I don't feel eligible to write a full review since I only listened to the voice parts of the game. And the reason for that is that the game is unhookable by any instruments. No threads are found at all. Still I'm confident enough on the grappled content to write my thoughts of it.
First things first: game has very poor systems.
1) Full-screen only. My try to launch it in window-mode with Dxwnd succeeded, but menu top started to fly separately from the main windows and mouse cursor started being distorted in space so full-screen is the only comfortable way to play.
2) There is no skip function. The closest thing to it is CTRL which draws a full wall of text and you need to press CTRL separately for each such wall of text which amounts to thousands of hits of this key.
3) Sound volume is outrageous. Voice is way too low and sounds and bgm way too loud even when voice maxed up and other sounds minimized. I had to pull sound volume to the limit of speakers to hear voices well, but each time BGM stroke there was a shock feeling. BGM only sounds for one minute and calms down so that minute was the most painful time over and over again. Maybe it was different for win98 but no compatibility helps. By the way, installer only launches with win98 compatibility.
4) CG viewer is one of the worst I ever seen. Out of five heroines it shows CG of two first heroines fairly well and there's the beginning of 3rd heroine and there's no way see the rest with game means.
That being covered you can probably guess my irritation with the game even though the game was not started yet. But there are some positive sides of the game:
1) Full voiced, including protagonist.
2) Beautiful clean graphics.
3) Good structure - 2 girls available from the start, then consecutively three more girls open up and then there's the true route.
4) Longevity - all six routes take about 40 hours of time to read properly.
Let's touch the story a bit.
Matsunaga Yoshihiro is a young man given the task of watching over a group of students from Touyou School on their summer break to a beach. One of the students, Morisawa Nao, has had sadness in her heart from her past - something Yoshihiro can relate to, having his own issues arrising during the trip.
That's the rough synopsis with the only remark that it's for anime made the next year. Morisawa Nao is the main character only in anime. In the game she's just one of five ordinary heroines. She's one of the two started heroines, so I guess she's chosen for the main part in anime since first two days mostly focus on those two starter heroines in game while the path to the next ones is branched off much further. Morisawa Nao is a much better choice over the other starting heroine Iwasaki Chinatsu since the former one is much more attractive and has the most dramatic story among all the non-true heroines.
I don't really feel like covering heroines or even the true route heroine since I like the anime short version much more than those routes.
Conclusions.
New Elf is different. Old Elf works were challenging and playful. This work is stripped of any playfulness and it's a mere imitation of other successful nakige with true route structure. Heroines routes are vastly meaningless and only true route has some meaning. The locked forced structure makes us play the same story for six times with the branching only done by the middle of it without a good skipping feature. This monotonous flow is extended to excessive 40 hours without any satisfying conclusion.
Shizuka is the most bashful heroine, but her route included childhood memories scene of her sitting and covering the head with hands while other children get in a round-play and sing the exact "Kagome" song from Kazeoto, Chirin. I get that it's not C's Ware that invented the song, but it looked just like a shameless plagiarism to me.
So one more faint question remains - why the hell this crap of a game is VN of the Month November 1999?! Well, with all the flaws of this work it's the modern type work with nice characters and true route. When I look at other November 1999 VNs there are even more irritation factors like SIM, bakage, hetare protagonist, H-focus, shortness or lack of info. Refrain Blue is the only one that's not defiled by those factors. And it's not that bad of a story, just overextended one and lacking in excitement. This is actually the 2nd case after Interlude (2003) where I liked anime version much more than the game. Interlude changed the plot to clear the mess of a setting and Refrain Blue just gathered the most interesting heroine path together with true route, cut everything else and set the table with a nice one hour long work. If you want to taste Refrain Blue, just watch the anime version, really.
Since there are so many reviews of it, there's no need in full review, so I'm just explaining my choice for this game to be the game of the month October 1999.
The game is painful with a lot of text, characters, interaction with the scenery, puzzles and seemingly unrelated cases. Up to the middle of it I really struggled through painfully.
Game is about five cases of a heinous crime unit 1. But what's cool about it is that it's not about finding and catching the culprit. Those are just stories that have a beginning and some resolution, mostly sad resolution, actually - pretty much failing the case. Case 1 is about a swat team being massacred by some legendary criminal Kamui and eventually finding this Kamui as a totally emotionless shell of a human. Case 2 suddenly shifts the focus to some homeless children who live in the shelters - one of the boys is lost and we discover the story about his disappearance. Case 3 is about two syndicates rivalry and kidnapping of one syndicate's director. Case 4 is about illegal surveillance and streaming of private moments of life of a pop idol. Case 5 returns us to the mystery behind Kamui and all the cases finally get connected into one satisfying resolution.
The gist of the story is presented in a fairytale told by one of characters and since it has great importance and great charm I'm giving the direct dialogue: - You know, recently... some people say fantasy is like brainwashing. Giving kids sweet dreams for the purpose of controlling them. - When you put it that way, that sounds right. - Originally they were pretty messed up stories. - Like "messed up" how? - Realistic stories, without all the happy stuff. - Well, that sure sucks. - That's why they got turned into happier stories. - Is that all? - No. Here's where it starts. So anyways, when I was a kid, there was this fairytale I heard. It's an old folktale from my hometown, but... - Hm. - Once upon a time, there was a princess. A beautiful princess. A terrible giant serpent fell in love with her. The serpent ruled the land ... no, he had taken over the land. - He invaded it? - Yeah. The serpent turned the king into stone. The greedy serpent wanted the princess... So he took her away... - Pretty standard shit. Go on, go on. - Then came a band of heroes. To rescue the princess they ventured to the huge castle. - Well of course. I'd do the same thing. - The heroes combined their powers and fought the serpent. And then... - What happened? - They defeated it. - Fuck yeah!!! - Everything was fine and good. - Is that the end? - Well, mostly... - What the fuck? That's just a normal-ass fairytale. That sucked. - You liked it, right? - No, that's no good. There's no twist. - It's not over yet. - What? - Think of the story I just told you. It's been tweaked to make it nice. The realistic parts have been obfuscated. - Well then what the hell happens? - The princess was dead... - What the fuck?! What do you mean? - She was killed by the serpent. - Man, FUCK that serpent! The fuck kind of story is that? - And one more thing... There is no serpent. - No? Why not...? That stuff comes up in stories all the time. - Of course there isn't. There's no such thing as a "giant serpent" - Well. yeah... - It wasn't a serpent, but a human. The heroes were people, too. Humans killed another human, for revenge. - That's just a crime... - Yeah... Fairytales are crimes. The unrealistic fantasy that happens in real life is crime.
Rereading this dialog after finishing the game actually bears a lot of sense, it's the shortened version of the game's theme and meaning. The game does not really tell much directly and there's still the need to think up the rest of it, just like in this dialogue.
Let's get to the bad points. It's long (over 15 hours), slow-paced, low on events. It does not have voicing. It's mostly in sepia tone. Art is of specific and quite shy style. It's quite hard to guess who's talking since you just get the sentences appearing in one window one by one. It has a lot of interactivity. There's one hundred-questions spree with only 10 seconds for each answer and questions are mostly on history-sciences-media topics. Interface and controls are confusing. Dialogues are dodgy and make no sense. Characters treat each other poorly, trade in homophobic and sexist slurs. There are some puzzles. Game can be repetitive - at one case you need to search 80 separate and identical rooms in order to find five items.
Now to the good ones. Game is great because it has cool charismatic characters each with distinguishing personality. Characters-like it reminds me the Unit from Ghost in the Shell the most. The atmosphere is quite like that as well. Heroes smoke, curse like hell and talk in a cryptic way. The dialogues are just awesome with constant verbal abuse towards each other. But as for the story twists and mystery it resembles Metal Gear Solid series the most, as for me.
What makes a masterpiece for me is being memorable, no matter how many suffering it brings in the process - just need to treat them as trials. And there's no need to get tortured - there are a lot of great video let's plays of it without the commentaries. But in the end we get a mature, rich in details story that leaves much for the afterthought and lots of precious memories to cherish.
Foreword: It's a C's Ware game and these guys have not let me down even once. Unlike Re-Leaf which has quite a clear synopsis and multiple endings, this work is much more mysterious. I thought I'd get just another rural slice of life with some side mystery, but what I got was an ancestor of Cross†Channel with a global anomaly and looped story.
Title: Kazeoto, Chirin (I'd translate it as "Sound of bells in the wind")
Developer: C's Ware
Date: 1999-09-10
VNDB link:https://vndb.org/v4332
Length: That's tricky. Some 5 hours for first playthrough, plus some 4 hours more to get other routes to the end. It actually took me more that 15 hours due to a complicated walkthrough and confusion of the true routes.
Game type: Global mystery rural story.
Difficulty: Medium when you get how it's organized. For me it was very high since even choosing locations in wrong order can lead to falling out of heroine route.
Synopsis: Satoshi, the protagonist, and his best friend, are both college students who came back to their old town to spend their summer vacation. But residents suddenly start to disappear without any reason. The most optimistic versions are that people are being spirited away or aliens abduct humans or that an ogre comes down from the mountain or that yakuza sell people into slavery because of debts. Hero does not care till the closest people to him start disappearing as well.
Structure: Game takes place for 8 days from July 31st to August 8th when the Obon festival is held.
Character Design rating: 8/10
Protagonist rating: 7/10
Story rating: 9/10
Game quality: 8/10
Overall rating: 8/10
Rating comments: It's a good game with great atmosphere, main idea and nice events. But heroines aren't charming enough. Out of six heroines I liked only Ageha, because she's a diligent student, hard-working keeper of a boarding house, loving older sister of Kanako and tsundere-ish at the beginning and very reasonable later on. Protagonist is a university student, but he's quite passive and he does not care about disappearings till his friends get missing, so it's a minus for him. Game quality is high, but I had to undergo through a lot of repetitiveness since heroines don't have their own routes and the difference is mainly just in several choices. If you watch my video walkthrough, you won't see that repetitiveness since it's cut there, so I hope you get to like this game even better.
Protagonist: Satoshi-san is your ordinary megane university student. As he admits himself, he just goes with the flow and never really gives attention to studies. When Ageha asks him to help with the university summer homework on maths, Satoshi says he's in humanitarian division and that he "avoided" math entrance exams to the university somehow. And he has amnesia and is trapped in the eternal loop of 8 days, so he has all kinds of memory flashes all the time which does not help to concentrate on something. To the left is Satoshi and to the right is his brother Bozo (such is name when he's called in game) which i ended up calling Boshi and synopsis writer on VNDB called him Takeshi. Bozo is more of a playful type. He's fast to know the news and always eager to help.
Characters: I wanted to talk about heroines in bulk, but there's no good joint CG, so let's run through them separately. First of all, there are no separate character roots. Secondly, there are no romantic feelings at all here - all H events happen on August 6 out of desperation of two last people in the world. Six main heroines routs are paired by two: sisters Ageha+Kanako, sisters Satomi+Shihori, nurse Midori+patient Ayane. It's difficult to call even those branched routes separate ones since the flow is the same aside from several events and the people who get to disappear first.
Ageha is a diligent university student, keeper of a boarding house and a kind sister to Kanako. She's depicted as an angry comic person in the beginning of the story since Satoshi has not payed for the stay for quite a long time, but she gets to be the most attractive character for me - responsible, intelligent, kind.
Kanako is a school student, but she runs the soba dining hall almost by herself. She's cheerful and childlish.
Ayane is the most mysterious person since unless we follow her route we get to see her just once occasionally. She visits the local doctor since she's having pains, but the doctor claims that those are psychological ones after the death of her husband. She's the oldest of characters and she has a complex about here age - she even calls herself obaasan. Well, but she's the most experienced one and she's actually quite a nymphomaniac.
Midori is the nurse in the local hospital. Since she's the most typical character, the writer really tried to pull her out of her role giving her lots of very nice events (in the sunset etc) outside of her working clothes, in casual - at those times she's cheerful and likes to set pranks.
Satomi is Satoshi's cousin. She's always together with Shihori and they have the coolest CG together. Again, the writer tried to give her traits discerning from her sister. So Satomi is cheerful, creative, and workaholic, but she's quite irrational.
Shihori is Satoshi's cousin. The more rational of the two, but she hates cooking and working - more of a city girl. Together with sister they came for several days to rest and see their cousins and their theme is to get out of the town as soon as politeness allows.
Hibiki is the joker of the game. She only appears on sunset before the end of the day to say some cryptic stuff about the time, the universe etc. Her route is the true route that opens up after clearing all the six heroines. A lot of questions are getting answered in it, so any additional information would be a spoiler.
Story: Satoshi and Bozo don't have real plans. They just wander around the town that's very ordinary rural town without any discerning feature. There's an Inn, a Soba shob, a souvenir shop, a marketplace, a river bank, a bridge, a clinic, a shrine, a bus stop, a small square with a bronze statue and that's it. Then their cousin sisters arrive and they get a full-scale investigation of the time once more. Here and there there is information that some people get missing, but it's usually neglected as people might just go to hot springs or somewhere. Then their important person disappears (who - depends on route) and start searching around. Eventually everyone disappears but Satoshi and one girl by the day of the Bon festival and after visiting this spirit festival the world resets. That's the loop that keeps on repeating. Composition-wise Cross†Channel is better since the hero works towards getting out of the loop by trying to remember things or writing them down in the diary. Here Satoshi is the same each time - first he's pulled in some merry adventures and then he's on the brink of despair. Through next five routes it's monotonous gameplay since very few events change and there's a lot of movement on the map, so skipping is not fast. Hibiki route that comes with everyone cleared finally puts some dots and breaks the loop without any active actions from Satoshi side. Thus Cross†Channel wins by all the parameters - the charm of characters, the humor, the protagonist, but it is a perfect 10 by my standards, but it came four very saturated years later and had some predecessors - including this work - to fix its flaws.
CG: Well, I loved its CG. Heroines are gorgeous there. Best to see for yourself.
HCG: What I appreciated was that every heroine got only one H-event (with some exceptions) - in the end of her branch. Those events are short and involve mostly talking in the beginning and in the end so it's the best type.
Sound: Full voicing except for Satoshi protagonist. Just as in Chiruhana the tunes in the first half of the game are absurdly merry, some sound like parade ones. And C's Ware still can't get sound volumes even since both BGM and Voice for different occasions differ a lot.
Themes and Symbols:
1) Unfortunately there's nothing deep in the main theme of the game - that's just remembering the truth about his deceased mother and thus breaking the loop. Well, there is some cool twist in it, but I won't spoiler.
2) What's much cooler is the mystic atmosphere that's created. There are sounds of bells heard all of a sudden in this town - some say it's the air, some invent more fancy explanations like plazma. And at some point it gets clear that each time the bell rings a person disappears and then it gets scary. This goes very well wit the Obon festival theme - the most pagan and spiritual festival celebrated. There a lot of impact in spirits roundelay. And when your heroine gets sucked it in it's horrifying.
3) There is a bridge in the town. When Satoshi asks what's on the other side of it - noone can answer. Well, that's weird, but we get to forget about if till the situation with the disappearings gets critical. There's a great scene when Satoshi and Bozo set off through the bridge... and the bridge ends and beyond it there is nothingness. Just insane. What's happening? Is this world not real? AM I ALIVE? That's just a wonderful mindscrew.
4) But the deepest theme is quite unnoticeable. It's when doctor says that he wants this damned rural town to disappear with all of the inhabitants. This hate grew strengthened in him each day. He wanted to break free of it, but was forced by his parents to return after studying. He even had a girlfriend in Tokyo and they had to divorce because he needed to return to this dump. And this is scary, because it's a social reality. Japanese society in some places remains quite archaic. Oldest son has to inherit the house and even the profession of the father and devote his life to whatever miserable life his father had. Well, in case of this game it was not the Doctor who was the source of the disapperings and notes it himself - at first only outsiders and tourists started to disappear and if it was in his power the whole basis of the town should have rot with its core inhabitants.
Overall comments: This game is very good. It has very nice characters, great global mystery and unique strong atmosphere. It's not an S-class work like Eve:Burst Error, but this little cursed game is definitely a masterpiece for me, something that has an ability create memories.
Foreword: I've been mesmerized by C's Ware games for quite a long time by now and I could not miss this work even though it's not my type of game at all.
Title: Chiruhana ~Kindan no Ketsuzoku~
Developer: C's Ware
Date: 1999-01-29
VNDB link:https://vndb.org/v2662
Length: 3 hours. There might be slightly more if you look for side H-events and look in non-plot rooms all the time.
Game type: Mystery suspense detective story.
Difficulty: Zero. Linear.
Synopsis: Your uncle dies, and you investigate his mysterious manor.
Structure: There are five chapters and each chapter ends with a murder save for fifth chapter that finalizes the game.
Character Design rating: 6/10
Protagonist rating: 5/10
Story rating: 6/10
Game quality: 8/10
Overall rating: 6/10
Rating comments: Don't be led astray by the low scores - game is of high quality and is enjoyable. Mystery is well developed and I failed to guess the culprit. Well, I have not guessed the culprit not even once in my whole life, anyway. Low scores were almost inevitable and they come from the setting and from game length. You can't really extend manor mystery to 30 hours (Nocturnal Illusion managed to do that only thanks to torturing bruteforce gameplay). And you can't develop characters in action-driven mystery story. Game did everything it could - it produced a thrilling fast-paced story and created a nice mystery layer on top of that. It could be much worse if it tried to extend length or try to develop characters.
Protagonist: There are two - mansion owner's nephew Shiraishi Minoru and mansion owner's granddaughter Chisato. Minoru is quite an ordinary young man without distinct traits. Chisato is kind of tsundere and tomboy.
Characters: There are quite many characters - initially - hehe. The two most noticable are mansion owners' daughter and mother of four kids Michiyo-sama as she eventually pairs up with Minoru in investigation. Minoru's senior, investigator Kaneshima-san also comes to the mansion on the following day and he eventually pairs up with Chisato in investigation. Basically, Kaneshima-san is the only one who actually investigates and everyone else only a hindrance to investigation. But the most memorable are probably twins Tomomi and Tomoka. They are totally synced in speech so that one usually starts the phrase and the other one finishes it. Several phrases they speak together in unison. And you always hear their lauch, like a pair of small bells ringing and that laugh at some point drives Minoru to the point of craziness and he can't sleep and see them in every room following him. Another example of brilliantly enhanced atmosphere.
Story: It's not the murder that's terrifying but the way how it's done - mansion owner's neck was cut and he was hanged on a sakura tree upside down. Many old legends show up featuring ghosts and evil revenge spirits that kill only men and the whole game this atmosphere is kept up which is great. Mansion inhabitants are paralyzed with primal fear and police only comes to assert the deaths as suicide. Minoru's senior Kaneshima-san is the only one who is able to think sober and analyze the facts. He finds a hidden room inside the mansion where some kind of laboratory exists and tries to link the deaths with poisoning. Only couple of deaths seem to linked to poisoning and the others are done much more brutally with piercing wounds. So is it an evil spirit ravaging or are there several culprits? We'll find it out eventually.
CG: Cool CG in adequate quantity.
HCG: I liked it that there are only H-events and they mostly are of soft nature and very very short, some 30 lines or so. They bear much artistic value. I especially liked the fact that melon-chest maids aren't having any scene in the main plot. Game's CG shows that they have a scene, but in order to get it it's probably needed to check non-plot highlighted rooms all the time.
Sound: Full voicing. Even for both protagonists. One of BGM was irritating since it had one very high pitch moment deafening me and making voices unrecognizable, but lowering bgm volume helped. Also I'd like to notice that most of BGM are very lively yet old-mannered corresponding to Taisho era, so it's not a depressing game. Just with some atmospheric features.
Themes:
1) It's not a theme, but rather a symbol. Blossoming sakura. It always had the most sweet reminiscences. Chiruhana treats it another way. Pink. Light red. Dark red. Red as carpet. It's the color of beautiful flowers that bring bad omen. Sakura demands blood. This symbol is repeated over and over with words an visuals and creates a specific atmosphere.
Overall comments: It was very difficult to make something good from such synopsis and game succeeded in that. Mystery remained strong till the very end and numerous details made the atmosphere really thrilling. The end was very satisfactory for me as every murder is explained. It's not my type of the game, but if you have a taste for good quality short atmospheric mystery murder story, it's much advised.
