Eclipsed
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Posts posted by Eclipsed
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13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim.
It's made by Vanillaware, who were the makers of the 2(.5)D side scrolling action RPGs like Odinsphere, Dragon's Crown on the PSVITA. Which, sue me, have been on my Vita backlog for years now. Unfortunately there's only a PS4 version out atm for Aegis, yay exclusives, would've liked a Switch version plx.
And holy crap, this is one of them hidden gems. This thing was released in Sep 22 this year, and already has an average 4.9 stars with over 400 ratings on Amazon (and Amazon reviews are notorious for slamming VNs for "not being a real game" etc. smh). Even VNDB averages a whopping 8.95 with only 126 votes. It's on sale on Amazon physical NA for 30 bucks.
13 protagonists whose stories all intertwine in an epic Sci-Fi mecha time traveling world ending saga. It's not a traditional VN with static sprites and backgrounds; I'd say it's more of an interactive adventure visual novel. IADVN or something. Dialogue will be displayed over the character rather than a dedicated textbox at the bottom middle, though thankfully there is still a backlog you can refer to anytime. Presentation is supreme, you can control your current protagonist in a vivid 2.5D environment: there will be cars driving and pedestrians walking in the background when you're in the city, trees/branches will be swaying from the wind, characters all have fluid, expressive animations even when idle. The world feels alive. Then you think about the most recent VN where you have static sprites and empty backgrounds and it's like man, this is the future!
Yes, the world is threatened by Mass Effect 3 Reaper wannabes and it's up to the 13 protagonists who are able to control their own personal mecha robot "Sentinels" to defend the universe across multiple time periods and yes I made it sound cheesy, but seriously the presentation of this game is top notch and gets you hooked right away. The story plays episodic, there will be 13 protagonists with their own shenanigans and the story progresses by shifting protagonists and perspectives until all of their paths eventually overlap. Every character has their own goals and motivations, relations and revelations, and every time you think you answer some questions, you get a new bundle of them in your face!
There's a real time SRPG gameplay element that's thrown in to compliment the adventure novel aspect. It's almost universally agreed upon that it's definitely on the weaker end of the enjoyment spectrum, but it'd be pretty hard for the 2.5D to show epic battles between the 13 Sentinels and the Reapers, and we need some gameplay to appeal to the masses so I guess that's that.
- Dreamysyu, starcraft2 and Mr Poltroon
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THAT IS THE CHOICE OF STEINS;GATE!
I think what holds R;N back is that it's the entry where the writers start trying to tie the whole SciADV series together, so R;N doesn't have as much standalone oomph like C;C or S;G did. Kept having to refer to the good ol' times and how badass prior protagonists are. But I get what they're trying to do. It'll be interesting to see what future titles have in store in the ongoing battle against the C of 3 times 10^2. I would've preferred that they did new scientific standalone titles with occasional references to the past like they've been doing, but it looks like they're gonna all in go for a mega ongoing saga that adds to the cast. Guess we'll see what happens in Anonymous;Code one day.R;N was decent overall. But again, lack of standalone oomph. There were a lot of interesting story/character concepts presented in both entries that went absolutely no where, writers couldn't commit what the hell they wanted to do. AIri felt criminally underused despite playing such a key role during the Kimijima Ko report hunt saga then she just becomes a demoted-to-onii-chan-spamming-extra, though her DaSH route was rather enjoyable with the 'what if she was in her 20s' scenario. Jun's karate thing never develops despite it being 90% of her screentime and instead they just settle for her finally gaining some self confidence. I don't think Frau ever even got closure regarding the reason she came to Tanegashima, and her DaSH route offered nothing to her character and was mostly just for BL service. Idk, majority of the characters just feel like "why are they even here"? but the VN still tries to paint everyone as having this unbreakable bond with each other. Slomo and Fastforward were cool character concepts but nope didn't do jack with them either.
Akiho x Kaito was done well at least. It was pretty much the only thing that I was interested in reading about for DaSH. I loved the whole "we were inseparable childhood friends all the way through high school, then in the 6months between R;N and R;NDaSH, somehow everything's awkward now between us, wtf happened?!" plot point. Sometimes that's just how life works.
