I'm doing a spotlight on this author for a number of reasons... one is that I'm currently going back through his works on my new Kindle (lol), but another is that I have never really understood until recently just how profound an effect his works have had on my thinking until I had the opportunity go back and marathon some of his series.
Modesitt has been writing since 1982 (the year I was born, incidentally) and has a massive number of works to look at (seventy novels across a number of series). He writes primarily sci-fi and fantasy, but he also ventures into poetry, non-fiction, and other areas. For the sake of those, like me, who are only interested in fiction outside of history books, I'm going to focus on his fiction.
Modesitt... is probably one of the most subtle writers I've ever encountered. Part of that is that the current trends (straightforward writing with an emphasis on less... roundabout methodologies) hadn't been established when he first began writing. Another part is that he is that he has been writing on the same basic themes for over thirty-five years.
Those themes, though it isn't obvious unless you go back with an analytical mind, include environmentalism, gender politics, personal growth, and the costs of poor sociological and practical choices. Perhaps one of the most common statements (whether internal or external) that you'll see in his books and that is probably the most important one for the reader to grab hold of is, 'See the world as it is, rather than as we would have it.' Most of his protagonists are people who either act out this way of looking at the world or eventually grow into it. In the Internet Age, this is a particularly relevant theme, because the sheer amount of information available means that otherwise sane individuals will subconsciously or consciously ignore information that is inconvenient to their preconceptions of what is true and what is not (we have seen a lot of this in America recently, lol).
Another thing that you'll see - primarily in his fantasy series - is the tyranny of dominant genders. Generally speaking, in his fantasy realms, there is usually at least one realm, usually embattled by its neighbors, where a matriarchal society exists, at least one where the genders are almost equal (it tilts back and forth based on the era) and many where patriarchal societies are dominant. One thing that is striking about the matriarchal realms he depicts is that men tend to be relegated to roles you'd normally see in females in other societies on the same world (stay at home parent, decorative spouse, etc). Another is that he depicts an approach that is far more balanced in those realms than in the patriarchal ones, where treatment of women can vary between the casual chauvinism that is so prevalent even in the West to the pet-like treatment you see in nations in the Middle East and parts of Africa. The reason I find this interesting is because, while he obviously thinks that a matriarchal society is healthier than a patriarchal one, he still sees the same ills (albeit on a lesser scale) that plague a patriarchal one.
He also has a rather obvious contempt for the 'warrior archetype'. Individuals who fight for the sake of fighting, seeking conflict out of vainglory or ambition, his books generally portray dying horribly or in incredibly stupid manners... usually after failing to back down when the protagonist of the books confronts them. The most obvious of these is in the Spellsong Saga, where Anna, the former American music teacher turned song-sorceress, is continually confronted by the stupidity and shortsightedness of men and women who refuse to see that there is no 'honor' in killing for the sake of harmful traditions or ambition.
Another theme that pops up, his contempt for those so short-sighted as to believe the world is going to last forever or problems will fix themselves, is generally portrayed in the endless line of antagonists or passive rulers/characters who see that something is wrong but fail to take action to fix it, causing their downfall. These characters generally see that their own lack of action is going to lead to the destruction of what they love, but they often cannot accept this and will ignore it, if it is inconvenient to their peace of mind. This is most glaringly obvious in the Corean Chronicles and the Forever Hero. In the Corean Chronicles, a race of humans called the Alectors or Ifrits, has made a habit of using their magic to escape each world they occupy after they render it worthless. The Alectors have literally drained three worlds of all life in the past, using it to fuel their magic engines, using it to make their clothing nearly indestructible, and using it to control the populations of the worlds they seed and conquer. Their attitudes bear distinctly similar tones to those of modern Westerners, particularly in their stated concern about waste (in this case, of life-force) vs their unwillingness to reign themselves in in any real sense. Considering the end results of this attitude... well, it is rather obvious what Modesitt thinks about this kind of thought-pattern.
The Forever Hero Trilogy is... probably the most depressing work by this author I've ever encountered. It portrays a future where Earth was laid to waste by careless over-exploitation to provide the resources for colony ships and contaminated itself beyond natural recovery. The protagonist is a young 'devilkid' (a sub-species of human involved for individual survival above all other things) who is captured and educated by the Empire, the successor to the Earth-based galactic government that preceded it. Having been educated, he sets about the task of resurrecting Earth... only to find that the simple physics of space travel and the economics of the Empire make resurrecting Earth nearly impossible. Fortunately, as a natural immortal (he doesn't age), he has the time... and the intelligence to work it out. He is perhaps the most ruthless and amoral of Modesitt's protagonists, but his cause is enough to grasp the reader and not let them go. This series also deals with the 'dirt and grit' of a far more realistic sci-fi environment than is common in modern science fiction, where the details tend to be sanitized outside of dystopian efforts.
I generally recommend this writer to those who like reading sci-fi and fantasy that makes you think, characters that are good at the beginning but grow to be great as their role requires them to, and those who don't mind their comfortable way of looking at the world being jarred on a regular basis.
To be blunt, I only started this one first because I don't want to read something written by Kazuki Fumi (the writer of Nanairo Reincarnation) just yet... I'm sleep-deprived, so I wouldn't be able to appreciate it, lol. In any case, it was either this game or the new Windmill release, and, when in doubt, I try to get the new company games out of the way first.
This is written by Scokan, a new writer on the VN scene. Judging by what I saw in the common route, he is about of average level for a charage writer or maybe slightly better, with a tendency toward using the wrong kanji for some archaic terms. The characters in this VN all fall into classic VN stereotypes.
Kikyou is a somewhat innocent tsukumogami (For the inexperienced: tsukumogami are objects that have, over a long period of time, gained a form of sentience and some spiritual power) who is devoted to her duty but hopeless at doing anything related to that duty (whereas she is abnormally good at cooking and other daily tasks). She is enthusiastic and kind-hearted, but she has a tendency to apologize excessively.
Haruka is the classic genki stepsister. She loves her niichan and is virtually attached to him at the hip, despite his protests. She is generally cheerful and tends to want to touch those she likes constantly. Underneath, she is surprisingly vulnerable, though her fundamental baka-ness means that she rarely remains down in the dumps for long.
Shiori is your classic kuudere (a type that we don't see that often these days). She seems aloof at first, but, when people try to talk to her, she has a tendency to give them the benefit of the razor edge of her tongue. She also has as much trouble being honest with her feelings as any other tsundere variant.
Misaki... is your classic deredere osananajimi miko (yes, this pops up enough in charage that it has become an archetype). She rather obviously is in love with the protagonist from the beginning, and this makes his rather half-hearted and awkward attempts to avoid her rather irritating in the prologue. Moreover, she is extremely pushy and tends to settle into the usual 'fuufu manzai' situation in front of others when it comes to the protagonist.
The protagonist, Yuuto, is... a hetare. I'm sorry, but that is how I feel. Oh, the getchu page makes him seem like a shadowed character, but he is just half-heartedly misanthropic... and this part of his character is handled poorly in the common route (he hardly struggles at all against what is happening, despite his supposed misanthropy). I found him immensely irritating a lot of the time, though his interactions with Haruka are frequently amusing (as opposed to his interactions with Misaki being downright annoying).
Common Route
The common route is mostly classic charage fare. You get lucky sukebe events on a regular basis, the heroines forgive the protagonist quickly, and the protagonist eventually stops resisting the friendship of the heroines (without crossing the line into favoring any particular one). Thankfully, all the routes split off from the same choice, so there is no massive number of meaningless choices to annoy the reader, but I thought that Kikyou's character was poorly developed in the common route, considering that she is the obvious main heroine. A lot of this is that she is a non-presence during most of the school hours, and the writer applies the plot device of the magic power keeping the protagonist from getting too far from her inconsistently. As a result, I exited the common route with a fondness for most of the heroines but a bit irritated/stressed because of the way Kikyou was neglected and the protagonist was such a hetare about some things.
Kikyou
It was a close race between her and Shiori, but I picked Kikyou first (I have no intention of bothering with the other two heroines, as they are both types that make better side-characters than heroines).
As if they were sorry for treating Kikyou like a side-character in the common route, her own route is... emotionally-packed. There is some serious drama in there related to her nature as a tsukumogami and the protagonist's trauma (which is touched on in much more detail here), and it was almost as if an entirely different writer was handling the more serious parts. I cried several times... but this path uses a rather archetypical set of events (if you've played other kamisama-heroine paths, you'll recognize the tropes instantly), and even though it is presented well, the pacing is kind of sloppy toward the end. The ending of this path is... short. I say this in annoyance, because this would be an ideal path for a Hikoukigumo no Mukougawa-style 'to the very end' ending.
I want to talk about the ichaicha in this path separately because it is worthy of note that it almost felt like a nukige at times. Kikyou and the protagonist have almost no restraint, and it is made worse by the fact that Kikyou is the type to gladly respond to just about any kind of advance and the protagonist is the type who has self-control issues once he actually has a girlfriend. There is, thankfully, only one date in here and they didn't try to insert something unrealistic like the innocent kamisama wanting to go shopping (which would be out of character for Kikyou but which some writers would have insisted on).
Shiori
I picked Shiori for a very simple reason... I have a weakness for kuudere heroines who really hate being alone. Shiori's path is, like Kikyou's, fairly emotional, with her asthma playing a role in the path's story along with the protagonist's trauma (once again, and showing off a bit more detail as to what happened leading up to it).
By the time I got halfway through this path, I started to recognize a pattern in how this writer is handling the protagonist... at some point, the heroines start to mother the protagonist to one degree or another (the reason why this is part of the relationships makes sense when you've played the common route), and, similar to Kikyou's route, the protagonist is like a dog in heat throughout much of the route after the romantic connection forms (as is the heroine). I feel it necessary to mention this because the 'intensely sexual' phase of most charage routes tends to be a lot less extensive than I saw in this one. This felt much closer to Majikoi levels in some ways, hahaha.
The ending is reasonably touching... but again, by my standards, it felt like it wasn't quite enough, as it ended less than a month after the climax (I like 'years later' endings).
Conclusion
If you want to try a newer (up and coming) charage company, this is a good choice. For this game, they used artists from Studio Ryokucha and Gesen, and it shows in the styles. There are more emotional moments than is the norm for your standard charage, but that is a plus rather than a negative. The only real downsides are a few pacing issues, the briefness of the endings, and the weakness of the common route (lol).
This is my fourth time replaying the Light VN, Vermilion Bind of Blood, and to my startlement, I realized that my only commentary on this is is in my ancient VN of the Month Thread on the forums. So... of course I cannot leave my beloved public ignorant of this game (though I've made a habit of recommending it to everyone, like Evolimit).
Vermilion was the first chuunige made by Light's second team, and it was my first experience of the team's work. It is also probably that team's single most balanced VN, and it is the only one I call a kamige, albeit with a few reservations.