Foreword: I do not believe in AliceSoft. As for me, they can only do that pornographic rapist Rance series over and over. So any work outside of Rance franchise is of interest to me to support or demolish this statement.
Title: Prostudent G
Original Title: ぷろすちゅーでんとG
Developer: AliceSoft
Release Date: 1993-05-15
Summary: By the end of the 20th century, radical educational reforms have transformed the Japanese society. Students were split into opposing groups, and the more aggressive of those eventually formed a dominant organization named Order of Black Phoenix, centered on the cult of a mysterious person known as "The Queen". Outcast students have escaped to a secluded island near Okinawa. A wandering lazy and lecherous manga and anime fan named Gorō Endō teams up with a female teacher and a few students to lead an opposition force against the oppressive governing circles.
VNDB Link:https://vndb.org/v4701
Game Type: Command selection absurd bakage
Story Length: 6 hours
Complete Story Clearing Difficulty: Easy!
Comments of Difficulty: One-way road with several choices affecting the ending
Character Design Rating: 6/10.
Story Rating: 2/10.
Protagonist Rating: 5/10
Game Quality: 4/10
Overall Rating: 4/10
Rating Comments: I had to force myself to finish it. By the mids of the story nothing sane was left and it got really difficult to follow that farce. For that reason I don't have the right to produce a structured review - it would rather be graphical impressions of the story with comments. Another thing is that game is a very crude port from PC-98 to Windows-95 dated by 1995, so it's same PC-98 edition, just with windows text extraction capabilities. No voicing, no remastered CG, no improved systems... nothing. I'm sorry, but there will be spoilers since the chances that anyone else gonna play this game are very close to nil.
Structure: One whole part.
Story:
We start as hooligan Goro (he claims to have sent to hospital many dozens of students) exiled with other outcasts to an island beyond Okinawa. He has really nothing to do and is dying of boredom. So when weird Noriko-sensei suggests he serves as her bodyguard in her trip to Ministry of education to propose two-weekend school plan, he reluctantly agrees.
But ech, she's ugly. Two other students join then on the ferry to mainland
So from left to right they are Noriko-sensei, ever-hungry karate-kid Choko and gun maniac Saori. But at the ferry eternally horny Goro sneaks into Noriko-sensei room and finds her with her usual glasses.
He immediately swears to always love sensei. But when Choko visits him the next minute in his room, he makes a woman of her. Sorry, sensei! Actually, the decisions to comfort plot girl characters is optional and it affects the ending we get.
So we get to the mainland and just go sightseeing. Since this is the part I was still reading attentively, here are some examples of game humor encountered.
We get to book store and while sensei is buying "The treasure of love" we want to buy quickly "How to SEX" and seller pesters us for a long time with questions like whether we want silver or gold edition and then persistently wants to sell us tissues. Goro declines saying that a real man needs no tissues! And seller insists that we'll definitely find use of those tissues, for example during influenza.
Fortune telling is being whipped. First magician points us at each of four directions consecutively and each time we explore that direction and find nothing. Another thing is that for fortune telling to work magician each time needs to perform a ritual like touching the girl's boobs or bondaging a girl. Choko and Saori were the poor participants.
When you die in battle, an angel appears before your eyes and offers to resurrect you. In one plot sequence (not a real battle) this angel appears with a rose in his butt and demands that Goro licked his butthole in order to resurrect. And Goro wanted to live.
After all the sightseeing Goro wants to visit adult store very much, but does not want Noriko-sensei to go there, so he suggests ladies go to a boutique and he visits the X place. And this happens when he returns.
Some elite guy from Black Phoenix captured sensei. And a good third of the game we just trying to get her back... We save some girl on the street from molesters just before that and now girl attacks presumably to let this guy get away with sensei.
So this is just first of many girl enemies ahead. Try to guess what happens when you defeat such an enemy... Right, typical Rance stuff. And I think there slightly less than 10 of such enemies throughout the game.
Anyway, we interrogate some punk from the Black Phoenix on the street and learn that sensei was taken to Osaka.
We find the bridge blown down and need to swim over the river and by the mids of it Goro feels that he's got more difficult to breathe.
And the reason is Sailor - oh, I mean some nameless enemy. Saori helps us in this battle but something worries me...
Saori uses revolver and even SMG agains the pink head enemy. Oh, well, must be some special underwater arms, really. I should not even mention what happens to the enemy the next scene.
And it was still ok till some huge mech attacked our heroes with cannons and blasters.
Since there was nothing to do agains a giant robot, Goro just... summoned himself a new robot from the sky. REALLY?!?! What's wrong with this game, I wonder?!
After we deal with the pilot in an additional scene the kidnapper of sensei shows up and whatever we do we get defeated. At this point resurrection angel only offers us to resurrect as a girl... and at this point I completely lost it.
Next Goro girl was getting lots of harassment, some transsexual also showed up on the scene to support such a cute baby.
First Goro girl had to defeat some karate kid in karate competition with unorthodox methods like boob attack and tickle, then this win somehow got us access to some school where with this transsexual in girl clothes we hunted for the contents of school director safe. And then the company went further to Hokkaido. Somespace ship attacked and I guess Goro just summoned himself another spaceship, no biggie. As spaceship hit volcano, a multi-handed giant Budda appeared and for some reason became a threat!
At least there was no H scene after defeating this monster. Despite original goal was two-weekend school week proposal to the Ministry of Education, noone really bothered about it anymore. Instead, for some reason we storm the fortress of Black Phoenix to confront "The Queen". So on the way to this fortress Goro just dies in his cabin and angel gives no option but to resurrect as sensei kidnapper... Somehow the dude who claimed to be the toughest guy in Japan joins us since Goro claims that Goro is number one and that guy is number two. Anyway, this weird pair does most of the work in the fortress and the dude sacrifices himself to take one of the bodyguards out of action in this gay scene.
But instead of the Queen the ultimate boss is this... I don't have the words.
In our travels we bought or picked up some items that weren't of use not even once. So now is the chance to try all those items to defeat the boss.
The mighty boss is defeated with the banana peel and we get rape the queen scene. Game over. AAAAH! What the hell was that? We get a CG featuring afterstory of most of plot characters and that's it. I was not asking for a good story, but I'd appreciate at least a coherent one. And I can't stand rapist protagonists for their inevitably ugly moral image. That sums it up. My attitude towards Alice Soft has not changed, but i'm looking forward to next AliceSoft non-Rance game to prove me I'm wrong.
Foreword: I don't believe Alice Soft - they can only make eroge and bakage. But this game was highly praised overseas. Who knows, maybe it's the game that can overcome my aversion.
Title: Diabolique
Developer: Alice Soft Date: 1998-05-28 VNDB link:https://vndb.org/v2261
Synopsis: In this world, here are two kinds of intelligent beings. One are humans and the other are Diaboliques. Diaboliques possess power, violence, intelligence, and eternal life. Their life form was categorized into four levels, the lowest division lacking intelligence, reproduction ability and beauty and the fourth being very intelligent and able to change form.
For thousands of years, human race has been suppressed by the danger of diabolique. However, a legend has passed on through generation that there's diabolique that kills its own species. This diabolique was Azulite - one of the only five Lord Diabolique (the ones of highest category). Being known as the "species killer," Azulite has come up to kill diaboliques. At here, he met a girl named Letticia. Her innocence and tragic background has attracted Azulite, and soon Azulite fell in love with her. However, the two lovers were separated after Letticia was killed. They promised to see each other when she was reincarnated. Carrying with the promise, Azulite once again set off on a journey looking for Letticia.
Structure: There are roughly five big parts corresponding to five different time periods. Length: 16 hours Game type: Command selection adventure Difficulty: Easy. Story is one way road and bad ends are possible only if make a bad decision in battle. Even then the game kindly suggests to load from the beginning of the battle rather than finding your earlier savegame. Character Design rating: 8/10
Protagonist rating: 10/10
Story rating: 10/10
Game quality: 9/10
Overall rating: 10/10
Rating comments: Two games in a row with a 10/10... either my standards are that low or the games are that good. I actually stand for the latter. My only complain to game quality is that it's not voiced and music only lasts for couple minutes and fades before the next scene is reached. And I did not particularly like the way the five Lord Diaboliques were presented. We get short scenes with them between the main Azurite story parts and only by the mids of fifth final part we're told their names and their governing elements. So through the game they are just random guys and when we get acquainted to them, there's already a climax part pending. I'd like to get more of Lord Diabolique characters.
Protagonist: Azurite is absolutely fabulous as a protagonist. He lost most of his memory, but he knows that he's the strongest of Lord Diaboliques. He remembers he's searching for something and wanders around killing his kin and getting food and shelter for that. He travels in a human form and he looks like a very tall elf with his long hair, slender body and big sword. But in this cruel world drowned in blood he's the only gentelman. He's very polite, kind, good-mannered and modest. He never drawn his sword against any human no matter how bad he's bullied or hunted (well, not in human state at least he-he). And he's a one-woman man. From the moment he met Leticia in humiliating conditions he felt a deep sympathy towards her. He's never laid an eye on any other woman and when one woman throughout the story tried to force herself on him, his manhood could not react at all. He's very loyal and that makes the story unique. Well, he's quite sensitive too and he can afford to cry when he's with Leticia. He's a great cook and at mornings he always greets Leticia in an apron and with a ladle inviting her to have breakfast.
Characters: Each of the five story parts has its own set of characters. I adore party adventures and story part 2 and 3 were about adventuring in two different parties and that was absolutely cool. I really liked those different party members with fancy characters, but they don't play significant role. Only Leticia follows throughout all the parts (actually, even she's absent in one part) and enemies. There is also Aria girl that has an important role in 4th and 5th story parts, so let's look at those two girls.
Leticia: Well... she's different. Part 1 shows us canonical abused scary girl. Part 2 is an absolutely different, bold and picky personality and a different appearance. Part 3 is again totally different from those two, but I would not like to spoil here. In Part 4 she's absent and in Part 5 she's basically canonical Leticia again, but she remembers all the previous reincarnations as well. Well, she's quite a typical heroine like in many single heroine stories. Sensitive scared crybaby who knows next to nothing about the world and that gives Azurite an opportunity to act protective and teach her basic facts about the world. But as for me, Part 2 and Part 3 Leticia reincarnations are much cooler, totally different personalities and great stories.
Aria: She's a usual native Indian girl, curious and brave. She recovers Azurite body when he falls into a trap and takes care of him while he recovers. But Azurite falls into the same trap for the second time (well, he's not wisest man) and she dies stepping up and getting all the blows that were ment for Azurite. That's an inevitable spoiler because there's not point discussing Aria as human. Azurite makes a misfortune (intelligent creation) of her she stays protecting those ruins and waiting for Azurite. Well, that's the biggest charm about this girl. She's becomes a killing machine, but she regains her memories - she looses humanity, but she has intelligence and senses. She's condemned to wait for Azurite for hundreds years in that dark den and eventually he comes... not alone, but with Leticia. There's a very touching scene of jealousy risen inside Aria towards Leticia and that and her damned fate make her a very memorable character.
Story: Story is superb throughout first four story parts. There's a lot of diabolique fights, lots of death, lots of adventuring. Part 2 and 3 features adventuring inside two different parties and that's just the best moments of the game. Part two is also a perfect slice of life on top of that. So we get to know Leticia in part 1 and eventually lose her. In part 2 after 60 years we discover her soul in a different girl and eventually lose her. At this point I already thought I knew what would happen in leftover parts. But part 3 is totally shocking - there's no Azurite in it, there's no Leticia in it - main three characters are a pub girl, a huge warrior woman and pub girl's brother who wishes to go adventuring and joins that huge warrior woman. For two hours the story lingers and you start to put up with the fact that's it's a totally different story when - BAM - Azurite appears in a totally unexpected way - BAM - Leticia appears and the chapter shortly ends. Ok... now I adjusted my expectations and the leftover stories were bound to be the same Azurite is searching for Leticia, but in other humans forms, easy as that. And fourth chapter gives another shock - there's Azurite in his usual for throughout the whole chapter, but Leticia does not make appearance in this chapter at all - not her soul, pretty much nothing! Just wow. So fifth chapter should finally be about meeting of two heroes, right? NOT. For one and a half hour you watch a slice of life about 7-year old reincarnated Leticia and her 7-year old friends. And I'd like to assure you that watching a slice of life about 7-year old first graders is not fun in any way - that was the most torturing part of the game. But fifth part is the longest one (about 5 hours long), so there is enough time for heroes union and new confrontation setting and final resolution. I'll tackle the fifth chapter in Themes more.
CG: There's a lot of CG, actually. I'm totally satisfied by is quantity and quality. Here are some gore CG for the taste of it. There's a lot of CG, actually. I'm totally satisfied by is quantity and quality. Here are some gore CG for the taste of it.
HCG: Believe it or not, but there are only two and a half hentai scenes in the game. Two scenes for 16 hour long gameplay. I'm sorry, is this really Alice Soft? Well, it is. In order to make up with just two H-scenes there are a lot of half-naked/naked shots. A lot of enemies are drawn the way to amplify eroticism. There are a lot of flashbacks and occasional nudity scenes, so don't worry, it's very much Alice Soft, just adapted to fit the pure love eternal reincarnation story. And the only Azurite and Leticia H event is one of the most memorable in my gaming experience. There's no music and no voice during that. Only the rising and fainting gusts of wind are heard. The scene is maid as manga scrolling strips overlapping each other with up to 4 small screens deployed at one time. Very beautiful and touching.
Sound: Sound is my biggest complain. I'm used to unvoiced games, that's ok. But each bgm fades after some two minutes and during the rest of the scene there's dead silence so I really often had to check whether I forgot to turn on sound or something. Actually, there are also nice sound effects during actions, but everyday life scenes lack them a lot.
Themes: So first four chapters were pretty much brainless merry adventures with some sad resolutions. I loved those the most. But then came final fifth chapter and game suddenly turned into a nakige. The great diabolique/human war broke out and our heroes are hunted from both sides as well as by four Lord Diabolique. Leticia shakes in hysteria crying that's she's tired of running and hiding asking to leave her alone. Azurite is totally depressed as well because he can't give anything besides his feelings to the woman he loves. Those are very depressing scenes that last throughout the whole fifth chapter. But at the same time a lot of serious questions are raised.
1) Time brings change. Leticia was hiding in the forests with Azurite for 11 years and now she's 18 and she's tired, she wants a normal life. Feelings alone aren't a solid basis of relations.
2) What's better - to reincarnate, lose memory and start anew or to keep on living? Surprisingly, I feel like the game says that reincarnating even with memory loss is much better. First four chapters are a vivid example of it. It used to be a great romance story, but once heroes got together and Leticia turned 18 things have changed. She'll soon get old and die of boredom in the forest. Bearing the burden of past lives memory is already difficult. So when fire kings visits her alone in the forest and suggests to wipe her memory she's pretty much ready for both memory wipe and even death and reincarnation since reality has turned into such a heavy burden.
3) What's good and what's evil? Diabolique Lords are almighty cruel creatures that enslave humans, but with the story flow we start to see their characters, their griefs, their losses and they aren't seen as evil anymore. Humans used to be on losing side, but with the invention of firearms the balance shifted and humans started to kill even 24 Diaboliques getting very close to hunting Diabolique Lords. While diaboliques mostly used humans for sex pleasures, humans started to torture diaboliques just for the sake of revenge and those tortures were inhumane. At fifth chapter we're given the ultimate choice - shall we support the Diabolique Lords or shall we keep on hiding and fighting diaboliques. Supporting Diabolique Lords leads us to the first game ending with Azurite regained memories and power of Lord Diabolique of darkness and Leticia happily living with him. This is not a true ending, but I don't see it as a bad ending either. Humans with their lowly desires are hardly better than diabliques. While they were weak, they used to humiliate their own kin. And the story of Leticia in Part 1 is a vivid example of that. Now they got the power and they start to torture and humiliate even diabolique gods. Under diabolique lords dominance the Earth survived for thousands of years and they never really cared much about the humans, never tried to wipe them. And there's big question whether the human dominance going to be better. Azurite understands that and he chooses the third way. No spoilers.
Humor: I don't really need humor to enjoy the story, but it can be a very nice addition to the story. In this game those seldom humor moments present were of Alice Soft bakage heritage. Here's one example of its "humor". Chapter 2 Leticia takes Azurite's clothes and gets to wash it while Azurite sits covered with a blanket. He wants to get breakfast and set coffee, but Leticia notices that it's dangerous and he could get a scorch. Azurite suggests that he wears an apron to prevent that. -But you don't have anything to wear, all your clothes is being washed! -I can wear an apron as I am! -NO! PLEASE! NO WAY!
Overall comments: Atlach-Nacha was the first game of Alice Soft to shake my beliefs in Alice Soft as a sucky company. But it's Diabolique that made me surrender and shake off all the grunts. Diabolique is really an astonishing adventure and pure love story. It's ever surprising, mysterious nature keeps the thrill on all the time and I finished this 16 hour story in just two sittings. It has plenty of touching moments and an ultimately satisfactory ending. It's a waste to bury such story just because the game is old, has command selection gameplay and meciocre sound support. You can always glimpse on the game through my video playthrough as well.
Cross Tantei Monogatari ~Motsureta Nanatsu no Labyrinth~, Double Cast and One ~Kagayaku Kisetsu e~ are the masterpieces of the month, but One ~Kagayaku Kisetsu e~ is the clear winner here.
1. Kimi ni Steady キミにSteady [980605] D.O. 1
Hero is a senior in high school sctudent. He spent summer vacations on part-time job and did not create any memories. Now he intends to definitely find his love by Christmas.
Pure love romance school adventure. Game period is 4 months and you move around the game and trigger events. Game system looks like classmate, but it's made much easier for newer generations. Like triggering events does not advance time and important events are clearly show on the map. But still for newer generation the game remained too difficult. Actually, difficulty varies from very easy to next to impossible. Game relies on minigames a lot since each girl has her own mini-game and there are also games at game center. Still, the characters aren't really cute and the character designs have not gone far from Youjuu Senki. Game was in production for two years and grew old even before release.
2. Tsurushi 吊 [980605] Deep Zone
Ando Reina.. She is my current lover. Cute face and fine body suitable to it. She is also quite popular.
However, recently she has started becoming annoying. If she does not know of my each and every action anyhow, she cannot be satsified. She is a female on the verge of becoming a stalker.
It is troublesome. Actually before Reina, I was going out with Sakakibara Miho. She is pretty unreserved, a good female. She has no desire to monopolize, loves sex and is further my type.
I only wanted to go out with Miho, so I thought...
I consulted with my friend Nakada, to make plans regarding breaking up with Reina. Nakada is an outrageous and inhumane character, even more than I thought. To start off, gets her raped by the homeless guys of the town. He started carrying out various schemes even unthinkable from my standards.
Whoa.. This is awful..
During this opportunity, Reina's friend, a woman named Azumaru Aya got wind of this situation and started giving lots of advice to Reina for the sake of returning to our previous relationship. Because of the fact, I am trying to get Reina's attention and set her up, it is convenient for me.
Once, teacher also joined a number of guys and flooded them with semen. Contrary to Aya's brave co-operation, Reina gradually became miserable.
The covered Aya, looks pretty cute! Eh? Do I like Aya?
Evil Nakada, sex loving Miho, miserable Reina, facing the backfire of her plans Aya and frivolous, I.
The rotten relationships of these 5 people, where will they end up?
Surely...
Single road adventure, but there are immediate bad endings upon wrong choice. And yes, marriage is also a bad ending! Situations are forced to include as much H content as possible.
3. Angel! えーんじぇる！ [980612] Triangle
Hero is an angel apprentice who can not pass the promotion test to angels even though his lover Shirley is already an angel. The chief angel chief decided to impose the final special examination on the hero. Its contents is to go down to the Earth, do good things and earn 100 points in 6 days. If those conditions aren't met the hero will be expelled from the Heavens forever. His powers on Earth are limited to transformation into a strange stuffed animal figure. He appoints two school girls Mikoto and Makoto as his own apprentices and hurries to do the good deeds worth 100 points.