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Ehehehehe that's a legit 37 hours 37 minutes and 37 seconds playtime, though i waited for a minute or two for the timer to reach those 37 seconds
Let's start off with my favorite R;N track:
Definitely a tune that I felt gave R;N its own identity, especially when it starts ramping up past the 1:00 mark.
Hrmmm, mixed feelings about this one. Robotics;Notes is definitely on the "it's good, but kinda lacking if you compare it to Chaos;Child & Steins;Gate", as much as I shouldn't compare this to its siblings, and I agree with VNDB's R;N getting 7.5 average versus C;C's 8.0+ and S;G's 9.0+ average ratings.
I think it has to do with the overall atmosphere/tone: we kind of have grown to expect the science adv series to be this mature, plot conspiracy heavy pseudoscience funtimes with quirky characters, and Robot;Notes is MOSTLY that, but ultimately they made R;N to be the more LIGHTHEARTED entry in the series, and lighthearted doesn't really work well when you're trying to write about world ending conspiracies and whatnot. Don't get me wrong, things will get dark come lategame, but they never really get TOO dark/bleak like they do in S;G and C;C. It kind of feels restrained, held back, like they went for PG-13 instead of R.
Which is mainly due to the Robotics High School Club setting, and Akiho being the main heroine and having the classic genki/optimistic/passionate template. Would've been nice if they tried to give her some heroic BSODs to overcome, but nahhh she's too strong for that
Power of friendship will trump over all!
Honestly felt like power rangers good vs evil levels of cheesiness sometimes. Exacerbated by Akiho's love of the ingame fictional anime about robot justice called Gunvarrel that she will constantly blabber about in your face. The good vs evil black and whiteness come lategame is so cheesy that I even felt like the big baddies of the science ADV were a bunch of chumps and not intimidating anymore, despite them coming up with technically an even grander more dire conspiracy this time around, yet they were for sure HELLA intimidating with their antics in S;G. How the mighty have fallen..
Still overall an enjoyable VN. I usually can grow to love all the characters and these guys are no exception, though they are indeed a very quirky bunch and sometimes you just go "how the heck did these guys all end up together". But yeah 90% of the plot is literally just Kaito YOLO following Akiho's immature unpractical shenanigans for robots (can literally rename the VN "Akiho's Robotics Adventures") with some bits of conspiracy unravelling scattered throughout eventually culminating into we'll-beat-the-baddies-and-save-the-world-power-of-friendship-style! It's a bit hilarious because come lategame you can actually have Kaito be like "yo sorry Aki, I've been following you and your shenanigans all this time, but now I'm tired of it all bb cya" and get a badend.
One thing I'll have to reiterate that I believe R;N does extremely well is having the ingame tweeting system that you can look up on a daily basis to get character reactions to daily events. They even went above and beyond and you can unlock certain very familiar names to follow and get their reactions to events, something I'm sure fans can appreciate:
Spoiler
Kurigohan and Kamehameha <33333333
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Also, started Robotics;Notes DaSH. Hmmm, having a sequel with a set-insameuniverse-prequel character as one of the main characters? I don't know if that's a clever way of writing or if it's just a "let's ride off of the popularity of a prior work!" but I guess we shall see...
Btw, I see why you prefer 2D over 3D now, Daru. You look absolutely terrible with a 3D sprite. Revert back to 2D pls.
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Hoh... didn't feel like I slogged through 20 hours on this VN so far, actually feels like < 10, I swear, my playtime is probably inflated because I'd get sidetracked and leave my Switch idling with the VN running or something. idk. But I refuse to believe it's been that long..!!
I'm assuming Nae's route is kind of like a common route ending type of route, because that ended WAAAY too abruptly lol I was legit confused and had the biggest "that's it??" ever when I saw the credits rolling. Plotwise it still feels like I'm only ~50% through the common route, I mean I only had 3/7 Kimijima Reports and there was still a whopping 6 months to go until the Robot Expo that Kaito and friends were preparing for, but then Kaito all of a sudden gets the hots for Nae (I don't blame him, she really grew up fine lol), yada yada oo la la, gg ez, rollcredits.
That being said I have no idea what triggers routes and whatnot, so guess I'll have to do some research.. Hope it's nothing too complicated like Steins;gate's systematic text message responses. God help me if it's based on TWIPO replies or something.