The protagonist of this story is one Kashima Toshirou (who is referred to in the Western fashion as Toshirou Kashima throughout the whole game). He is a former samurai from the era just before the opening up of Japan by Perry's black ships who became a vampire. Now he is a gloomy man who serves as a watcher for the vampiric community of the fictional American city of Foggy Bottom. Toshirou is something of an anomaly amongst vampires in general... and most seem to hate him instinctively (there is good reason for this, though few ever know it). He considers all vampires merely to be an extension of humans, denying the vampire legend that most believe in, and he has nothing but contempt for those who allow themselves to drown in their power and the arrogance born from it.
This game has four heroines. They are:
Anne Portman- The first heroine. You are forced to play her route first (probably because nobody would want to go after her if given a choice). Unlike the other heroines, who are more or less easy with their lives as vampires, Anne is a timid, kind-hearted girl who is fundamentally unsuited to being a vampire. Her role in this game is quite similar to that of Kasumi in Dies Irae (more as a contrast in the form of a 'normal person' than as a real heroine). While her character is less than inspiring (that she is a heroine is the only flaw I see in this game), her path is actually quite good, though less so than the others in this game. I did and do find the ending worthy of mention, because it is... pleasant in a sad sort of way. It is also surprisingly uplifting, coming back without being tainted by my dislike for the presence of a Victim A heroine in a chuunige VN.
Sherryl McGregor- The victor of the heroine polls twice in a row, Sherryl is Toshirou's long-standing partner in both work and the home. Their relationship is a 'don't ask, don't tell' one where they don't talk about their pasts. It is an easygoing relationship, but it is fairly obvious that Sherryl fell for him decades ago. If I were to compare Sherryl to a translated VN heroine, it would be the adult Cal Devens from Phantom of Inferno, albeit with a century and a half of experience under her belt. Sherryl was born in Victorian England, and her experiences in the slums there shaped her base personality. She bluffs, she fights, and she has a temper... but underneath it all, she is as soft as a fuzzy teddy bear when it comes to Toshirou. She is also a talented singer, a skill she shows off at Casanova, the bar near the office. Her path is the most revealing of Toshirou's past (in fact, that is its structural purpose, though that doesn't interfere with its quality), and it is a fun ride... Her ending is actually pretty hilarious as well as touching, because it is probably the only path in the game where Toshirou manages to move on to some extent (Toshirou is very very stuck in his ways). Sherryl also grows a great deal as a character in this path (as a matter of course) and it is a pleasure to watch.
Nina Orlok- The Principal (political leader of a Diaspora, which is the name given to vampiric communities) of the Western US Diaspora, a young woman forced into a position far beyond her personal power by her powerful blood father's will after his death. She sees her duty as the only way to repay her father's trust in her, and she constantly struggles with the gap between what she wants to be and who she actually is. That said, she is actually a quite capable political leader (a given, since she isn't dead or imprisoned, despite being a youngling in a position that would normally only be allowed to an ancient vampire), with a core of strength hidden under the girl struggling desperately to fulfill her father's hopes. I sincerely enjoy her path, each time, because her growth as a character is inspiring, especially once she gets past her father complex. Toshirou in her path is probably the most samurai-like (in the classic sense), and the battle that closes out this path is the third-best in the VN (behind two of the fights in the Grand Route).
Ariya Takajou- The Jaeger (vampire hunter) White Pile's successor, who has come to Foggy Bottom specifically to hunt Toshirou Kashima. Driven by her desire to prove herself and a latent fear born from her experiences as a child (her family killed before her eyes by vampires), she endured training that would make a Marine recruit run away screaming to obtain the ability to almost match the physical abilities of a vampire (it is something close to inner qigong). She despises all vampires and sees them as inhuman monsters, but her meeting with Toshirou fills her with a personal hatred, as his obvious (to her) difference from other vampires drives her to obsess over him. Ariya's personality (on the surface) is very... twisted. She is probably the single most sharp-tongued heroine I've ever encountered (she makes Kagome from Comyu seem pleasant), quite naturally using insults in a tactical fashion to get vampires to lose their heads and simply because she doesn't like people. In her own path, she also develops a rather... twisted sort of love for Toshirou (and it is love, mixed with hate, gratitude, and intense sado-masochistic lust). I always rofl at the way she changes in this path, and the ending... is actually really really cool.
Grand Route- The Grand Route of this game focuses on fighting the antagonist who was the root cause of the conflicts in the VN, as well as dealing with the origins of vampires in general. In this path, Toshirou finds himself facing his past and looking into the future in a way he doesn't in the other paths. This path also has two of the best fights in the game, including the final face-off between the antagonist and Toshirou himself. This path also gives a really significant insight into the mind of a side-character whom I loved... Klaus, the previous White Pile. The ending of this path is bittersweet and faintly sad (as is common in a lot of chuunige true endings), but it also gives you a sense of completeness, closing out the VN nicely.
Side-characters worthy of mention
Isaac- Isaac is the bartender at Casanova and plays a key role in all the paths. He is Toshirou's one true friend, and his personality is a cross between a hedge philosopher and a boy who never gave up his dream (and never will). His (oddly troubling) life advice frames a lot of the game's key internal conflicts, and his influence can be felt throughout every part of the game, to some degree.
Klaus- The previous White Pile, an elderly Jaeger who fights with a gigantic stake (think a log from a log cabin with its edges carved into a spike-like tip and you get the picture). He is a warrior to the core, a man who hates vampires absolutely and has made a living sacrifice of his life to cleanse as many of them from the world as possible. In contrast, his unstinting love for humanity, including its flaws, is awe-inspiring in its strength, and he has an absolute faith in humanity's potential to rise above its own filth. He saved and raised Ariya to be his successor, and she is perhaps the only chink in his armor other than his personal hate (he normally sees vampires not as individuals but as harmful insects to be crushed) for Toshirou. He loves her deeply, in a fatherly fashion, and it is his love that is perhaps Ariya's greatest salvation, though it is also her second greatest weakness.
This is the latest kinetic novel based in the setting created by the 'Uso' series by Campus. The name of this VN says a lot about how it begins - the name means 'How we began our calculating love-comedy'. The protagonist, a young man who managed to pay off his parents' massive debt through hard work after their deaths, comes to Mahoshi Gakuen in order to find a rich girl to marry. This is in part because he is actively suspicious of romantic inclinations due to the fact that his hopelessly inept parents were from rich families and eloped because of opposition from both sides (and he saw his misery as a child being caused by his parents' decision to take love over wealth).
Despite this, he is essentially a good person... and intelligent, despite frequently making facepalm-worthy decisions and taking facepalm-worthy actions in pursuit of his gold-digging goal. He approaches Teidou Shirayuki (a younger relative of Setsuka from the Uso series) and is rebuffed harshly... but his experiences in life have left him more than a little psychologically tough, so he decides to continue pursuing her. It is then that he is approached her maid, Sakura Nono, who offers her help in his plans...
Just to get this out in the open for people who aren't fans of nontraditional or unconventional relationships (or those who are), this VN is a 3P romance story, and it is typical of this series for bucking the common trends in VN romance in a few little ways (that I won't spoil for you). After I got over wanting to bury my head in my hands over the protagonist's actions in the prologue, I quickly took a shine to the three main characters and their odd little relationship (and it just gets more odd as time goes by). The protagonist's overconfident attitude and endless optimism about his own capabilities (sometimes justified, sometimes not) is frequently a source for humor, and seeing Shirayuki's cold attitude melt away is a true pleasure to watch. While Nono frequently takes on a sidekick like role, she still manages to be a solid heroine in her own right, with her possessing almost as much affection for Shirayuki as she does for the protagonist (this is true of Shirayuki as well).
Despite its premise, this game actually manages to be much more believable in some ways than other VNs with a romantic focus, and that is a huge positive, at least in my view. I love the relationship building in this game (both before and after the required and omnipresent 'confession scene'), and I came away from this game feeling some of the built-up negative feelings from playing so many charage with almost identical romances shaved away.
First, I should apologize for taking so long (for me) to get around to finishing this game. Despite the fact that Kazuki Fumi games are always high-priority for me, for some reason I stalled after finishing the first arc and two of the paths in the second arc. The main reason is probably because the first arc pretty much satisfied me, and I didn't feel like the game needed much of a second arc or the third arc that comes after.
As indicated above, this game has three arcs. The first arc is a dark and emotional story that focuses on the protagonist, an android programmer and mechanic, the people around him, and a legless abuse victim named Hatsune that is left on his doorstep. The whole thing is emotionally powerful, has a Sharin no Kuni/G-senjou no Maou style battle of wits, and it generally left me completely satisfied with how things turned out....
Then came along the second arc (which will hereafter be named the romance arc). The romance arc shows off the style Kazuki Fumi has put together in the last few years (to varied reactions from otakus, for whom his approach to romance tends to be hit and miss). The romantic formation is abnormal, the romance is strange, and the end result is generally not what you would expect. Is this a good thing? If there hadn't been a third arc, it probably would have been.
Now, let's get down to the third arc. First, the third arc is a dramatic conclusion to the aftermath of the events that occurred in the first arc. This was actually the biggest mistake made in this game's structure and the reason I expelled it from the running for VN of the Month. The first thing you are asked to do upon starting this arc is pick which of the heroines you romanced in the second arc, which essentially just changes one or two scenes and the ending scene. The arc's story as a whole doesn't change at all, and it is short enough that I was able to finish it all in under an hour.
Now, why is this a problem? The reason is fairly simple. It completely screws up the pacing of the game. For better or worse, the second arc's 'endings' feel like a conclusion, even though I knew from the walkthrough that they weren't. They weren't a great conclusion, but if they'd been followed up with individual after-stories or completely customized versions of the third arc, this might have become a solid VN of the Year candidate. Unfortunately, the third arc is what amounts to a 'one size fits all' affair that makes the whole romantic mess of the second arc feel mostly irrelevant. Coming from someone who generally doesn't express a fondness for romance, I know this will sound strange... but this was a horrible way to handle things. This game isn't a kusoge, but I honestly can't recommend it with the current conclusion (hope for a story FD to smooth things out, maybe).
In conclusion, this is a game that shows signs of greatness throughout the first arc, falls back on romance in the second arc, and stumbles in the third arc. It has great characters, a good story and theme... and falls far short of what I've grown to expect from this writer after Nanairo Reincarnation.
"I have no regrets whatsoever about the fate I chose, bore, and walked to its end."
"The reason is that I had only to but bear the burden alone. It was a situation where the madman known as Valzeride was the only one that needed to suffer to the end."
"If offering up the Monster of Light as a sacrifice would bring my homeland prosperity, then there need be no hesitation. It truly was a perfect exchange. As I desired, I ran through the infinite hells to their end."