Full voice fun bakage! There are choices during the conversation and depending on those Makoto and Mikoto gain empathy and that directly affects the ending. At important moments Makoto and Mikoto use magic that you pass to them. H-scenes depend directly on the magic you give them. Due to this fact many playthroughs are needed to discover all variations of CG. Slight inconvenience that saving is only possible at the beginning and end of each chapter, but skip function makes it easier. Story is not serious, but moves in a good tempo and contains five chapters stylized to look as anime episodes. It's a big hit among bakage due to high production values and attractive parodies.
4. Misetagari みせたがり [980612] Zero
There is another world where girls who want to show themselves gather. Click on their body parts and let them show to you what they got. Just interactive pickup.
5. Nine Lives ~Hanyafuda Suru Nyan~ ないん☆らいぶす 〜はニャ札するにゃん！〜 [980612] Apricot (old) 1
This is a majong like tile matching game. In the Story mode, our guy found a were-cat that used one of her spare lives to save him. He still has to collect 8 more lives in order not to be turned into a zombie. That and a weird gem makes his life exciting. In the Tournament mode, you can pick one of 8 girls to play with.
There is an English review.
6. Koi no Floating Mine 恋のフローティング・マイン [980618] Active 1
Life is always hard for a student who have to transfer to a new school, especially the fact that you need to start everything over. But there are always exceptions...
Especially if you meet a bunch of pretty girls!
There is an English review for this game. But the review says nothing really relevand apart of the fact that it's short compared to Kakyuusei. I want to defend the game. It's voiced and I found it really amusing. Never got to the girls part though since it's ordinary school setting.
7. Kiwamete! Scandal!? きわめて!スキャンダル!? [980619] Arkham Products
Main hero lives in a luxury condominium and has fun every day.
One time his father got into an accident and his secretary urgently called main hero to take the lead of huge corporation instead of his father for the time of father's hospitalization.
This is how his three scandalous months began ...
SIM. Day is divided into four time zones with lots of activities to do. One of those activities is giving sex instructions to the employees in the education room. There are many parameters to maintain. The main goal of the game is to retain all the female employees and remain corporation's president even after three months' time. It looks horrible at first sight, but in practice it feels more like Rance craziness.
8. Saikai ~Sotsugyou Ryokou '98~ 再会 ～卒業旅行’98～ [980619] Saint
School life is over and classmates go on a graduation trip for four days to Okakura pension house What kind of memories will the hero build over this trip?
First things first - I blocked the prequel for it having a yaoi scenario. Well, here there's also one yaoi scenario, but aestetics is not yaoi-distorted and most of love interests are girls so I'll let it slip. So it's quite a typical romance game. You move around, hit flags for the first days and on the third day you can confess to your love interest with a H-scene following on 4th day. There are 8 heroines to capture (rather 7+1 non-heroine). Each girl has both pure love and eroge sides of scenarios to pick up.
9. Tropical Memories ~Natsuiro no Symphony~ トロピカル・メモリーズ ～夏色シンフォニー～ [980619] h.m.p
Hero is high school 3rd grade student. He can't talk with girls because of shyness and uneasiness feeling. He likes popular girl Erika. It is rumored that she prefers sportsmen. Because of that hero is going to train mind and body during the summer in order to confess to the lady of his heart. He knows that Erika spends the summer at elite Pao Pao resort. It's impossible to get there without prior reservation, so hero applies for a part-time job on the island. And so summer begins.
Yet another 3D SIM by hmp. Did not get far there and there are no reviews to confirm the ending.
10. Cross Tantei Monogatari ~Motsureta Nanatsu no Labyrinth~ クロス探偵物語～もつれた7つのラビリンス～ [980625] WorkJam 1
The player takes the role of a young 18 years old detective (Koruso Ken) aided by his partner, a young girl of 19 years old (Nishiyama Tomoko) that got a detective agency. The game features 7 different cases that take place in different parts of the city and outside the city, with different characters and suspects in each episode.
Since there are a lot of cases to handle the development proceeds in a good tempo with a lot of lively characters around. It's one of the most technologically advanced works of the time, so it manages to astonish all the time. That's a true masterpiece for those who can stand detective stories. I can't.
11. Double Cast ダブルキャスト [980625] SCEI 1 2 3 4 5 6
The game begins with you, the main character, waking up at a fountain to the face of a pretty girl. You are a high school boy, and this girl has helped you out of the garbage where you had passed out in a drunken stupor. (Talk about first impressions!) As it turns out, she cannot remember anything about herself except for her name, Akasaka Mitsuki. Since she has no place to stay, you offer your own, and so begins your unusual relationship with this spirited girl. When your film club finds itself in need of a female lead, Mitsuki joins in, and from there the main story begins to unfold.
There is enough English info, but it's very dry, so let's spice it up. Full voice full animation interactive movie. Game starts as a heartwarming story, but since the middle turns into a suspense horror. Game is all about discovering endings - there are 27 of them plus one special if you discover all 27. Few options and endings are available at first but more and more options are added with discovered endings. Skipping and choosing episode to start with help, but still a guide is almost a necessity to find some of them. Surprisingly interesting game with high production values, but only for PS1 and PSP.
12. High School Terra Story ハイスクールテラストーリー [980625] Uran 1 2 3
Basically, you have about three and an half months to finish the game with one girl. Each day, you start out at school and you have a parameter with three sections: Studies, Athletics, and Art. Depending on how you build up this parameter and how you inter- act with the characters, the story will change. You also receive love points if you answers questions by the girls you interact with correctly. You do not freely move in this game, it directs you by your parameter and how you answer questions with the girls. You can choose which girl you want to finish the game with by using that method. You also earn money and you have a meter that tells you how tired you are.
There are two good English reviews on the game.
13. Mormotte [980625] Outgrid
Serizawa Koichi lost all previous memories after brain surgery. On awakening he learns that he agreed to participate in experiment for 31 day. During that time he's placed in a certain location together with other people. What kind of future will he choose?
Basically Koichi travels around the place and rises likability of girls he likes. The development is aggressive in H department and makes up for half-baked feeling.
14. Ace of Spades 2 [980626] Love Gun
There is a special casino that only accepts customers who bring women partners along. The bet there is not money, but women as the losing side has to pass woman to the winner.
There's no real story, just tabletop games. There is even a mode without H events on winning. The number of HCG is big.
15. Forest In The Dark - Kuraki Mori ni Tsudou Yume フォレスト・イン・ザ・ダーク 暗き森に集う夢 [980626] Speed
The elder of the clan dies and leaves mysterious instructions to determine his heir - to find memory card game and play it to the end till next full moon. There are only several days left till the next full moon and thus hero arrives to the forest mansion to try his luck.
Game takes only four days with first day being arrival, second and third being heroine routes and fourth the ending. Each route is focused on the past of the hero and selected heroine. There's not enough time neither for relationship nor for memories regain, so overall development is hasty.
16. Kyou*shi ~Nerawareta Seifuku~ 狂＊師 ～ねらわれた制服～ [980626] Crowd 1
The story behind the game is about you being hired as a teacher at an all girls school. And because of the pervert you are, you somehow take advantage of the girl students around you. There are three different linear story-lines depending on chosen specialization: P.E teacher, Arts teacher, or a Chem teacher.
There is an English review.
17. Mayaku 魔薬 [980626] Flady 1
Hero is a high school chemistry teacher. Accidentally he produces a powerful aphrodisiac. He indents to test the new medicine on different female students.
There's no real story as we just pick one of the girls pictures and move right to the H mode. Oh, and there's an English review.
18. One ~Kagayaku Kisetsu e~ ONE ～輝く季節へ～ [980626] Tactics 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
One's story revolves around Kouhei Orihara, the main protagonist, who suspects that at some point his current life will change while living a peaceful daily routine. Due to this, he begins to seclude himself in the Eternal World, a world within his mind. The game's main recurring motif is a focus on the Eternal World, a mystical alternate space which is never clearly explained, and the details of which are unknown.
Game is localized and has many English reviews.
19. Ryoujoku ~Suki Desu ka?~ 凌辱～好きですか?～ [980626] Ail
Hero has a debt unable to be repaid. One day he finds a suspicious medicine while working and uses it on girls out of curiosity. Girls become lustful as a result. Hero gets used to such life ... is it suffering or blissful life that awaits him?
Insulting game and insult scenes are voiced which was still very rare.
20. The Grand Hotel ザ・グランドホテル [980626] Janis
Meg and Alice graduated this spring and they are best friends.
They are trying to find job at the Luxury Hotel "Grand Hotel". The final exam is to pick up the debts from long-standing patrons.
However, all the patrons are weirdo. Will they be able to adapt?
Game is ADV with some SIM elements like money. So you wander around the rooms and ... practically anything can be inside. It's a parody game on the verge of sanity. One of the endings even says that hotel was a training ground for space mission and they both go to space. So it's probably an eroge, but a merry one.
21. Update あっぷでーと [980626] Pinpai
Main character registers on the meeting web site by friend's advice. Will he be able to find his love and meet her in real world?
Well you write a letter and choose a topic for beginning, middle and end. And if you mail suits girl's character, she responds. You can keep sending replies of fair, good or best quality. Then if everything is ok there's a meeting of net friends in a real life and then a possible date. There are two H-events for each character. The most fascinating route is of protagonist's ex-girlfriend as the story unfolds her dark net past.
22. Viper-M1 [980627] Sogna 1 2 3 4 5
Sogna combined the best of both worlds in VIPER-M1: a modern, Windows-based interface and a set of three smaller games, reminiscent of the earlier V series titles. Super-heroine story My Mothers features cover girl Mika in her attempt to rescue a prospective boyfriend. Coming of age tale Green Boy follows Natane and her two older sisters as they welcome a strange young man into their home. The May Works focuses on a schoolgirl, Maki, as she flees from an alien invasion of her hometown.
There are English reviews.
23. My Dear Arenaga Oji-san My Dear アレながおじさん [980628] Blue Gale
Five girls have been receiving allowance by a mysterious uncle. Now as they have grown up they are summoned to the mysterious uncle's mansion to help him recover from an old snake bite.
I adore the game's opening. The contents is surprisingly light. There are dozens of endings and in most of them the uncle gets killed. Can't say there's much humor in here, but what happens on the screen is usually very funny. The number of H events is moderate - four for each of five girls. And HCG are too crude as if it's a doujin game.
24. Lady Lady God-damn Night [980630] Hyperspace
Amami Hitoyo is a daughter of huge corporation chief, but she mostly does private detective investigations as a hobby. Akashi Michi is a high school cheerful and attentive student girl who joins Amami as assistant detective. Together they investigate a kidnapping case with clues hidden all over Europe and Africa.
Game is special for being a serious involving experience with number of H events not that big. The difficulty is very high and unforgiving - one mistake or failure investigate all the spots at certain location leads to a bad end. Even though the graphic quality is lacking the charm of the heroines and the curious cases in different cities make up for it.
Doukoku Soshite... is the only masterpiece of the month and thus is VN of the Month.
1. Kunoichi Torimonochou くのいち捕物帖 [980205] Polestar Co. 1 2
Long ago, during the Edo period, those chosen to become ninja train in secrecy from youth, living in an isolated village to become a secret agent for the shogun. Here, a young girl is training to become such an agent; her name: Ran Sagajo. Along with her talking ninja squirrel companion Sasuke, she has begun a trip to Edo to continue her train
You generally choose destination and wait for events to happen. Battles are played in the way that you select a command and opponent selects and you watch the outcome, much like the other VN fightings. When energy is accumulated to the max, a special move can be used. There are stats and places to train them. Game's appeal point is a good balance between animated story sequences and picturesque battles.
2. Yume no Yukue Karuizawa Monogatari 夢のゆくえ 軽井沢物語 [980205] Fair Dance
In Autumn wandering in the forest of Karuizawa of autumn leaves, I met a girl in a white dress living in an old villa.
In winter three of my classmates and I came to ski and I had a vision of a girl in white dress again..
In spring I walked in the forest of Karuizawa to find a girl in white dress.
And in the summer I shall wander between reality and daydreaming.
Obscure work, mostly due to the fact that there is no save function in the game.
3. Ahiru no Pantsu あひるのパンツ [980206] Segue Laboratory
My name is Rika. I live with my mother. Today I sell Pantsu in town. Although it is already late, only two pieces have been sold. What shall I do...
One playthrough takes some 5 minutes and there are several scenarios. And most of them inevitably fall into H category.
4. Natural ~Mi mo Kokoro mo~ Natural ～身も心も～ [980206] F&C Co., Ltd. 1
Rumor's spreading of a hot new couple on campus! A professor is giving the sexy swim star some very special lessons. And this teacher's pet is hot to trot and learning all kinds of new tricks!
Yet another erotic training SIM, but this time it's kind of pure love bright training which is rare. The characters are also cute and easygoing. So this work represents shift from dark hardcore eroge to bright softcore ones in the years to come.
5. Kyouken Densetsu Crazy Knuckle 2 狂拳伝説クレイジーナックル2 [980213] ZyX
Lunar shadow was a legendary ultimate fighting school, but its last descendant lived 80 years ago.
Kusakabe Aoma is a bouncer of the street gang group in the city called Crown City. But he wants to get to know his true self. One day he arrives to the usual place, but instead of smiles of other members all he sees is a sea of blood.
Compared to the prequel text has gone better. Scenario is the debut work of Arakawa Takumi who gave us Ayakashibito, Bullet Butlers and several other interesting works. There is a good balance of seriousness and comedy. The atmosphere gone even darker than that of the prequel. Fighting system got more difficult. Animation is widely used. H events are densely packed, pretty much with every battle. So a good entertainment work, but not more.
6. Sadistic Medicine [980213] FlyingShine
A big pharmaceutic company develops a new medicine and sets experiments first on animals, then on humans. It seems to be a revolutionary aphrodisiac.
First Flying Shine works are so terrible. Blurred real-life photos plus NVL walls of texts are accompanied by HCG.
7. Happening Journey はぷにんぐJOURNEY [980220] Euphony Production 1
Masaharu is long in love with his childhood friend Yuki, but lacks the courage to tell her his true feeling. One day Masaharu's friend Takagi asks him to go on a ski trip together, telling him that he would also take Yuki for Masaharu, so that Masaharu would take Miki, his partner in their tennis club, for Takagi. Somehow their plan becomes known to other girls too, who start insisting on joining the trip - so the party now consists of seven boys and girls. Will Masaharu have a chance to tell Yuki his love during the trip?
There is an English review of this game.
8. Megami no Shizuku ~Jonason 95~ 女神の雫～Jonason95～ [980220] Xyz
Daughter of a famous deceased thief Aya Kisaragi teams up with her father's buddy Unko. They excel in whatever job they take. This time they aim at three Nobunaga sacred treasures hidden in remote area mansion, but they get into a trap...
There aren't reviews of this game and game's super rare, but chronological row of CG shows us first the CG from the prequel, then a spree of HCG, so I guess briefly the story of the prequel is retold followed by H fest.
9. Doukoku Soshite... 慟哭そして。。。 [980226] Data East Corporation 1 2 3
In this game, you play the role of a high-school student (whom you can name as you like). A bus takes him and his classmates to the school every day. But this time, just when the hero was talking to one of his classmates, the lovely girl Riyo, a car drove up to the bus, there was a sound of a crash, and then the hero became unconscious. When he woke up, he found himself, his classmates (most of whom were girls), and a couple of unknown people in a locked room in a strange mansion. Soon the hero realizes something terrible is going on in the mansion. People are being killed under mysterious circumstances, their corpses hidden; he finds a memo soaked in blood and a photograph. Will he be able to solve the mystery and to protect the people destiny brought him together with?
There are three English reviews of this game.
10. Misa no Mahou Monogatari ミサの魔法物語 [980226] Sammy Corporation 1
Misa no Mahomonogatari - Heartful Memories tells the story of a young girl who got a mission from the queen of a magic world called Firimu, to travel to the human world, find a young girl and train her into a tarot magician so that she could defeat the evil forces willing to conquer both of the worlds.
The game takes place in that high school and will last 4 years of training, the main character of the game is Misa and during that time period she has to train her abilities, meet different people and classmates, and face the evil that endangers the world.
A raising SIM to train a justice magician girl. And that's enough already to stop discussing it.
11. Tour Party: Sotsugyou Ryokou ni Ikou ツアーパーティー 卒業旅行にいこう [980226] JAMP
Tour Party Sotsugyou Ryokou ni Ikou is a board game, that was also released for the Sega Saturn console, in which the player can choose at the beginning of the game to play as a girl or a boy, the theme of the board is to travel, and the game features at the 4 human players to play as the same time and compete against the others.
The gameplay is similar to Takara's the Game of life but in Tour Party, during the journey the players will meet different people and they can become friends with them, and different events that will make the trip more interesting. The game features 8 different characters to choose from and a complete viewer mode with character profiles, musics, and other unlockables modes.
More SIMs, yay
12. Yuukyuu Gensoukyouku 2nd Album 悠久幻想曲 2nd Album [980226] MediaWorks
The Third Division Vigilante Corps have earned the trust of the people of Enfield, and under the popular Commander Neumann, they have worked hard to earn this trust. However, Neumann is now gone, leaving the third division with low morale and little work, and eventually the main character from the previous game is the only member left. The third division is to be disbanded, but he appeals to the director, and is given one year to restore the third division to its former glory.
Yūkyū Gensōkyoku: 2nd Album follows directly after the events of the first game, and is once more a traditional Japanese adventure game. You must gather your group to perform jobs for the people of Enfield, and interact with the various characters around town.
Another SIM
13. Coach! Oshiete コーチ！おしえて [980227] Nouvelle
New teacher was suddenly invited to a girls' school as an advisor to the athletics division. The final goal is to win the tournament! Is it possible to train six champions?
Raising SIM with week as time unit. Apart of training routine there is summer and winter vacation training camps and various events. Period is one year. The biggest complaint about this game was that there is no H events in here, only peeping in the changing room etc. The worst part is that despite each heroine having unique profile, all the events and text are absolutely the same for each of them - zero personality. Also even with max stats (256) it's actually a game of luck whether you win tournament or not. A rare kusoge...
14. Houkago wa Fiancee 放課後はフィアンセ [980227] Sweet Basil
Tadashi Wakita lost his parents in an accident at an early age, but thanks to the assistance of his uncle Kanno Rotaro, he is a high school student and lives in a house. Uncle dies and leaves a will that nephew must marry one of his three daughters in order to inherit his property and he must do it before the deadline.
Depending on choices it can be either a pure love story or a tyranny story and choices aren't transparent at all. Game is not limited to three daughters, there are other, less profitable variants too. Each route takes about one hour and there is also a harem ending with five girls. Characters are cute enough, but H events are too frequent and dark side of the game constantly tries to pop up.
15. Kemono no Sumu Kousha -Shinshou- 獣の棲む校舎 -真章- [980227] T2 Co., Ltd.
Three days after the first incident. But there's no time to rest - a new request awaits Ikuro Makita.
Nothing is being told about the first incident. Protagonist always talks about incoherent things. Capture degree is very high as you need to remember all the appointments and at exact time be at exact place out of 20 places.
16. Mars Ball マーズボール [980227] Studio Jikkenshitsu
Humans migrate to Mars, where the description of ancient sport is found in the ruins and it becomes the new craze - the Marsball.
An ordinary salaryman gets fired and with his baseball experience in high school he tries his luck as a manager of a new Marsball team.
Baseball game with card battles and quite high difficulty. Most of the time you train and once in a while there is match. H-events are hard to unlock with flags and are over in a flash. It's weak as love story, weak as H-story... then it's probably just a gameplay oriented game.
17. Mukuro ~Mesu o Nerau Agito~ 骸～メスを狙う顎～ [980227] Saga Planets
When I woke up, I did not have a memory.
Who am I? Why am I here?
People around me do not have recollections about me as well.
I shall make my way with women using this position that I do not know anything.
And then I shall make my memory return... remember with my body!
Production values are good, but in the end it's just a mystery nukige with weak cast of characters and protagonist. There are multiple routes and memories show up consequently with routes clearing.
18. Shift! [980227] Trush
Boy drinks secret medicine "XYX" and and turns into a girl. The only way to get to original form is to have intimacy with girls. But that works only for a short time and there must be a permanent antidote solution... Will he be able to regain male form?