E: fk me, they are. How the hell do devs actually expect people to find their way blind through routes in all honesty..
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WTFMUX THIS GAL IS IN THIS VN?????????????????????
I MEAN IT'S BEEN LIKE 6 YEARS SINCE I'VE READ STEINS;GATE BUT WE ALL REMEMBER THIS GAL FOR ONE THING AND ONE THING ONLY:
(MASSIVE S;G SPOILERS):
Spoiler- Dreamysyu and EntireInternet
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Slowly slogging through Robotics;Notes, took me literally like a week just to do Phase 1 lol. I'm a huge slacker sorrz
Thoughts/First Impressions:
The 3D sprites + animations take some time to get used to. It's kind of like when you first red Steins;gate and it might've taken you some time to get used to the watercolory artstyle. Doesn't help that the N.Switch has some anti-aliasing issues compared to all the other versions (rip). But it eventually grows on you/you get used to it.
Spoiler
Don't mind the horizontal bars/videotapey look of this screenshot, this is a result of free-viewing the world through the ingame phone app IRUO or whatever. But the jaggy lines/antialiasing issue that plague Akiho's sprite is indeed a flaw that only apparently only exists on the N.Switch version.
Also, huge oversight by the devs, only for this particular pose of Akiho where she is leaning forward, when you look downward:
Spoiler
LOL
...I already miss YU-NO soundtracks. Stuff from the 1990s just had more identity and flavor. Everything in Robotics;Notes so far is forgetful generic elevator-tier sounding.
Story takes a bit to take off, then again I'm barely starting Phase 2 so I'm probably speaking waaay too soon. I think it's the general overall premise/initial hook. Steins;Gate's premise was time travel. Intriguing. Chaos;Child was murder mystery supernatural. Interesting. Robotic;Notes? High school robot competitions. The main heroine Akiho is the genki-hardheaded-charge-towards-your-dreams-full-speed-ahead type but she just wants to do too much/has pretty unrealistic goals. Then we have the protagonist Kaito who doesn't help either with him being 100% disinterested in the Robotics Club (and being quite vocal about it too). He's more into his online pvp game KILL-BALLAD, where he ranks #5 in Japan. He sticks with Akiho though because they're childhood friends/the two need to watch over each other because of their Fast Forward and Slo-mo handicaps. On the plus side, the duo do have excellent dynamics and so far its a pleasure to see them interact with each other.
One of the great things about the Sci-ADV series is their continuity: R;N literally gives you a glimpse of 1.048596 in the opening, and you'll get a famous one liner about eyes pretty early on. Lovely callbacks, though I hope R;N can hold its own and not overly rely on the glory of its earlier siblings.
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Since it's ROBOTICS;notes-> Robotics-> technology, the devs got a bit more creative with the level of technological interactivity in the world you can have via Kaito's PhoneDroid/smartphone. Whereas in S;G you were limited to receiving and replying to texts only when the narrative demanded it, in R;N there is a barebones Twitter replica called Twipo that adds a hearty amount of flavor to the entirety of the cast/plot/setting via the characters twipping about their lives and ongoing events day by day, and Kaito can even reply to a handful of those twips. It's one of the things R;N does well and it makes the world feel alive:Slight character reveal spoiler (though you learn their identity within a couple hours of meeting them so it's not too bad of a spoiler):
Spoiler
I find myself checking Twipo often just to see characters' thoughts, it's a really nifty supplemental content idea.
Btw, Frau def is topping the first impression best girl charts, her online speech reminds me a bit of how I type on these forums sometimes lel. Fking
millennialsGen-Z -
Ehehehehe
I wonder why Robotics;Notes scored relatively poorly compared to Chaos;Child and Steins;Gate (130 votes avg 7.36 vs 1806 votes avg 8.39 and lol 8132 votes avg 9.02 respectively)
I'd like to think it's just that most peeps who tried R;N were going off of the high from S;G and then got disappointed, or maybe it's the use of 3d sprites, which can look pretty jank:
Worst case scenario it's cuz the plot actually is subpar, god I hope not. We shall see~- Mr Poltroon and Seraphim
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Aight, finished YU-NO. I actually only had 1-2 more hours of readtime when I made my prior post lol.