"Believing to the end that, beyond the holy war, a shining future where someone would be able to smile awaited..."
"My vow to fight using my willpower is unchanged even now. Even though I have fallen and become a Demon Star, I still feel that I must protect the goodness and peace of others."
"For that reason, be at peace, Horizon. Oh young man who is worthy of respect and the name of 'hero'"
"Ruin will not come to you even in the final battle in two days. As, if it is a matter where I alone must suffer, if the Lightning Emperor of Slaughter need only but suffer to the end..."
"... if at the end, I am able to stop someone else's tears, then, as always, there is no need to hesitate."
"The garbage known as 'the enemy of evil' is as foolishly invincible as ever."
"I know. That is why I wish to show you my answer."
"I wish to prove it to my great predecessor."
"I find that answer to be bright... no. That's right."
"I'll look forward to it."
VN of the Month, May 2018
First, VN of the Month, May 2018 is Shunkyoku no Tyrhia. While the game had some serious flaws, like all Liar Soft games, it was enjoyable enough that I felt it worth becoming a candidate for VN of the Month.
Maoten
Maoten is the game I was looking forward to the most for June's releases... and I was not in any way disappointed. The game is classic Candy Soft in some ways (the over the top characters, looser sexual mores than the norm in non-nukige, etc), but it also stands out as its own story.
This game focuses on a small town where a large number of demons settled after giving up rather quickly on conquering the world. The protagonist, who is at first unaware of this, is forced to an awareness of their existence by the rather extreme occurrence of Carlen's emergence into the world. Carlene, who is essentially a hedonistic free spirit with a child's attention span, becomes a catalyst for an interesting central story.
The protagonist of the story, Rentarou is a fishing addict with a kind heart and an inordinate fondness for women with large breasts (I know... *smiles wryly and shrugs*). He can be be proactive when it is necessary, but, as is typical of many essentially introspective protagonists, he has a tendency to fail to ask for help when he needs it.
There are three heroines in this game (though there are several noteworthy side-characters with h-scenes as well). The heroines are Rita (the protagonist's psychotic osananajimi), Yuuri (the protagonist's adoptive elder sister who happens to be a battle angel), and Carlene (the demon lord who devoured Shiva when he came down to obliterate the demon world).
In Maoten's world, demons who disrupt the human world seriously are subject to obliteration (usually along with any geographical features and lifeforms in the area) by the Angels, who are 'guardians of order' (supposedly). As such, the demons who arrived twenty years before survived by making agreements with Earth's government to allow for their settlement there.
Common Route
The common route varies between comedic and serious moments, with those same moments (typical of Candy Soft and its subsidiaries) often being mixed heavily. Generally speaking, most of it is comedic, with the more serious moments concentrated mostly in the beginning and at the end. A lot of this is simply because of the need to form a solid picture of Carlene's character, since she is the only one of the three heroines not to be living in immediate proximity to the protagonist.
I enjoyed the (rather long) common route and it had good pacing. However, it did leave a lot of things to your imagination int he worst way, so I felt myself wanting more even as I went into the heroine paths.
Carlene
Naturally, Carlene's path is the one I chose first. The relationship formation in this path is... kind of weird. Oh, there is definitely love there, but the resulting relationship can't really be called romantic. Rather it ends up as a rather weird version of a Queen and consort relationship, mostly due to Carlene's beliefs and her own view of her feelings toward Rentarou. There were a lot of rofl moments in this path, not the least during the h-scenes (you know that you are enjoying it when the h-scenes make you laugh). The actual story was good... and though I disliked how they dealt with the protagonist's own major issue, I just shrugged and lived with it in the end. The ending is one that made me smile, and it was perhaps too convenient... but I've yet to encounter a good ending from this company or its subsidiary (Minato soft) that wasn't that way to one extent or another.
Yuuri
Yuuri is an adorable person. While she seems both strict and friendly in public, in private with the protagonist, she is very much the 'wannabe oneechan', and she values her relationship with Rentarou greatly. The relationship building in this path is ridiculously straightforward, but in exchange this path deals with the events of ten years before (which involve the protagonist).
Like Karin's path, this one starts mostly amusing but becomes more story-focused as the protagonist digs deeper into past events surrounding the decaying hospice and himself. It was enjoyable, and the ending is worthy of a few happy tears in itself.
Rita
Rita's first path is something of a bad/normal ending. The story itself is excellently-written (as should be expected, given my experience with the previous paths), and this story deals the most intimately with the protagonist's most dramatic past issue. That said, this path has a much darker turn than the other two, at least for a time, and there is one scene that is borderline guro, so anyone coming into this one should be prepared. The humor in this path is much like the humor in the rest of the VN (typical Minato-soft/Candy Soft style character typical humor).
To give you a better idea of Rita's personality, she is like Kagome from Comyu (if she wasn't killing people to survive) or Momoyo from Majikoi (if she wasn't a martial artist). She is actively mischievous, strongly attached to her small circle of closest friends, and extremely hedonistic and self-absorbed much of the time.
Rita 2 (Another Path)
This path is referred to as Rita's second ending, but it is actually a non-romantic ending that serves as a general conclusion (it also wraps up the biggest loose end from the first Rita ending) to the story as a whole. This path is equally dramatic to Rita's path, but it is also a lot more emotionally stressful for much of its length. That said, I can honestly say there are no more secrets to this game's setting once this path is done, so it left me with a definite sense of satisfaction with the game as a whole.
Omake
The omake scenes in this game are basically a series of post-Another Path story and h-scenes focused on side characters (including one yaoi scene with Ramu). They are mostly humorous and/or ecchi... and it was nice to get some h-scenes with the game's rather large set of interesting female side-characters.
Conclusion
A first-class game that I've already put on my list of VN of the Year candidates. If you like the Majikoi style, this is an excellent game for you, but if you don't like it, there is a good chance you'll hate it. This game is apparently based in the same world as the Majikoi series, based on a cameo of certain characters, but I honestly question that, since I can't see Momoyo failing to sense Carlene and come to 'visit', lol.
The definition of a 'capable' heroine, in my case, is a heroine who manages to surf the waves of life and move circumstances to create a situation convenient to herself, either through manipulation or force of will. A heroine of this type might pursue a dream, pursue revenge, or pursue power, but what defines them is that they both 'seek' and 'take' what they want. Most heroines in male-oriented and otomege VNs do not fall into this area. Most are reliant on the males in their life to some extent, and without them they wouldn't get anywhere. This is a list of heroines who don't fit that particular stereotype, for one reason or another (incidentally, this isn't me being a male feminist... I just like this kind of heroine). These heroines aren't dependent by nature, though they might feel a strong attachment to or obsession for someone. These are heroines capable (both in general and psychologically) of navigating the sea of life with none or little help. If you feel someone belongs on this list, feel free to add them in the comments section. I might argue with you, but if it is within the ballpark, I won't delete the name, lol. (an exception... most heroines that are born all-powerful don't count, since they meet few if any challenges in their lives. As an example, Sofia from World Election doesn't count since she was born essentially unkillable, with a genius-level intelligence, and more power than anyone else in the world) A heroine of this type should be at least a little ruthless, even if it is only the sense that they are capable of pulling out stops in the way of their goals or manipulating others if necessary.
Kamio Ami (Semiramis no Tenbin)
Hinaori Kagome (Comyu)
Himehoshi Arika (Ojousama no Hanbun wa Ren'ai de Dekiteimasu)
Chitose Oboro Amatsu (Silverio Vendetta)
Amatsu Kanata (Devils Devel Concept)
Otonashi Saku (Hello, Lady)
Himegami Alice (Yami to Hikari no Sanctuary)
Fujina Kanori (Minamijuujisei Renka)
Tsukigase Sayane (Shuumatsu Shoujo Gensou Alicematic)
Hijikata Sei and Sakamoto Ryouma (Kikan Bakumatsu Ibun Last Cavalier)
Leona Kaname Burns (Electro-Arms)
Shiguresato Himeno (Hyper→Highspeed→Genius)
Naname Nanami (Ojousama wa Gokigen Naname)
Kizuna (Reminiscence)
Sakurakouji Luna (Tsuki ni Yorisou Otome no Sahou)
Nagisaka Hakua (Namima no Kuni no Faust)
Let's be clear... I have no reason to try to be fair to charage anymore. This might sound like a terrible statement to make, but the fact is, I've been a lot nicer than I wanted to be for years when it came to charage. I went out of my way to look for positive aspects, and when I found one, I deliberately put it in as positive a light I could without overdoing it. This was because the sensation I got coming out of most charage was fatigue. SOL, in small doses, is enjoyable and even relaxing... in the kind of doses I experienced over the last five years, it is downright toxic.
Now, down to the game... CharaBration is what is termed a 'thematic charage'. This is a type of VN with a preset theme that all the heroines and possibly the protagonist all adhere to to one degree or another. In this case, it is the duality of the heroines/protagonist's character types. Each of the characters presents one face to the world and another in private... and in the case of this game, the gap between them is massive.
The heroine who starts as the initial focus is Hai, the protagonist's cousin whom he thought was a sickly ojousama that he had to take care of... and is really the kind of tomboy who dominates all the males around her, with a coarse manner and foul language. Yukia, who is pretending to be her sister Mirei, presents herself normally as an arrogant leader who always dominates the room, but in private, she is shy and has trouble talking at all. Himeme is normally acts in a false male role, but she really prefers to act like the girl she really is. All the heroines are like this to one degree or another, and Rikka (the protagonist) ends up splitting his life between pretending to be a maid and attending school in his male form.
Now... this is a game with a lot of potentially fun elements, and it would have been great if the 'hidden' character traits for Hai, who was presented as the main heroine at first, weren't so grating. Starting out with a positive hatred for Hai that never really faded even after I got into the heroine routes (her ojousama act just made me more irritated, due to that fake cough) was a huge drag on the experience for me, and it is the reason why I took so long to finish even the paths I did. Hai is annoying, to be straight about it. While her presence is necessary to create the situation going in, her persona (both of them) drove me up the wall.
The fact that I actually liked the other heroines only made it worse, because whenever she came onto the scene, I just wanted to delete her character. I'm sure some will love her (there is someone for everyone, supposedly), but she isn't for me.
Common Route
Tbh, the common route spent so much time on Hai and stuff related to her that I'm tempted to erase it from my brain. However, it needs to be said that it does a good job of introducing the heroines and creating their relationships with Yuki/Rikka. Rikka is a standard 'I protest dressing up like a girl but I subconsciously am coming to love it' trap protagonist, and that creates a few moderately amusing scenes... However, I can't really said this did a good job of anything but introducing the heroines and creating those basic relationships. It is a pretty short common route, and the heroine routes afterward aren't long either, so it feels like more time and effort could have been spent deepening the relationships before they headed off into the romantic wilds.