Medicine fantasies are pretty popular in 1998 as I see. And it's at least third game where gender is suddenly changed. Game is mostly of erotic nature, but with a comedy touch.
Foreword: The culmination of the series and the biggest jewel Four-Nine ever produced. I'm late with the review since I wanted to finish recording video playthrough first.
Title: Canaan ~Yakusoku no Chi~
Developer: Four-Nine Date: 1997-04-18 VNDB link:https://vndb.org/v8697 Synopsis: The fourth entry in the GaoGao series is set in the same post-apocalyptic world as the two previous games. In the future, a failed biological experiment caused widespread mutations, leading to a total separation of human civilization and the mutated tribes of "animal people". The events of the game begin shortly after the end of the previous installment. Human civilization is nearly destroyed; the remaining humans live in shelters, dreaming of the "promised land" Canaan, somewhere "near the end of the world", where there is enough food for everyone and where mutants can't enter. The game has two protagonists: a human boy who has lost his parents and who swears to himself to find Canaan, and Wolf, the mutant hero of the previous game, with his colorful female companions. Eventually their paths cross - but will they able to understand each other and bring peace to the troublesome world?..
Structure: 29 parts overall varying in length from 3 minutes to 2 hours. Length: 15 hours Game type: Command selection adventure Difficulty: Easy and even easier than in before. No need to bruteforce all the commands to advance, dialogues are enough to proceed usually. Character Design rating: 10/10 Protagonist rating: 10/10 Story rating: 10/10 Game quality: 9/10 Overall rating: 10/10 Rating comments: All the shortcomings of Gao Gao 3 are eliminated here: no more command bruteforcing, optional (and less painful gameplay-wise) H-events, story is not bounded to a strict structure, but feels as a natural adventure. I can't put 10 for quality since it's PC-98 game with no voicing, but besides that just perfect.
Protagonist: Same Wolfy boy (we're given official English spelling in the credits like that), but now also with a human boy Kite moving elsewhere in parallel with paths joining only by the end. Wolfy is same cool and optimistic person, but what's nice - there was a chapter of total despair even for him - that was a welcome character development to see. Kite is pretty much allusion to Gao Gao 2nd part protagonist - human boy who wishes to protect those he loves but fails to do that due to lack of power. "I want to become stronger" is his motto, but unlike part 2 here Kite actually becomes strong and at some point even assaults enemies on par with Wolfy - that was also a satisfactory character development.
Characters: I've counted 25 humanoid characters in the game, aside of definite side-characters. Only four of them are males: Wolfy, Kite, Blue, Pr.Kayne. All the allies migrated from Gao Gao 3rd safely with some new ones and old acquaintances. It's enough to mention that there are as many as 12 people in our party at the time of the final battle. Just as in Gao Gao 3rd whenever you meet some new person, a long quee of questions to him follows, so every character is very well depicted as we get to know their past, their status and their wishes. This way is much better than having lots of mystery characters and getting to know them bit by bit by their actions.
Enemies: are very cool. There are more guys with advanced tech and guns, there are robots, new war modified mutants. Just as before, human enemies are possible to negotiate with.
Story: Kite is a boy who lives in one of the sealed shelters and one day sneaks out from there to try to find Canaan - the best place for people to live - he read about in the books. Wolfy party gets out of the Underground this time and walks the picturesque landscapes. At some point they find Kite's shelter, read his diary and burn up to find this land of prosperity Canaan as well. Kite saves a girl Angela from the crashed helicopter and they go seeking her "Fur", someone very close to her but unable to remember because of amnesia. Wolfy party finds the angel/bird girl Fur in a different crash place and she needs to find Angela. Soon Fur gets kidnapped and the story slowly, but surely unwinds. The biggest part of the story takes mutual alienation of mutants and humans. And only little by little, one encounter after another both species stop thinking in black and white terms.
CG: There were much more CG compared to 3rd part. They are of better quality and overall make up for the rich story feeling. A lot of backgrounds are reused from 3rd part, but that seems natural as it's the same underground everywhere.
HCG: I'm pretty sure there are less H-events than in 3rd part and all the female characters excluding only some enemies get their own HCG. But what I really liked is that there are only two compulsory events with Rabby in the beginning of the game and in the end of it and one compulsory event of Kite with mutant girl Mira. Mira is by the way one of the main characters this time, party of Kite consists of three persons usually: Kite, Angela, Mira. Optional H-events helped me to concentrate on the story and build up more empathy for the main characters rather than struggle through all the side-character pretty random and not important H-events. Sound: Only couple of old bgms migrated from Gao Gao 3rd and those are generic battle ones. All of the important battles, events and just actions have new much more elaborate midi melodies, which is really nice.
Themes: Most evident theme is definitely of Canaan. We tend to ask about Canaan every passer-by with both protagonist. What's Canaan? Will we be able to find it? See it for yourself, but the answer is very satisfying. Another interesting Canaan side-story is that of Prof. Kayne - but I won't spoil it here.
Another theme is that of coexistence. In Gao Gao 3rd there was not a single living human - only one human spirit Saison, but that was snobbish pc room maintenance specialist and he openly declared that mutants is the lower life form and has to be annihilated. By the start of Canaan both parties are ready to kill the other species enemies on spot and it takes a lot of effort to overcome that feeling. It starts from simple - "They can also be sad and cry" and goes all way through.
The third important theme is that of creators and creations. Are we responsible for life of those who we created? Should we treat them as luggage and just make another clone instead? This theme is covered mostly by Pr.Kayne sideline.
Another one is that of the reason of life. There are some suicides in the game and the gravest events happen because characters lose the reasons of their lives. Is it worth it to live on without the reason of life or is it possible to find another reason? Those are the questions raised.
Originality: Since it's direct continuation of Gao Gao 3rd there's not much originality here. But double protagonist story lines is a fresh move which really helps with the information overdose in the beginning.
Humor: I absolutely love the humor here. The old jokes don't have a strong presence, but occasionally show up and those moments are cherishable indeed. When a party of peddlers is asked whether they know about Ningen, they first take out a carrot, then green beans and then admit that they don't have any more vegetables reminding Ningen. Hit android with the pie joke is played out pretty cool too and the whole party was shocked that android did not stop functioning after that. The inventor of new meanings is only Iria now and she is hit frequently by Rabby, Leona and Dola because of that. Wolfy thoughts and comments are stingy as ever and the spirits in the party is always high.
Overall comments: This is a very rare beast. A serious grown-up story in postapocalyptic world with the best possible humor, dozens of well-developed characters and many important themes raised. What else can one possibly want? It feels like an epic RPG story on par with Legend of Heroes - Trails in the Sky, but with zero RPG elements. There are other games with interesting stories, but this unique party atmosphere is not to be rivaled in any pure visual novels to come further.
Foreword: I've noted the series quite long ago, but only when approached 4th final work decided to play the prequel that's directly connected with 4th part. Review of Canaan is coming a bit later.
Synopsis: Wild Force is set in the same post-apocalyptic world as the previous entry in the GaoGao series. A virus turned most of the Earth's population into mutants, and human beings continued living in artificial cities, separated from the rest of the world. This time, the story is seen from the point of view of the mutants themselves (the previous GaoGao games had human protagonists). These look more like fairy tale creatures (half-cats, winged people, etc.), and continue living on the wild, dangerous Earth, keeping close to their respective animal tribes. The protagonist of the game is a young boy named Wolf, who belongs - you've guessed it - to the wolf tribe. One day, exploring the wilderness, he stumbles upon a strange cave with lurking monsters. Together with a girl from the rabbit tribe and other fantasy creatures, Wolf discovers an advanced civilization, learn of the existence of human beings, and eventually becomes a hero who saves the new world from a grave danger.
Structure: One route with 8 chapters. Length: 15 hours Game type: Command selection adventure Difficulty: Easy. Scene advances after brute-forcing all the commands in all available locations. Character Design rating: 8/10 Protagonist rating: 9/10 Story rating: 9/10 Game quality: 9/10 Overall rating: 9/10
Rating comments: I'd give it a perfect score, personally. But what keeps me from it is painful command selection brute forcing. Game is really long itself and did not need such extra longevity layer. Another minus is interactive H-scenes that can't be skipped and that take really much time with that painful scrolling up and down. Characters are cute and memorable, but in H-events they often have distorted faces, that's a bit unpleasant. Oh well, and since the game is for pc-98 only, it has only midi for sound. Otherwise, a perfect game with a perfect story.
Protagonist: Wolf boy Urfy. He admits that he's given the name just after his tribe name, so if English version existed, he'd probably be called Wolfy instead. He has face. He is rational, skillful in sword art, supportive, tries to cheer up companions even in difficult situations. And he tolerated that Rabby tsundere bunny girl (she's named Rabby after the rabbit tribe...) the whole game absorbing all her hysteria. He never imposed himself with women (with one small exception during interrogation). He's the perfect guy. He is really unusual and he leads the story without being pushed by circumstances.
Characters: There are really many characters in this game, so let's just present our most frequently met party members and enemies. First enemies.
Enemies are rather cool. You would not believe it, but there was just one enemy that was bitter alienated and the others had their own reasons and could be debated with words, not swords.
Allies are even more developed, of course. First we have baka twins Leona and Dora. They move usually as a separate unit and we constantly stumble upon them wherever we go.
In the right upper corner is our acquaintance throughout the whole game - Rabby. She is total tsundere, blushing and shouting all the time. She is also a spiritual medium and she's the first to hear sounds or perceive traps. She's not of battle sort and on this CG she only fights because she has spirit of Ilia controlling her.
Ilia is the warrior in the right lower corner. We first find her spirit that occupies Rabby body, but then occasionally get her old body. She's strong-willed, but reasonable. She's also breaking everything she touches.
In the left lower corner is Nise. She's a gluttony-obsessed coward who can not even fly. We find her in the second chapter and she has little utility serving as a cute girls who's often crying and is afraid of everything. But she finds her use in one of the last chapters.
Story: I'll give chapter titles with brief description of contents:
1) - Underground - Urfi stumbles upon Raby in a dangerous forest where people disappear and together they fall through the ground.
2) - Legend - The chapter takes takes place outside on the way to the capital city. In this chapter we save Nise as the only survivor of beast assault on the road. Then beasts attack and we fall underground and occasionally find Ilia spirit that embodies Raby.
3) - Resurrection - Capital city inhabitants takes us for saviors from legend and send us on a mission to recover the body of Ilia. After some adventures we succeed in that.
4) - Trap - Ilia is resurrected and we go to the village that was assaulted by the beasts. On the way back from it we get to the trap of one of the enemies. Next Ilia gets deadly wound by mysterious enemy.
5) - Ephemora - In order to save Ilia, Urfi with baka twins go to the witch Ephemora for ambrosia and after some adventures get it.
6) - Key - Time to get on a mission to save the world. The key to all mysteries lies under the temple where Ilia body was found. And underneath it is a high technology human ghost city where the answers to all the questions are found during next two chapters.
7) - Dark eater - no spoilers
- Blue - no spoilers
CG: Game was quite greedy for non-HCG throughout the game but under the credits roll it presented so many cool new CG that I'm ready to forget about that. I found great pleasure in graphics and non-HCG in this game. The game has its cruel and even guro parts with the whole villages massacred, heads thrown away from the bodies etc and I liked those a lot.
HCG: I've counted it and there are 19 H-events in the game. That's it! 19! And all of them are interactive that you need to constantly choose different commands. So each such event usually takes several minutes of your time. And I'd say that 60% of HCG weren't pleasant due to distorted face features. Girls in this game are very proactive. They sneak into Urfi's room the same day they get acquainted. I was so happy to note that there were as many as three girl characters who never took interest in Urfi... but by the last chapter there was only one minor girl character left without H-event and that was a boarding house host girl without a sprite who had a husband she run business together. All the other female characters sooner or later had H-event. There were two more girls free from his charms, but one was a zombie-android creature and another one was heavily wounded on meeting her and died withing two minutes. So I wish there were much fewer H-events.
Sound: There was only midi bgm. Quite nice bgm to not annoy during 15 hours.
Themes: This work is a concluding one for all the series (since there was no 4th part in plans in 1994). It has big involving story and gives all the answers to all the questions of this part and previous ones. What happened to the humanity? Who are mutants? Who are demon children? Who are Dark eaters? Who are Light Eaters? Everything is explained in last two chapters, so it's a very satisfying work designed to be a grand finale
Originality: This work is the origin of a new game genre - heartwarming party adventure. It is basically an epic party RPG that was stripped of absolutely all RPG elements and given command selection instead. There are a lot of battles in the game, definitely more than H-events, so over 20. And each battle is played individually, not through fixed commands. Commands vary for each battle and you can't move on till you brute-forced the needed commands. That makes realistic involving battles where most of the time you talk with your party members and the enemy and read in text as you advance or try to defend or invent some cunning strategy or even flee from battle. And this adventure is heartwarming because a lot of time is spend walking or attending city buildings where you mostly chat with your party members. That allows to develop really deep personalities and get to know everything of each other. Add here a very good text - it's very easy to read, it's involving and it has a lot of funny face animations and emotions.
Humor: Apart of jokingly inter-character interactions there are actually a lot of very funny humor moments that are events-based or repeats-based. Here's an example of an event joke: the party flees from an overpowered opponent and uses consequently all the secret items acquited from the city - first makibishi spikes but enemy only jumps over them (one of party members actually gets into them which adds the fun), then a smoke bomb, but it does not help much. Then we search the bags and throw a pie into an enemy and enemy leaves us alone for the rest of the day!
I adored the repeats-based humor moments as well. It's mutants world and when we first here word "ningen" (humans) party members give their variants. The coolest one was from Ilia that she ate it in salad - it's the red vegetable from the garden, a carrot (ninjin)! Then at the human secret facility we find a pc with an interactive chat program. The girl there calls herself Crazy-chan and to most questions answers "Don't know". To the question what is "ningen" she answers... a red vegetable from the garden! Ilia joyfully jumps up shouting I told you, I told you! Then Crazy-chan adds "That's a lie, actually" -Arr you little!!!
The story with repeats goes long much further. At one moment the party starts to guess meanings even of known words they stumbled upon in secret human facility. Security door asked a number and the party is already discussing. It said Nampa! How shall we get it with the door?! No, it said Member!
At one of the rooms we find the box of this developer's another game - Waku Waku Mahjong Panic! - we read the whole advertisement on the back of the box and get to discuss what Mahjong is. One of the variants is that it's the benefit that you gain after load is returned to you (margin). There are also cereals called Gao-Gao with a girl on it. I really liked these real world references without breaking the 4th wall completely.
Overall comments: I liked this game a lot. It has everything a masterpiece game should have - thrilling big volume story, great cute characters including enemies, absolutely fabulous text, humor just to my taste and the unexpected and most welcome shift from fantasy to post-apocalyptic sci-fi like early Might and Magic and Wizardry series. The important note about this game that its pc-98 rom is very easy to find and it runs with any anex86 emulator version. This emulator does not require to tune it in any way and game text is easily acquired by default ITH hook. Google translate with Translation Aggregator gives a very good translation after its upgrade in the end of 2016. So no need to be afraid of scary PC-98 emulation. Good stories know no aging and should not be forgotten.
Foreword: I hate bakage. And yet I'm reviewing yet another bakage. Why? Mostly because together with YU-NO, these are the last two works of the Great Elf/Silky's team, after that Elf is going to loose too many staff members and is going to rerelease old works for Windows, stamp eroge works alongside with slice of life works. No more crazy adventure spirit afterwards. It's a historical moment to visual novels industry. Oh and I liked the two hentai OVAs of it immensely back then. I'll assume everyone seen them since I'm going to compare these works.
Title: Be-Yond ~Kurodaishou ni Mirareteru~ Developer: Silky's Date: 1996-08-30 VNDB link:https://vndb.org/v1973 Synopsis: When I woke up from the darkness, I learned that I was the legendary Devil of Darkness, that was said to have the power to destroy the universe.
The beautiful girls approach me one after another. My shout roars in space. When I pat a villain gently, he is discomposed into molecules... It seems that I have the power... But... am I really the Devil? Structure: There are 10 chapters and the branching at 5 good and two bad endings happens only in the last chapter. Length: 9 hours Game type: ADV with small command selection parts and couple minigames Difficulty: Moderate, actually. Without the guide I had no idea where the branching really happened and only achieved a bad end. Character Design rating: 9/10 Protagonist rating: 9/10 Story rating: 6/10 Game quality: 9/10 Overall rating: 7/10 Rating comments: It's my firm belief that I can only overall 8+ if I can recommend the game to anyone. The point is that I can't. This is one of the best bakage ever with a good story, great protagonist and memorable characters. It's just that I can't get satisfaction from bakage, even if it's the best bakage ever produced. And this game can easily rival this status.
Protagonist: We don't get to know much of his past. He just woke up in the black demon form already. He remembers his name as Miyamouto Koujiro and he's definitely not a student. His actions are well-weighted. He's not aggressive since no weapon can pierce the armor of his body and most of aggressive actions he does unwillingly, just because someone else presses the joystick button - the joystick that manages his actions, even walking...
Characters: All the characters share the same route with the only branching in last 10th chapter, so there is little emphasis on individual relations. But each of those characters are your adventure buddies and they are quite memorable so are worth taking a glance on.
Ren holds a special place in the story. She's some kind of guardian and servant of the dark lord. She's the only female character that is not human. Her ending can be considered the true one since the dark lord keeps on going the old way, with only his servant on his side. She values the safety of her master the most and she lacks human traits for the most part.
Eva probably has the leading female role. From the start she gives a "battle" to the black demon ship and looses not only 90% of her fleet, but also demon's missile hits the planet and then another planet damaging the other 5 planets of the seven start solar system which whithin a month also explode... triggering the solar system to explode... damaging the nearby systems... and Eva has to pay for the caused damage for the number of years close to eternity. Within her little powers she does her best to pursue the dark lord and actually manages to catch up to him three times! First time she's getting close with him due to overdose of a medicament, but gradually starts dreaming of him. What makes her special is the amount of hardships she suffers in her quest, majority of baka events happen to her.
Fey is the third heroine we meet. She's a very poor bounty hunter without knowledge that the gun needs bullets or that there is a safety check. The crew saves her from one of the wild west style bounty hunter duels and she begs the dark lord to accept her as apprentice. She's a pilot of a huge mecha built by her uncle and sometimes is of use as such. Fey provides all the leftover baka events for the game.
Amelia is the princess of one planet, but she runs away from the wedding with unloved groom and seeks refuge at our ship. She's the boldest one and has the biggest number of H-events.
Chime is actually Amelia's mother (might be wrong on that) and the queen of some planet. She only has two plot H-events and not of much significance besides that. Kind and experienced.
Vermouth is the captain of the fleet belonging to Chime. She only has one H-scene and some miscellaneous use for the story. Hard-boiled knight.
Story: As in every bakage, story is not of much coherence. So we wake up from the noise that the surrounding fleet makes firing at us. Rei worries that it can bother our sleep and from the controlling gamepad launches a missile that destroys half of the universe. On the nearby planet we meet Eve who gets to know of dark lord's identity, picks up the gamepad and presses a button... which launches a missile that makes a huge hole sends her in the open space. Out of pity we teleport her back to the planet (without her clothes - it's a safety measure while teleportation as Ren says). Eve manages to find us two more times - not without the help of her super space police bycicle!
Afterwards we visit several more planets without any real purpose and help other girls on those planets. Nine and a half chapters of pure bakage and grew quite tired of it by the fifth chapter. Tenth chapter suddenly presents an enemy rivaling our powers and some serious development with deaths, blood, branching and bad endings.
CG: I've zero complaints about CG. They are numerous, beautiful and fun. What I especially would like to notice is that there are lots of full height models on CG which is so rare in today's VNs. Another flavor is the backgrounds. They are excellent with the most notorious are different planets backgrounds with lots of characters on them. They are drawn with love like on this screen.
OVA comparison: OVA ep.1 loosely retells chapter 1 plot - loosely because it misses on several smaller events. The major differences that in game there is one more Eve ship penetration on behalf of the dark lord, but the most significant difference is that in OVA Eve does not recognize the dark lord identity and spend the night with him, but in the game she does regognize that in the end and sets into pursue. OVA ep.2 starts with chapter 2 and mixes some 5 more chapters together inserting its own plot line. Those events actually take place on three different planets and it just tosses them together, hurriedly adds Chime H-scene and ends without any reasonable conclusion. The game's much more satisfying on both the adventure and the endings.
