lol, setting that aside, this is the ending of the Tiny Dungeon series (so far anyway. I'm sure they'll eventually reuse the setting, if not the characters). First of all, it should be noted that this VN does not have the impact of the rest of the series. It is mostly comedy, with a few really cool combat scenes mixed in (Veil vs. Note is pretty awesome) and H-scenes for all four of the new heroines. This also serves as the harem ending for Tiny Dungeon, and it was apparently created on the request of fans, as the epilogue of Brave or Slave was a bit truncated.
Anyway, this is based approximately a year after the events in Brave or Slave, and it starts as Miko, Hime's little sister, is entering the school, entirely unaware of what happened to him a year before, believing that his position is as weak as it was before (basically, members of the human race are considered trash by the other races because it was a human who deliberately started the inter-world war twenty years before). So she is startled to find how much things have changed.
While there are plenty of service scenes in this VN, and as always the dragon race is insane about Ururu (see the pic above), a lot of things have changed for Hime and friends in the previous year, as a result of the events of Brave or Slave. Since most of this VN is comedic slice of life, it might seem a bit disappointing to some, but there are some good action scenes, including a really awesome one at the end, where Hime shows off his best.
Anyway, as an extended epilogue and extra after story, this is a more than adequate experience. However, without the previous VNs, it wouldn't make a lick of sense. The new characters all have a legitimate reason for being there, but since they all have their own motives, it is a bit hard to sort through it all. I do think that they should have had the VN extend across a longer period of time, preferably letting Miko get more out of her trials at the school, but that is probably asking a bit too much, lol.
Akatsuki no Goei is something of an oddball if you ignore the existence of Grisaia, but they share some major traits. Both have a relatively 'peaceful' (if dramatic) first game that involves romantic paths that are mostly irrelevant to the third game. Both have a psychologically-scarred, killer protagonist with a criminal past. Both have a quirky sense of humor that is mostly generated by the protagonist's abnormal actions... I could go on, but I'll move on to my point.
The most blatantly obvious similarity is that both series have three games, the first, the fandisc, then the third as a conclusion. In both cases, the conclusion is more serious, but that is where the similarities end. Whereas Grisaia's third game went down the kinetic novel path, giving you only one ending to see, Akagoei's third game, Tsumibukaki Shuumatsuron actually has three main routes with over fifteen endings, each with a different heroine.
Now, I'm going to hit the titular reason why I wrote this post. Akagoei can be seen one of two ways, based on knowledge gained from playing Reminiscence. You can either see the fandisc as irrelevant save for the long experience of Kaito's past seen in Anzu's route, giving you the background knowledge to give flavor to the third game.... or you can see the FD's endings as an alternative to the ones in Tsumibukaki Shuumatsuron, a conclusion that a lot of the fans of the SOL and comedy elements of the series picked.
This is actually very typical of Kinugasa Shougo. Kinugasa, from all accounts, hates canon endings. He doesn't like to produce firm conclusions, and he always wants to leave the reader guessing on one level or another. I'm about 90% sure Kinugasa created Tigre and made Reminiscence solely to make people confused, because it draws elements from all three games into the background, while not telling you what actually happened at all. A few of those elements include: Akemi's path events in 3, Tae after-story from the FD, Reika path events from 1 and 3, and any number of other things. It is also pretty clear, probably intentionally so, that a lot of the characters from Akagoei left descendants to appear in Reminiscence, though you can only guess who is who by appearance and their roles in the underground society.
In other words, feel free to draw your own conclusions when it comes to this series... that's about half the fun.
Unjou no Fairy Tale is the second game by Cosmic Cute in the series/setting that began with Sora no Tsukurikata. It is based around eighteen to twenty years after the original game in the city of Kaguya, a lawless city with many different races floating in the sky far above. It is ruled by the invincible Mayor (with thirty-seven terms under her belt) Azumaza, frequently troubled the antics of the great (and in the eyes of ground dwellers, insane) alchemist Nemo, and plagued with more criminal organizations than anyone can count.
In that place, there is a neutral ground, the cafe Amelia, run by the protagonist Tsukasa, with the wannabe Great Witch Natsu as a waitress, frequented by the diva Dahlia, and visited regularly by the elven swordmistress and antique/art seller Makoto. One day, a girl in a beautiful dress comes running down the street chased by thugs and is rescued by Makoto and Natsu... only to find out that she is not only a princess but that she is Tsukasa's younger sister.
Thus begins the story of the city of Kaguya and the Pay Back thieving gang.
Now, before I go any further, it needs to be said that, like Sora no Tsukurikata, this game uses the 'ladder-style' story structure, meaning that heroine paths other than the true one split off at the end of arcs featuring primarily the heroine in question. This story structure does not do the heroines other than the true one justice. In most cases (such as G-senjou or Eustia), it becomes an excuse for neglecting the heroines or making internally inconsistent heroine routes. For that reason, I consider the very existence of this story structure in any VN to be a reason to automatically subtract 1.5 points off the maximum rating I give it on vndb. In other words... the story just has to be awesome for me to consider overturning my dislike of this structure.
The common route of this game does an excellent job of introducing the characters and giving you a good idea of the internal dynamics of the city of Kaguya. Kaguya... is the kind of city no sane person would want to live in. The protagonist routinely sleeps through gunshots and explosions (they are so used to it that it doesn't even disturb their slumber), and the Mayor (who is over 2500 years old) seems to take great pleasure in both keeping the chaos from settling and keeping it from overflowing beyond all forms of control. I spent most of the common route smiling or laughing, similar to Soratsuku, which is a definite good thing.
Now, I'll introduce the heroines...
The first heroine is Dahlia... and she is already my favorite. She is a singer at a high-class nightclub, a fox-girl with the ability to control others with her singing. In the thieving group she serves as the driver and occasionally uses her voice to control pursuers or guards. She is the second oldest of the heroines, in her mid-twenties, and she has an inordinate fondness for heavy drink and teasing those she likes.
The second heroine is Makoto, known as the greatest swordswoman in Kaguya, as well as being Tsukasa's first friend in the city. She is the oldest of the heroines, being an elf (there are hints that she is at least fifty years old early on), and she works most of the time as a dealer in antiques and art. She has a reserved personality, and she is often misunderstood, due to her tendency to talk to her sword (yes, she talks to her sword). However, she is also cute... in that she does things like making lists of things she wants to do with her friends and rehearsing potential conversational scenarios well in advance of even the most normal, everyday events.
The third heroine is the protagonist's younger sister, Yuki. Yuki is... a strong-willed, pure-hearted princess who came to Kaguya to find her long-lost oniisama... only to find that he had become a thief and manager of a cafe in one of the most crime-ridden cities in existence. While she is generally forgiving by nature, once you manage to anger her... she is easily the scariest of the four heroines.
Natsu is a wannabe witch
I honestly hate the fact that she is the main heroine, because that is two games in a row that go to unreasonably naive, kind-hearted witches who frequently mess up on a grand scale. This is a mistake frequently made with ladder-style structure games, but it is usually the case that the weakest heroine in the group ends up as the main/true heroine for games using this structure. She, like Hal/Haru in the previous game, is a sugar-addict with a rather unpredictable magical ability. There isn't a drop of malice in her personality, but...
Dahlia path
Dahlia, as I said above, is my favorite heroine in this game, so I was more than a little angry to see that yet another great mimikko heroine was being condemned to 'lowest-ranked heroine Hell'. However, as I played the path, I stopped caring about that BS. Dahlia and Tsukasa's romance creates one of those rare situations where I actually have to take a step back and wipe the tears away... solely because of the romance. Since I'm not a fan of romance for its own sake, that pretty much says it all about that. This path has some excellent feels and is about as long as the mimikko from Soratsuku's path. I spent a great deal of the last part of the path just laughing hysterically at the antics of the characters as they strove for Dahlia and Tsukasa's sakes, and I wept at the climax. Definitely worth reading, though this definitely has my mimikko-love bias interfering with my judgment. The ending after story is very heart-warming, and it takes you to a point three years after the end, which was nice.
Makoto path
One thing that absolutely needs to be said about Makoto's and Dahlia's paths, but is a major SPOILER:
I'm going to be blunt... this path is simply weaker than Dahlia's. Part of this is because Makoto's personality is so reserved and the romance is so charage-ish. Another part is that there really isn't that much in the way of deep feels or good action/comedy in this path, outside of the usual with Yuki losing her temper. While I like the ending, I have to say that I felt a bit cheated, because they didn't go into detail on the past that lies between Tsukasa and Makoto, despite them being one another's oldest friends.
Yuki Path
The Yuki path feels a lot like a true path. The simple reason is that, despite its seemingly innocent (and hilarious) beginnings, in the end it pretty much reveals everything there is to know about Kaguya and Azumaza's past, as well as the reasons why Tsukasa ended up in Kaguya. Honestly, as I finish this path, I think that it is possible that it was the true path, rather than Natsu's, and that is my hope as I go into Natsu's path (I'm writing down my opinions on the paths as I finish them). The ending is really touching, and I had to cry at some of the revelations that get put in here... Incidentally, by the time her path comes around, Yuki has been thoroughly poisoned by Kaguya's anarchist atmosphere, and this has some rather hilarious results in the fourth arc that leads to the final path split.