Yukia
Yukia is easy to like, at least for me. Her helpful, kind nature is prevalent throughout much of the VN, and her other persona is mostly amusing (some of the ways she strings together lines to hold a conversation together make me laugh). Her relationship with her sister, Mirei, which comes out in her path, is amusing on several levels, and I like the way she grows as a character during the course of her path. That said, her ending is somewhat disappointing, as I would have liked to see what she and Rikka were like after graduation.
Corona
I chose Corona as the second heroine mostly because she is Yukia's opposite in so many ways... and because I rolled a pair of dice to decide which would be the second and final heroine I would play (I can't bring myself to play all the heroines in this type of game anymore). Umm... I really like her character, if only because it makes me laugh (an easily-embarrassed prime personality and a secondary personality that strips without a hint of hesitation and is obsessed with other women's breasts... definitely worth a laugh). In fact, this path is nicely weird, especially because of how those twin personalities interact with the romance. If Yukia's path was par for the course (predictable and staid as trap protagonist and ojousama heroines go), Corona's went pretty far out there. The epilogue and after story was also too close to the ending in chronology though, *sighs*.
Conclusions
Despite some high points, this game is pretty average as charage go. Like a lot of thematic charage, it makes the mistake of assuming that the theme is all-powerful, and, as a result, it falls short on a lot of minor points. I was particularly irritated at the way they handled the endings/epilogues, and I felt that the writer didn't really do Corona or Yukia justice, when it came down to it. Given more detail and time spent deepening character relationships in a believable fashion, it would have been much easier to engross myself in the setting. Unfortunately, that never happened here (the good parts of Yukia's and Corona's paths stand out so much precisely because they are the best parts of the VN by far). It felt like the writer wrote his favorite scenes first then sort of created a bare-bones framework to support it using the theme.
This is the latest game released by Akabeisoft3, the bastard company made by Akabeisoft2 to take in all the subsidiaries of its parent company other than itself, Applique, and Akatsuki Works. The game was written by Nakajima Taiga, who first made his name as the writer of Dekinai Watashi ga, Kurikaesu and gained yet more fame with the utsuge Inochi no Spare.
This game is a nakige, though it is one that leaves a lot more bitter in with the sweet than is normal. It is based in a Japanese inn called Yuki, where ghosts can interact with the physical world in order to complete the desire that keeps them in the world. In order to hide the fact that they are ghosts from the normal customers, the employees wear cosplay to make the unusual or out of season clothing the ghosts are often wearing not stand out.
The protagonist, Haruto is the bantou, the male in charge of greeting customers arriving and taking reservations. He has been there for ten years and is seen as a reliable employee by the younger staff. He is very much a workaholic, performing his duties with absolute devotion and no real hesitation... it is just that those duties involve arranging the things that 'non-reservation customers' (the ghosts) need to fulfill their last desires. These desires are often simple things like wanting to say something or leave a message for a loved one, but can also be somewhat crazy things like wanting to get into a swordfight to the death. Haruto takes on all these requests without hesitation or any real emotional disturbance. Nonetheless, he does care.
The partings in this game are probably the most vivid aspect... naturally, you come to know the ghosts' stories, and when the time for parting comes, it is always sad, even if you know they are going away happy and satisfied. I cried repeatedly during these scenes.
There are four heroines in this game: Neko, the ghost of a girl who wanted to live freely but was unable to when alive; San, a cheery girl who gets along with everyone and enjoys her work; Kohane, a nervous otaku girl whose dream is to become a professional cook; and Sakine, a somewhat gloomy woman in her mid to late twenties who decided to work at the inn on impulse.
Neko
Neko was the first heroine I pursued, mostly because I have a thing for girls who say ~nyaa. Neko is a seemingly whimsical girl who loves to hang around the protagonist and constantly makes false attempts to play hooky from her work... but never really does so. Her path starts out as a soft romance between two souls with a lot in common...
... but the fact is that Neko is a ghost, and there was no way it was going to have a purely happy ending. Neko's path is full of small happiness and frequent sorrow, and the desire that binds her to the world is heartbreaking in and of itself. I honestly found myself crying for the entirety of the last hour of the path, to the point where I developed a sinus headache.
Kohane
Kohane is the assistant to Makoto, the fake homosexual cook (the story behind how that happened is hilarious in retrospect but it is part of a sad scene). She is shy and is very negative about herself, but there is enough iron in her core that she has managed to stay for one year under Makoto's extremely harsh tutelage. Kohane is a living heroine (as opposed to Neko, who was a ghost), and her path differs accordingly.
Kohane's personal issues were actually fairly interesting... enough so that I was honestly able to empathize with the last scene and cry my eyes out (again). The last scenes in this path are all highly emotional, but there is a lot less bitter in with the sweet than Neko's ending, which feels more bitter. One issue that is common to both this one and Neko's path is that the protagonist's own issues aren't addressed, sadly for him, though it doesn't seem to bother him much (which is understandable once you know about him). It isn't a negative issue, since it makes sense within the context of the story.
Sakina
Sakina is the only full adult heroine in this VN (by the story, I'm guessing 27 or 28). Having quit her job previous to coming to stay at the inn, she decides to work there soon after the game begins. She is quiet, shy, and a bit gloomy at times. However, she is also kind and thoughtful. Unlike the other heroines, you will only rarely see her smile, but those few smiles are the ones that get you.
Sakina's path is... tied up with the protagonist's past. The way this route turns out is different from the previous two (though I can't tell you why without spoiling), but it was interesting in and of itself. I didn't end up crying my way through the whole later part of the game, but the ending was uplifting and bright.
San
San is the game's central heroine. Her personality is bright and sunny, generous and giving by nature with a strong spirit. San is a student as well as one of the inn's hostesses (a job shared by Neko and Sakina), and her favored cosplay are a dog-girl, a maid, and a new wafuu (Japanese style) idol.
Her path, like many central heroine paths, is the only one where all the major character issues are resolved (though only speculatively based on the epilogue in a few cases), and it is also the only one where the protagonist's own major issue is resolved. Like Neko's path, this one is very bittersweet, and like many cases in this VN, the partings here had me in tears for long periods of time, leading to sinus headaches (this game took me longer than it would have otherwise because I kept having to stop playing after I cried myself into a headache). I will say that I consider the ending to be a happy one, but, thinking of how San had to feel in the time between the ending and the epilogue breaks my heart even now...
Overall
Overall, this is an excellent nakige by a writer who seems to be able to write across all the genres and involving characters of all types and ages. For those who want a lot of catharsis, this is a great choice, but be prepared for a bit more 'bitter' in with the 'sweet' than is normal with a nakige (though it is still a nakige, rather than an utsuge). Despite my remarks on how bittersweet this game is as a whole, it should be noted that the atmosphere at Yuki, the ryokan (Japanese-style inn) that serves the setting, is very warm, welcoming, and downright familial to the point that I found myself wanting to jump into the game and stay a night there. I liked all the characters, including the side-ones, like Sentarou (the night security guard and exorcist that bears a passing resemblance to Archer from FSN), Toki (the century and a half hold ghost owner of the inn), and Makoto (the macho fake homosexual head cook). This isn't a kamige, though I'm tempted to call it one based on my general level of satisfaction, but it comes pretty damned close.
Ok, I know some of you are going to wonder why I bothered with this game. As the remake of Iinchou wa Shounin-sezu, this game exists as a reboot of a game that wasn't interesting in the first place. So, why did I decide to play this, despite having stopped VN of the Month? Pure perversity and contrariness, probably.
The big problem with this game, saying it outright from the first, is that it uses a style that has more or less vanished due to its massive unpopularity with the target audience. Generally speaking, a comedy game that isn't really funny and a charage that spends a ridiculously low amount of time getting to know the heroines is going to be considered a failure, don't you think? Moreover, it kept the 'brief scene swaps' technique of yesteryear, where choices leading to heroine paths only switch out the scenes related to the heroine and the ending.
There are six heroines in this game, and some of them actually get close to being interesting. Unfortunately, the heroines never step past their initial impressions as characters, and they all have the same clingy side once they get close to the protagonist. While I like clingy heroines, there are ones where that particular personality trait didn't make that much sense, and the actual process of turning from 'acquaintance' to 'lover' is so abrupt that it feels unnatural. This is especially true since character development in the common route is almost nonexistent and there is relatively little in the paths themselves.
In other words, this game is pure amateur hour, from a writer who rarely does anything but nukige.
This is an opinion that has been a long time in forming, but I am coming around to an opinion that the more simplistic viewpoints I've possessed on the differences between American approaches to storytelling and Japanese ones are somewhat off the mark. Note: This is a rant, it should be treated as a rant, and if it doesn't make sense to you, that is because it is my brain leaking into text on this blog.
First, my original opinion:
To put it simply, it was my belief that the Japanese had a tendency to go for emotional surrealism (in other words, emotional bombardment) and visual excess (exaggeration) to tell their stories. In opposition, Americans tend to go for the 'gritty and realistic', with straight out bullet to the head realism. This was a generalization that, while based on my experiences with Japanese video games that told a story (both VNs and jrpgs) and Western games that more or less tried to do the same (Isometric RPGs, Bethesda-style games, etc), was never meant to be an absolute statement but just a general opinion of the tendencies I'd encountered.
Second, my new opinion:
First, I've come to the conclusion that American gaming companies don't know how to tell a story anymore (since Bioware has gone crappy, Obsidian is about to get absorbed/has been absorbed by a company that has no idea of what it is doing, and the Witcher was made by Polish people). Second, the Japanese seem to suffer from a similar malaise... and the source is, quite ironically, fairly similar in the cases of mainstream games.
It is the disease I call the 'MMO virus'. Yes, you who actually read my blog know my opinion on online multiplayer games and what they have done to erode storytelling games in general, but my recent conclusion is that this erosion has actually reached a critical point in the last five years. Rebellions against the progression of this disease have occurred (Tales of Berseria, Xenoblade Chronicles 2, and Nier: Automata come to mind for the Japanese, and Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire for America), but these have been relatively minor upthrusts against the toxins released by the cloud of mission-based 'stories' you see in games nowadays. Bethesda has also contributed to this plague (fetch quests and hunt the monster quests being a common plague for them as well), and it seems like every time I turn around, I see another game trying to tell its story through an obvious mission or quest system is sitting right there. Sure, the systems had their roots in D&D games, but the way they've developed is the result of the plague that infected the world using games like WoW as its vector.
I first began to see signs of this disease back in the PS2 era, though it was mostly limited to 'high end' games at the time, like Final Fantasy (XII having essentially repurposed and altered XI's MMO battle system for a single-player model), I was honestly horrified to see how easy it was to let myself get led around by the nose from objective to objective in hopes that I'd find the story in there somewhere. The problem was, once the objectives became my reason for playing (as was inevitable, because that is the tactic they use to draw you in), I increasingly realized that I couldn't enjoy what story was being told, because I was impatient to get to the next objective, even though I didn't find any of that searching for objectives to be fun in the least.