Sound: No complaints either. Lots of compositions of great style.
Minigames: There are actually two minigames in 10th chapter. One is faking an rpg with an ability to attack and defend and the other one is shoot 30 appearing targets in 40 seconds. I barely passed both of those mingames from the third try.
Overall comments: I can't remember a better bakage even from contemporary visual novels. It's possible to rant on characters and story, but it's essence is in baka events so I'm presenting CGs of some of them.
Foreword: I erroneously marked this game as eroge and now it's the time to check out what it's really about. Title: Ushinawareta Rakuen Developer: Silky's Date: 1995-04-14 VNDB link:https://vndb.org/v9147 Synopsis: College student Kojima Kousaku is promised a high payment for assistance in scientific expedition on a southern island. However, a storm breaks out and the ship suffers a shipwreck. The crew gets separated and they start to search first for bed and food and then find a strange temple in the jungle. Structure: Pretty much one route with minor branching. Length: 4 hours Game type: Mysterious island adventure. Difficulty: Moderate. Several saves will lead you to some happy ending, although getting all happy endings will probably require a guide.
Character Design rating: 7/10 Protagonist rating: 4/10 Story rating: 7/10 Game quality: 7/10 Overall rating: 6/10 Rating comments: Game is thrilling and something constantly happening keeping you glued to the chair. So while playing it's totally fascinating, but the aftertaste is bitterish due to several shortcomings. Protagonist: Usual college student, nothing really outstanding.
Characters: If we count only happy endings, they're only for the three girls. If count possible H-events, there are six characters. Characters seemed quite cliche to me - an active red-haired Ayano, a shy megane Yumi, professor young wife Shiori fills ojousama role, there's a blond american origin girl Monica and sexy mature professor secretary and partner Reiko, there's also the ingenious shaman girl Lira. They all share the same one-road story with minor branching leading to different girls happy ends - like go along the coast and that somehow means a happy end for Ayano, go by the forest and get the Shiori happy end. No meaning at all in that choice. Character design is great for all of them, but without voicing and with such small volume it's hard to start to feel sympathy.
Story: The story is depicted quite shallowly. First acquaintance is with the local flora that can cause various effects on eating and fauna presented by tentacle monster beasts, who rape some girl, but never harm anyone leaving peacefully afterwards. Then we discover the jungle village where professor holds supremacy. He throws the crew in prison and makes them to participate in a ritual ending being trapped in a cave with tentacle monsters. Professor boasts that three years ago he made the first contact with the villagers of this island and they agreed to assist him if he can keep the tentacle monsters away. Somehow he managed to lock most of tentacle monsters in a cave. But most important are special fruits that grow in this location and turn humans into beasts - professor is going to use them militarily later. The crew manages to find a way to the inner temple of the cave with some high technology ancient device inside as well as a mutated monster to oppose. And couple events later the end. CG: The CG here are great but not too many for not a long game.
Sound: Music was actually great. Lots of memorable tracks. What was especially cool is some midi sound that resembles a cry a lot and it's used in all the situations when a girl is in danger and she screams loudly. At that time music stops and after that some dangerous music starts playing - really good sound support. Overall comments: So game is thrilling, good-looking and memorable which is a lot. So here are the shortcomings the game is blamed for:
1. Heroines happy ends depend on quite a random looking choice and are difficult to get without guide. And those happy ends are a short talk and couple of HCG, not really satisfying.
2. The story is too short if all the 11 bad endings are cast away. So game has bad endings chasing in mind.
3. Repetitiveness of actions is big since heroines "routes" branch quite early.
To sum it up, game is short so it tries substitute volume with repetitiveness, fake happy endings, lots of bad endings and artificial rise in difficulty. Read it once to the end and get some happy ending and you're going to get a very good impression. But get all of three endings and your evaluation might fall as you get close to nothing for much additional effort.
Foreword: Cyberpunk erotic action police story made me really curious. I was very skeptical of the Sammies review since he spent too much money to get windows version and turned to hate this work. And so I went to check it out myself...
Title: Merry Go Round
Developer: Mischief
Date: 1996-03-08
VNDB link:https://vndb.org/v8807
Synopsis: Merry Go Round is set in Yokohama, in year 2197. The city has turned into an international megalopolis, where crime prospers, and where justice is pursued by lone vigilante fighters. The hero of the story is a private detective named Brian. The first case is about an assault on a prostitute in the brothel "John Wayne". Further investigation reveals that the assault is connected to other cases, some of which involve dangerous biological experiments. With the help of the policewoman Akane, the bounty hunter Ridley, and others, Brian begins to gradually see the whole picture...
Structure: All the choices are meaningless, one road story, almost kinetic novel.
Length: 4 hours
Game type: SF detective investigation
Difficulty: Easy.
Character Design rating: 3/10
Protagonist rating: 5/10
Story rating: 5/10
Game quality: 4/10
Overall rating: 4/10
Rating comments: Wow, I ended up rating lower than the Sammies. Game shines about nothing. It's got great visuals and some great CG, but that's it, actual game does not develop on that great basis.
Protagonist: Brian was supposed to tough bastard, but the cool CG with the gun that inspired me was actually the only good one. The other CG with the gun are just plain bad.
Story:
The story can be told in mere seven CG. And that's basically it. In-between the events there are numerous H-scenes while gathering information.
Theme: Prostitutes. That's the real theme of the game. They are everywhere. They are the victims, they are the friends, they are the job givers, they are the only visitors of bars. Between the few action scenes it's the daily routine to lie on the sofa and go searching for information while finding nothing and triggering two H-scenes out of the blue.
CG: All the cool CGs are presented, besides that there's little to look on. Female characters have mostly ugly character designs and CG. There was just a few good shots and then back to ugliness. I could not tell police woman Akane and bounty hunter Ridley apart, it's like the same face, really. And those are two main female cast characters. So unless you read names attentively it gets into a mess.
Sound: I had zero sound. None of the emulators was able to reproduce that.
Technical difficulties: They were too numerous. No music. Then Neko project emulator by the middle just split the screen on three screens and kept on broken as that so I had to shift to anex86 and click it to the middle again. I've wasted 5 hours debugging anex86 to find the text hexes and I found the huge pile of texts that contained all the texts all right but there was no thread to actively upload speech by speech. And that was strange considering that ITH was able to give out half of kanji for each line. So in the end I had to use screenshot reader OCR and that was very painful since there were just three lines for text and at times three screens were required to hold the full speech line.
Overall comments: Game leaves a poor impression. Investigation takes not much time. Ending is abrupt since as soon as we kill Mardalene demihuman (girl on last CG), there is a brief talk with the professor hologram and abrupt game over. The CG accessible from menu afterwards are only HCG, which already reveals how the developers saw this game. Cut all the H-scenes and the game will drop to some two-hours length which is unacceptable for a story game. What I actually liked that all the H-scenes happen with random characters, not plot ones. There is just one scene with Ridley in the middle (when u save her from the dungeon which is ok) and behind the credits. Akane and Miku (Miku is actually a palm-size assistant) are left alone, so at least plot moves apart of H-scenes. So only the atmosphere of the game was good to some point, but frequently reused CG ruined even that small illusion and it ended up into a too small world to produce a significant impact story.
Surprisingly poor for masterpieces December, so my grey horse Lilith is the winner this time.
1. Houkago wa Betsu no Kao 放課後は別の顔 [951201] Ucom
A collection of four short stories featuring sexual experiences of school girls:
1. 「通学電車」
2. 「先輩・・・・・・」 3. 「進路指導」 4. 「非行少女」
A distinguishing feature of the work is the presence of narrator girl who also appears in the stories. But overall it's a very specialized content.
2. Momoko-chan for Me ももこちゃんfor Me [951201] Ume Soft 1 2
Momoko-chan for Me: Minarai Kangofu-hen is a visual novel focusing on a young male aspiring physician, the son of a famous doctor who has left on a vacation and entrusted the son with the management of certain hospital-related affairs. The game focuses exclusively on the relationship between the protagonist and a nurse-in-training named Momoko.
Remastered version heroines look much cuter. The difficulty of the game is high since there are over 10 endings - most of them depend on ecstasy level between the characters.
3. Moonlight Energy 2 ムーンライトエナジー２ [951201] Interheart 1
Moonlight Energy 2 is a sequel to Moon Light Enegy. The game's premise is nearly identical to that of the predecessor: the player controls a high school student named Maki, participating in her lesbian escapades with other students or personnel.
The infamous les chikan is back. So it's a normal Interheart work with many H events.
4. Rance 4.1 ~Okusuri Koujou o Sukue!~ ランス４．１ ～お薬工場を救え！～ [951201] Alice Soft 1 2 3
This is a side-story in Rance series, released shortly after the fourth game, but dedicated to an entirely different quest. All kinds of troubles are happening to a factory where a new Happiness Medicine is being developed. The mercenary Rance is hired by the manager to investigate the source of these troubles. First task: clear the factory of the monsters...
4.1 looks more like introduction to more longer 4.2. Battle system is simplified and few known heroines take part here. The quality is very good for a bonus game given away for free.
5. Reverse リバース [951201] Gloria
Takumi died in a traffic accident when he was young, but his spirit continued to live in his fraternal twin and gained ability to read other peoples hearts. Using that ability he helps people around him to solve their problems.
It's really difficult to comprehend what's going on on the screen since Takumi and his twin change spots all the time. The contents is quite dull and sad.
6. Super Erect Taisen S・EX スーパーエレクト大戦Ｓ・ＥＸ [951201] Dynamic Production
Hero was watching a pop idol live performance when the skies tore apart and idols got sucked inside the demon-faced black whirlwind together with his favorite Ichigo-chan. After than an angel descended from the skies and offered cooperation to defeat demon king and return the girls.
Each enemy turn takes so much time that I did not have enough patience to wait.
7. Ace of Spades Ace of Spades [951207] Love Gun 1 2
Ace of Spades is a casino game with a gruesome twist. The player competes against female opponents in poker or blackjack; every victory leads to an explicit scene of sexual torture. The main mode includes a series of matches and subsequent sadistic scenes against various women.
A primitive stripping card game.
8. Custom Mate 3 カスタムメイト3 [951208] Cocktail Soft 1 2 3
It's Christmas. Hayashi Ryuusuke is walking through the crowded city, feeling sad that he is alone on such a day. Suddenly, he spots a neon sign: Custom Mate. He enters and sees a strange receptionist with elf-like ears and a magic symbol on the forehead. She creates the girl of his dreams and they get married! But this is just the beginning, and Ryuusuke realizes that marriage is not all about the honeymoon...
After the honeymoon, the couple returns to daily routine. The player can make daily or monthly schedule. The wife's behavior is determined by character creation, but also by the choices the player makes. The wife would often ask questions, make suggestions, etc.; the player's reaction determines future interactions and the overall development of the relationship. The couple has various parameters, from love level to monetary wealth.
First two parts were blocked as eroge, but this one is much more "fun". There's a good thorough mechanics English review.
9. Magical Girl Pretty Sammy Zenpen 魔法少女プリティサミー 前編 [951208] AIC Spirits
Mahō Shōjo Pretty Sammy: Part 1 - In the Earth is based on Magical Girl Pretty Sammy (魔法少女プリティサミー) anime TV series which focus on magically transformed Sasami character from Tenchi Muyo! universe. This is a visual novel featuring Sasami as the protagonist. For reasons unknown, she has been chosen as a champion by Tsunami, the next queen of Juraihelm, to fight in her name. But there are people bent on seeing Sasami fail in her endeavors and her tasks will soon prove much more challenging as she fights her way with Misao, her best friend who was chosen as a magical girl by Tsunami's opponent, Ramia.
Anime was pretty popular since there are at least four different visual novels about Pretty Sammy. Game is issued with CG for PC-9821 consoles and thus is not well known.
10. Miwaku no Chousho 魅惑の調書 [951208] Black Package 1
The protagonist, a young man named Shinnosuke, discovers a beautiful mansion, in which apparently a large-scale party is taking place. Determined to meet and enchant some beautiful women, he ventures into the mansion.
The core of the game is nanpa, but atmosphere and girls are luxurious. The pictures using the full screen contribute to its charm. But don't expect much plot here as after targeting three women an ending happens. To get the rest a new game is needed.
11. Never Land Never Land ～ネバーランド～ [951208] Tips 1
You are Jimmy, a child of Never Land which is an island of magic and fantasy. You are always accompanied by May ,a small nymph, and you can fly in the air. Never Land is a world of children who can dream.
One day a boss of pirates gets a magic wand that has power to transform anything. You set out to restore status quo.
There's an English review that gives a rough outline of what to expect.
12. Rance 4.2 ~Angelgumi~ ランス４．２ ～エンジェル組～ [951208] Alice Soft 1 2 3
Rance 4.2: Angel-gumi is the second part of the story that began in Rance 4.1: O-Kusuri Koujou o Sukue! rather than an all-new Rance adventure. The hero continues to investigate the weird occurrences connected to the Happiness Medicine Factory. Since the story picks up directly where it ended in the sequel, Rance begins his adventure already commanding an all-female squad called the Angel Team.
There is an English review.
13. Toushin Toshi 2 - Soshite, Sorekara... 闘神都市II そして、それから・・・ [951208] Alice Soft
Returning from the goddess tournament, Sid is reduced to level 1 by the Demon King. His dojo sent him to a training journey, but Hazuki was so worried about him that she followed Sid and got into trouble herself.
A kinetic novel with rare pictures - mostly it's just clicking through walls of text. Since hero is weak again there is little excitement. But the story is good and well worth reading for the fans of the original game or if there is sympathy to Hazuki.
14. 2 Shot Diary 2 ツーショットDiary2 [951209] Mink 1
This is the first of the four episodic games that constitute the sequel to first 2 Shot Diary game. Unlike the first game with its 12 different scenarios, it only contains 2, and both are very short; however (also unlike the first game), most of the scenes here are animated. Both scenarios consist entirely of depictions of explicit sex.
One of the scenarios is about a girl named Yukari; after her father died, she had to look for a job, and finally became a maid in a mansion of a rich oligarch, who molests her sexually.
The other scenario is dedicated to a very young girl named Emi, who goes with her friends to the beach. Once she finds herself in a secluded place, a young boy approaches, and the two have sex.
Ero-centered short work.
15. Hiiro no Shimai 緋色の姉妹 [951215] Apollon Create 1
The protagonist of the game is a college student named Shunsuke. His mother died when he was five years old. Now his father is marrying again. He and his new wife have departed on a honeymoon; while he is waiting for them to come home, Shunsuke discovers that he doesn't live alone any more: three young sisters of his stepmother have moved in. Shunsuke now tries to get to know them better (in every possible way..), at the same time gradually discovering dark secrets about his father's intimate life.
Command selection hurts the pace a lot. There are several branches, but all the sisters turn out to be M and their stories aren't that different. Characters are quite cute, though.
16. Kekkon Marriage 結婚Marriage [951215] Westone 1
Shizuka, Mika, Kiyomi, Reiko and Mami are all grown up and have one thing on their mind: finding the ultimate husband! From the workplace to automated dating services, there's wedding bells to be heard and love to be acted on, all for the ultimate goal: marriage! With biological clocks ticking and youth slipping away, these girls will do whatever it takes to snag a man, love or not!
A dating SIM with 5 girl candidates. There are some parameters used. The flow is talking - telephone talk - date - proposal - engagement - marriage.
17. Lilith リリス [951216] Four-Nine 1
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.
I have a full review prepared.
18. Clone Doll Kagai Jugyou クローンドール 課外授業 [951221] Space Project 1 2
In Clone Doll, the protagonist is a rather "geeky" teenager who is actually a genius: he invented a machine that can make clones of human beings! After he gets a hold on a few hairs that belong to Kimika, his schoolmate and object of his passionate desires, the young scientist creates a clone of her, a young girl who has no other knowledge and wishes but satisfy the hero sexually...
There is an English review of the game. And Space Project confirms his fame as kusoge creator.
19. Fermion ~Mirai kara no Houmonsha~ フェルミオン ～未来からの訪問者～ [951222] Silky's 1 2 3
In the year 2296, world-wide pollution has led to drastic changes in the natural order of things. Human organism, unable to withstand the pollution, was slowly mutating. In the huge city Megalopolis, a group of young female scientists designed a time machine. One of them, a blue-haired girl named Connie, who can mutate into a cat, is sent to the past, to year 1996, to find a way to change the future...
I have a full review prepared.
20. Getsumen no Anubis 月面のアヌビス [951222] Multimedia Intelligence Transfer 1
The protagonist (default name Keisuke) and heroine (default name Kaori) are astronauts living in a laboratory set on the moon. A group of American soldiers are also stationed there. Mysterious incidents begin to occur that threaten the lives of everyone there - there are multiple scenarios, but only one is explicitly horror-themed. Said scenario involves a race of mysterious space parasites that can take possession of anyone, leading the protagonist (and thus the player) to grow distrustful of the other characters.
Yet another NVL "sound novel". Short and horror one, of course.
21. Idol Project 2 アイドル・プロジェクト2 [951222] KSS Inc. 1
Unlike the first Idol Project, the story of the sequel is directly related to to the anime series Idol Project, starring the same characters, with the young and ambitious Mimu Emilton as the protagonist. Mimu finds herself on a tropical island, where she must rise to fame by winning contests and promoting her singing skills. Like in the previous game, the majority of gameplay is dedicated to exploring the top-down city, visiting various places, searching for necessary people and raising the protagonist's parameters. Mimu has a much more detailed set of parameters than the hero of the previous game, including physical attributes as well as popularity rankings. The RPG element has been further enhanced by introducing random character (crazed fans and alike) who would sometimes attack Mimu on the city map and other locations.
Now is an ADV with a lot of town exploration. Still the use of parameters alienated me.
22. Ikazuchi no Senshi Raidy 2 雷の戦士ライディ２ [951222] ZyX 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
"Ugh... desert travel is terrible on the skin, let me tell you!
Why did I ever choose to come this way... If I don't find water soon it's going to be troublesome.
Wait, what's that in the distance - an oasis?! And a town next to it! Civilization at last..." I am Raidy, wandering the continent of Else as a swordfighter. I can freely bend the power of thunder to my will, so people have taken to calling me the "Lightning Warrior". I'm traveling far and wide to improve my fighting skills and search for clues about my past, and my mysterious power over lightning.
After defeating the monsters in the Cubust tower in my last adventure, I left the village of Sadd behind and continued on my journey. My travels have taken me across the desert to the oasis town of Lake Blue. Looking forward to a break after the long and dusty journey, I settled in for the night at the local inn... only to have its peace shattered by the cries of the young, beautiful innkeeper!
I rescued her from her mysterious assailant, to learn that the town was living under constant fear of attack from a gang of marauding bandits led by a cruel woman called Jammy. It seems my vacation won't be so uneventful after all! I set out to find information on the gang's hideout, and a new adventure begins...
Game's localized and has several English reviews.
23. Meisou Toshi 迷走都市 [951222] Tiare 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Runaway City tells the story of Hiroaki, a boy with a mysterious power of Good Luck. It's almost as it some power makes women do whatever he wants. At first it's a great power to have, then as time goes by it scares him more and more. Unchecked, this power will be the destruction of all Japan. Can you find out the nature of your power and find a way to stop it before it goes too far?
Game's one of the first localized ones and has many English reviews.
24. Mesuneko Hishoshitsu 牝猫秘書室 [951222] Melody 1 2
Kurou works in a company that specializes in "headhunting", finding and recruiting capable employees for big companies. A new client representing a company that has recently concluded a trade with an American software firm needs a new secretary. Problem: the last headhunter who was given a similar request has gone missing. So Kurou's boss wants him to get to the bottom of things, teaming him up with the resourceful and pretty headhuntress Tomoko. Naturally, as the partners begin the investigation, dark erotic secrets of the employees become gradually revealed...
An ero-centered work where you need to chase the same character to get to her ending. Game's notable for all the target characters being mature women.