Natsu path
Aaah... I don't mean to be cruel... but they got seriously lazy in Natsu's path. I mean, it feels very much like an echo/rehash of something I've seen a dozen times before (you'll see what I mean if you play it, but I won't spoil it). Understand, Hal is my least favorite heroine from Soratsuku and Natsu is my least favorite heroine from this game (The order goes Dahlia>Yuki>Makoto>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Natsu). Like her mother, she is a clumsy doofus with a ridiculous amount of poorly-utilized magical talent. Every single element of her path past the end of the last common route arc (Arc 5) is ridiculously predictable and holds no surprises, down to the last detail. I haven't been this irritated at a 'true' path in years. If I were to just judge this game on the three previous paths, I would give it an 8.5 on vndb, but, due to this path, I have to give it an 8. Sadly, this is one of those cases where the main heroine and the final path are a hindrance, rather than closing out the story on a good note.
Edit: This is just a minor addendum of some thoughts I had in retrospect or forgot to include in the main text.
I honestly like characters like Yuki, who, while functionally innocent of the details of normal life, nonetheless possess an iron will. I also love it how everyone is afraid of her despite the fact that she is the weakest character combat-wise. In addition, the way hardened criminals are obviously terrified of her makes it even better.
Dahlia is very similar - in background, personality, and (to some degree) relationship to the protagonist - to Yurika Vistvolg from Soratsuku. As such, even if I hadn't guessed that she was not the main by the walkthrough, I would have figured it out anyway. This writer has a definite preference for characters with an element of 'innocence' as main heroines (note that a total of two of the heroines in both the games he has written are not innocents on some level), despite the dystopian settings he creates.
If we were to eliminate my personal tastes completely from the equation, Makoto is probably the weakest heroine, in terms of character development. For some reason, almost all the elements of her character that could have been used to make her route more dramatic (her sentient sword, her longer lifespan, etc) never once became an issue in the game. This is a huge red mark in my personal book regarding this writer, as I absolutely loathe failures to utilize fundamental aspects of a character's design.
It has to be said that this game relied a lot more heavily on the immortal characters for humor than Soratsuku. Asumaza, Nemo, and Simone are so far 'out there' as characters that their actions can be considered an unavoidable natural disaster, so they make wonderful pillars for the game's situational comedy (similar to the vampire lord in Soratsuku and her love of junk food and torturing people who use guns). However, it also needs to be said that Simone, at the very least, should have been a heroine. That type tends to have a great dere if handled properly. It is pure negligence on the writer's part that she isn't a heroine (though she has an h-scene in the append disc).
I'm definitely going to have really, seriously mixed feelings on this VN when it is done. The problems with the common route still apply, but some of the heroine routes make up for the problem. I'm not going to say this is going to be another Tasogare no Sinsemilla... that possibility never even really existed. For better or worse, this VN has serious pacing issues near the beginning (yes, the heroine routes are longer than the common route), and the difference between even the non-true heroine routes is a bit sharp, based on my experience with Yui's, Honoka's, and Koharu's routes.
First, Honoka's route is straight-out the best of the non-Misaki routes. I say it is 'the best', but that is mostly because it strikes the best balance between the heroine and the protagonist and their problems. Unlike in the average charage (it is questionable after playing this route whether this can be seriously considered a charage), there are multiple points of drama, and the actual story (non-ichaicha/H) is fairly extended. I was actually impressed by this route in the sense that I haven't encountered one like it in a while, but that just emphasizes how 'patchwork' this VN feels as a whole so far.
Second, Koharu's route... for better or worse, this is a lot closer to a charage route than Honoka's, in the sense that the drama is very self-contained, mild, and it is over relatively quickly (in the larger perspective of the route as a whole). Unfortunately, this just points out how much better Honoka's route was, both in detail and in general. This is what I mean by the VN feeling 'patchwork'. There are seriously good points to this experience, but then there will be long stretches of mediocrity or intermittent moments of brilliance with the same. It feels like it was written by three separate writers at times, lol.
Third... Yui's route. Yui's route is a lot closer to Honoka's, in that the conflicts involved are more serious/have more serious consequences. Again, this tends to contrast with Koharu's route, which felt bland and drama-less in comparison.
So far, the biggest common point between the three paths is that the protagonist is a bit clingy and if the girls didn't already love him, he'd probably be stalking them (seriously, this was my thought as I played). That said, I liked how natural (in terms of the plot) the relationship-formation stage was in all three paths, though the paths themselves tended to feel a bit drawn-out.
Now, on to Misaki's path... and the wrap-up.
To be honest, if something more interesting is up before I start this, I'll probably play that... why? Simple, you can name the protagonist, which is enough of a downer for me that I seriously want to avoid this if I can.
Setting that aside... this looks to be a fairly standard charage, though the protagonist isn't - for once - a high school student (instead a college student). A big downside of what I read on the title was that it seemed like the protag is a total dimwit, even by VN standards... if a possibly amusing one. Another is that the list of settings for the heroines are all standard archetypical ones that make me want to scream because they are so familiar - in a bad way. The only positive thing about it is that it isn't in a high school, so there are no sudden transfer students, student council presidents, or class president heroines... which is nice.
Can you see how much I don't want to play it from what I said above? Or would you like me to elaborate? lol
God, I think I understand why most of the long-time VN bloggers have always been even more negative than I am about this kind of VN... which is sad, since I joined this site to get away from that type of person. Anyway, for all that bitterness above, rest assured moe fans that I'll at least give this VN a chance before I decide to drop it into the abyss of 'VNs not worth playing'.
I didn't go into this VN expecting much. Judging by the cover (considering I am a bibliophile, you would think I would know better, lol) and the Getchu page, I thought it was going to be a half-nukige along the same lines as the Ren'ai Jijou series (since Otaku was written by the same guy). However, I was surprised at what I got... the first addition to my 'Chicken Soup for the Soul' list since Natsuiro Recipe in mid-2015.
As a reference point, I almost never add VNs to the Chicken Soup for the Soul list. The requirements for it are just too strict (low stress, soothing, mildly cathartic, and overall something that leaves you feeling better about the world afterward). So, I generally expect years to go by between each addition to that list. I specifically select these VNs for their restful properties, so the ones on the list are the kind of VN you should consider going to when you feel the need to just take a total rest from the stress of your life.
Now, this VN is a kinetic novel, which means there is only one ending and one story. In fact, there are no choices in this game. This isn't a bad thing, from the perspective of a game I'm adding to the list above. To be blunt, choices are a type of stress-factor at times, so it is nice to just be able to read the VN without thinking about choices or looking at a walkthrough.
The story focuses on a young scientist named Kyouji (he's in his mid-twenties), who, at the beginning of the story, has just finished his second and third prototype androids. The important thing about these androids is that they have emotions and the ability to learn and think for themselves (in other words, human emulation and autonomous AI decision making). This story is about how the three androids and Kyouji grow together, and it is mostly a gentle story about the family they form together.
The oldest android, Nect, is an 'older-sister' type who serves as Kyouji's accountant, assistant, go-between, and secretary. She is good at keeping him from breaking the household finances and keeping him on track to finish whatever work he has taken on at any given time, but she is also very caring and protective about Kyouji and her 'little sisters'.
Lux is the second android, designed to be a reliable partner and possess a desire to help others. This quickly turns her into what Kyouji refers to as a ダメ人間製造機 (a woman who reduces men to helplessness through her eager 'help'). She loves nothing more than to do things for others, including her sisters and Kyouji, and she feels the most fulfilled when she is doing her level best to spoil someone rotten.
Sphere is the third android, designed specifically to be like a younger family member. She hates being lonely and wants the affection of her family members, and she also has the most effective learning ability, eagerly absorbing information about human relations from movies, anime, manga, and books.
Overall, most of the VN is gentle, heartwarming slice of life, with frequent bits mild comedy (mostly running jokes like Roppu's desire to be modified by Kyouji) and occasional h-scenes (yes, they are occasional). I honestly haven't felt this relaxed coming out of a VN in a while, and I liked the ending fairly well. I give this VN high ratings for essentially erasing my stress from the work of the last few days, lol.
One of the things I've experienced more and more in the last decade as a part of 'the generation gap' is a difference between our interpretations of the word 'inconvenience', especially when it comes to games and devices.
Understand, when I say 'inconvenience', it generally means 'it doesn't have the functions I find useful'. When I talk to people who were born after the year 2000, it is almost always 'too many functions I don't know how to use/are not intuitive to me'.
Perhaps the most blatant clash of the generations, at least for PC gamers like me who play games from multiple locales, is the difference between versions of Windows. A lot of the young people I encounter are perfectly willing to deal with annoying adverts and intrusive programs in exchange for the convenience of Windows 8 and 10 (and I will admit that, from the perspective of someone who likes to keep their brain as unwrinkled as possible, they can be considered more convenient *smiles dryly*). In my case, those adverts and intrusive programs eat at my RAM, my bandwidth, and record my daily activities to be sent to people I don't know. I my mind, that far outweighs any 'convenience' gained from the simplification of the system. In fact, it is that very simplification of the system (which incidentally makes it more inconvenient to purchase and play games from anyone other than Microsoft) that makes it inconvenient for people like me. Sure, we can download software that modifies certain aspects of the interface to get around these difficulties... but it becomes harder year after year.