VNs suffer from a different set of problems. While jrpgs and western games suffer from the simple fact that the current generation of makers grew up obsessing over pathetic attempts to graft stories onto multiplayer games, VNs suffer from the fact that the best and brightest of their creators are... getting old. Hell, some of them even died in between projects. Worse, no one of equal capability has replaced them, leading to an unfortunate confluence of near-universal incompetence and corporate inability to grasp the reasons for failure and fix it.
No, I'm not saying that all new VNs suck. Hell, if they all sucked, I wouldn't still be trying to go back and play them, like the burnt-out junkie I am. No, my issue is that there is a sudden dearth of developed talent within the world of VNs that has gotten horrible in the last five years. Most of the major names are retired, have moved on to 'greater' things, or are dead. Shumon Yuu is silent, Hino Wataru seems to have gone underground, Masada is probably off in his own little world, Fujisaki Ryuuta is circling in place, Kurashiki Tatsuya is off indulging his inner sadist with half-assed games, Kazuki Fumi can't seem to stick with one thing long enough to make it great since Akeiro Kaikitan, and Agobarrier is three years dead. That isn't even mentioning all the formerly major names that have just decided to retire without telling anyone or got hired away by mainstream video game companies.
What is replacing them are primarily LN writers... who, unfortunately, tend to write like middle school street kids on crack (and not in a good way). They often have great ideas, but they are fuzzy about execution and lacking in technique. As a result, you get a bunch of third-rate one-off VNs that no one really likes.
Artists aren't a problem. There will always be plenty of skilled otaku artists who can draw h-scenes. The issue is and always will be writers... because it is the writer that decides whether a VN will become remembered for years to come or be dropped back into the dung at the bottom of the latrine.
Well, essentially the above poll came down to a tie vote between Random Chuunige and Meguri, Hitohira.
I'll give you a quick run down on the two choices that is a bit more detailed than the post above.
Meguri, Hitohira
Essentially, the protagonist of this story is a loner with the ability to see non-humans and other mystical beings. He has lived much of his adult life in despair, blaming himself for the death of his little sister, who was the only person who understood him and accepted his ability... and whom he believes died as a result. The protagonist is an artist, and when he goes to a small town with a run-down Shinto Shrine (no human dwellers), he encounters a loli goddess, who subsequently grants his wish... to meet his little sister again.
I played the prologue of this game a while back to see whether it was something I'd want to sit down and play at length later, and my first impression is that the game is set up to be a mix of 'hohoemashii' warm-heartedness, catharsis, and a generally somber atmosphere.
Random Chuunige
The current candidates for this are Kaziklu Bey, Bullet Butlers, ExE, Master Re:Master, Muramasa, Jingai Makyou, Ayakashibito, and Tokyo Necro. Due to a number of requests, I've also added: Soranica Ele, Paradise Lost, Abyss Homicide Club, and an Ayakashibito>Bullet Butlers>Chrono Belt marathon.
The most requested was Paradise Lost, and I had four separate people request that I do the marathon of the three related Propeller games. Since they all fit the bill, I decided to shrug and just add them in as options... in fact, I think I'll cut out the individual options for Ayakashibito and Bullet Butlers, just to make it fair when it comes to the random choice.
This is the newest game by Sweet & Tea, the makers of the near-kamige (kamige in my heart) Karenai Sekai to Owaru Hana. This has a different set of writers, with Ban'ya of Kuroinu and Mugen Renkan handling the sweaty H-scenes and NYAON, the writer of Moshimo Ashita ga Harenaraba (and a few charage and nakige besides that) as the main writer.
Now, this is a kinetic 3P lovey-dovey nakige about a girl named Iroha who, after spending ten years trapped in a divine realm by accident with a wolf god, is returned to that realm... with wolf-ears! (lol) I say it is about Iroha mostly because of my fetish, but it is really about her, the protagonist Shuuji, his girlfriend Kana, and the people around them.
Now, a few things to get out of the way before I put down my own feelings and impressions... for those who don't like cheater protagonists, I'm going to come out with it straight up. He cheats on Kana with Iroha. The fact that this is mostly a comedic element is because of Iroha's animalistic/innocent manner (she's actually just aggressive about what she wants and more knowledgeable than her speech patterns indicate), and the fact that Kana has pretty much been the seducer/brainwasher side of the relationship with Shuuji, who tends to be the type to give in to the girls he cares about in just about everything.
Now, this game never goes really dark. It has some bad moments for the characters emotionally (the protagonist has his own issues and ten years is a LONG time), but that is all properly resolved in a cathartic way, as is the way with nakige. Unlike Karenai Hana, there is no aura of terrible suffering and despair, and the protagonist is mostly about compassion and love rather than self-sacrificing love and guilt.
While this game is pretty short (think about four hours for me, six to seven hours for the average reader), it doesn't feel unsatisfying for what it is. I did want a more extensive epilogue, but the one I got was hilariously H, so I came out of this feeling mostly satisfied.
Perhaps my sole real reservation is the fact that this didn't become a 4P with Chihiro, who is obviously interested in Shuuji (even moreso by the end). I'm thinking that they will eventually make a followup, sequel, or fandisc to advance the whole story more. However, with the immediate issues all resolved, the game doesn't feel as truncated as I usually feel with games setting up for sequels or fandiscs from the beginning.
Due to work and other stuff, I hadn't had time to really get into this until recently, and with friday signaling the release of October's list of VNs, at least one of which (Deep One) will play immediately, I felt that it would be fitting to go ahead and give you my initial impression of the game.
My first impression, after playing through the prologue, was that, while this game is pretty old, it is also very... familiar in an odd way. At first, I couldn't figure out where that impression was coming from... but then it struck me!
I finally figured out where Favorite stole its basic style. It always bugged the hell out of me that Favorite was able to produce such decent to great games despite essentially being a company full of lolicons and the writer basically being an unknown who produced two mediocre games before Irotoridori. The atmosphere of Meguri, Hitohira is almost identical to Irotoridori and AstralAir... which made the game feel pretty familiar as I delved into it.
However, this familiarity wasn't a bad thing, because I always liked the atmosphere of those games, even if I felt nothing but contempt for the loliconism. Say what you want about Favorite, but the atmosphere of their games is usually worth buying them for.
That said, this is a Shumon Yuu work... and Shumon Yuu is easily the best non-genre-specific writer in VNs. I was crying inside the prologue, empathizing deeply with the protagonist, his predicament, and his hangups, despite knowing that similar protagonists in other VNs have pissed me off in the past (understand, it takes a master's hand to make the suffering and self-hatred of a sensitive young man as sweet as honey, and when it goes wrong, it generally feels like I was eating aspartame in powder form afterwards). The fact that the game is very, very dated didn't hurt the presentation nearly as much as it does with some other old games (Ikusa Megami comes to mind, as does Tsukihime, despite my love for it).
Since I haven't hit an ending, I don't have a conclusion for you... but even if this game were to flop on its face later (an impossibility, given the writer) it would still be worth playing. You probably won't see my final impressions for a while, because, even though this game is engrossing and emotional, it takes actual courage get into it, since I know Shumon Yuu's habits well enough to figure out in a vague sense where he plans to go with the story (Hint: Most of Shumon Yuu's games almost border on utsuge at times, with the exception of Tenshi no Hane o Fumanaide).
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).
This game is on a short list of VNs from 2015 that I am pretty sure I underrated. As a result, I decided to take a second look at it and see if my impressions changed. To an extent, they did. I was much nicer to it this time around, if only because I had better perspective after having taken a few steps back from VNs in general.
This game is focused on the Gardening Club of a Protestant boarding school in Japan. The protagonist, Haruto (real name Hartviche or something like that) is a vampire born in the twelfth century and staked rather thoroughly by the Inquisition in the sixteenth century. He was then revived by the game's main heroine, Kureha, who gave his mummified corpse some of her blood as a child. His body then reverted to a child state of equal age to hers and he ended up being raised a second time as her little brother.
It should be noted for those who hate nerfed fantasy that this game is somewhat borderline in that respect. In this game's version of our world, vampires are actually people who, through intense mental and magical training, exceeded human limits and became able to live solely off of life energy or blood. Their purpose in doing so (at least the ones who became vampires by this method) was to save humanity by eventually becoming one with the world. If this sounds vague to you, don't worry, you aren't alone... it is probably the most out-there outlook on vampires I've seen since Twilight, lol.
Anyway, Haruto, who is a member of the club, one day finds that he has entered a state called the Flower Choosing, in which he is required biologically to find his mate and drink their blood, with the near-100% chance they will turn into a vampire themselves. Haruto, being a goody-goody type, is of course greatly conflicted by this idea (since his experience tells him that very few humans can withstand the burdens of eternity), and, like the hetare all charage protagonists who aren't hot-blooded or super-lucky (as in, the situation resolves itself without him having to move), he waffles a lot during the common route and heroine routes.
You won't see any action scenes in this game... though there are plenty of scenes that are emotional, the game's length turns out to be its greatest weakness at times. The common route and the heroine routes are about as long as you'd expect from a Yuzu-soft game, rather than your standard charage, and a ridiculous amount of time is spent with Haruto and the heroines wringing their hands about stuff that is exasperating, looking at it from the outside.
Nonetheless, the emotional moments are generally worth the wait, and I can honestly say there is one area in which this game managed to redeem itself in my eyes... the endings. Every one of the endings in this game is a 'years later' ending, meaning you aren't stuck reading what they did the day after the climax (a common occurrence in charage, mostly because companies want to leave stuff for a possible FD or just because it is 'tradition' now). However, one thing that seriously irritated me about this game (besides the somewhat excessive length created at least in part by switching out scenes depending on which heroine is set to dominate at the end of the common route) is the way the vampire setting only ever really lives up to its full potential in Kureha's route. Oh, there are a few moments in each route where you can go 'that would be kind of cool', but Haruto's general reluctance to use his abilities or actually change the girls ruins most of it.
I have better perspective now, so I can see it didn't deserve the poor rating I gave it way back when... but if you asked me if it was satisfying, I'd say it falls short.
This is essentially a bundle release of all Hello, Lady related games/scenarios. As such, normally I wouldn't really see much of a need to go back over it... but there was enough material added here to make it worth a further assessment.
Hello, Lady
The original game, Hello, Lady, is unchanged from its original version. That's to say, it is the last truly great Akatsuki Works game.
For those who have never read my long-past review of the game, it occurs during the same time period as Hi no nai Tokoro ni Kemuri wa Tatenai and in the same generalized setting as Ruitomo. It is also based in the same city as Hi no nai Tokoro, though the events occur completely in parallel without having any effect on one another.