Overall enjoyable. My failure to appreciate the final route as much as I could've was more due to my tendency to come into final routes waaay too overhyped. I blame Ever17. Ever since that VN I've always expected true routes to be mind blowing braingasm experiences so it can be very easy for me to bamboozle myself and end up disappointed.
One of the things I liked the most was the jigsaw puzzle plot revelation format, where every heroine route focuses on a core mystery and you only get the complete picture once you've read everything. It's a great way to keep the reader hooked.
Not gonna do too much of an indepth misc. thoughts, I'm kind of out of mental power atm sorryz
(Spoilers):
Spoiler
Kanna route:SpoilerKanna's my guilty pleasure heroine. Gotta love the spikey blue hair, really love how great she looks modern compared to her 1996 self:
I think it's a shame they didn't do more with Kanna. Why was she at the prologue overlooking the Ryuuzouji-points-gun-at-Takuya scenario, where both Ryuuzouji and Ayumi get flung into Del Grante and thus make an appearance in the final route, and yet Kanna is nowhere to be seen? She was also fairly prominent in Mio's route, always watching over/warning the duo and then at the end when Takuya is mourning Mitsuki/Yuuki's death she LEAPS DOWN THE WELL to go fetch Takuya and set him back on the right track. Point being she's established as this enigmatic girl who knows what's going on, has great physical prowess, and maybe even has her own Reflector.
And then in her route she just fumbles around getting shoved into the sand, getting slandered and bullied for her promiscuity, and getting hot fevers that make her bed-ridden all day errday.
Takuya says he has some unknown attachment to her and can't explain why he's so fond of her. Reflected in him instantly settling on calling her Kanna-chan despite not knowing her that much which I think was simply adorbs.
Btw, who thought Amanda was Eriko the first time around? *Raises hand*
Based on the photo, we know Kanna is the daughter of who you'll eventually learn to be Amanda. Guess who Amanda banged prior to getting sent 50 years into the past during the final route climax showdown vs Ryuuzouji? Takuya! I don't think the VN pointed this out, it's one of those clever HORY SHI! revelations that the writers decided to let readers connect the dots for themselves and I thought was pretty neat.
Kaori
SpoilerNGL, I totally tripped out when I was going through Kanna's route and saw a green branching line path. I was like, wait what????? Kaori has her own route? No friggen' way, isn't she just a side character like Eriko-sensei?
And yeah, she ultimately is. Her route is basically 80% the same Kanna-centric events except you can become Kaori's partner in crime towards the end.
Also NGL, I indeed got bamboozled by "Hand over the stone", because even though you already know you should hold onto it to save Kanna, I was actually trusting of Kaori because of her help was what was needed to reach Ayumi's good end via the incriminating photo evidence vs. Toyotomi, and there you had to trust giving her the 20th document page in order to do that. Man she was such a wildcard.
Btw, most here's the most criminally underused epic "make your decision!" track that was used for the above. Legit only used THREE times in the VN iirc: 1 for 20th document Kaori, 2 for hypersense stone Kaori above, and 3 for partnering with Mitsuki or Yuuki during Mio's route:
Tangent: they should've made the late game final route "untie Ryuuzouji" be an actual player choice rather than Takuya automatically doing so and then play this theme, and it would've been up to the reader to deduce that Ryuuzouji is and always will be a bad guy whom cannot be trusted:
Because, well, okay, call me stupid, but at this point I was actually starting to get red herring'd and reverse big brain myself into thinking "maybe Ryuuzouji is not a bad guy, he's pulling a Harry Potter Sorcerer(Philosopher)'s Stone Snape act and only looked like a villain all this time, he's actually been trying to get the Reflector to go after Koudai/Takuya's dad who will end up being the true big baddie. Yes, I had this train of thought at one point LOL.
But I digress. Ultimately disappointed in Kaori's route ending in that she was just another pawn of Ryuuzouji's, the girl legit appeared to have her own goals and ambitions...
... but she ended up being a Mass-Effect-3-Illusive-Man-tier fodder. Whatta shame.
True Route
SpoilerDon't laugh at me, I thought Celes would turn out to be Takuya's real mom or something. Really weird that the story/motivations behind Koudai + time travel/rewrite history to pursue Takuya's mom is never properly concluded, since that was one of the main big questions of the entire VN.