I was extremely shocked a few years back when I played Kami no Rhapsody from Eushully and saw a game that had obviously been designed by some moron who didn't understand why touch-screen functions were nothing more than an annoyance for someone without a touchscreen. The 'simplification' of the battle system made the game flat-out boring in comparison to other games I'd played by the company, and the highly-restrictive character progression that gave an illusion of freedom (I'm not exaggerating) only made things worse... because the programmer was obviously someone used to working on games with microtransactions.
That isn't to say the game was horrible, but it was horrifying, in that I saw the worst aspects of mobile apps intruding on a PC experience. I don't and will never like touchscreens. They get dirty too easily, break too easily, and cost more than your standard monitor. To be frank, it is far easier to use a mouse on a PC than a touch-screen and less likely to cost you a few hundred dollars every other year.
So what is the meaning of convenience to me? I am, to be frank, shockingly old-fashioned in the eyes of many because I don't even own a cell phone. I used to have one, a hand-me-down from a relative, but I disposed of it almost immediately because people were calling me and using money (unlimited texting being a bad word to cell phone companies at the time) to text me on things that could be done more efficiently by email. I also hated it being possible for people reach me when I wanted to be alone, lol.
So what about a smart-phone? I honestly have trouble developing an interest in smart-phone gaming, because microtransactions offend my sense of wanting to have things 'paid for and done with'. I hate subscriptions, I hate monthly payments, and I especially hate having my personal information available to a company that sells info to others (as most cell phone companies do or want to do). I can't maintain an interest in anything that makes me pay more than once to enjoy the experience. If I spend $120 on a game and its season pass, I don't want to find out that there are microtransactions in game that nickel and dime me. I also hate that I have to distrust any game application that cost me less than forty dollars because I can't be sure half the game won't be unplayable without further piecemeal investment of money.
I also hate the dead-eyed look some of the younger gamers give me when they laugh about having spent their entire paycheck on virtual items in an app they'll forget about a month later.
In other words, my idea of convenience has nothing to do with what others seem to consider convenience now. My idea of convenience is playing video games on my retinas with signals from my nervous system, not playing drastically simplified games with flicks of my finger.
Sorry, I rave... but I get tired of all the BS about 'convenient features' that companies use to cover up the building layers of inconvenience in the shit they try to sell me. Convenience has become such a meaningless term in recent years that it makes me want to scream.
The Nier/Drakengard series is one of the single weirdest series out there. It's games range from DW-style man vs armies with dragon flight simulation elements to heavy action-rpgs like the Nier games. The Nier series originates with one of Drakengard's endings, where the protagonist and his dragon get thrown into another dimension and end up getting impaled on the Tokyo Tower after having it out with the JSDF. This leads to the events of Nier, a thousand years later.
The original Nier's story is incredibly grim, in keeping with the almost Lovecraftian nature of the universe built up since Drakengard (if you want more details, I'd suggest playing Drakengard 3, reading the novellas, then reading a summary of the events in Drakengard, since that game has aged so horribly as to be almost unplayable). Hope turns to despair, the player's actions lead to mass extinctions, and simple motivations create terrible consequences.
Automata doesn't differ significantly from the original Nier in that sense. Don't expect a happy ending to the saga told across three separate paths in Nier Automata (first the perspective of 2B, then 9S, then a unified plotline that has you switching back and forth between two characters until the true end). This game is based yet another thousand years in the future from the original Nier, and, if you go looking for them, it is quite possible to find remnants of the past, though fragmentary.
The story starts with 2B, a battle android from an organization called YoRHa, coming to the surface from a space station in order to begin operations against the machine lifeforms that infest the ground and sea. No humans remain on the surface, and android resistance fighters desperately try to keep the machines' numbers down, though these efforts are of questionable effect considering the speed with which the machines multiply.
2B is a quiet female type, who is very focused on her mission and inevitably terse with the more cheerful 9S. As a fighter, she is a close-up physical combat specialist, and the pod floating around her head provides her only means of fighting at range until you get shockwave chips. She lacks the inquisitiveness of 9S, as she is a battle-oriented model, and for those hoping for a lively relationship between the two, only disappointment awaits.
9S is a scanner model, designed for recon behind enemy lines and hacking rather than raw combat power. It is a great deal harder to fight using him, in my experience, as you end up relying on hacking to defeat most enemies on normal and above. If you suck at evading attacks, you'll die quick in this game, either way.
Automata has an open world, with all areas being accessible without loading screens, though certain ones can only be accessed after the story progresses. Battles are frenetic and fast-paced, inevitably requiring that you master the timing of evasion and attacks with various enemies, lest you die with unseemly quickness (with some bosses, I say with guilt that I chose to go to easy difficulty, lol).
Typical of a game by this team, the music is superb... no game in this series has lacked for a good soundtrack, and this game is no exception. That said, it does fall slightly short of the original Nier's godly soundtrack, despite making a good effort.
Visually, this game takes decent advantage of the capabilities of a modern console, and I didn't see any of the bugs I'm accustomed to running into in western rpgs (clipping, sudden freezes, falling through the ground, etc).
This game has a nice jumping mechanic, allowing you to jump twice, use the pod to throw yourself forward, use the evade button to thrust yourself forward, and attack with your weapons to inch yourself forward... making it possible to get across some surprisingly big gaps without too much trouble, though the timing of these jump techniques can be tricky for the action-game incompetent (of which I count myself a member). I did, at times, long for a character who could jump tall buildings in a single bound, but I found more than enough amusement in hacking giant robots and using them to lay to waste their own allies before using their self-destruct buttons, lol.
If there is one thing this game needed that it didn't provide, it was a more varied series of enemies. For robots that supposedly self-evolve, there are relatively few differing shapes of enemy in the general sense.
Story-wise... like most of the series, there is a deliberate sense of 'fill it out yourself by interacting with the world'. If you ignore the side-quests, it is difficult to get emotionally involved in the conflict, and the revelations on the way will inevitably lack impact. I cried at several points of the game, almost despite myself... and that was with the initial protagonist being the opposite of talkative most of the time. The game isn't terribly long... I managed to finish it in about eighteen hours (endings A, B, and C) if you ignore the time I spent sitting there, thinking about what I wanted to do next.
The chip system, which is essentially your non-weapon equipment system, is fairly deep... but I'll be honest when I say I ignored most of the complex crap. I stuck with self-heal, attack buffs, shockwaves, movement speed enhancers, and a few other basic chips throughout the entire game. The only real customization I did was chip fusion to make higher level chips with lower slot costs. At hard and above, I suppose using everything the system offers is absolutely necessary, but I didn't find it so on normal.
In the end, this game is awesome for fans of the series, but I can honestly say I wouldn't have picked it up if I hadn't been following the series since the original Drakengard. A lot of the attraction for me was the sense of continuity and the knowledge that easter eggs from the original Nier were lying around to be found in-game. Don't expect a happy ending to this story... or even a satisfying one. Too many people have died, too much has been destroyed for there to be any sense of personal salvation brought out from the darkness enveloping the world in this game. That said, that is typical of the series, since most of the endings for the games have been psychotic, bad, evil, terrible, etc. I mean, the giant flying carnivorous babies in one of the endings of Drakengard are one of my most memorable moments in my gaming life.
Now... this is a VN by Hooksoft. Hooksoft is a company known for its 'sweet' stories, with lots of moe, decent (occasionally straying into excellent) character development, and lots of heroines. This is their first trip into fantasy, and from what I've seen so far, it looks like they did a better job than some companies tend to do with this kind of thing, though the character types are universally standard Hook Soft heroines (I can see echoes of previous heroines from their games in all of them). Similar to all the other Hook Soft games I've played, I have no intention of playing all the paths. To be blunt, with nine heroines, it would take too long and I wouldn't be able to properly evaluate the VN by the end (deluge of endless moe results in hate). Hook Soft VNs are examples of the charage/moege ideal... and they are basically a perfect strike to the heart of lovers of that type of VN. However, for people who just dabble in moe, they tend to present a gift of psychological heartburn.
So, I decided to hit the heroines I found interesting... naturally, all of the non-human ones are included (Chloe, Zirconia, Finn, Pascal, Rea, and Miisha)... and after that we'll see if I have the energy for one more (probably not).
Common
The common route is actually relatively short for a charage. I completed it in just under five hours... and that was without really hurrying. During the course of the common route, you are introduced to the heroines, get to know the situation and setting to a certain degree, and you are given just enough information to decide which heroine you will choose. To be honest, I thought this common route was a bit out of character, compared to other Hook Soft games. If anything, most Hook Soft VNs tend to have a lot of fat and filler (usually cute and comedy). However, this was kept relatively minimal, with a definite sense of 'head for the nearest heroine' to it. Whether this is a good thing or not depends on your perspective.
Chloe de Pureryune
Choe is a vampire... though you would hardly notice it at any point in the VN if she wasn't so obsessed with it. Most of it is comedic, save for what is used to create her path's drama. To be honest, even for a Hook Soft VN, there was no real struggle to push her in the protagonist's path or make them into lovers... it happened so fast and with so few complications I was left gaping. One of the top points of a good vampire heroine's path (when the heroine has something resembling common sense) is actually getting into the relationship. However, in this case, most of the inconveniences of an immortal and a mortal being lovers are sort of glossed over in this path in favor of another nearby conflict. To be honest, my opinion on this path is that it wasted the entire vampire issue as a whole, despite her vampirism being a central issue. I also felt a bit gypped in the end, because they had several perfect chances for touching scenes where they just skipped over it and said 'its over' at the end. While I'm sure a lot of moe-addicts will love the ichaicha and general cuteness, this is not a well-designed path.