The game focuses on Tenkawa Noble School, an educational institute for those possessing the special power known as 'Halo', a power that takes many forms but at the core allows the possessor to alter reality within strictly defined limits. The school is run partially as a research institute and partially as a training school for MHIs (the possessors of the aforementioned ability). At the head of the student body are five highest-ranking MHIs (the only five who have reached Etoile class) who are also called the Crown.
Into this comes Narita Shinri, a supremely arrogant, supremely capable, and supremely perverted man with a habit of speaking in a manner more suited for the stage of live theater than real life. He enrolls as a student, but from the very beginning, he says he doesn't agree with the ideals espoused by the school's management and founders... and he also has an extremely bad habit of feeling up every girl he meets.
Hello, Lady's main game is, in the end, a story of vengeance and romance intertwined. It is frequently deeply emotional, and Narita is surprisingly human under his arrogant outer layers (OK, he never stops the arrogance, but it grows on you pretty quickly and is the source of a lot of laughter). The issues with MHIs, both social and practical, are deep and effect the story strongly.
Overall, that this is a game that I could still enjoy on a third playthrough says everything.
New Division
New Division focuses on two girls who were immensely intriguing in the original game, but were essentially shuffled to the side. My guess is that AW figured they could make more money by keeping these two stories separate than by including them in the main game, even as extras.
Hishia, Narita Shinri's utterly loyal maid, is one of the two heroines bestowed with a route in this game. The basic scenario of her story is a mixture of recollections of her past with him, her interactions with the heroines during their brief meetings, and it follows the outline of Saku's path (albeit without romance between those two). Hishia, even before you get to know her past, is an interesting character (and not just because she is a maid with machine guns under his skirts). Her constant making fun of Shinri (which he hardly notices for the most part) and the way she talks about him behind his back with the heroines is pretty amusing. I found her battle with one of the major antagonists to the best part, chuunige-wise, in her path... while the ending of the battle was inevitable, Hishia was still badass.
Mitori is one of those rare individuals born an MHI, meaning that she used her powers as a matter of course through her young life and was... significantly 'different' from the rest of humanity until her meeting with Saku. Her path, unfortunately (and predictably for anyone who played the main game) is full of tragedy and despair... but it is also very informative about the setting itself, filling in some of the holes left empty or poorly filled in by the main game. I cried several times in this path, as I did for Hishia (Hishia's past is tragic, by most standards).
Superior Entelecheia
This is the extra scenario from the Vita version of the game. Superior has a strong focus on the motivations of the antagonists (all of them), and as a result, it is pretty over the top. The battles and conflicts in this path are more complex and less of a one-sided 'Narita getting what he wants' kind of thing. This path has a lot of emotional ups and downs, and it digs much, much farther into the reasons why things ended up the way they did before the original story started. The ending itself left me in tears, then had me laughing.
I do have some complaints about this, though... one is that the VA quality is lower, the VAs differ for several characters (Hishia's VA was so different as to be almost unrecognizable), and there are a few lines here and there that probably could have been fixed with a simple retake. Still, it wasn't enough to keep me from enjoying the experience as a whole.
Alls well that Ends Well
This is the only part of this unique to this release... to be straight, it is a comedy scenario with h-scenes for all the heroines but Sorako. It made me laugh briefly, especially toward the end.
Hatsugamai (or Soshite Hatsukoi ga Imouto ni Naru) is one of my favorite nakige from the last four years. Feeling in the need of some emotional catharsis, I finally went back to it a while back, and I was blown away a second time by just how powerful the emotions this game brings out are.
First, it should be noted that Alcot Honeycomb, the subsidiary of Alcot that produced this game is known for two things... that it is a low to mid-price and budget company and for the fact that they have never produced a flop. Every one of their games has come out in the black within six months of release, and they inevitably end up placing at least in the top twenty of any given year. Another quality of their games is that there are no 'wasted scenes' in their games. Every scene drives story and path progression, without exception. This game is no exception.
I am going to focus on introducing the characters of this game, since you can check out my previous blog post on the game if you want an idea of what the game as a whole is like.
Tokitani Kazuharu- The protagonist of the story, he is a hard-working young man who is absolutely devoted to his own financial independence and protecting his 'family' (currently consisting of Shinobu and Manami). At the age of eight, he ran away from home to get away from verbal and physical abuse from his mother and eventually adopted another runaway, his 'imouto' Shinobu. If it weren't for Old Man Tatara, their current guardian, he probably would have ended up living on the street for the rest of what was likely to be a very short life. As it is, he works hard every day at multiple part time jobs to feed, clothe, and shelter himself and Shinobu (ignoring Tatara's offers to pay for everything) and lives at a rickety school dorm with Tatara's granddaughter Manami. Kazuharu is a young man of intense feeling and kindness. While he considers himself to be a practical, at times unfeeling person, it is fairly obvious to those around him that he is the very reverse of that. Kazuharu is constitutionally incapable of setting aside responsibilities or abandoning someone who calls out to him for help. His immense capacity for love and selfless behavior make him a powerful character, and his emotional scars often bring tears to my eyes.
Tokitani Shinobu- As a small child, she ran away from an abusive situation to live under a bridge, where she was found and informally adopted by Kazuharu. She quickly and intensely fell in love with Kazuharu after his ferocious efforts to protect her and keep her fed in the time before Tatara discovered and took them in, and that love has, if anything, only grown deeper and more intense with time (she is almost yandere at times). Unlike Kazuharu, who struggles with school while working, she is the student council president and the highest scorer on school tests, while still working multiple part-time jobs. Like Kazuharu, she has a very clear-headed and down-to-earth view of the future... if you ignore the fact that her view of the future involves her creating a corporation solely so she can take the burden of financial support off her brother's shoulders. Despite how this sounds, she isn't completely monomaniacal. Having been practically raised by Kazuharu and seeing him as an example, she is a deeply kind and compassionate young woman, with a deep capacity for love that matches his own.
Tatara Manami- One of the three major side characters in the game, along with her grandfather, she is a child (about ten) who speaks in Kansai-ben and has a tendency to abuse pseudo-anglicanisms. Her cheery personality and cute attempts to sort-of mother the people at the dorm hide a deep loneliness born from the fact that her parents abandoned her, leaving her busy grandfather to raise her pretty much as an absentee parent. She has a strong bond with the Tokitani siblings, one that is at times adversarial (jokingly) with Kazuharu and conspiratorial with Shinobu.
Tatara Taizen- Shinobu and Kazuharu's guardian and Manami's grandfather... as well as the owner and head of the board of directors for Shinobu and Kazuharu's high school. He is a man who has spent his entire life in education and sent innumerable students out to succeed in the world. However, his own family is a horrible mess, with his daughter and son-in-law having abandoned his granddaughter Manami and his own responsibilities making it impossible for him to raise her in his own home. He adopted Shinobu and Kazuharu when he discovered them as runaways (he has apparently done this in the past) and supported them out of compassion. He is a true educator at heart, devoting himself to the well-being and future of his students. He and Kazuharu frequently fight (in a friendly manner) and his mannerisms are frequently humorous or deliberately display him as a dirty old man. However, his love for Manami and the two siblings is deep.
Minamino Shouhei- Kazuharu's best friend and the son of a yakuza family. Despite his origins, his goal in life is to work in childcare, and his personality is kind and cheerful to the core. Along with Yuka and the Tokitani siblings, he is part of a group of 'hard-working friends' who have been together more or less since before middle school. He deeply resents the path his father wants for him in life, and he is definitely in rebellion against the family business. While he is unaware of the Tokitani siblings' past, he is still the only person who can confront Kazuharu on completely equal terms in the game (for reasons that become obvious if you play the game).
Miyamoto Yuuka- The other childhood friend besides Shouhei (and one of the heroines) she is a pin-up model who dreams of becoming an actress, working long hours after school toward that goal and ignoring her parents' skepticism. Yuuka is a bright and cheerful character with perhaps the most 'normal' viewpoint of the characters in the game, serving as a touchstone for the warped (understandably so) viewpoints of the other characters. That said, she is also in the entertainment business, so she isn't unfamiliar with the 'dark side'. However, it hasn't tainted her, as of yet. She has a strong will and is a dreamer at heart (whereas the others are mostly down to earth), contrasting her to the other characters on just about every point.
Tanaka Neneko- A ferociously strong-willed senpai at both Kazuharu's work and at school, she is also the worst kind of boss, ordering him to do everything in five minutes. Raised in an unstable household where both her parents were frequently ill, her role model was her elder sister, who worked intensely hard to bring the family back together after the kids were briefly put into the system due to their parents' inability to work. Neneko works intensely hard, often getting exasperated reactions from Kazuharu (who works for money, only working hard when it is necessary or when it is part of the job). She is constantly smiling and is the older sister of the group, frequently ending up as the advisor when it isn't her path.
Kawatsu Tsubasa- The game's main heroine, whose appearance is the catalyst for the events that create the game's story. Like Kazuharu and Shinobu, she has experienced both abandonment and abuse from her family (mostly psychological abuse), but unlike those two, she isn't really capable of anger, so she has no outlet to release her stress. Despite her fragile appearance, she is not weak-willed... she is simply the type that endures, bending with the wind rather than standing firm within it. Like both Kazuharu and Shinobu, she has an intense, deep well of love. However, she is also far more willing to believe in others than either of them is, unwilling to give up on others until she is driven beyond her ability to endure.
Over the last few weeks, I've gone back through all of the chuunige Hino Wataru was responsible for, and I came up with a number of common points that exist in each of his games, that define his overall style. At the same time, I thought I'd also mention why I usually recommend Comyu to people despite the translation being such a disaster.
Hino Wataru patterns
Hino Wataru has a number of unique patterns that define his style of writing chuunige (some of it spills over into his SOL games, which I plan to replay soon as well). Here, I will describe these patterns and why they are unique in modern non-nukige VNs.
First, every Hino Wataru game has at least one major character (antagonist, protagonist, main character, or heroine) who is sexually open or strongly driven by their sexual impulses to the point of being out of control. In Ruitomo, it was the infamous predatory lesbian Atori. In Hello, Lady, Narita Shinri is himself the one with the overdriven libido. In Comyu, both Haru and Akihito can be considered to be of this type, albeit for opposite sexes. Shizuku (a major antagonist in Suisei Ginka) is pretty much a bisexual succubus. Akeno Shuri himself in Hi ga Nai is the sexually amoral one. (incidentally, the first complaint most people have about Akihito from Comyu is that he is a cheating man-whore... but I always figured they were just being prudes)
Second, every Hino Wataru chuunige has some kind of internal catchphrase (sometimes multiple ones) that plays a vital part in the thought processes of the protagonist. In Ruitomo, it is 'we are cursed'. In Comyu, it is 'koko wa yasashii oukoku' and 'soredemo, to'. In Hello, Lady it is 'Nasu beki koto o nasudarou.'. Generally speaking, these phrases are often loaded with multiple meanings or meanings that are unconventional. Unfortunately, these phrases and a lot of Hino Wataru's other wordgames just don't translate at all, which is one of the reasons why Comyu's translation comes across as flat or awkward.