Characters who's deaths I didn't care about: Illia (waaaay too little screentime), Kun-Kun (waaay too little screentime), Celes (decent screentime but felt too sudden/underwhelming. How did she die again? She bit her tongue and bled to death from that?
WTF was up with Kun-Kun's death. 30 minute screentime lizard thing, it flies you to safety, dies, and you have to eat it to survive but Takuya is being a lil' bitch about it cuz of the whole morality thing. Felt like VERY cheap attempts for the feels but i simply didn't care for any of it.The disconnect between the final route and the main game was so stronk I even didn't care for God-Monarch Ayumi's death, even though she is the 'original' Ayumi in the prologue who suffered through 5 years of solitude and even though I bawled like a baby for Ayumi's suicide end in the main game. But yeah, Ayumi is my best girl so it did make my heart sink a bit to have her canonically die in the true route. At least it's not as bad as Mitsuki, who apparently is fated to die on day three no matter what (so she doesn't even get an epilogue end like Kanna/Mio/Ayumi do, RIP). Btw kudos to the writers for bamboozling me on who the God-Monarch was, I was 50/50 on Ryuuzouji or Koudai but Ayumi legit came out of nowhere and it absolutely caught me off guard.
Btw, missed opportunity with the post game Epilogue ends for Kanna/Mio/Ayumi that are obtainable only after finishing final route: most of the 'good' ends on the main game end on kind of a bittersweet tone where the heroine laments for a bit before Takuya has to jewel or get Chaos Corrected back to the beginning, an example being Kanna's:
And so when I finish the final route and then grind back to here I expect it to pick up from this exact bittersweet moment and Takuya to be like, "Yo, I'm back". It would've felt so COMPLETE and satiated all of my "They earned their happy ending" cravings for years to come. But nope, there is no continuity. There's no Kanna survives -> Kanna wishes Takuya luck -> Takuya goes through YU-NO -> Takuya returns to Kanna -> Happy end going on here. It's just Kanna survives -> Happy end. A small little nitpick tbh but yeah I think these post game epilogue ends would've had alot more OOMPH if they went for continuity. Hell the VN even makes you CHOOSE whether to get the epilogue end or the normal bittersweet end:
HOW ABOUT, CONTINUE ON REGULAR ROUTE AND THEN GIVE ME AYUMI'S END YA DAMN GAME. FEELS MORE COMPLETE THAT WAY.
Celes appeared in Mio's route, right? When the duo were lost in the underground lake area and growing fatigued she guided Takuya to find the lightning tower. But Celes is dead in the final route, so which Celes was that? Obviously a parallel universe one, but why would she know of the Takuya of that specific moment? In general the time travel/multiple dimensions/parallel universe concept for this VN was waaay too hard for me to grasp I gave up lol. I still don't know how/why a Reflector works, I just know that it does despite all the pseudoscientific jargon used to explain it. Also the whole 8000 year / 400 year cycle loop, and how Dela Grante came to be and end up in that cycle. Oof. My head hurts I'm done.
...
"WHO COULD SHE BE?" are you effing serious, I hate how oblivious Takuya was. Sure YU-NO grew up from teen to adult in like a year since you last saw her but this was just pathetic.YU-NO is voiced by the same VA who voices Hina Hikawa from Bang! Dream / Bandori franchise. Her fking voice was nagging at me for 90% of the final route where I was like, I FKING KNOW THAT VOICE, WHO IS IT?!??!
No commento on YU-NO's incestual lust for her papa. In general I was surprised by the amount of taboo relationships explored in this VN. And you have student-teacher, stepson-stepmother, father-daughter incest via TakuyaxYU-NO and TakuyaxKanna, high school girl sleeping around with many guys, grieving widow getting white knight rebounded, random one night stands, all in 1996. 1996 man!
In general Takuya was pretty abysmal during the true route. Him getting unreasonably angry and shouting at Celes early on and going off in the desert like a dumbass and then his constant insistence on "protecting" YU-NO by not letting her accompany him through the desert or later on vehemently denying her to do her priest duties for all the typical selfish "I DON'T WANT YOU TO DIE, BUT IT'S OKAY IF DIE DW YOU'LL BE FINE WITHOUT ME"
..Ryuuzouji died way too easily, super anticlimactic for a tens of thousands of years old consciousness multidimensional traveling entity.