This list isn't in any particular order, but I'm going to separate out the fantasy ones from the non-fantasy for the sake of those who have no taste in fantasy elements. This list excludes nakige and utsuge. I got a request to make a charage list a while back, but I only got around to it today.
Fantasy
World Election (first-class)
Floral Flowlove (kamige)
Minamijuujisei Renka
Koiiro Soramoyou
Senren Banka
Ore no Tsure wa Hitodenashi
Yomegami
Love Rec
Sanoba Witch
Koko Kara Natsu no Innocence
Sakigake Generation
Suzunone Seven
Kamikaze Explorer
Haruru Minamo ni
Signalist Stars
Akabanzu
Uso series (by Campus)
Alia's Carnival
Amairo Islenauts
Appare! Tenka Gomen Matsuri
Chuuning Lover
Koitama
Onigokko
Natsuiro Koi Uta
Otomimi Infinity
Sakura Iro Quartet
Prism Recollection
Sukimazakura to Uso no Machi
Tayutama
Non-Fantasy
Like a Butler
Noble Works
Love Revenge
Otome ga Tsumugu Koi no Canvas (kamige)
Otome wa Boku ni Koishiteiru Futari no Elder
Natsuiro Recipe (very soothing)
Primal Hearts (one and two)
Itoshii Kanojo no Mamorikata
Kimi to Boku To Eden no Ringo
Kimi no Tonari de Koishiteiru
Lovesick Puppies
Shunki Gentei Poco a Poco
Zannen na Ore-tachi no Seishun Jijou
Wow, there are a lot of VNs being released for February this year that aren't nukige... this happens occasionally, but usually it is four or five games. A few major names got concentrated into this month, as well as a bunch of games by new companies or new subsidiaries. To be honest, from my point of view, despite the fact that this is my birth month, there isn't much to look forward to. There is a new VN in the Shuffle universe here, but with Agobarrier, the universe's father, deceased, I can't say that I have a lot of interest in its continuance...
https://vndb.org/v24748
Spiral is the aforementioned new game in the Shuffle universe, focused on a young spy from the god race who is ordered by his boss to attend a human school the princess is thinking of going to as a spy (and a trap). Given that this is the Shuffle universe, it is probably going to be standard rom-com fare, with some fantasy antics and drama.
https://vndb.org/v23205
To be honest, since this is made by a subsidiary of More, which is famous for its impressively mundane SOL romance games... I can't say it looks interesting. Based on the summary, maybe some potential NTR/love triangle action...?
https://vndb.org/v24717
The fandisc for Kin'iro Loveriche. Definitely going to play this, if only for the extra path for the snooty ojousama (who should have had a route anyway, since hse had more of a connection to the protagonist's group than Akane).
https://vndb.org/v24564
This is made by the makers of Karenai Sekai to Owaru Hana, which is one of the few kamige made in the last four years. As such, I'm going to play it... well, with a cat ear heroine, I'd play it anyway, lol.
https://vndb.org/v23742
Evenicle II... to be honest, do you really think I'd play this? I barely got through the original, and Alice Soft's sequels tend to be iffy, in my experience.
https://vndb.org/v23600
What looks to be an SLG sex fest from Astronauts' gameplay hybrid division. No interesting heroines (at least to me), so I probably won't play this.
https://vndb.org/v24275
Made by the new subsidiary of a company famous for anything from standard moege to harem-ge, I might try it eventually, but probably not in the next month.
https://vndb.org/v16516
To be honest, the premise of this game gives me a headache. Feng tends to use any excuse to produce third-rate rom-com SOL games... so it is hard for me to take them seriously.
It has been a while since I did a partial post on a VN, and most of the time I either do it out of enthusiasm or because I got a specific request for a path-by-path detailed report from a friend. In this case, it is because I ran out of time to finish Sekai de Ichiban Dame na Koi after I played through half the game and two of the paths. I ran out of time because my copy of Senren Banka, which I asked me friend to ship to me directly, arrived two days early. I wasn't expecting it until Tuesday at the earliest, and more likely I thought it would arrive on Friday, lol. I didn't have an excuse to keep playing Damekoi at that point, so I had to start on the VN of the Month.
Damekoi is a type of VN we almost never see today... in a number of ways. First is that the protagonist is a full adult, without the need for the usual 'all characters are over eighteen' BS. Second is that he is a semi-hetare (despite the tags, calling him a total hetare is inaccurate, as he is actually quite capable in his limited field of capabilities), which has pretty much gone extinct as a protagonist type save for in those shota reverse-rape monster girl VNs that have gotten so popular in the last four years or so, lol. The third way is that it is pretty much the only VN I've played that uses the G-senjou story-split structure without making it seem like the side-heroines were neglected or the main storyline was left in the dust.
Understand, I believe the G-senjou no Maou story structure is an integral flaw added to any VN that uses it. First, it is based off of there being a main storyline that is full canon. In the case of Aiyoku no Eustia it was Eustia's path, and everyone knows which one it was with G-senjou. That makes it an absolute necessity to maintain a certain consistency with the main storyline... but the fact is that most VN writers simply don't have the necessary multi-tasking capabilities to manage that many different threads in a consistent manner. As a result, you get massive inconsistency in the sub-heroine paths in most cases... and for someone like me, who demands consistency in heavy story VNs, this can go beyond annoyance to insane rage, regardless of how much I enjoyed things up to a point (it took me three years to forgive G-senjou, and I still haven't forgiven Eustia).
I honestly don't know how they intend to solve things in this case. I've been playing the side heroine paths as they come up, and so I can only give you my 'in-progress' views of this game, which is considered a classic by many and has been one of the few 'gold stars' in my backlog full of crap and moege.
To be blunt, this protagonist is a run-down salaryman in in his late twenties, who is kind-hearted but fundamentally unwise when it comes to preserving himself. He has an extremely low self-esteem despite being quite capable/talented, and he has the worst kind of bad luck. He, like more and more young people in this age in fully-industrialized nations, suffers from a sense of alienation from his fellow man, partially created by his alienation from his own family as a result of both of them constantly working and rarely coming home. This has resulted in a nice young man who nonetheless is utterly incapable of reading the people around him without as much as ten times more clues than anyone else would need, lol.
The heroines are... interesting. Universally, they are the type of women who are attracted to men that 'need taking care of'. Their varying personalities and viewpoints on life only serve to emphasize this common element, and it frequently leads to conflicts and tension between them. The main heroine, Mitoko, is the daughter of a woman who ran off with a man on a whim, leaving her to take care of an ancient apartment in one of the wealthiest parts of town. Now, anyone with a lick of common sense would instantly sell that prime real-estate at an inflated price and put up a newer apartment in a somewhat cheaper location. However, expecting that kind of common-sense attitude out of any of the heroines in this VN when it comes to their own affairs (as opposed to the protagonist's, lol) is somewhat... ridiculous.
Mitoko has that puppy-love thing going for the protagonist almost from the beginning, though she is the oldest type of tsundere (before the term was coined and Zero no Tsukaima patternized even the speech of the archetype) who beats up on the protagonist whenever he does something wrong but fundamentally is positive toward him. Unfortunately for Mitoko, Osamu isn't exactly perceptive when it comes to the emotions of others, so he takes her at face value most of the time, hahaha.
The first two heroines - and the ones whose paths I finished - are Kaya and Himeo. Kaya is a somewhat lazy office lady who is a bit younger than the protagonist. She falls head over heels for him after seeing him at work, and she is rather straightforward about her affections, actively trying to turn him into a freeloader she'll take care of for the rest of his life. Himeo is the daughter of the president of a major real-estate conglomerate with a penchant for charitable causes and an unreasonably intense affection for Mitoko that manifests itself in some seriously screwy ways, though it is sincere.
Both paths have to deal with Mitoko's jealousy, the fact that the protagonist's first priority is always going to be Mitoko, and the instabilities of the heroines involved. The protagonist's emotions toward Mitoko are definitely fatherly, and their intensity combines with his sense of duty to make it impossible for him to make them his first priority outside of certain moments.
I've honestly enjoyed this VN up until now, and I think it would be a good read for someone who is looking for something 'different'. I can also tell why this never solidified as a genre archetype, as most of the people reading VNs in Japan are the type of people who would hate using a Japanese salaryman as their perspective of the story, lol.
Tsubame is the person who has perhaps the most 'normal' reaction to the central conflict of this VN, and for that reason I consider her to be the best representative of 'normal humanity' in this VN (though this VN deliberately doesn't show the stuff happening in the cities, referencing it only obliquely). Emotionally, she rises and falls with a predictability that is reassuring, in comparison to Miu (who is something of a nihilist) and Miyako (who has issues that distract her from what is going on). In this way, her route is something of a compass for those who are interested in what a best-case reaction would be for a regular human girl in this situation. While I don't normally like the genki-type osananajimi archetype, in this case it works.
This path has a ridiculous level of detail, primarily because Tsubame's path is the only one that completely resolves certain issues that you can't help but wonder about on the other paths. (I really hate leaving yall to hang on this, but one of my policies is 'no spoilers', and I can't explain this better without spoilers)
Seriously, bring out your handkerchiefs... because the latter half of this path hits really hard, especially when it comes to the theme of immortality. To be honest, I remembered this path more intensely by far than the other paths in this VN, primarily due to what happens in the second half.