25. Metamor Panic Doki Doki Youma Busters メタモル・パニック ＤＯＫＩＤＯＫＩ妖魔バスターズ [951222] Family Soft 1
Hero is a high school student who secretly went camping in the mountains with his childhood friend Yuki and cousin Ai. They found a suspicious cave and occasionally lifted the curse laid on demon king. The curse shifted to the two girls with Yuki spontaneously occasionally turning into a kitten and Ai into a parrot. Youkai appear in the city and start rampaging. The three heroes stand up to the demon threat.
This playstation game feels more like an ADV novel with light RPG elements rather than a serious RPG. The start is very harsh and punishing for a player. The second part when you learn to control the transformation is easy, so the balance is not good. Graphics are excellent, but game's only partially voiced. The tempo is slow and bgm quite monotonous. Some affinity to RPG genre is required to enjoy, but game absolutely can be enjoyed.
26. Paradise Call パラダイスコール [951222]
At a place where girls phone in, a guy waits. When a girl calls in, he talks with her. If he respond right, he will meet the girl and have fun. This game is a simpler version of Virtuacall 1.
Very primitive ero-centered game.
27. Viper-V16 [951222] Sogna 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
The final game in the V series and arguably the most recognizable. VIPER-V16 breaks with tradition and provides only two stories, instead of three, but both are longer, more complicated, and contain many more options than the prior V series stories, resembling games more than visual novels for the first time. The widely popular Rise story describes the kidnapping and escape attempt of three waitresses, while the lesser known Imagine tells the story of a young technical college student's attempts to attract the interests of three girls.
Game is localized and has multiple reviews.
28. Virtua Call 2 バーチャコール2 [951222] Fairytale 1
Emily has had a crush on Hasegawa for quite some time. A fellow resident of her building, Hasegawa has always been there for her as a friend, though she would like something more than friendship. When Hasegawa starts confiding his woman troubles to Emily, she introduces him to Virtuacall, a service that lets you interact with the girl of your dreams just as you wish you could. Unfortunately, Hasegawa becomes more interested in Virtuacall than her as a result. On the verge of leaving the country for her homeland, Emily is so overcome by emotion that she can neither tell Hasegawa about her feeling or tell him that she is leaving.
Nampage with outstanding difficulty. You really need to make memos during the talks all the time to get by without guide. Game got more user friendly since the prequel and even cuter girls. It's just too difficult to empathize with the nampage nowadays since the genre feels inferior to galge and there are thousands of galge today.
29. Zakuro no Aji ざくろの味 [951222] Imagineer Co., Ltd. 1
The story is set in a five-story office building on a cold winter evening. The protagonist (default name Domon) is working on a story for a monthly science fiction serial. As he goes to visit the editorial department, a series of earthquakes cause the building to collapse and trap everybody inside. Attempting to find an escape, Domon heads into the basement, and depending upon a decision made early in the game, he may run into anything from zombies to demons.
Yet another sound novel. It's released at the same day as Getsumen no Anubis and has references to it. Short horror story again.
30. Doki Doki Pretty League EX DokiDokiぷりてぃリーグ EX [951223] Xing Entertainment
Ayaka and Remy are members of time police "Chronopolis" in the near future. This time they investigate a case of a professional beauty wrestler of the 20th century who got missing.
Game has nothing to do with tennis this time, but has lots of H content. Several more former members of Doki Doki Pretty League make an appearance here. There are some mini-games available. Original creators of pretty league were absolutely against such game with erotic content. Female wrestling organization condemned this game as well. But the sales were ok, so franchise got resurrected at PS with time.
31. Kousoku Chojin 拘束超人 [951224] Foster 1
Haruki is a student at the prestigious private Morino High School, which he attends together with his beautiful sister, and where he leads the drama class. One day, Haruki discovers a strange toupee that transforms his body. Unbeknownst to him, he has gained special powers and comes into contact with a strange violent world that is hidden inside the school. Now he must understand what's truly going on there, at the same time trying to "score" with every girl he meets - be it student or teacher...
A crazy erotic baka-game. H events happen quite randomly. A cheerful Foster game.
32. Dangel - Special Disk Dangel スペシャルディスク [9512] Mink
Contains a parodying story set in the universe of Dangel, which happens at the same time as when Anduke starts his own adventure.
Game has the same intro as original Dangel, but this Plum hero is a mere parody worried about washing his pants more than saving the world. Text is quite good, but I guess playing through the original needed to appreciate the most of it.
33. Only You -Seikimatsu no Juliette-tachi- Ｏｎｌｙ Ｙｏｕ －世紀末のジュリエット達－ [9512] Alice Soft 1 2 3 4
A Japanese teenager named Hiroki is interested in martial arts, and has to take care of his little sister. Their older brother Yoichi had gone abroad; just when he announced that he was coming back he disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Hiroki and his friends eventually find out that an international supernatural criminal syndicate is in cohorts with an even darker power that is about to bring the apocalypse onto Earth.
Another RPG hybrid. First part is quite an ordinary ADV where you get humiliated over and over till the flame of vengeance embraces you, and the second part is a whirlpool of battles. Pure love is promoted in the game as each of seven girls has their own route with own boss and a happy ending while trying to get several girls brings a not so happy one. There are as many as 4 usual strikes and 4 special actions, but strikes deal random amount of dmg and should only be chosen with caution when fighting flying enemies. Special actions are only available on bosses and when at the same time the apocalypse timer is close to expiration. The game was initially made only for subscription fans and included lots of materials from previous works, but had great acclaim and had to be redone into an alternative version with all the legal issues fixed. So it is probably the first normal game of Alice Soft without dark fetishes. Good riddance!
34. Shikimi 樒 [95] Raisin Land
Two girl classmates stay at school after classes. But they aren't going to study. They are in love with each other and dedicate this time only to themselves.
Doujin school love story quickly turns into SM play.
35. Rinn-chan no Tensei Hakusho ~Meido no Miyagebanashi~ Rinn's転生白書～冥土のみやげばなし～ [95] Wanpaku Family
Rinn-chan is a 14-year-old junior high school student who suddenly dies before confessing to her love interest. At the heavens she meets an angel and three other girls. Angel agrees to return Rinn-chan to the Earth due to unnatural cause of her death. She may choose one of the three girls to reincarnate and confess to her love or choose no one and go back as herself.
Choosing other girls leads to inevitable H-scene and death afterwards. Reincarnating as herself gives H-scene with a better ending.
36. Momoiro Sankaku ~Riko & Hikaru Hen~ もも色さんかく～理子&ひかる篇～ [95] T&H Projects
Riko and Hikaru and normal girls who live normal lives. One attends kendo club, the other is a fan of reading. But one day their wolds coincide in one.
Just another short doujin H-game, this time with horrible quality.
37. Hotaru HO・TA・RU -ほたる- [95] Misono Soft
Hotaru gets molested on the train, but to her surprise the culprit is a man she knows very well.
Yet another unremarkable doujin H-tilt game.
38. Asuka Ayako-chan to Hokenshitsu あすか ～綾子ちゃんと保健室～ [95] B.T.B software
Ayako-chan feels bad at a gym and goes to school's health room right in her sportswear. There she meets her classmate who she likes.
A very short doujin game about a sudden passion of two young people.
39. Tantei Imasato Misa Jikenbo Tanpenshuu: Romance wa Shiroku Kiken na Kaori 探偵今里美沙事件簿 短編集 ロマンスは白く危険な香り [95] Maimai
Tokyo, 1960s. Amateur detective Misa takes up a case in secret from her father detective. It starts as a romance request, but soon plot starts to thicken.
A detective work, so no-no for me
Foreword: This is Keno-san's scenario. He did not have much experience when we was thrown to produce scenario of the game that we know as Love Potion in two months time. Critics buried the game and that's why there was much more care in producing next game scenario - that was DESIRE, the game that I can't praise enough. The next year Keno wrote scenario for EVE burst error and on the wave of popularity moved to legendary Elf company where he kept working on EVE franchise and created another masterpiece YU-NO and then left for Abel company. He created a lot of wonderful scenarios after that but we're interested in Xenon ~Mugen no Shitai~ scenario. It was developed after DESIRE but prior to EVE. So it was the golden age for Keno and he was experimenting a lot, trying to further develop the already complex DESIRE structure. This resulted in Xenon -Phantom Limbs-.
Title: Xenon ~Mugen no Shitai~
Developer: C's Ware
Date: 1994-12-09
VNDB link:https://vndb.org/v7474
Synopsis: Kōji, a Japanese high school student, experiences strange, recurrent life-like dreams. He finds himself in a space station inhabited by beautiful young women. As he tries to explore the dream realm he wakes up. His teacher, intrigued by his account of the bizarre adventure, urges him to travel back to the space station in his dream and report his discoveries to her. Eventually Kōji realizes that his dream and reality are tightly connected, and finds himself compelled to avert a grave danger.
Structure: Three routes with 3rd route to have four branches for different heroines, then there is an extra small kinetic route or something like that.
Length: Close to 10 hours, probably a bit less.
Game type: Space mindfuck mystery
Difficulty: Moderate. Flags are obscure so best to use guide.
Character Design rating: 7/10
Protagonist rating: 7/10
Story rating: 10/10
Game quality: 7/10
Overall rating: 8/10
Rating comments: Game is quite difficult to evaluate since there are two worlds with own sets of characters and there are even two protagonists (actually, even three) of varying charm. Not all the characters are cute, some look good only at CG. Game has great text but is lacking in some fields.
Protagonist: Quite and ordinary japanese student on one hand and much cooler The Greatest and Toughest Space Pirate, Genius and Universe Champion on the other hand. I liked the latter much more!
Characters:
Megumi - real world girl, your lover and her papa is medical center sponsor
Sayaka - real world government researcher
Ryouko-sensei - real world psychiatrist
Mai - real world Ryouko-sensei sister, participates in experiments as catalyst
Ranfa - space ship mechanic
Fal - space ship researcher
Tracy - space ship captain assistant
Bianca - space ship sleeping beauty in cryogenic chamber
Story:
It's not easy to tell this game's story without spoilers. And this game's charm is only due to this mindfuck state of mind in projects constantly. If I tell the contents of 3rd route, game will be stripped of half of its charm. So I'll only roughly retell first route. Game introduction shows Kouji being taken out of hypnosis state by psychiatrist Ryouko-sensei. And this scene is repeated like 10 times throughout the whole game and it's great for the atmosphere - sometimes it's real awakening, sometimes it's just a dream. After introduction we find ourselves in some hospital chamber, bump in some weird looking (some exposing uniform) girl then discover naked girl wired to some cryogenic coffin.
After that Kouji wakes up in the real world (I'll call it real for now although it's not that simple). He's questioned by Ryouko-sensei about what he remembered from the dream. Outside of the room he is greeted by Megumi, who claims to be his girlfriend and lover. There is also some strict government official lady Sayaka who does not let us go into computer room. And finally there is Mai girl who is very worried about Kouji condition. And from there it goes chaotic. This real world is constantly shifting with the dream world where there are four different space ship crew girls await - mechanic Ranfa, researcher Fal, captain assistant Tracy and sleeping beauty Bianca in cryogenic room (actually, it's the different sleeping girl, first one in the dream was actually Fal).
So Kouji gets thrown from one world to another, sometimes without warning - we share consciousness and even items while there, so basically we've found some media disk in one world and could find the device to play it only in another world. Furthermore, we hear voice of some man from time to time. In real world we try to know more about the hypnosis treatment we undergo and to get to the computer room. In the dream world there is even more action - we investigate the sleeping beauties, try to find out about our identity and once even blow the ship.
As for identity - that's another interesting story. Some ancient ruins were found on some planet and first research team was sent to investigate the ruins. Noone survived. Second research team was sent to investigate the fate of the first research team and.... noone survived, except Kouji. So everyone urges us to remember anything but in vain. Then there is the sleeping beauty Bianca who eventually wakes up and blames Kouji of killing the whole first and second research teams. Then there are reports that actually Kouji was not listed neither in 1st, nor in 2nd research team... So the main question of the game is WHAT am I? That's just an amazing start, but actually game does not live up to this fantastic start to the end.
First chapter ends when Megumi gets kidnapped and as we rush to rescue her we get caught by Ryouko-sensei and get another charge from the mind machine that burns 2000-30000 of brain fibers in Kouji's brain and in the dream world Kouji steals the shuttle and flies to the Eriteia planet with ancient ruins to meet with Ranfa who promises to give answers to all the questions - and we get first chapter end while man and woman promise each other to become new Adam and Eve while staying on some wasteland.
That is a fantastic first chapter. But then starts the second chapter and... Kouji just cries off the bat - I'm the Great Space Pirate, Genius and Champion of the Universe! So the beginning of the chapter feels like a comedy with most of the real world girls trying to calm him down and treat his craziness. But the sad part here that this is real space pirate who changed consciousness with Kouji and came 6000 years from the future. He's cool, reserved and he first persuades Rouko-sensei into being his slave, then with her hands does the same with Ryouko-sensei's sister Mami, then proposes to his girlfriend Megumi to become his wife, actually, slave wife! And together they manage to confront Sayaka successfully after some violent scene and burning 30k more of Kouji's brain vibers.
Third route finally gives some answers as we play as real-life Kouji on the space ship. Fourth route is just ero-bonus content, sadly. So what we have is awesome space mystery that gradually looses its mystery and turns into a set of ero-scenes.
Theme: The recurring theme of the game is that of the dream. What is reality? Is it possible to percieve what's real and what's not? Game tells us a definite - impossible to perceive. The Confucius symbol of butterfly in human's dream is used a lot. Mai directly asks Kouji to be a butterfly in her dream. Since dream is as important as reality it's best to live a full life and take full efforts even in dreams.
CG: There are very few event CG in this game and those few that exist are of bland palette.
Sound: Actually, it was to my liking. Especially the theme of Greatest Space Pirate was awesome. It's some heroic march so when it starts merrily, you always know that Kouji now has a different personality. And I totally adored the voicing of Rafna... she's the youngest character and her seiyu just did a miracle here with the special voice and intonations. And Rafna got the cutest character design and CGs on top of that.
Overall comments: Scenario is second to none and text is really good. Game mechanics are finally driven from commands selection to usual ADV type, so story can be enjoyed to a bigger extent. I can't recommend this game to everyone since it does not reach the level of other Mr. Keno's masterpieces. But I can totally recommend this game if you like the space mindfuck mystery setting or if like good writing. Personally, I adore Vladimir Nabokov's books. Of course he has well known masterpieces like "Lolita", but I can take any of his novels and open them at any part and just start reading - the text is so good, complex, multi-level and rich that I get great pleasure just from reading a couple of pages. The same goes to this work. The aftertaste might not be the best, but while you read there's much pleasure in the process.
Another bakage from Alice Soft. I've no idea how to write reviews of such games. Guess a structured review won't go since there's nothing to discuss - there's no serious story or theme or interesting characters or anything worthwhile. All it has is bakage action, ero CG and lowest quality "variety" humor of stupid illogical events, not even sensible one. So I guess I'll just stuff it with images with some comments.
There are four chapters. In first chapter Sati (red-haired wild one) gets a desire to achieve the famous resting pillow from a galaxy museum. She does not even care if it does not have such qualities. Because it has PINK BUNNIES on it!
In second chapter they see some cooking show on a TV and... on a whim go to participate in galaxy cooking competition! First they kick all the opponents asses.
Then they compete with the remaining ones. They set on a fish-man dish. But they lack the main ingredient and you know how to catch man-fish? You don't? Then see for yourself.
But opponent is cheating! They're serving the dish on a naked girl's body! I would not show that CG since it's not entirely safe for work one, but just imagine that Sati is serving three small tarte pies that barely cover her shame parts.
In third chapter Sait and Shiori read at some super V-DOS net a thread about a dream stone and - what the heck - go to the other side of galaxy to get it.
In fourth chapter they are surrounded by space pirates ships and captured, but after intensive H-scene their robot friend Lambda throws them some activator and they transform in nearly invincible warriors. Only pirate boss could rival them, then they just did some merged transformation or something - go go transformers! THE END.
I guess the selling point of the game is lots of doors that they encounter in 1, 2 and 4 chapter and behind most of those doors are "humor" events, like this bloomers cult or this interrogation officer.
Or maybe someone finds this scene funny when yakuza space pirate infiltrates Funny Bee ship, but turns out to be a man of very gentle mind.
I was kind of worried by "yaoi" tag this game has and game indeed has yaoi encounter in one of the rooms. But I should give the game its due, the only right answer in the scene is "KIMOUCHI WARUI!!!" and kicking their... uhm... spines... yeah, spines sounds good.
So first of all I'm going to evaluate this came compared to Prostudent G. This game is so much better that I'm putting it 4.5/10 compared to 4/10 of Prostudent G. To tell the truth, this game is not bad if you don't mind bakage and can find some pleasure it this kind of event humor. It's fast-paced, with several types of mini-games, interactivity and great visuals. So compared to Prostudent G this game has the very same engine that only ports pc-98 version to Windows without enhancements. Finally in Funny Bee you don't get to rape the poor defeated side and it took only five years for Alice Soft to come to the idea that such outcome of battle is also possible! Secondly, protagonists here are much more likable. In Prostudent G we had a hooligan pervert with all the thoughts, all the speeches and all the jokes about lower body parts. In Funny Bee there are such stupid moments as well (like when you solve the safe puzzle on the belly of a giant racoon... the next move of Sati is doing him a fellatio just because it's safe and healthy - WTF?!) , but at least "humor" is events-based. The most significant difference is much faster pace and much cuter and funnier CG. And at least in Funny Bee there weren't mind-blowing events (warriors mode transformation looked quite organic for this setting) like summoning of giant mech or rebirths in various people that were in Prostudent G. As much as I would like to throw AmbivalenZ into the comparison, I can't stand rape after defeat there.
Foreword: I've played it in on a whim. Looked into synopsis and just could not believe that Cocktail Soft would do a full-scale fantasy eroge with rapist hero as protagonist. Fortunately, my belief in this old company prevailed.
Title: Demon City
Original Title: デーモンシティ
Developer: Cocktail Soft
Release Date: 1993-12-21
Summary: Vagnard kingdom practices "True religion" to live without restricting own desires, so its capital got known as "Demon City". "Blue moon" cult has established believers base of over 300 people and king sets us, sex fighter Yuaranas, on a mission to turn five gurus of the cult back into "True religion".
VNDB Link:https://vndb.org/v8675
Game Type: Icon selection fantasy adventure.
Story Length: 7 hours.
Complete Story Clearing Difficulty: Moderately easy.
Comments of Difficulty: Story is one straight line, so I only had difficulties while searching for the town bard without a clue where to look for - first time i needed to look at the square fountain to find him... and the second time to talk to fountain... that was beyond logic. Another narrow point was the puzzle to set six books in the right order based on someone's words much earlier. Had to shamelessly google solution.
Character Design Rating: 7/10.
Story Rating: 8/10.
Protagonist Rating: 8/10
Game Quality: 8/10
Overall Rating: 8/10
Rating Comments: Surprise, surprise! I never expected that kind of quality from a pc-98 game. Great backgrounds, great CG, wonderful story and even sufficient music.
Structure: There are four main chapters, and also introduction and ending chapters that go do not fall in the chapters division.
Story: I don't really know how to write without spoilers. I read all amaterasu reviews, but they all look alike and can be applied almost to any game since they dont tackle story in any manner at all. I prefer to reveal the story, create tension and keep silent about resolution. So we get quest from the king and gather information about the cult's next meeting. We get to this forest meeting, but get uncovered. In a short assault scene we evade throwing knives attack and even manage wound one of hooded figures in the arm before fleeing.
In the daytime a local dancer girl shows up with an arm wound. From her we get to know the first crumbles of information on a 3000-year old mystery that surrounds the cult. Then we witness how local nun teaches city children of "love and purity" and thus uncover her involvement. Local blacksmith is brought a knife for repair and we identify the night assault throwing knife in this weapon. Knight captain girl admits it's her knife when we say we found it on the town square and thus uncover herself as cult follower. After that the story turns upside down with a lot of gore, treachery and total shift of objectives and enemies (even more than once). The ending is classy for a fantasy and satisfying.
Characters summary: Characters are multiple and very cute, but aren't particularly deep, so the only person I can really talk about is protagonist.