Third, a lot (not all) of his chuunige involve a group of characters forced together because of circumstance that never quite get over that first awkwardness. The heroines of Hello, Lady never really settle down around Shinri. Ruitomo's group of friends are constantly on the verge of being at one another's throats over one thing or another. Comyu's main cast has so many conflicting personalities it is a miracle they don't kill one another (literally).
Hino Wataru loves to philosophize. All of his chuunige protagonists philosophize or have a moral policy that is slightly or completely out of sync with conventional morality. Narita is capable of valuing life deeply while taking the lives of others ruthlessly for the sake of his goals. Akihito is ruthless at times, excessively soft on women, and actively prioritizes those close to him over what is right. It goes on.
Comyu
During my recent replay of Comyu, I was reminded again of why I stopped playing VNs in English. I played the patched version of Comyu shortly after it came out, out of curiosity... and it was enough to put me off playing translates games entirely for years after. A lot of this has to do with elements of Hino Wataru's style that just don't translate well, so it can't be said to the translator's fault entirely...
As such, it always screws with me when people nitpick the translation then use it to bash the game itself. Calling Akihito a man-whore is fine, but using that as a reason not to like the game always struck me as stupid, since he has a lot more stuff to him that makes him interesting.
Anyway, down to the nuts and bolts...
Comyu, as anyone who has played it knows, suffers because of the way the paths are locked at the beginning. To be blunt, nobody who plays the game likes Benio as a heroine. She is naive, her personality is incompatible with what is going on, and, though she serves as a perfect opposite to Isawa, that doesn't get around the fact that her naivete is frequently annoying. As a side-character, she is excellent, but, like Ruitomo, forcing you to play the least interesting heroine first doesn't make for a good start.
Hisoka's path benefits from being highly emotional... Hisoka's situation is a tear-jerker, and the way you are introduced to it is ideal for ripping your heart out and serving it back to you on a plate. It has one bad, one normal, and one 'sort of good' ending... However, it is also much bloodier and darker than Benio's path, providing a strong contrast.
Mayuki's path is significantly more light-hearted and SOL-focused than the previous two paths, but it too has a number of strongly emotional moments. It has one bad and one good ending and only one major fight.
Now we come to Kagome's path (Ayaya's not being worth mentioning). Kagome is, very obviously from the beginning, the true heroine of the game. She and Akihito are inseparable in all the paths, and the one thing she never does is abandon him. This path reveals the 'area behind the stage' in its entirely, and as a result, it is exponentially more bloody than all the other paths combined. Kagome's own truths are about as dark as they come, and all the characters are pushed to their very limits, many of them dying in the process.
Kagome is one of the major reasons I come back to this game on occasion. She is also the heroine who sparked my recognition of the phenomenon of the 'absolutely connected' heroine (the type of heroine who is so close to the protagonist that she is still by his side in all the paths, unless she dies). Not to mention she is the only heroine I've ever encountered who honestly loves the protagonist to the point of being truly deredere and yet has a semi-permanent sneer/contemptuous smile on her face (I consider her to the ultimate spiky tsundere). Well, she is also truly contemptuous of him... it just doesn't get in the way of her loving him.
Kamikaze Explorer was the third game from Clochette I played, and even today it remains in my memory as one of the most well-balanced charage/plotge hybrids I've ever played. I say 'balanced' because most games don't achieve hybridization at all. Most charage are essentially character development, light romance, and SOL with little else. Plotge, on the other hand, often tend to go for 'efficiency' on character development, romance, and SOL (exceptions exist), and true hybridization of the genres has become exceedingly rare in recent years (specifically since the beginning of 2015, we saw a general decline in charage with actual stories and a fall in the overall number of plotge).
Clochette is a company more famous for being full of oppai girls than for its stories... but that is mostly because anyone's first impression on seeing the cast of one of their games is that the heroines are all... large, to say the least. That said, except for a few failures like Amatsu Misora ni, this company has produced nothing but charage/plotge hybrids since it came into existence, with the company having a steady, if not huge, following in Japan and over here.
Kamikaze Explorer is based in a future where much of the world has been sunk under the oceans and technological development has stagnated. However, about twenty years before the story began, large numbers of children began to be born with or display supernatural abilities that came to be labeled as Metis. These abilities generally were based somehow off of the hidden desires of the user, and, in the more well-off countries, it was decided to research them in a humane manner rather than the inhumane one you would usually expect.
The protagonist, Hayase Keiji transfers into a school that is centered on researching and training such individuals (such individuals being labeled as Metis-passers). At the school, he is immediately recruited by the pretending-to-be-arrogant-but-actually-shy ojousama Mishio into Argonaut, a club that seeks to help people in general while also acting to solve Metis-related incidents at the same time. Keiji is something of a genius, driven by his sense of curiosity to the point of obsession, and his current obsession is Metis.
From a purely SOL-romance point of view, this game is pretty sappy. There are a lot of really obvious emotional points, and the ichaicha is heavy-handed... However, in this case, that doesn't come across as a negative... mostly because the ichaicha is usually interspersed with relatively serious moments and plot-related issues.
The plot itself isn't huge in scale, but it is dramatic and shows off perhaps too much of a dark side for the average charage at points. However, for the most part, it is not heavy-handed or excessive. Well, I will say one of the antagonists is a bit creepy/scary, but that just made the game interesting, at least for me.
It needs to be said again, but this game is a hybrid of charage and plotge so those who purely want one or the other should think before playing. Like all the games by this company, the H-scenes are mostly mild... but they are also extremly erotic and relatively plentiful for a game of its length.
Edit: Incidentally Miiko (Mishio) is my waifu. Grab one of the other girls if you want a waifu *snarls viciously*
If yall haven't guessed (or just read my previous posts) my primary reason for giving up VN of the Month was being buried in SOL... well, that and the fact that playing that many new VNs a month took up too much of my time and left me none for any pursuits beyond work.
My immediate realization afterwards was that I quite simply couldn't play SOL games at all for the first few months. After years of constant overdosing on saccharine fake romance and meaningless conversations that exist only to make you go moe over the heroines, I had simply had enough. Even now, I literally cannot play a pure SOL game without my body physically rejecting it by putting me to sleep or giving me a headache.
After a while, I got to where SOL didn't bother me, as long as I knew there was something beyond it (actual plot of some sort, maybe a little violence or a protagonist I could like). Unfortunately, that means I can't bring myself to play anything where I see no hint of something beyond the SOL (seishun doesn't count, since that is default). My most recent experiments (Clochette games) told me that I could still enjoy SOL as long as it was peppered with something interesting. However, I quickly realized when I tried to play some of the newer games that came out this month... I wanted to vomit after starting several of them. I literally couldn't stand the obviously standard-issue protagonist, the weak carbon copy heroines, and the dead copies of games that came out years ago.
For instance, Sora ni Kizanda Parallelogram was such a blatant attempt to use the nostalgia of both Aokana and Walkure Romanze fans (FD for the former and complete pack for the later came out recently) that it made me want to be sick. The protagonist's situation and personality were carbon copies of the one from Walkure Romanze, and the situation and setting were partially stolen from Aokana. Hell, one of the heroines is of the same type as the main heroine from Aokana. That sent me over the edge, and I sold my copy to a local eroge addict so I wouldn't have to look at the filthy thing again.
Worse, a bad copy of Ninki Seiyuu no Tsukurikata came out this month, and I wanted to smash something (I hate games that focus on entertainment industries). Ugh.
*coughs* ahem, now that I got that out of my system, I have to wonder... am I going to have just as violent a reaction next month and the next after? There are things I used to like about SOL games that I just can't enjoy anymore, and that saddens me deeply... and my tolerance for blatant and pathetic attempts at milking other companies' games' popularity has gone down to zero, apparently.
Paradise Lost was the first game in Masada's/Light's 'Shinza series (Paradise Lost>Dies Irae>Kajiri Kamui Kagura). For the sake of those who read Dies Irae but still don't understand how this universe/setting works, I'll explain it in a spoiler box at the end of the post.
Paradise Lost is based in the ruins of a city once called Sodom, now the Quarantine City, a city full of poisonous miasma that causes death and mutation in its inhabitants, a city sealed from the outside world by an impenetrable barrier, a city where Darwinism is the only law. All the denizens of that city are beasts, monsters who combine human cruelty with the lack of restraint of an animal. In that city, a man, sometimes named Lyle, at others Nacht, and at yet others Death Scythe, walks the streets of the darkest, most toxic area of the city, stained with the blood of those unfortunate enough to encounter him.
That's my intro to one of Paradise Lost's two protagonists, Lyle. In a city where everyone is out for themselves, with no pretense of anything else, Lyle is a living legend, a monster who kills simply because he can, because he feels like it. Always at war with his even more violent alternative ego, Nacht, he searches for a past lost so long ago that it was forgotten by time itself. Frozen in place for years, time begins to move forward when he encounters the angel Ririel deep in the depths of the Dead Zone.
The other protagonist, Knowe Christ, is a bit more comprehensible from the average human perspective. He is a young man who is on the lowest rung of the Quarantine City's societal ladder. Born with defects that make a life of violence impossible for him, he supports his adopted little sister Sophie by selling drugs and being a 'body chopper', selling his own body parts for enough money to feed them both. He loves Sophie dearly, and she is the only thing keeping him sane in the abyss that is that city.
Paradise Lost is, like all Masada games, over the top and pretty much a perfect example of epic chuunige style (as opposed to the standard types, which are less melodramatic and grand in scale). In some ways, this game avoids everything that Masada normally does poorly (namely slice-of-life) entirely. It is pure story from beginning to end. There is no conflict between daily life and the darker struggle, because the struggle is merely an extension of that daily life. Both protagonists are dark by nature, though Knowe can be pretty frustrating for his surprising naivete (understandable, since he is a weakling by the standards of the city).
This game has a lot of great fights and slaughter, and the actual story is pretty interesting. Unfortunately, the visuals are dated (though still pretty cool) and the protagonists aren't voiced, both of which are negatives for a chuunige (you would have thought Light would have fixed that when they re-released the game). There is only one truly good person in this entire VN (Ririel), and most of the characters in the game would be considered to be monsters by our moral standards. Both inside and outside of the city the world is a huge dystopia, with merely the vector differing.
This game uses a lot of Christian apocrypha (as should be obvious, considering that Ririel is an angel) in the setting, but it is done in a way that should be pretty offensive to most Christians, lol (seriously, I don't think that Masada could have so thoroughly designed a blasphemous work even if he'd done so intentionally).