Edit: I should say that Tsubame's path includes the Sakura path (the second half is the Sakura chapter/path, which goes into hers and Sumire's backstory as well as extending the Tsubame path greatly). The two Sakura Chapters make me cry like a small child...
As I’ve said before, Giga is at its best when it is doing the Baldr series. Why? Because their high production values really shine in a more serious setting, as it gives so many more tools for presentation. That’s not all… for some reason, in my experience Giga seems to be incapable of making a non-Baldr gem. Their stuff is inevitably visually beautiful and has great sound… but in exchange, the stories tend to be deeply flawed or poorly paced compared to other companies with less money power. This VN is no exception. I’ll be honest… this VN hit several of my major pet peeves from the very beginning. For one thing, they let you name the protagonist… and despite the immense amount of money the studio possesses, they didn’t even have the default name voiced by the heroines, which seems a waste. As such, this pissed me off from the very beginning. Making it worse is that the early VN is too openly a koukan-do type choice system, where you have to say what the heroines want to hear. This gets old fast, as it actually makes sounds and has a visual effect, which ironically gives me the ‘businesslike’ feeling I prefer to avoid in VNs. The heroine routes… are not something worthy of writing home about. I’ll be honest, I probably would have rated this game a bit higher if it weren’t for the first part of the game… but the heroine routes just don’t have much depth. It is like one long avalanche of ichaicha and H-scenes, making the game as a whole feel even more ‘businesslike’ to me, after the baptism of fire that was the common route. Making it worse is that there is no real depth to the heroines, which kind of defeats the point of having individual routes, as the protagonist is a non-entity self-insert ragdoll. Overall, this VN is a really flashy plaster covering over a lot of mediocre content. I was actually surprised at how bad this VN is, as Giga usually manages to do a little better (albeit not a great deal more so) than this with its non-Baldr games.
Semiramis no Tenbin is a game by Caramel Box, best known in the West for the Otoboku series but who is more generally famous in Japan for being the home of Takaya Aya, one of the better writers in the industry. This game... is unique. I say this outright because there literally is no other VN like this. It isn't the characters or the themes that make it unique (though those are part of it), but rather the sheer impact of Takaya Aya's 'side trip into thinking like a chuunibyou patient' as he put it.
Semiramis no Tenbin is a game with two sides, Law and Chaos. Law is represented by the Fortune-Telling Club's president, Eru, and Chaos is represented by Kamio Ami, the 'demon' of the story... a transfer student who appears in the prologue. The other heroines are placed at various points of balance between the scales (Sunao for Chaos, Touko for Balance, and Fumika for Law), with Eru and Ami serving as the absolute points of their alignments, as defined by Takaya Aya.
The game really begins with the protagonist, Hayami Reiji, being blackmailed by Ami after she tricks him into having sex with her by using her circumstances to manipulate him (this is not a spoiler). Ami is the penultimate pragmatist, an individual who puts results above means, and while she can't (quite) be called ruthless, she comes pretty close to it. She is a heroine type that is rare to unheard of in Japanese VNs, an extremely manipulative person who wields her genius level IQ throughout the story to create situations in her immediate vicinity that would otherwise never have occurred.
Much of the common route (two-thirds of which is standard, with the last third being split into Chaos and Law branches) is spent with Ami proposing a result she wishes to achieve, with Eru presenting her argument against it, and the protagonist acting or arguing in favor of one side or the other to decide things.
Eru and Ami are both extremely intelligent individuals, whose conversations provide a lot of food for thought, not the least of which because Ami is ingenious at manipulating conversations to go her way, whereas Eru is good at seeing through these manipulations. While there are only five of these direct 'debates' in the common route itself, they leave a strong impression and provide a reason to come back later, if only to ruminate over what is said.
Ami
Calling Ami evil would be easy. She is pragmatic to a fault, doesn't believe in valuing the 'process' of doing something over the results, and she has a tendency to manipulate situations when there is no apparent need to do so. One thing that is striking about Ami's character, other than the obvious, is that she has extremely good reasons for being the way she is, reasons that are ironically similar to why Eru is the way she is.
Ami does have a (very limited) sense of ethics, but these ethics are extremely narrowly-defined. It is her viewpoint that even if she manipulates a situation and people in a way that has negative results, it was the people involved who made the choices that led to that situation, so it isn't her concern what happens after. However, if an unexpected factor gets involved to cause such unpleasant results, she is willing to act to counter that unexpected factor. In addition, she does have a strong affinity for helping those she gets close to, though this also usually involves manipulating and controlling them into better results, because this is apparently the only way she can really involve herself with others.
Eru
Eru, throughout much of the game, has a tendency to react with a logical interpretation of standard morals and ethics. This is not necessarily because she believes in them blindly but because of how she was raised (it is more complex than stated in the common route). She is referred to as a 'wall of ice' by Ami and at least one other person during the common route, as she fundamentally defaults to keeping people at arms length and reacting using that same logical attachment to common morals and ethics.
That's not to say she isn't fond of some people... she likes the members of the Fortune-telling Club and values her time there, but it also needs to be noted that the situation is unique for her, as she apparently doesn't hold the rest of her positions in life in the same esteem, apparently.
Fumika
Fumika plays the role of the sweet-natured kouhai with a speech impediment. She is very good at worming her way into the affections of Reiji and the few others she trusts, but she is surprisingly detached from most others. She is also one of only two characters other than Reiji himself who manage to worm their way into Ami's heart in any of the paths (which is notable, since while Ami might become fond of someone, it usually doesn't extend to actually caring about their life and fate).
Her path... has so much impact you would never guess that she isn't one of the characters in the foreground of the game's cover. To be blunt, Fumika's quotes in this path have an impact that have stayed with me for the past six years, often serving to me as an example in the best uses of powerful phrasing at key points. Fumika rarely speaks in full sentences, so the sheer impact when she forces these quotes out of her mouth without stumbling is...staggering.
Touko
Touko is the game's erstwhile narrator, (though it isn't apparent through much of the game) and the character presented as being the writer of a novel based on the events in the story at the very beginning. She is also the heroine who has potentially the most intimate friendship with Ami, which says a lot about her hidden perceptiveness at important points. Normally, she is presented as a 'yurufuwa' character, a bookworm who sleeps through much of the day at school while speaking in slow but clearly enunciated sentences when awake. She is Reiji's osananajimi and many fans of the game consider her the 'hidden true heroine', as she is the heroine that represents Balance.
Sunao
Sunao is the weakest of the game's heroines. There are a number of reasons for this, but the most obvious one is that she is deliberately a derivative of Ami (a more normal/healthy minded version). The most powerful one, though, is that her ending can be considered a second bad Ami ending (there is a bad ending in Ami's path). I won't go into details, but once you get accustomed to Ami's quirks, you quickly realize what she is doing with Sunao and Reiji, which makes it hard to even maintain an interest in Sunao... much for the same reasons Reiji puts forth if you pick the conversational path that leads away from a relationship with Sunao. I honestly don't recommend playing Sunao's path unless you are just a completionist.
Notes on the Common Route progression
One thing that will probably strike anyone who picks the Law route is that the conflicts are... darker. To be blunt, the last few arcs of the common route are much darker in nature in the Law route than they are in the Chaos Route, which can be seen as the world bearing out that Ami's viewpoint of results over process being a better choice might be correct. Ami is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a 'good' person. However, the story itself states that the results she get are more likely to create a good situation. I found this an interesting - and possibly telling - choice on the part of Takaya.
In addition, this game has a tendency to rile 'pure-hearted weaboos'. I say this because the picture of Japanese society it presents is as unflattering as that of Yume Miru Kusuri... if not moreso. If nothing else, the portrayals of how 'officials' react to domestic violence are telling of the flaws built into their legal system.
Conclusion
If you are wondering why I don't go into more details on the routes and the like, it is because it is impossible to do so without spoilers. I focused on giving each heroine a proper introduction and telling you what to expect from them. This game is not meant for those who want sweet and romantic. Most of the paths aren't romantic, except in a really rough sense. There is love, there is affection, and there is sex. However, it tends to come in a fashion that is 'dirtier' than most VN readers will be accustomed to, unless they dig into the borderline dark nukige out there.
Now... I've been asked to play/replay several VNs and post on each by several people who read but don't post here, as well as several members. These will have to come after I finish Damekoi and after the VN of the Month (currently playing Floral Flowlove), but there is a distinct possibility I'll manage to play at least one more VN through before the release of Deus Ex later this month. I've also had requests to play and comment on more JRPGs, but I'll be honest when I say there aren't a ton of jrpgs coming up that I'm actually that interested in. I do plan to play FFXV, because a friend of mine asked me to go in for half of it (neither of us trusts SE enough to pay full price for one of their games), but I can't really say I'm looking forward to it.
The VNs I've been asked to replay include:
Hatsuyuki Sakura- To repeat one of my usual phrases, I'm going to be blunt with yall... this game is the last truly awesome game I played by Saga Planets (Hanasaki was good but not great). I am tempted to replay it now that I've had some people bug me to replay it... but I'll also be honest when I say that I remember the story a bit too well to really enjoy it the same way on a second playthrough.
Bradyon Veda- Mmm... I really don't know why they want me to replay and post on this one, since I'm pretty sure I already blog posted on it once. It is a kamige, so I don't have any objections to replaying it that I can think of off the top of my head, but I am also uncertain of whether I really want to go out of my way to replay it just yet.