Protagonist: Absolutely fabulous. I don't think I've ever met such protagonist. He's been brought up as a sex fighter since childhood. As a result he's not interested in women at all. Majority of girl characters openly say let's make love before they say hello in this city of vice and every time protagonist ignores them. The most irritating is his 31st wife, but he ain't wasting forces on her, just handing her vibrator. Whenever it's possible with other girls, he also tries not to get involved much and actual coitus happened like only couple times. I just liked it that hero had a real aim to get princess as wife and rule kingdom. Very practical aim. For that he needed to become an aristocrat. And for that he undertook king's quest to convert cultists back to original religion. His actions were always weighted and logical, despite the seemingly stupid look on some CG. His actions can be considered rape, but not a single one was for pleasure. Each time there was a concrete aim driving him closer to fulfilling important political mission. So rape under necessity won't be considered an ordinary rape for me later on.
Sexual Content: First time you search for an astronomy book in the library and the stupid librarian girl placed all books by matched color and rally hindered your searches begging for sex, so after some 10 rounds of search had to give up - and the needed book was shortly found afterwards. Second time you need to go to the night meeting in the forest and your wife just would not let you go, so reluctantly had to please her and move out. The next time you gathered a lot of evidence stating that dancer girl was in the cult but she kept rejecting anything, so needed to use interrogation techniques on her. Same goes for the fourth time - you get substantial evidence of the church nun participation in the cult and some interrogation techniques (with the use of special aphrodisiac drink) had to be applied. Next time girl thief stole our family sword and did not want to give it back, only some stimulation changed her mind. And then the knight girl, but only after we've found satisfactory evidence of her participation. Finally there's the princess and this is the only time of emotional treatment since memories of their childhood acquaintance wake up. There are also couple scenes where H-scenes are witnessed.
Affection for the Characters: Low. The cutest characters show up only in several scenes and princess is not really lovable.
CG Score: 9/10. CG aren't bad. I just never expected this kind of quality. They are of low resolution, but so were the devices at that time. I'm a big fan of quality gore scenes since they support atmosphere of the work immensely and here there was a lot of impressive content.
Sound Score: At first two same melodies kept sounding getting irritating, but at final chapter there was an abundance of great music. Final impression is what only counts, right.
Addictiveness: Low. Great story, but that's it.
Conclusion: Cocktail Soft quite often present provocative settings, but the story each time dominated. The mids of the game may be repetitive with the same locations visited over and over for clues, but overall the tempo is good, probably thanks to good systems - there are just three commonly used icons - look, think, talk and quite seldom there is an option of what to look at or think/talk about. Usually command is applied to the whole screen - that cuts repetition in half. I also greatly appreciated that the game is totally serious without stupid jokes. A quality fantasy work with some really memorable moments and great charm.
Foreword: I liked De-Ja a lot so sequel was a natural choice.
Title: De-Ja 2
Original Title: デ・ジャ２
Developer: Elf
Release Date: 1992-06-25
Summary: After events of De-Ja you're the winner in life. You have fame, respect, money and the love of pretty Gachako. What else to wish for? New adventures and unveiling new mysteries, of course. You get intrigued by the story of "crystal skulls" and one mad archaeologist knows exactly how to find them...
VNDB Link:https://vndb.org/v2349
Game Type: Command selection with elements of point and click adventure visual novel
Story Length: 12 hours.
Complete Story Clearing Difficulty: Easy!
Comments of Difficulty: You can see story progress in percentage. Difficulty was surprisingly subpar to prequel. The greatest planets puzzle was rather easy since the only information you got was light to the light and dark to the dark and it was repeated over and over. Compared to infodumping of prequel puzzle, it was a paradise. There was also the puzzle for piracy - the puzzle that you were supposed to clear only if had brochure shipped with the game. But unlike prequel, there was no randomization on this part, so in just 3-4 errors you inevitably make it to the finish and you don't even need to load game for that.
Character Design Rating: 6/10.
Story Rating: 8/10.
Protagonist Rating: 7/10
Game Quality: 8/10
Overall Rating: 7/10
Rating Comments: Well, that's a harsh one! It's classic Elf adventure that we're talking about! But that's how I feel. I see every element as inferior to De-Ja either for a reason or sometimes because that's not fresh anymore. I felt bad about too many things. Length got almost twice as long. CG got really scarce. Protagonist stopped being that badass hooligan, Gachako got lots of bi@tch traits. And with all this huge length (some people claim to spend over 30 hours on it) very monotonous gameplay, quite an inarticulate story line and lack of really funny moments to cheer up in the mids of the journey.
Structure: 100% division just as prequel.
Story: Because of implemented command selection variant I may have missed some parts of it since you have to click at everything up to five times and while reading same lines over and over tend to skip even important parts. So one mad archaeologist makes us really interested into the crystal skulls story. But you soon find him dead in his own house almost simultaneously with his daughter. As you prove to each other that you're not the killers there's a natural desire to investigate the death together. With the safe deposit key found in his pocket you discover a green crystal skull inside the cash. With that you make your way to Palau temple and thread by thread approach the secrets of this temple and locations of two other crystal skulls. Archaeologist daughter get mysteriously killed in the process and with Gachako you manage to unwind this knot of secrecy only to discover the identity of the enemy and his plot just in the final of the game. I don't think I spoiled much, actually since there are lots of characters and details not even scratched.
Characters summary: There are quite many characters here, but I found all of them (besides old acquaintances from De-Ja) quite dull. Girls were pretty, but I was shocked by their minor role as one-scene filler in the mids rather than original characters the prequel had. There is exactly one other girl that Hatsushiba Hakase got into relations with, the mad archaeologist's daughter. But she appears kind of late, disappears kind of soon and she plays an important plot role. Without spoilering too much, I'd just say that's she's not really mad archaeologist's daughter...
a
Gachako: Whoa! Miss Gachako got even more... how do you say it... mature. But as for me her character went awry. All she's saying all the time is "Say that you love me", such sleazy talk. She demands constant attention, behaves as if she owns Hatsushiba Hakase and bi@tches about everything. But the culmination for me was meeting her with another guy (archaeology institute worker from De-Ja) by chance. Her motivation was "You aren't paying me enough attention so I wanted to have fun and invoke jealousy". That's just boring, really. I just see here how netorare Elf is being born in this very moment. And it's not even close to the really intriguing relationships like in C's Ware "Desire". Just stupid woman stuff.
Protagonist: So it's same Ryuusuke, but he's called Hatshushiba Hakase so often that original name rarely shows up. He's still cool and he's kinda totally pro sticking his hands everywhere. Just impression is not as fresh. But Protagonist is really a savior of this game.
Sexual Content: Look at the picture and hereby try to believe that there is nothing going on with this girl. She's just a hotel owner. Not a scene... nothing. And now imagine that there are lots of other cute girls that play their minor roles that have nothing but the flirt. And now you know the sexual content of De-Ja 2. Apart of Gachako and that archaeologist daughter there is actually nothing. But there are as many as two H-dreams. So even this part is lacking.
Affection for the Characters: Low overall. Women play too small roles and there aren't charismatic males.
CG Score: 7/10. CG aren't bad. They are just way too scarce for this volume. Women are depicted with care, but you better remember this or that stance because you'll hardly be able to see another one.
Sound Score: Voicing is good in multi-pack version. No protagonist voicing of course.
Addictiveness: I'm rather spectical about this work.
Technical Aspects: So game is command selection. And quite a determined one. It's not rare that you have to click everything up to 5 times to progress. It has point and click moments only to search the dead body or among the shelves of books or on a desk. It could easily be pure command selection, not much of a change. It's said to be such mix because players weren't ready to such bold jump to point and click on ELLE release. Pretty weak argumentation. There are animated objects like in ELLE, but they are scarce and they aren't fun when you select them upon the look menu and finding them out directly by clicking. So yet another step back from ELLE.
Conclusion: It's not going to be game of the year 1992 of my choice. Most of Japanese reviews I read claim this game to be another masterpiece. It might be, actually true. All I rant about is that I was not thrilled since the beginning, then there was not a definite goal and not even a clear enemy, just some loose events that somehow manage to lead somewhere out of coincidence. Repeating choices mechanics did not let me enjoy the talk puns. I did not like the characters. And I especially did not like the ending where upon real 30 minutes time you're being told what this game was really about, what were the people and circumstances behind the so random events which somehow managed to lead to a final. It's like you played for 15 hours and did not even notice events were made up for it. How could I even notice that behind the randomness and foolishness. I'm sure this game can be enjoyed a lot if you find the story or the character of your liking. I failed to find an appeal point and little irritations piled into this review.
Foreword: I've wanted to play this game for a long time. I've always considered it to be the grandfather of all adventure visual novels, but only found time for it while doing year 1990 coverage. So this is Elf's first grand work and the first Elf work to have Hiruda as story writer. Game is amazing but at the same time there aren't that many japanese reviews and as many as zero English ones. How can that even be possible?! I've no answers. My best guess is that work is prior to internet era and Multi-pack (2004) only brought contemporary systems and graphics, so japanese didn't really bother to discuss a remake. Let's start already.
Title: De-Ja
Original Title: デ・ジャ
Developer: Elf
Release Date: 1990-06-15
Summary: You are Ryuusuke, archaeologist in pursuit of adventures and legendary treasure. One day you dream of finding a secret compartment in a pyramid filled with piles of treasures. That's going to be the discovery of the century! A naked woman appears and tells you not to take out the treasures. When you try to touch breasts, she turns into a monster. You wake up by the telephone ringing. A client brings you an antique cane with engravings on it. Those who possess this cane see the same dream every night with a golden hair girl. You take the cane to try to translate the symbols carved on it and end up in a real adventure yourself.
VNDB Link: https://vndb.org/v2338
Game Type: Adventure Interactive novel / Chuunige
Story Length: Took me some 8 hours or so.
Complete Story Clearing Difficulty: Tricky! I'd even say difficult.
Comments of Difficulty: First half of the game was steamrolled while after that you first get into situation where you need to use game manual shipped with the game to pass through puzzle, next there's an abyssal difficulty puzzle where you need to understand which symbol signifies which planet and then place them in a special order. It took me four days (1h per day) to solve that puzzle and in order to do that I had to load old save twice and go through all the dialogues VERY attentively writing down every detail and both walkthroughs that I found gave no real answer what to do. At some point I was able to find 3rd walkthrough that finally clarified things. So here is my 5 ring puzzle clarification for all the poor souls like me: 1) you need to talk to everyone and click everywhere till you get in a state when you can't exit the puzzle screen - only then the right answer will be accepted 2) Initially planet signs are set (and reset to this state after each bad try) this way: "Sun" · "Mercury" · "Venus" · "Earth" · "Mars" 3) You need to get signs to this state "Earth", "Sun", "Venus", "Mars", "Mercury" 「太陽」・「水星」・「金星」・「地球」・「火星」 4) The fastest way to do that is this: №1-up*2, №2-up*1, №3-intact, №4-down*1, №5-down*2. That's it! And it took 4 hours of my life.
Character Design Rating: 9/10.
Story Rating: 10/10.
Protagonist Rating: 10/10
Game Quality: 10/10
Overall Rating: 9/10
Rating Comments: Isn't it obvious? Game is a masterpiece and the only flaw I can invent is that characters lack depth. But they don't need it in the first place. It's light adventure novel and not a charage/nakige. The overall rating is 9/10 just because it's an I-ADV and you need to click the same stuff and revisit the same places over and over - repetitiveness sometimes makes you miss really important info.
Structure: Game is one piece but you always see how % of story progress after each significant event.
Story: Story is not too big since it's an I-ADV and most of the time you need to click at everything some three times to advance the story. Mild spoilers may arise. So you get the cane for research. You see the dreams of blonde hair woman each time you sleep. You track down cane's seller and little by little find out that archaeological society is somehow connected. At the same time the backstory unfolds that recently archaeological society head was found dead and new one is keen on kicking you out. Once you get back to office only to find it turned upside down and cane missing. Your friend Gachako's house got rampaged as well. Since everything keeps pointing at archaeological society, you find a way to infiltrate it and eventually get into underground cellar with your cane and adjusting crystal ball. After that you're being threatened frequently by new archaeology boss Hyuga. Anyway, you get to translate the signs on the cane and set out to the airport. You wait for Gachako there and after a while you're being approached by man in black who passes a video tape. Kidnapped strangled Gachako is on it so you the rest of the game you search for her whereabouts, discover the site of mysterious blonde girl temple and set on a trip there to finally find out the inter-planetary inter-dimensional mystery concealed.
Characters summary: It's not a charage and thus girls exist there mostly to get info from. I actually referred to Gachako as just one of such girls. I only found it a bit odd that after each piece discovery you usually need to go to her place, think it over together and set further actions.
Gachako: Gachako is an easy-going cheerful girl that either always helps you with advice or just makes fun of you and gives her comments. She's fun and doesn't really have strict morals. She is a daughter of the murdered archaeology head and thus really interested in finding the truth behind it. But she actually shined only when at some point she joined you for a small time in your constant jogging around that town. Since Ryuusuke is constantly sexually harassing everything that has a skirt, it was real fun to watch the very same scenes but now with her intrusion and commentaries. Then she gets kidnapped and thus comes the recognition of her as main heroine. And she's going to be main heroine of De-Ja 2, so we'll sure see her soon again. I really loved that time when Gachako kept Ryuusuke a company since it really reminded Lipstick ADV, Hiruda's previous game.
Protagonist: Ryuusuke is awesome! Actually, that's totally my favorite type of main hero. Grown-up who constantly harasses girls and makes fun of everyone else. So far my favorite one was Taichi from Cross Channel, but this time it's even more fun. What's more to aspire of protagonist?
Sexual Content: Low. There's one desperate housewife in the middle, couple illusions and just a bit more in the final. But those are are very short ones and a way to push even more jokes through.
Affection for the Characters: Sky high. Characters are most beautiful and charming. Sub-characters are mostly fun cartoonish faces. It's an adventure light story so don't expect any depth from characters, but oh my they are great. Here's a little example of mass scene.
CG Score: 10/10, naturally. Every single CG is a masterpiece
H-scenes: Since it's quite an old game (and remake of it), there weren't real sex scenes. Just girl naked. And that's much more fun. Or ojiisan naked. Don't ask. See for yourself.
Sound Score: There are only 11 compositions. But none is irrelevant or irritating. 8/10
Addictiveness: If only not I-ADV mechanics. I'm addicted, for sure. Can't wait for playing De-Ja 2 already.
Conclusion: Game that I enjoyed a lot. Good adventure story, awesome characters and lots of wild talk with loads of laughs. If you can bear I-ADV system clumsiness, a great experience is almost assuredly guaranteed.
I used to like VNs rated. To such extent that whenever I could not find an english localized VN review with a rating, I wanted to make a review with a rating myself. And usual vote ratings aren't reliable since anyone can vote for any rate, even having dumped the actual VN. As of late my opinion on this matter changed drastically. What a review actually needs instead of being structured one (like this my old review) is just to transfer impressions, VN core, noticeable flaws and afterthoughts. This way author does not need to retell the same things in several parts and review brings more useful information and wastes less time for writing. Majority of blog authors that I enjoy reading write in free style without ratings. At the same time ratings and some structure are almost always present in amateur reviews. Hence is the poll question. So here is my flawed structured review on the game that noone ever heard of and will certainly never will (and I'd never picked that out of free will). Some kind shepherd translated this VN into English, but never bothered to actually hack the game, so translation only exists as a word document. Now I know that it was not a good idea since there turned out to be some 100 branches with vastly coinciding text and a lot of confusion with search.
Foreword: The novel under review is Anaheim Girl's Love Story by short doujin-maker studio Fan-na and it's here only because it miraculously managed to stretch the dialogues to 10 hours and because there appeared a person to actually translate all those talks and because the only review I found is fuwa-fuwa review on yurination with no score given - thus all three conditions miraculously coincided and here I am trying to figure what this game is about. I only appreciate platonic yuri relations, never ever watched anything of Gundam series and greatly oppose doujins and nukige - oh, well, that clearly puts me out of target group, but at least it's going to be unbiased.
Title: Anaheim Girl's Love Story
Original Title: アナハイム・ガールズ・ラブストーリー
Producers: Fan-na
Release Date: 2009-12-30 (English translation published 2013-02-10)
VNDB Link: https://vndb.org/v6924
Game Type: Yuri story
Summary: A girls' love story between two Anaheim Electronics engineers. It also chronicles the development and construction of the fourth unit in the Gundam Development Project (GP-04 Gerbera), and its subsequent alteration into the Gerbera Tetra as seen in the "Gundam 0083: Stardust Memories" anime.
Story Length: Medium (10-30 Hours)
Complete Story Clearing Difficulty: Easy
Comments: There is basically only one partner and all three endings are outcomes of decision what to do about her her.
Character Design Rating: 4/10
Story Rating: 3/10
Protagonist Rating: 2/10
Game Quality: Low
Overall Rating: 2/10
Rating Comments: Well, I do not know where to start. Story is plain, protagonist is baka-baka shoujo, all the photoshopped backgrounds and sprite models are crap.
Story: 80% of the game as nothing but small talk and 20% of the game is forced development in attempt to embrace events from Gundam 0083: Stardust Memories. The most exciting thing from those 80% of the game is probably sneak peek at Gundams - Gundams have about 50% of overall game CGs and always drawn good. If only that quality could be spent on backgrounds and character sprites. I got only the general idea behind all the Titans, Federation, Gerbera Tetra, Zeus and things like that that i've zero awareness of so I see very little logic in actions of main characters and all the drama composed looks very forced.
Characters summary: So there are only two main characters, there's also Marion as a failed main character, two side-characters and a bot that plays probably the most important role in the game. Oh well there is also boss character and Chinese colleague girl, but those are mostly dialogue fillers.
Saotome Rinne is just a baka-baka shojo character who has to be a protagonist and thus be an invalid without brain, without will and without wits. Well, most protagonists need to be this way so that the story could unfold in any way creators want. To reabilitate this characters creators nominated her twice as an annually best junior Gundam engineer. So forget that she's a no-brainer, she's just only good for engineering. Most of choices are phrased by her thoughts and thus look almost the same - Oh no, I want but i can't... I need to say no this time but... But, but... You can't always guess where she's actually going to get with this or that phrase. In the first 80% of the game her choices do not mean much anyway, whether she says yes or no she still gets laid.
Sophie is our second main character. She's already an experienced engineer. Kind, reserved. But authors really needed a fast developement so there was not any space for acquaintance or roleplay. The very second time she meets Rinne, Sophie just kisses her right ahead. Senpai, why did you kiss me? Oh, well, I just wanted to cheer you up. IN YOUR FACE. Worst development ever
Marion is a stub character. This is the only CG she ever got apart of one h-CG. Arrogant and sharp-tongued, just a generic bi@ch. Her only purpose for this game is small talk and attempts to avert Rinne from Sophie by temptating her.
Haron is actually a swiss-knife of the game. He starts as just a cute robot mascot only saying "Ha-ron!" but as the game switches to active phase he just does everything because all the heroes are so useless. He spies, gives advice and even defends his masters. Whenever autors needed some development, they just threw Haron in. Why do they even need all those various Gundam models when this omnipotent creature like that does all the work. Oh right, Gundams just look cooler and they can hold blasters.
Sexual Content: High
Between the small talk scenes heroines cuddle all the time with the very same HCG repeating over and over with only small adjustments. HCGs look very solid, but by the look at everything else it can be said for sure that they consumed all the budget and efforts. There's even kind of animated HCG scene in shower with every drop of water animated (the very single use of animation in the game)! That's the very spirit of doujin works - they only aim to make memories of HCG scenes.
Affection for the Characters: None
CG Score: 6/10.
CG of this game look very cool but sample CG are totally the same on every internet board because one thing - those are actually almost the only CG that game has. The game lacks not only non-h CG but even HCG get repeated over and over with just some small change. Out of five characters two secondary characters got zero CG and Marion who actually can be called one of the main characters since she has a h-scene and an ending featuring her - Marion got exactly ONE non-HCG and ONE HCG with two slight variations. So 50% of CG are hcg of two main characters and other 50% are pictures of gundams standing, gundams flying, gundams shooting etc. My biggest complaint is not really CG, but character sprites and backgrounds. Character sprites are surrounded by thick black marker which makes them absolutely artificial and literally drawn. All the backgrounds are just photoshopped real photos and thus leave very bad impression.
