Overall comments: It's a surprisingly interesting game series full of vivid characters, animations and it's just a really twisted story with lots of deaths. If command selection gameplay looks troublesome - just watch my video walkthrough of the game. I'm really weak to good game series, so I'm getting to the bottom of it. The next stop is Eve:The Fatal Attraction.
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