Hoshi Ori Yume Mirai- The console version of this is coming out soon, so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised someone wanted me to replay this... and I actually don't have that much of an objection to doing so, as my bad mood the first time I played it ruined the experience for me.
Muramasa- Due to the recent release of a freeware side-story for this VN, I got twelve requests for me to replay and post on this VN. Considering that this is one of my favorites, I again have no objection to replaying it.
Mirai Nostalgia- This is the game that pushed Purple Software from a mediocre to a truly great VN-maker. I still remember being stunned at the massive gap in quality between this and their previous games, and it is the reason why I played Hapymaher immediately upon its release rather than waiting until after I played something else.
The Baldr Sky series- Since the possibility of this series coming over here got raised again, I've had forty-seven requests to go back and play this series again (almost all of them when I dropped into IRC for a few minutes on a whim). I honestly think it is a bit too soon for me to go back and replay this, though I might consider it after I've played Baldr Heart, which comes out next month (but I'm not really sure about).
Ryuusei World Actor Badge and Dagger
I'm going to be blunt, I'm not fond of what was done with the previous game, and I felt like this one was a repeat of the same mistakes. That's not to say there aren't a lot of good points to this game and its predecessor. Kinugasa Shougo is an excellent writer (as VN writers go) with a great skill in characterization and scenario design. However, just like the first game, this one cuts off without completing the story.
I'm not nearly as angry this time, as I was expecting it. This game was obviously meant to be just another part of a longer series of games (probably a trilogy, given the situation with Ruka at the end). I don't feel this game deserves a horrible rating, but I also feel that it doesn't deserve to be rated overly well until the series ends.
For those interested in the paths, a similar tactic to the original was taken here, where the heroines are mostly irrelevant except as characters. In a sense, that is even more true this time around. Ryouko and Fuyumi are never really presented as real heroines (for one, because their characterization is ridiculously weak), and one can't really call Ryouko's path Ryouko's path, since it is essentially semi-casual H on the way to progressing the main story instead of actual romance or a connection between the two.
Honestly, I felt that Kinugasa managed to be slightly less haphazard with the 'ending' while completely mishandling the heroines this time around. The cut-off for this game feels more like building up for another episode than an abrupt severing of the plot like the first game. However, in exchange, he botched the heroines.
I am not going to hate on this game as much as I did on the first... but I recommend that most people wait until the series concludes before playing to avoid frustration.
Dies Irae Interview with Kaziklu Bey
Yes, I finally pulled this one out of the dusty bin for a rainy day last week. My need for chuunige has been great lately, with there having been no new good ones since Silverio Ragnarok a little over a year ago and nothing since Trinity before that. I'm going to start out with a clear statement for those who have played Dies Irae but not this game... it quite surprisingly doesn't really add anything significant to the canon or exceed expectations, at least in my eyes.
This game is essentially an opportunity to get to know a character who was central to both KKK and Dies Irae but who generally took on the role of being kicked around in the latter and had an odder role in the former. Wilhelm Ehrinburg is a man who considers himself to be a vampire, reborn in the mud of the slums of Hamburg before World War II and the killing of his own parents. He is the kind of psychopathic monster that pops up periodically throughout human history (more often lately), and he was a perfect fit for the Black Round Table and its soul-sucking adherents. In Dies Irae, it is easy to perceive him for his humanity because there is a much crazier person in his immediate vicinity (Schrieber), but the fact is, he is the kind of person that would have ended up on death row in any peaceful era.
This game does a very, very good job of showing you Wilhelm's personality flaws, his hangups, and his particular 'curse' (if you are unfamiliar with Dies Irae, Mercurius essentially proclaims the 'curse' of each of the Black Round Table's members' destiny). The girl who serves as the heroine of the story is a perfect foil to his dark nature, a pure-hearted girl who, while born under similar circumstances, managed to be a person of virtue and piety.
This game is based in the 'blank period' between the historical assassination of Reinhardt Heydrich and the events of 1945 Berlin set in Dies Irae. This period is not referred to in the Dies Irae story in any significant fashion, and most of the characters tend to focus on the period before that assassination when reminiscing about the past in the original game. The exception would be Kristoff, whose fate was decided shortly after this game's ending.
This game was written by Masada, so it is obviously well-written and excessively wordy. Due to DMM's drm, I had to read it without aids of any sort, so my head was hurting seriously by the end (really, why does Masada feel the need to use so many obscure kanji I don't normally find in paper books, much less VNs?). Yes, I could have read it in English... but I think most of you know my hangups about reading other people's translations by this point.
There is only one serious battle in this game, which occurs toward the very end, and the game as a whole is much more predictable than most Masada games (mostly because it is made to fit within the canon, so you know certain people won't die and certain people probably are dead). However, I will say this game has a great deal of charm for someone who liked Dies Irae. Seeing the Black Round Table characters without the distraction of Ren's perspective or a short side-story was enlightening in some ways and in others only confirmed my impressions from the original.
In the end, the only conclusion I can give you as potential readers is that this game really is only valuable to fanboys of Dies Irae. Despite the chronological order, I don't recommend playing this first, as it spoils certain aspects of the setting you aren't supposed to know about to enjoy the story of the original. As a stand-alone chuunige, it just doesn't work, but as a side-story prequel, it is just fine.
Anyone who has read one of my reviews knows I'm something of a cynic and a pessimist. I try to think the best about every VN I go into, but my first impulse is to see what is wrong, rather than what is right.
Whether it is optimism and rose-colored glasses or pessimism and cynicism, and excess of either is often a negative influence on the quality of a review. Generally speaking, I usually make an effort to find something I like about a VN's concept before going in, then I start the VN trying to enjoy it as an outgrowth of that. By the end, this usually results in me having experienced both the negative and positive aspects of the VN... the problem is, when reviewing, it is all too easy to forget what is good about the VN.
As a result, when I'm writing up a review, the first thing I do is write up a list of the good points I found, ignoring the mitigating negative factors. I then build the review around these and include the negative points in with the rest... but you can probably tell that being positive just doesn't come naturally to me, since I tend to be pretty harsh.
However, by using this system, I've found dozens of VN gems over the years that I probably would have discarded for perceived negative qualities if I didn't use this process. Indeed, early on in my reading of untranslated VNs, I dropped numerous ones simply because they had a negative aspect that I got obsessed with. I would later go back and replay them, only to find that the negative aspect wasn't as big a deal as I thought at the time, since I made the effort to go back with a differing perspective.
A poor quality in a reviewer is the tendency to ignore the negatives about something you like. Another one is to rate things entirely based on aspects you only have a vague grasp or focus on (in my case, due to my eye problems, I'm not the best judge of artwork, and my musical sense is entirely based on how it enhances the atmosphere, rather than raw quality comprehension). I'm a story reviewer. I review almost exclusively based on the story, characters, and presentation. As such, art and sound rarely have a place in my reviews, since I don't think I'm qualified to evaluate them except in the most general of terms.
I can tell when a VA did an exceptional job, because it stands out enough for me to notice. I will even mention this in the review, since it takes a lot for a performance to stand out to me. However, I never pretend to know the ins and outs of specific aspects of VA or musical quality. I simply don't have the right kind of ear for that kind of thing, not being musically inclined.
One thing I've noticed in some reviewers who prefer niche genres (such as myself) is to display a tendency I refer to as PGRD (or Popular Game Reactionary Disorder). It is a fictional mental disease that many of us who have a distinct preference for a niche genre display that causes us to have a knee-jerk negative reaction to popular works, simply because they are mainstream. This is a problem that is particularly common in Western otakus of around my age, who became fanboys during a time when watching anime, playing Japanese video games, and reading manga had a rather strong stigma that left us feeling isolated and defensive. However, it is also present in people who prefer niche genres (I get the double whammy, being both). That sense of isolation leads to a tendency to over-praise our favorite materials and bash anything that we see as being too popular.
In reverse, there are those who automatically dismiss anything that isn't mainstream. Both types are reactionary in nature and have little to do with the quality of the materials in question. Being a long-time sci-fi addict, I can't understand why anyone would enjoy Avatar (the movie). However, if I make the mistake of saying that in front of a fanboy of the movie, I will inevitably get a vociferous lecture on how misunderstood the movie is by science fiction fans...
There are many such examples of such behavior I have experienced over the years, both in myself and in others. As such, a reviewer has to be willing to examine his own motives for liking or hating something. Are you being cynical for the sake of being cynical? Are you over-praising something to the point of overlooking the obvious problems with it? Are you making excuses while thinking you are making a reasoned argument? On the other side, are you ignoring the voice of reason to give you an excuse to dislike something?
In the end, bias is unavoidable... but it is a reviewer's duty to do their best to cast aside as much of it as possible, because people use our reviews as reference points when they pick what they want to play/read/watch.
First, it should be noted that I love the Silverio series, regardless of its flaws. I see those flaws, I recognize them, then I shrug as I realize I don't give a flying fart about how the critical part of myself feels.
First, lets consider the two games that have come out (so far, given that the setting is so insanely detailed that it would be sad if they didn't make more games) in the series separately.