While there are six endings to the game, it should be noted that there are only two possible overall outcomes, with the only differences between them being whether the endings are focused on Knowe's side (and one of his two heroines) or Lyle's side. Basically, the essential difference between the endings is determined by whether the antagonist succeeds or fails in his main goal (ironically, the antagonist succeeding creates the 'good' endings).
Overall, this game is a great chuunige... but anyone who doesn't like chuunige won't like it, because there is literally nothing but chuunige content in this game.
First, I should note the reasons why I keep playing Venus Blood games, despite not being fond of tentacles in general and rape in particular. The first reason is that the story and characters in each game have been exceedingly interesting, which is a good enough reason in and of itself. However, the second reason, and the one that makes this series stand out, is the sheer depth of the gameplay most games in the series since Frontier have displayed.
I played Empire and Abyss first, and, to be honest, they aren't really that impressive as games go. The stories were good and I liked the characters, but if you were to ask me if the gameplay was all that memorable, my answer would be no. However, it was with Frontier that I first experienced the need to truly delve the depths of the series' system of skills and unit building (as opposed to just randomly gathering units that seemed to go together and relying on the hero characters, like i did in Empire, lol). This system is one where you are rewarded for putting together good combinations of units, rather than randomly putting together a force of OP units. Most units have a role they are particularly suited for, and there are dozens of different factors to take into account when picking what units to recruit and put in a squad.
Venus Blood Lagoon came out at the end of last year, and it is already being billed as the hardest game in a series known for high difficulty levels (as opposed to the impossible ones frequently present in SofthouseChara games, where the gameplay is frequently unmanageable altogether). If you have played a VB game before, I suggest that you consider normal difficulty to be the hard difficulty of most other VB games, at least in part due to the limitations of the hero units this time around.
Most people who just like to play VB games once or twice (to get both paths or different endings) develop a habit of building all their units around their hero units. Part of this is because Hero units in past games have been more than powerful enough to form the core of a central squad each, meaning that it is perfectly workable to rely on them at least up through hard difficulty.
Lagoon, however, punishes this tendency at times. Part of the reason for this is that this game has a ridiculous number of dragon units compared to previous titles. As a result, you get a lot of units that have half-assed builds that don't stand out when compared to late-game recruitable units. There is a lot of crossover between unit types, creating a tendency toward all-rounders in a game where it is generally better to specialize in a single role (which is why Zahack and Tia stand out, since Zahack is DPS all the way and Tia is a perfect tank). A classic example of this is Ain, who, for all that he looks cool, is actually fragile and weak in comparison even to mid-game units, at least in part because they made him too much of an all-rounder without giving him the stats and skill levels to pull it off. Eden also stands out in the same way, turning out to be a decent tank, even though her skillset and stated class say she should be DPS.
Despite the class names, there are really three major roles and a few sub-roles in this game. The main roles are Tank, DPS, and Support (not used in-game). Tank units should be kept in the first slot and possibly the second to serve as a wall between the rest of the unit and enemy damage. Ideally, they should have a nice set of skills that make them hard to damage or hit (there are a number of such skills) and/or allow them to retaliate with something nasty when someone does attack them (counter-tanks and passive tanks are the two types you can pursue in this game, dependent on skillsets). DPS units generally have high attack (duh) stats as well as skills that make them more effective at dealing damage, such as skills that reduce enemy defenses, boost their own damage, or allow them to spread damage across multiple units. Support units are units that exist to provide boosts, defenses against bombardment, and healing. The rule of thumb in all VB games is to abuse the 活性 and other booster skillsets to create units that have massively boosted stats to deal disproportionate amounts of damage to the enemy. While this tactic isn't quite as effective as it has been in previous games, it is still the most important basic element of building a squad.
The major sub-role you should keep in mind is the Treasure-Hunter squad. This type of squad has a different role than the average 'smash and invade' squad type. To be specific, all units in such a squad should have boosted loot-related passive skills and equipment to increase the amount of drops after a battle. Ideally, you should pair such squads with more powerful smasher squads to maximize loot gain and minimize the possibility of the treasure-hunter squads being wiped out. If you want the resources to build up your army on your first playthrough, doing without Treasure-hunting squads is not an option.
Now, down to the meat of things... this game channels Hypno's system down to the letter. The Legion system, which allows you to move and deploy up to three units in a single battle, has returned... meaning that tactics have become more advanced and you are faced with a need to create far more squads than is the norm in most games in the series (I had fifteen squads fully formed and leveled by the end, with three on the back burner to make a full eighteen). Part of this is that you can't avoid creating a wide battlefront in this game if you want to get high after-battle ratings. Another part is that some units just do horribly against certain enemy squad builds.
The Main Route
This game's story begins with Tia's homeland of Elysses being destroyed by Gashel, the High Priest of the Divine Dragons (which included Elysses and its mostly human subjects). Tia's brother, Julian, sacrifices his life and resurrects the Demon Lord Zahack, the powerful being that once faced off against the Original Dragon, Eden. Zahack, even weakened by his long sleep, manages to get Tia away, and he forms a contract with her to help her get her revenge against Gashel.
Now, the main story of the game is focused on Tia's journey to gain revenge, but I should note that there are a number of points that differ from previous titles, story-wise. First, the protagonist, Zahack, is an assistant and ally rather than the overall leader of things. Zahack is a demon to the core, and his focuses are on the fulfillment of his contract, sex, and fun in general (not necessarily in that order), while Tia is an idealistic young woman constantly at war with herself as her idealistic nature and compassion conflict with her burning desire for revenge and growing addiction to tentacle sex (lol, yes, that is an issue, as it usually is in VB games).
To be blunt, in most previous titles, this protagonists tended to relatively easily force the heroines into submission (even the story battles tended to end with the heroines on their knees in relatively short periods of time once the protagonist's plans were complete). However, this game is one where nothing ever goes perfectly and plans frequently have to be adjusted or abandoned entirely due to circumstance and the fortunes of war. Tia is a good leader, but she is very clearly the one at a disadvantage from the very beginning. While she desires revenge, she is also kind by nature and not naturally pragmatic or ruthless as VB protagonists generally are. Zahack is generally willing to go along with her, as her struggles amuse him, lol.
The Law Route
I managed to get the true Law ending on my first try (happily), so I can honestly stay that the Law route has a lot to recommend to it for people who like more classic 'not evil' paths (calling the characters 'good' when most of them are mass murderers or using their own children as weapons of war is a bit of a stretch). There is an enemy worth defeating, a goal worth reaching, and the actual writing is perhaps the best in the series outside of Hypno. Zahack himself grows somewhat (though Zahack is Zahack, lol), and Tia grows immensely as a person as she gets past her dark desires and finds a new path in life.
The other characters also find themselves renewed as they face the new threats they had no way of knowing about at the beginning, and I actually found myself surprised at the antagonist, even if it followed the usual VB path of being a somewhat standard/archetypical choice in retrospect. This is also the first game in the series where I honestly couldn't find a connection with another game that has come out before, so I have to wonder if they are intending on creating a time-distant sequel at some point...
I will play Chaos eventually... but tbh, it took me sixty hours to complete this game (about eighteen hours of that was just thinking about then building units and squads), so I think I'll put that off for a while.
Venus Blood Hypno is by far my favorite Venus Blood game. There are a number of obvious reasons. The story itself is the deepest and most interesting, it is emotionally powerful, and, if you follow the Law route, it is possible to avoid sexual corruption issues entirely.
However, the true reason I love this game is because of Leonhardt and Anora.
Leonhardt and Anora have one of the most powerful, deepest relationships I've seen in any type of VN, ever. The emotional bonds between them are literally inseparable, and the trust between them is literally unbreakable. They have had innumerable horrible experiences, which have left them bitter and cynical, but their love for one another, while having a strong element of mutual dependence, is nonetheless untainted. It is unselfish and giving, and, while no sane person would ever envy them their lives, it is hard not to envy their love.
Leonhardt and Anora were once members of the Arknoa royal family, a human (sort-of) kingdom that lay at the lowest level of Helvetica, tasked with protecting the seal on the demonic races, but considered to be tainted and cursed because of the unique abilities the family often displayed. Anora, because her abilities were particularly strong, was feared and generally distanced from most of the family. Only her older cousin, Leonhardt, was close to her from the beginning, and when the seal broke and the demons flowed forth, it was Leon who carried her as he sought to escape certain death. Unfortunately for them both, Calvia Karlsefni, the Demon Empress who destroyed their family, was waiting... and in exchange for Leonhardt begging shamelessly for their lives, she made them her toys.
Leonhardt and Anora were used in an experimental procedure to create a weapon to get around the weakness of demons to divine power, fusing a different soul into that of another living being, transforming them into something that was neither human nor demon. Of all those who underwent the procedure, less than one in ten thousand survived, and many of those went insane or burned out soon after. They became what is referred to in the story as a 'Reisu Unit' (which refers to the fact that they use the soul fused to them and their own soul as fuel for their power). Incidentally, none of this is spoiler, really.
Now, down to the setting, one of the other reasons I love this game. Hypno's setting is dark, even for a Venus Blood game, where tentacles about and most of the main characters have demonic blood. In the events leading up to the game's beginning, the demons, who had long been confined to an underground world where there wasn't enough energy to sustain them, much less keep them powerful, overcame this problem in a way that was both simple and terrible... they used a new technology (called Laugraphia) to transform people's souls into crystals called Tactica, that could be used to power their magic, thus allowing them to break the seals and emerge back into the surface.
The demons went to war with the forces of angels and humans led by the Goddess, and the Great War began. Using the Reisu Units, the demons forced open the teleportation gates to the floating continent from the other surrounding continents, and Calvia killed the Goddess, transforming her into a Tactica.
Now, the Empire, which is the most powerful of the four demonic nations, rules the central floating continent and the southern continent of Brookheart. It converts large numbers of humans to Tactica on a daily basis, using any excuse such as criminality, religious activity, or simply being in the wrong place at the right time. All four nations are reliant on Tactica technology, at least partially because they are all afraid to give it up, lest the others rush in and overwhelm them using that power. As a point of reference, each of the four demon lords possesses at least one Myorne Class Tactica, which is a Tactica containing the equivalent of more than a million souls. It is common for most mid and high level commanders to possess a Ten-thousand soul Tactica, and most soldiers with potential have one that contains a hundred or more. Worse, Tactica can be 'used up' if their power is abused, meaning that huge numbers of souls are being burned like fuel on a fire on a daily basis.
As a setting, it has both depth and darkness, two things that I can't help but like.
Hypno, like most games in the series, is split between Law and Chaos paths, but with a slightly different twist, there is a true Law ending that can only be accessed under specific conditions on a third playthrough after you've been through the Law and Chaos paths once each. This is the True Law Anora ending, and it is, quite obviously, the single best (or at least the happiest) of the game's endings. I cried, lol.