Feels like 100 years ago? Nope sorry bruh, it was only like 2-3 hours ago for me. I think Muv Luv trilogy learned from this. Muv Luv Extra is the main game, then you have Muv Luv Unlimited to world build Dela Grante/Celes/YU-NO/alternate dimensions/parallel timelines concept, it ends with Celes dying, and THAT'S when you do Muv Luv Alternate and have Takuya cross the desert and begin his epic saga. Also fking utilize Mitsuki/Mio/Kanna, really surprised only Ayumi and Eriko made the cut for the final act.TL;DR:
Spoiler
And that's that. Love reading VNs. Every time I finish one I get antsy because it's like, damn that was good, I wanna read another one like this, will the next VN i read even be as enjoyable? Then I pick a completely different genre and setting and then come to enjoy that and the cycle repeats. Question is... what shall the next VN be..? (and no, it's not gonna be AoKana, sorrz no pureblood high school SoL for me plx)
*Looks at the date* Oh, I know!
Spoiler
- starcraft2, Mr Poltroon and adamstan
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I'm about midway, or maybe in the final stretch of Yu-No's lategame/true/final route, and wanted to drop some comments before I finish
It basically pulls a Muv-Luv Unlimited, or Rewrite post common route/Terra route in terms of the story and pacing just flipping on its head
And unfortunately it doesn't do it too well
Main complaint being the pacing, the story events themselves are passable though definitely not what I was expecting.
Pacing-wise it'll take you a solid 20-30 hours to read through a mere 3 days worth of events for 4-5 heroines.
The final route in YU-NO? in just 4-5 hours you'll go through 4-6+ YEARS worth of events. It's jarring af. Characters like Illia, Kun-Kun, Amanda, even Celes, feel so insignificant since they're introduced so damn late into the VN and then only get like 30min - 2 hrs of screentime. The connection to these characters who are supposed to be really important just isn't there. And then you meet the G-M and it's like HOLY SHIT I MISSED YOU JFC I SPENT THE LAST
5 HRS5 YEARS WITH STRANGERS WHO I DIDN'T CARE ABOUTThe sad thing is even though I'm complaining that the pacing is bad because too much happens in too little readtime, I actually don't think padding the 4-6+ years of events to take like 10-15 hrs of readtime or something would've helped, because when you're this late into the game on the supposed final, all revealing route that extra padding to flesh out these characters would probably instead just make you feel like it's too dragged out lol.
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Alright I'm apparently 69% of the way done with 2017 YU-NO Switch ver.
, so I'll do a midway thoughts review thing. I went Mitsuki -> Mio -> Ayumi -> currently gonna start Kanna's route
^----- 69%
It's been pretty fun so far. A bit "grindy" via the time travel/jewel save point mechanic because you'll have to frequently backtrack to recollect items that are needed to progress through whatever branch you are pursuing, because certain items are once-you-use-them-then-you-lose-them, even if you return to the past where you did not use that item yet, and so you have to return to the point where you actually got the item (did that make sense LOL) and then return to that branching point in order to see the other branch.
And then there's also the HUGE vulnerability where you forget to replace a save point (whenever you use a jewel it returns to your inventory AKA that checkpoint is removed from the map and you have to set the checkpoint again if you want to return to that point again but its soooo easy to forget when you're skip-grinding through the VN). AKA you set checkpoint A, load it, checkpoint A is now gone. If you continue the story without setting checkpoint A again, which is very easy to do, then you literally locked yourself out and if you want to go back to checkpoint A then you'll have to start the VN from the beginning and grind back to that point. Very annoying especially when you just want to see the other branch on a lategame decision.
One thing I like regarding the flow of the events though is how, uh, consistent? all the heroine routes are with each other. In other VNs with branching paths/multiple heroines it's very easy for the writers to just give whoever's not the main focus the vanish treatment, where in the back of your mind you're always wondering like, "Ok I'm currently flirting with girl A so they're obviously the focus, but I wonder how and what girls B/C/D/E are doing right now"...