Silverio Vendetta
Silverio Vendetta follows Zephyr Colerain, an unemployed deserter with an inordinate fondness for alcohol accompanied by an inability to handle it. Zephyr, if you take a step back and look at him, is antithetical to every other chuunige protagonist in existence. The cynicism isn't a problem. Roughly half of all chuunige protagonists are cynical on one level or another. The pessimism, while extreme, is nothing unusual. No, what makes him unique is his sheer... baseness. Zephyr, at his core, is a weak man who is perfectly willing to stain his hands with the blood of the innocent and the good to protect what he cares about... in order to protect himself. Zephyr is a coward, he is not only afraid all the time in battle, but his first impulse is to run away whenever a situation gets hard (though that fleeing takes different forms depending on the situation). When he is confronted with someone who sees him an obstacle to their ideals, he wants nothing more than to trample and spit on the glory of the person in front of him. Zephyr is essentially the embodiment of the part of us that is envious and resentful of those more capable than ourselves, with his only saving grace being that he nonetheless can at times drive himself to stand against his own nature.
In other words, in 99% of all the games I've played, he'd essentially be one of those petty minor bosses who got squished like a bug by my level 10 characters. He is also very similar to Rusalka from Dies Irae (if you have played the game, note her Creation spell's essential meaning).
Zephyr is accompanied by Vendetta, an artificially weaponized and resurrected corpse with an unknown purpose who is psychically linked with him, who constantly kicks him in the ass to get him to be a man and be a better person (which is often hilarious in and of itself, since Zephyr has no intention of doing so on his own).
On the other side is Christopher Valzeride, an undoubted hero who gives selflessly of himself, who never gives up, who moves forward with no desire for recompense. In most chuunige VNs, Valzeride would be the protagonist. His intensity of spirit, his iron will, his burning idealism... combined with a realistic understanding of the costs of his path forwar... make him an ideal archetype for a chuunige protagonist in a 'heroic style' chuunige.
However, the fundamental theme that starts out the game and resonates throughout all the paths is 'What is victory?' Zephyr is a man who has been destroyed, carved away, piece by bloody piece, by his own victories, gaining nothing but more pain and the next, even more difficult battle from anything he achieved. He is the picture of a man forced into a role by his talents and utterly unsuited to it by his essential nature. Valzeride is a man who seeks victory above all else and merely accepts the greater tribulations that await him as the price of his path.
Essentially, the two men are polar extremes of human potential that encompass both the best and worst of the two extremes. Zephyr, while capable of kindness and gentleness, is cruel in his cowardice and malicious toward those who corner him with their valor and vivid idealism. Valzeride loves human virtue but is utterly incapable of kindness or personal empathy, as his own nature rejects anything ambiguous and weak. He honestly can't empathize with the suffering others draw from their tribulations, and this is why he serves as a great antagonist, despite essentially being a truly virtuous man in addition to being a hero.
Silverio Trinity
Silverio Trinity focuses a lot more intensely on the nature of the 'Light', as embodied by Valzeride in the previous game. It portrays those who take after him as 'Zombies of Light', men and women who simply move forward because they are incapable of conceiving of any other course of action. As is said repeatedly in both games in various fashions, 'A hero of light continues forward, running over the hapless individuals who get in their way, unable to compromise, unable to consider the suffering of others except as the price for the brilliant shining future they seek to bring about.'
Ashe, the protagonist, is by nature a good and caring young man. He can be driven to anger for the sake of others, and he has a deep well of compassion that is honest in its depth... and contrasts starkly with the other characters aspected of Light, such as Gilbert, Helios, and even Dainsleif. Ashe recognizes and empathizes with the weakness of others, and his understanding of them is more than just the intellectual recognition you see out of individuals like Valzeride and Gilbert. In this fashion, Trinity is more of a contrasting of common humanity with the two extremes of human nature (darkness and light as represented by the protagonists and antagonists of Vendetta). Its narrative, while having a different locale and characters, is a direct continuation of the conversation with the reader begun with Vendetta, and its conclusion is interesting, to say the least (Edit: Though it can be said to be a typical conclusion for such 'conversation' in a Japanese VN).
In action stories, often the story's quality is determined by the quality of the antagonist as much as the quality of the main characters. The antagonist acts and the main characters react, creating the drama that pulls at our heart strings and excites us. The more complex the story, the more likely the need for a strong antagonist will exist, at least in modern fiction. I decided to put down my top ten and my reasons for making them my top ten here. These are my top ten, but there isn't a particular order to them, save for the top five being the absolute best.
1- Shannon Wordsworth-
2- Mercurius-
3- Kefka- Final Fantasy VI's main antagonist. He is frequently listed as one of the craziest bad guys in all of gaming history, with good reason. He is the nihilistic result of experiments with granting humans magic, and as a result he gets the bright idea to destroy the world... and actually succeeds. His psychotic laughter (in 16 bit sound) is familiar to anyone who played the game, and his psycho clown character traumatized an entire generation of gamers into thinking clowns are inherently evil.
4- Christopher Valzeride- The heroic antagonist of Silverio Vendetta.
5- Reinhardt Lohengrin- Legend of the Galactic Heroes- While he can also be considered the protagonist of the massive space opera, he is also an ongoing antagonist. Reinhardt is an ambitious young man whose meteoric rise in the militaristic and expansionistic Galactic Empire are driven by his twin desires to wrench his sister away from her position as the incompetent emperor's mistress and conquer the galaxy. A fierce man with a warrior's demeanor that usually only serves to fuel his strategic and tactical victories, he honors both enemies and allies who show ability and contempt for those who rise above their level of competency. As a ruler, he is ruthlessly fair with those of ability who are capable of loyalty and brutally ruthless with those who are incapable of it. As an enemy, he is one of the most frightening (non-magical) men in any anime, game, or VN I've ever seen.
6-
7- Mikado Ruri-
9-
10-
It has been almost six months since I ceased VN of the Month. I can say now that while I do, surprisingly, miss some aspects of that particular column, the freedom giving it up has granted me is far greater compensation.
When I was doing VN of the Month, I was literally the only person commenting on most of the non-nukige VNs in a given month. I was driven by a sense of obligation to those who read my blog to continue regardless of what it was doing to me and my life, and I can say now that that wasn't a healthy situation for me.
I am still a VN addict. I probably always will be, just as I am a heavy reader in general and a lover of role-playing games. However, I still think the role I put it on myself to play was a necessary one.
How many people who play untranslated VNs give honest opinions devoid of spoilers? For that matter, how many of them are honest about their biases when they feel they can't give a particular VN a fair chance?
I made myself abide by a pretty strict set of rules when I was doing VN of the Month.
One was that I would primarily evaluate VNs based on story, character development, and setting, while only mentioning visual and audio elements when they were obviously exceptional. My reason for this is that I lack the background to properly evaluate the technical aspects of audio-visual materials, whereas I have extensive experience with all sorts of reading material in general and fiction in particular.
Another was that I would, on a regular basis, restate my particular biases, reminding people of the limitations of my objectivity. This was because I was writing on all VNs I played for the first time, and it would have been unfair for me to fail to state my biases beforehand when playing something that was outside my tastes or something that hit them spot on.
The third was a resolve to avoid excessive spoilers. My standard was the Getchu page. If information was released on the Getchu page or the official site, I didn't consider it to be a spoiler, but I was to avoid spoiling things beyond that, except when absolutely necessary.
The fourth and final rule was to strive for objectivity inasmuch as possible and be honest with myself and my readers when it wasn't possible.
These rules were my guide posts for the years I did VN of the Month, and they served me well, generally... but I reached my limit. To be blunt, VN of the Month was only made possible because of my high reading speed and my willingness to structure my life solely around playing VNs and making money to buy more. Naturally, this way of doing things was doomed to failure eventually, but I got so caught up in actually doing it that I didn't notice it really at the time.
Now, I play only what I want to play, and that makes me a much happier person, despite a few wistful moments where I wonder if I couldn't have done it a little while longer.
I am a weaboo and it is good, lol.
More seriously, I started out becoming a Japan fanatic through swords, rather than through anime or games, like many others. As an adolescent, I shared the same obsession for sharp things that any number of young men in the past have had, and that eventually led me to the katana, then to the samurai, then to Japan (in that order).
I met anime and jrpgs about the same time, which only made the hunger more intense.
Like all newbie weaboos, I practically worshiped everything Japanese... I wouldn't accept criticism of anything Japanese, and I instantly thought of anything Japanese as awesome. That lasted well into my twenties, when I began to seriously study Japanese history as part of my larger hobby of studying world history and anthropology.
To be blunt, it is about this time that my views began to change, if subtly. The weaboo psychology, such as it is, is peculiar in some areas. Some weaboos continue to simply idealize everything about Japan, past and present, regardless of what information they pick up. Others become disillusioned as the faults in Japanese society (again, both past and present) become apparent. The third, and final group, tempers their adoration to a mere fondness and preference for things Japanese as they accept a more objective (relatively-speaking) viewpoint on their subject of obsession.
The first ideal that had to be broken for me was the samurai... to be blunt, reading the history of Japan puts the samurai caste into perspective in a way movies and video games just can't. The samurai ideal a lot of weaboos practically worship was born during the centuries of peace during the Edo period and is a relatively recent invention.
Once the samurai ideal was broken for me, it became a lot easier to see Japan for what it was. I still love Japan, I still love Japanese culture, and I still have a definitive preference for Japanese ideas. However, I can now admit that Japan's society is just as badly flawed in its way as my own, thus reducing my weabooism to a matter of personal taste, rather than a fanatical obsession, lol.