Music Score: 8/10. I dont really have any complaints with the music. There were some 30 variations of BGM, two with actual singing. Overall they vary by mood quite ok and do not irritate, but do not really affect the gaming process much.
Addictiveness: Low.
Conclusion: A must for all the yuri-lovers. A pass for everyone else.
Pros:
HCG are good
There aren't too many yuri VNs, especially this bold type
Gundam fans may be thrilled with such undercover of Gerbera alteration events
Game has 10 funny omake stories and seiyu freetalk
Cons:
Plain Story
Irritating background and character sprites drawing
Very random actions of heroes
Bland and clishe characters
Blog purpose
Well, I've been around VNs for about 15 years. As far as I can remember, my first game was MS-DOS Three Sisters Story, what we know now as San Shimai. At that time such games were the first erotic games along with Snake games and Poker ones and were referred as forbidden fruit. That game was a shock - what should have been a light experience turned out to be a really difficult story. All the characters were so nice that I really did not want to blackmail their father and looked for ways to stop my brother from revenge. Risa was so young that the only feeling I had was to protect her. The scene of fire and confrontation with brother was very well set. So what's the blog purpose? I'll get there... eventually...
So over this time I've played a lot of VNs, mostly in japanese with Translation Aggregator and sometimes with machine translation just because I missed VNDB appearance and kept thinking that TLWiki had the full list of english translated VNs... how I was WRONG. I've even looked through all the titles on Getchu just to pick several companies which art I especially liked. One of those games was Katahane by Tarte and I just played all games of that company since I'm kind of completionist (like I've watched over 1000 anime titles till had absolutely nothing left to interest me, watched all the doramas that interested me at d-addicts wiki etc etc) and those were very weird games, but at least I got a quite different outlook. So, the purpose of the blog? I know, I know, any time soon I'll be there...
So my purpose is to know absolutely all of VNs great stories. But I see some difficutlies in there (you see them too, right?). Anime has only about 3500 TV titles (and there's just a handful of really interesting OVA) and the majority of them have subs, so watching 1000 tv seasons of anime is not that big of a problem. So what should I do with over 20,000 novels of average 10 hours length with my still limited knowledge of japanese and greatly limited time? I've got and easy answer - just get rid of bad VNs and read good thorough reviews on the plot of good VNs. Phew, case closed... Well, not really. So the purpose of this blog... no, not yet! But I promise it wont take long!
So VNDB actually discovered the world of translated VNs for me but description tells us quite nothing about the game, only about the synopsis and no matter how many times i reread it, I don't seem to understand anything about the game. And discussions either show the everlasting 0 or some unanswered question and almost never a review, let along a thorough one. And since there are a lot of VNs there without the needed tags, I can completely miss some titles, which is inappropriate for such a completionist. Reviews are scattered around multiple blogs and forums and google tends to forget to render a great deal of them. Visual novels are virtually books, books = stories, that's the most important aspect of them and can't be ignored. So I really need a review section on VNDB. And since it might not come in our lifetime, I've promissed ( https://vndb.org/t950.310 ) to make my own vndb for reviews till such section comes to life. And here it is http://vndbreview.tigrimigri.com
Since I've zero experience with web design I had to use a ready solution - semantic mediawiki (and grind through that). There are quite some annoying technical restrictions which are gracefully avoided in VNDB and no beauties of custom css and such, but it does the job and allows me to gather reviews and show the result in a comfortable way. That's what really matters. Even though it's on a free hosting with free domain I really hope you can add some links of reviews and impressions in there as well since I can miss smth from 98,000 posts of VN talk in here.
And since I hate to waste other people's time here's my review of one of antique VN oddities Cosmology of Kyoto to make the whole post useful.
Cosmology of Kyoto
Foreword: Today's patient is Cosmology of Kyoto. There are quite a lot of English reviews of the game, but although the general idea behind them is overall praising - none actually gave any kind of evaluation score and that's something that i'm going to fix here.
Title: Cosmology of Kyoto
Producers: Soft Edge & Yano Electric
Release Date: 1993 (english version 1994-08-01 for Mac OS)
VNDB Link: https://vndb.org/v14314
Game Type: Unique eduactional story on Heian period in Japanese history
Summary: Step into the mind of an ancient Japanese person in the Heian period in ancient Kyoto. Live their fears, fight their demons, and understand their history and legends by actually experiencing them first hand.
Story Length: Medium (10-30 Hours)
Complete Story Clearing Difficulty: Easy
Comments: The Story is more or less easy to grasp as there are only few actions that actually needed to be taken to get the endgame notion. What makes it this long is slow adaptability to interface, game mechanics and great the abundance of exploration options.
Character Design Rating: 8/10
Story Rating: 10/10
Protagonist Rating: 5/10
Game Quality: Varies
Overall Rating: 8/10
Rating Comments: I am most assuredly going to be blamed for setting such a low rating to a unique educational spiritual and revolutionary game for the time of its issue, but i believe i have some good points to support my choice.
First things first - mechanics of the game. Cosmology of Kyoto is and interactive adventure and most of the time we spend wondering the streets. Turning only allowed by 90 degrees. There are only three things that are worth mentioning here. We need a katana to defend from multiple vagabonds. We need to learn Sutra to defend from demons. We need special outfits to be allowed to special places.
The example of extinguishing demons with Sutra
There are several other objects that have limited utility. Some items are just needed to be given to the right person. Money is good to learn rumors. Mirror useful to see what garments u have on. I've only found one utility for the bow - to shoot at flying kimono in one of the events, but there might be more.
Nothing can surprise the inhabitants. Moreover some 80% of them turn out to be either demons or possessed.
Events, CG and animation are great but events and reading through encyclopedia take only couple hours of pure time, and the number of hours of seeking for anything on the streets take hours and hours. Game really takes it slow and that's something that contemporary consumer is not accustomed to.
Character Summary: There are only several named characters in the game and all of them are covered well by encyclopedia. Half of them are mad, the other half are priests and warriors who actually help us defend from devils in some events. Protagonist has no character at all. Despite the fact that we create our body and face at the beginning of the game - with each death we're given a random body.
The most useful character in game
Encyclopedia is the single thing that's absolutely fabulous
Sexual Content: None
Comments: The only couple times the naked woman's breast actually appeared on the screen the woman was eaten alive or strangled to death the very next second. Those several women that actually showed interest in the protagonist were in a few minutes time decapitated/torn to pieces/cut through.
Affection for the Characters: None
CG Score: 10/10. The game actually looks amazing for the year 1993. Pretty much every creature and person is animated when you approach them close enough. The game boasts 256 colors and the actual picture still looks more or less decent.
Music Score: 5/10. I failed to hear any music. It might be due to the fact that i failed to find Mac PC to play in original and used DosBox for that. But as for voices, all the dialogues are voiced (but not the protagonist) and voicing quality is good.
Some hell layer. Human eating his own brains is quite a mild example of what's happening there.
Addictiveness: Quite Low. When you beat the game since there are only couple dozen events in the game and apart of that it's just aimless wandering around the streets with an ugly interface and talking to beggars trying to know something new.
Conclusion:
Pros:
Unique atmosphere of medieval Japan
A well made built-in encyclopedia that holds information on all the locations, all the named characters, all the events background and what not.
Great events and actual pictures. I think i've seen about a hundred of different demons with their unique faces and bodies. The scenes and very vivid and memorable, especially those of seven layers of hell.
Game claims to be educational and contains quite a few historic figures.
Cons:
Most of the time is spent in aimless wondering
Game fails to exhort educational function due to the fact that all historical events are greatly folklorized and fails to play entertainment function since apart of rare events there's nothing really fun about it.
Interface and controls are very simplistic for the interactive adventure exploration game
Several bugs that make the game freeze. E.g. there are two cool old men, one 800 and another 900 years old who know absolutely everything in the world, but while speaking to them game always crashes.
Foreword: It's a very curious game that I played in the past and then lost. Happy to find and finish it now.
Synopsis:
The plot of Natsu no Ame revolves around Sousuke, a soccer loving idiot who spends his days practicing with his two friends, Takeda and Midori for the day when he is allowed to return to the soccer club he was forced to resign from.
The story begins with Sousuke recalling a memory from his past where he pondered what qualifies as a first love, thinking about a young girl he teased almost to the point of tears as a child. Upon snapping back to the present Sousuke is made aware of a beautiful girl busy with her cellphone. After knocking her out of the way of on oncoming motorcycle he finds that he had also sent her cellphone into the river.
Being the nice guy protagonist that he is Sousuke then goes into the river to find her cellphone, however when he gives up and she tries to help him out he ends up pulling her in as well. First impressions aside he then finds out she wanted to know where his school was as she had just transferred in. Undaunted by his earlier screwups Sousuke decides to be a man and instead takes her on a tour of the town before finally dropping her off at school. In the end it seems he managed a favorable impression afterall!
Upon returning home he finds the very same girl in his home… where his mother informs him that she is his long lost half sister!
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLs4Gp5VU4Fv_qJeEChKrppPpzU9YgpLA4
Character Design rating: 10/10
Protagonist rating: 10/10
Story rating: 7/10
Game quality: 10/10
Overall rating: 9/10
As you see, it's a perfect score that I can ever put to a charage that is not a plotge. There are fantastic English reviews for this game already (1 2 3 4), so I slack as usual. I used to play everything that Joyjason evaluated as 8 and higher, and that guy is usually very critical in his reviews leaving not too many games with normal scores. And for the first time ever he evaluated Natsu no Ame as 11/10... wow. Then there's this Zen guy from omochikaeri who is always very bitter in comments. I doubt I ever heard something positive from him about anything... and he writes a superlong review giving score of 90%... And now I'm enthralled as well... this game is a miracle.
Since it's not a plotge, it's enough to read synopsis. But since it's a charage, heroines need a close look. This game starts with introducing Rikako, and she is breathtaking. What's interesting, no one ever tried to present a similar personality (as a quick tags search showed me). I'm tired of brainless imouto and pervy onee-chan. Rikako is absolutely special as she is seriously unhappy and unfriendly. At the same time I just can't call her a tsundere as she is out of S and M system of coordinates. I guess she is so attractive, because she is so human-like. The way she blushes while angry and narrows eyes is cute beyond any measure. She absolutely does not care about protagonist and basically runs away several times. Independent and strong-willed qualities make us respect her as a human being. Midori is supergenki and tomboyish, and her best friend to lover transformation is really thrilling to watch. Hinako is a deredere school friend which is nothing new, but she is brilliantly voiced. She speaks with a light and funny accent, though I wish it to be a full-scale Kansai-ben. Last heroine teacher Misa is surprisingly interesting as well. She is easily embarassed, but with her route we dwell into adult territory with alcohol and loli teacher's daughter.
I absolutely can't recall any deficiencies of this work. By the end of Hinako route I started to think that I've overgrown all these youth anxieties and would like to see serious adult relations, but with Misa route even this argument was utterly destroyed. It gave both matureness and feeling of family with loli daughter Nene included. Could probably nitpick over something (no amount of CG is enough), but just don't want to. Even protagonist was cautious and attentive enough to give a positive impression. So let's leave things with perfect scores for once.
I still stay my ground that charage should have plotge elements, so I like modern tendencies where games got so expensive to make that pure moege are eliminated and pure charage are limited. These genres have piled up enormous amount of works similar in nature and thus forgotten. But with this fierce competition the best of the best stay forever with reader and motivate to not lose interest with the genre. And Natsu no Ame smiles shyly observing the battlefield from unreachable height. Perfect.
Foreword: Abyss is one of the more known doujin games and even has a fuwanovel recommendation page. But I could find only one English review, so it needs to be fixed asap.
Synopsis:
Sasayama Akira was born into a family of assassins and trained as a child to become one of them. However, due to psychological issues, his father decided to send Akira to a relative's house, to live a normal life.
Several years later, Akira gets asked by the student council president to investigate a rumor of a group called Abyss, a shadowy group of students responsible for abducting and killing students in a grotesque game.
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLs4Gp5VU4Fv_JpraEZN60LRLufWm3loZt
Character Design rating: 7/10
Protagonist rating: 7/10
Story rating: 8/10
Game quality: 7/10
Overall rating: 7/10
I'm still not ready to evaluate a doujin game without voicing too high. And abyss is huge. It was actually delivered in three different issues before the complete version with first one seeing the light in September 2007. As a result, completing all the routes took 38 hours, and such volume without voicing can be difficult to digest.
The concept is simple - murders start to happen at school, and protagonist is dragged by a masked person to join the game. Basically, it's common battle royale concept that is popular in doujin chunige. But the actual game is neither pure survival like Killer Queen nor the battle of wits and hints like Umineko. We strive to survive, but also gather hints about opponents identities as well as learn to counter them. Quite a few mysteries pile up, and final Nami routes gives a lot of answers about protagonist past and ABYSS. And it's also not a simple mortal combat style game, because assassin means are deadly and fast, but also because multiple viewpoints are given throughout the story. We even start as a girl protagonist in common route. There's a lot to uncover, so mystery persists till the end.
As for deficiencies, I still don't like this concept just because it's battle royale. Participants are placed in a limited space so that they make the story themselves like a sandbox. A lot of stuff and twists are put on top of that to make forget about the core concept, but I still don't see an interesting story behind it all. Well, I did not like any game with similar concept, even FSN, so safely ignore this point. It's been a long time since I played a game with a zero voicing. It's a matter of habit, but everything gets a huge minus from me because of that. BGM is mostly good, but there are some with just a few sounds on repeat to create tension or smth, and I'd rather hear normal melodies. Game system is horrible for auto reading. I had to put lowest possible speed, but huge chunks of text disappeared too fast after small ones, and vice versa. CG are uneven. Basically, all heroines are strong, but in other people's routes they become weak. Another nitpick is that setting of ABYSS organization feared even by police is loosely shaped, lacks detail. Battles are depicted poorly and settled with one blow usually, but buildup and wits battle prior to that is nice. Some heroines routes bring little new and can be considered bonus ones.
Enough with negative points. On a bright side, in every route characters are mercilessly butchered, and you never know who or when gets to die. So there's a lot of room for emotional approach. Every heroine has her own story and motivation, and with so many masks identities remain unknown. Hints recovered throughout the game create doubts, but final route managed to take me by surprise, anyway. The good thing is that only couple heroines have traditional love scenes, some have violation, and Nonko has none at all. As you see, despite simple concept there's a lot of room for mystery, wits, tactics, twists, emotions and in-depth character stories. Don't let my evaluation scare you as it includes personal reasons. If you find such game enticing, you most assuredly won't be disappointed.
Foreword: I'm not really good with nakige and you want me to play an utsuge? Oh, well, I'll try.
Synopsis:
Aster tells the story of four young men, whose lives are connected by one incident.
It all begins with Hiro Sakaki. He is a high school student, and enjoys his life with his old friends, Saki and Saya, twin sisters.
Under the summer sun, their relationships change little by little... "There is no miracle but hope..."
Youtube:https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLs4Gp5VU4Fv_PLH2Q-nMbv9gQbzxI31ky
Game type: Utsuge
Character Design rating: 8/10
Protagonist rating: 7/10
Story rating: 6/10
Game quality: 8/10
Overall rating: 7/10
First of all, there are other English reviews 1 2 3 4. And since game is not story-focused, they cover pretty much everything I would. So I'll try something eccentric - compare this utsuge with the only nakige I still remember well - Moshimo Ashita ga Hare Naraba, or Moshiraba for short.
So, despite spirit extension of Moshiraba, two games have actually much in common. Both have older sister and younger sister as main heroines, as well as a cast of several side heroines. In both games we date older sister, and younger sister has to love quietly. In both games older sister dies (oh, come on, everyone spoilers this about Aster, seriously, can't discuss anything without this spoiler), and younger sister becomes her substitute. It's overall a good move since we can constantly see different traits of older sister in younger sister, and this common love for older sister is a good enough tie already, as well as a tearjerker.
But there are even more differences. In Moshiraba younger sister Tsubasa is seriously much younger than Akiho, so she has to compete for protagonist alongside two other side heroines - Tamami and Chihaya. In Aster all the competition is eliminated since side heroines have different protagonists and don't really intervene in other girls' routes. Saki officially becomes main heroine, furthermore because she looks identical with Saya. The biggest difference among the two games is that Tsubasa dies right in the first couple minutes of Moshiraba and then is only present as a ghost, so can't participate in normal human romantic relations. When there's a will, there's a way, so in Tsubasa route we make it work and also look for a way to revive her in some way. But Aster is purely realistic. Girl dies. Full stop. Move on in a different way.
But let's cast aside obvious differences and focus on what makes us like both games. In Moshiraba focus is on the supernatural elements and close relations between sisters. But Tsubasa also has inferiority complex over her sister, so she cries a lot. In Aster older sister Saya can't have screen time after death, so prologue is devoted almost exclusively to her while main route becomes fixed on younger sister Saki. Saki's advantage is that she is a mature nice girl who does not have dire complexes and does not really cry. Basically, Saki's pleasant personality becomes the thing that makes us love Aster. But what makes me love Moshiraba is cheerful older sister Tsubasa, other heroines pale in comparison to her. So in the end it is two sides of one coin - you either forget old love and try to substitute it with new relations or stay true to initial feelings. But in Aster - and thus in reality - there is no choice available, reality sucks. The fantasy concept of dating a ghost is more to my liking.
But with all the differences both games are more or less on the same scale. Then why one is nakige and the other one is utsuge? Actually, I don't see a reason. Core definition of utsuge is that it leaves reader depressed, and most of the time these games have no happy end, no help, no hope... That's absolutely not true for Aster. We get happy end in all of the four routes. Yes, Saya dies, but it happens in the end of prologue, basically before the very game routes themselves even begin. So why should we be depressed over prologue in four big routes to come next? It does not make sense. Yes, in all four routes there is some sort of drama, but just as in nakige we get over it together with the girl and become stronger. It's an absolutely nakige trait. There is one more "utsuge" addition in Aster - it's the 10-minute after-story showing us Saya last moments that were omitted in prologue. So what? It's just extension of prologue, a touching scene to infuse reader with additional emotions before making a judgement and putting the game a score. It has zero conceptual meaning. There are nakige with deaths too, and Aster is exactly such case of a nakige with death. Main characters bear this burden of death all the time, but it's what we do in real life. We suck it up and move on. So do main characters of this game. Nakige is not what Key privatizes with its stupid humor first half and squeezing tears absolutely everywhere possible. Nakige is much wider than this. Ballade for Maria is an Utsuge. For Elise ~Elise no Tame ni~ is an Utsuge. Before calling something an utsuge, ask if it leaves you depressed. Calling games like Kira☆Kira and Aster utsuge is plain stupid as these are not depressing experiences.
Year 2007 is great for bringing two full 10/10 masterpieces Draculius and Dies irae and many more very nice visual novels. You all know that winner is Dies irae as it's probably main visual novel of all times. First version from 2007 was quite raw, and there are some funny negative reviews from 2007-2008, but light found inner strength to polish this version and even freely give away it to original buyers. New portion of Visual Novel Openings 2007 with songs.
My list of masterpieces in 2007:
Aster
Boku ga Sadame Kimi ni wa Tsubasa o.
Bullet Butlers
Demon Parasite ~Akuma no You na Tenshi no Kanojo~
Dies irae
Draculius
ExE
Gekkou no Carnevale
Happy Margaret!
Himawari
Hotel Dusk: Room 215
Itsuka, Todoku, Ano Sora ni.
Kira☆Kira
Koisuru Otome to Shugo no Tate - The Code Name is "Shield 9"
Reconquista
Sekai de Ichiban Dame na Koi
Sekien no Inganock -What a Beautiful People-
Shirogane no Soleil -Successor of Wyrd- <>
Soshite Ashita no Sekai yori
Zwei Worter
A nice round number. I tried to cover most of masterpieces already, so there are only three untranslated masterpieces left without my review. Will add two more curious enough games for me in the poll for EXTRA review. As usual, I don't have too much time to meddle with passed year, so will make my mind in 3-5 days time after publishing the poll:
Aster
Happy Margaret!
Miageta Sora ni Ochiteiku
Soshite Ashita no Sekai yori
Tsukutori