So what kind of weaboo are you? (not assuming you are one, whoever is reading this, lol)
Now, this is one of those games where the Getchu description and the one on the site don't represent the reality.
First, this game is a straight-out comedy. The protagonist is a 'classic baka', a character who is easily distracted, daydreams about convenient scenarios with cute females, and generally makes trouble without meaning to. Because of his perspective, the game is pretty high pace (and not really in a good way).
The heroines include:
Chuuni Hime- A real princess from another world who is the master of the renovated love hotel that is the central stage for the story. She is apparently a genius and a great leader... but you would never be able to tell that from the pictures of her daily life. She is a heavy gamer (doesn't leave her room for days at a time), and she has little interest in fulfilling her stated purpose for coming to Earth. She has a real name, but nobody uses it.
Lagunaseca- Chuuni Hime's dark elven maid. She is a workaholic. Seriously, that is literally the entirety of her personality. Her only reason for living is to give of herself to others, so she is literally incapable of considering a life outside of service. She works several part-time jobs to feed the princess, and she only sleeps three hours a day.
Stella- Stella is a rather naive young knight from the same world as Chuuni Hime and in her direct service. She was raised on stories of female knights being raped by tentacles and orcs, along with falls into pleasure and mind break, and as a result, she is extremely... weak. She is terrible with a sword... so much so that she is liable to trip over it when she tries to draw it out. Since she came to Earth, she has become a light novel author, and when her editor gets onto her, she locks herself in a defunct fridge.
Suzuka- The only earthling amongst the heroines (ironically so) and the protagonist's childhood friend. She has a terrible case of chuunibyou (think wearing a black cape in summer and transforming her room into an alchemist's workshop), and... that is about the entirety of her personality. Unless you get on her route, she is almost a non-entity throughout the game.
I'm going to be blunt... this game actually starts out fairly well, but as a whole, it is very... not worth the money I put down for it.
The first reason is the writing. For some reason, this writer fails utterly to do anything other than the comedy right. Even momentarily serious or romantic scenes flop (at least partly because Masaki doesn't have the brains to carry those scenes off right) badly, and because of that, it becomes hard to even enjoy the humorous scenes.
The second reason is the artwork. I'm going to be blunt... this game's CG's and sprites are very... low budget. It isn't noticeable for a non-art-bigot such as myself at first, but it became bloody obvious when it came to the h-scenes and the few scenes granted a CG. If this game had been made in 2008, I probably wouldn't have noticed anything wrong, but for a game that is being sold at right about the average price for a VN on today's commercial market, that is a huge downer.
The third, and probably the most fatal reason, is the music and voice acting. The soundtrack for this game is... terrible. However, that could be forgiven if it weren't for the unusual fact that this game's makers managed to botch the voice-acting. Most of the voices in this game are horrible, with the notable exceptions of Chuuni Hime and Suzuka. I'm going to be blunt... considering how long ago they announced this game, it is ridiculous that this low level of quality in an area where the industry standard is about as level as it is possible for what is essentially an 'art' can even exist. All of the VAs are established names, so it is silly to make excuses about the quality of the actors. No, this had to be a massive direction and/or production failure.
My conclusion is that, while the concept wasn't bad, the execution for this game was downright horrible.
Dir Lifyna is the name of the world in which Eushully's Ikusa Megami games, Kamidori Alchemy Meister, and most of the rest of their games are based.
I love Dir Lifyna. I don't think I'm alone in this, since it was the unexpected popularity of the setting in the original Ikusa Megami that resulted in the ridiculous number of follow up games that culminated in Ikusa Megami Zero (which most fanboys consider the best game Eushully has ever made).
The setting is deep, based in a world built in the aftermath of a pure fantasy world (with no humans) being linked then melded accidentally with a future Earth that was apparently far beyond even our current technological level (think matter-of-course genetic modification and cybernetics, as well as artificial lifeforms of more than human complexity). At the end of the war that resulted from the initial contact, humanity's deities (artificial and otherwise) lost to the 'Living Gods', and humanity's history and most of its technology was systematically erased from the world. Most of humanity's original gods either died or went into hiding, and the remaining humans mostly worship the Living Gods. Other races that were 'hidden' before the initial contact (Nagas, for example) retained a faith and service to some of them, but that has just resulted in them being ever more marginalized in the world as it has become.
Humanity, ironically, has become the most numerous intelligent race, providing most of the faith (which provides power to deities) to sustain the Living Gods, causing even those Living Gods' own creations to often be as marginalized as the servants of the Old Gods. Demihumans often find themselves forced to coexist with humans or pushed out of the better lands, leading to conflicts in which the churches of various deities often take sides, even if the deities themselves don't (most deities that aren't a devoted patron of a certain race tend to prioritize the power gained from worship over all things, it seems like).
Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of the various games set in this world is that they rarely provide a purely human-centric viewpoint on things. Serika, the protagonist of the IM series, can't be considered to be human in any wise (either in perspective or body), Meishoku no Reiki's protagonist is practically a demon lord, Madou Koukaku's protagonist is the ruler of a mixed-race country, Kami no Rhapsody is all about people competing for the right to rule over a multi-race federation, and the Genrin series focuses on a half-demon protagonist who tries to conquer a mostly-human region for the sake of survival (at least at first).
'Chosen Heroes' (usually half-immortal paladins called 'shinkakusha' granted a portion of a deity's essence) are often monsters wearing human skin, priests are mostly political animals or dogmatists, and the conflict between Darkness and Light rarely falls into a 'good vs evil' formula, regardless of perspective.
That's when the games are trying to be serious from beginning to end, such as with Genrin, IM, or Madou Koukaku. However, some of the more 'frivolous' games (such as Sankai Ou no Yubiwa, Kamidori, or Kamiyui) are often lighter affairs, though the essential nature of the setting usually bleeds through at odd moments, usually near the end.
Unfortunately, Eushully has a bad habit of switching writers frequently, and this results in huge dips and rises in quality between releases, story-wise. As a result, while the company manages to produce kamige like IMZ on occasion, it more often hits a more moderate note like with Verita or Kami no Rhapsody... or strays into outright kusoge territory like with Sankai Ou or Himegari.
Gameplay wise, the company's works in this universe are a mixed bag... Ikusa Megami's battle system is essentially a variant on the ATB system, combined with a 'use it and it grows' approach to skill trees. On the other hand, Genrin was essentially a crappier version of Fire Emblem, Madou Koukaku was conquest strategy, and Kami no Rhapsody was a fairly horrible take on standard Japanese-style srpgs (seriously, obsessing over gimmicks like touch screen adaptation with an ero VN gameplay hybrid is just idiotic). It seems at times like Eushully wants to try every popular Japanese single player game genre at one point or another...
Anyway, if you are still reading, thanks for paying attention to this random ramble.
Ugh... can you say kusoge out loud twenty times fast? I'm sorry, but it has been a while since I played a VN that was this awful outright. It had all the elements, setting-wise, that a good story VN should have... a protagonist who gave up high school to work to support his sisters, twin sister heroines (yay for incest), a generally capable protagonist, a hikikomori neighbor heroine, and a lot of hints of potential story points that could have been used to enhance the paths.
Unfortunately, this VN never strays out of the range of the mediocre, from beginning to end. Seeing as this is a new company, it is ok that they used public domain and generic BGMs, but the way they used it made me fall asleep... repeatedly. Koyuki also crosses the line from shy to just being annoying, making what I thought would be a character that would grow on me just bothersome.
Generic, generic, generic. I experienced this kind of low-level moege dozens of times when I was poring through the stuff released at the opening of the century and the middle of the last decade. However, I just wasn't anticipating that someone would resurrect all the most pathetic aspects of a moege without the visual quality that is generally the only benefit of such games.
In other words, it is a kusoge, a kusoge, and once again, a kusoge.
PS: If you haven't guessed, this game drove me up the wall with how... boring it was, in every way.
Now, for VN of the Month, August 2016... this is a straight-out contest between Gin'iro, Haruka and Inochi no Spare. Gin'iro, Haruka has the high production values and best character development I've grown to expect from Tone Works, so for most months, it would have been a shoe-in, despite its extreme length. Inochi no Spare, however, is a kamige in the utsuge genre, which had me in tears for over six hours after I finished it.
My end conclusion was that while Gin'iro appeals to the mainstream a lot more and feels like it completely explores all aspects of its characters, Inochi no Spare is probably the one I'll still remember twenty years from now... and cry my eyes out. Gin'iro deserves an honorable mention for its high-quality slice-of-life, seishun drama, character development, and romantic aspects. However, if I were to ask which was the better story, it is definitely Inochi no Spare.
So which is VN of the Month? I'm going to pull a rare one out of the hat and name Inochi no Spare and Gin'iro, Haruka for VN of the Month August 2016. *laughs hysterically at those of you who thought he was going to name Inochi no Spare as the sole winner*
Why did I do it this way? Because, when it comes down to it, the only thing that was putting Inochi no Spare so far above Gin'iro was my personal tastes. When I removed my bias as much from the equation as possible, they really were close to being completely even (though Inochi no Spare still had a lead... which I eliminated with points taken away for subconscious bias). One of my ongoing policies in this blog is not to name a VN of the Month solely based on personal bias (though some bias is inevitable). As such, I never name chuunige VN of the Month unless their quality level is so far above the rest of the entries that there is no contest (though they often get honorable mentions). Last month almost ended up the same way, which is weird... since I generally only experience one such month every year, lol.