Well, technically, the vanish treatment still happens, but since all 4 of YU-NO's heroine routes take place over a very, very meager 3 DAYS the writers have the luxury of allowing the reader to keep tabs on what the other heroines are up to, even if you aren't on their particular route. And the vanish treatment is a bit justified because even If you're off flirting with the hot teacher Mitsuki trying to find out what's the deal with Ryuuzoji, you'll still get glimpses of tsundere classmate Mio doing her Triangle Mountain investigations, you'll still see gentle stepmother Ayumi getting shrekt HARD by her Geo Technics controversies, and more often then not you'll bump into enigmatic student transfer Kanna mysteriously appearing and disappearing during pivotal moments as if watching over Takuya.
That being said, even though it's just 4 heroines over 3 days you may fall victim to the Time Travelers' Omniscient Burden, where you're burdened with knowing things Takuya technically shouldn't know because his own memories are reset every time you start over, and you can become overwhelmed with keeping track of what's going on/has happened/will happen/only happens in another timeline yada yada yada if you're not taking notes on the side or something lol.
The remastered soundtrack is 9/10, very good stuff, idk, most of the BGMs just clicked with me. Very catchy and memorable and I found myself playing them in my head more often than I did any other VN that I've read this year. The heroines all have distinguishing themes appropriately titled after their names. I can't even remember any heroine themes of any VNs I've read in the past... Ok wait I just thought of one. Rewrite's Kotori's piano flower theme. Ok YU-NO's heroine themes have nothing on that tbh lmao, but the main point is that they were distinct and memorable to me and would bring a smile to my face to see Ayumi or Mio pop up on the screen with their accompanying theme.
Dialogue/writing/translation feels subpar, it's still readable but there are times where my very limited Japanese familiarity can call out the translation freestyling. One example being Takuya audibly saying he knows a girl's "three sizes" and yet the dialogue instead said he knew her height. I'm like dafuq, is that a result of censorship??. Also sometimes he/she pronoun is mixed up, very confusing when it happens. H-scenes are reduced to Takuya and the heroine professing their love for each other, making out, and then blacking out to post-coitus-cuddle dialogue. I actually prefer it that way, I was never into H-scenes to begin with and would always skip through them.
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Ok I'll be honest, I ended up wanting to write this post because I just finished Ayumi's route. Mitsuki and Mio were aight, nothing too special to note. But Ayumi, man oh man Ayumi, there was just something about her that drew me in so I was heavily invested into her. Dare I say it was the whole pretty, gentle, caring stepmother and forbidden love concept LOL. Overall her route wasn't too special either, more infuriating if anything due to the worst scumbag of the earth ever that is Toyotomi, but that bad ending though!Misc. Thoughts/Spoilers! (Ayumi route)
SpoilerCan't have a misc. thoughts on Ayumi's route without playing her BGM mang!
Really liked Ayumi's theme. There's this joyful tranquility feel to it that really reflects how Takuya feels about her.
Okay. Ayumi. Takuya's stepmother/widow to his dad Koudai. It's only been a month since Koudai's presumed death but Ayumi's been putting on a brave face to be the support pillar for Takuya who's been slacking on his studies and having a one night stand with his teacher Mitsuki while on his downward spiral as a result of his standard rebellious-teenage-trying -to-cope phase.
Ayumi's work load at Geo-Technics however increased to the point of her working late nights and just leaving money on the table for Takuya to order takeout, so they miss out on a lot of bonding time together. It doesn't help that her work is also sparking some mad controversy with all the lightning strikes that are occurring supposedly because of the construction work Geo Technics is doing, and she has to face the brunt of the criticism aka getting egged by protesters and being harshly interviewed by journalists since she's the project lead while Takuya is mostly helpless to support her though tries to do what he can. The stepmother-stepson bond is established fairly decently when one day Ayumi comes home drunk and Takuya ends up cuddling with her to comfort her, with hints that their bond could be more than just familial love...
Then comes the most annoying disgusting scumbag of a villain that is Toyotomi, who white knights for Ayumi when he's really the one sabotaging her work and manipulating her status as a grieving widow, and- Ayumi, oh Ayumi why did the writers do this to you- Ayumi is oblivious to it all and will side with Toyotomi over Takuya all the way until the fucking bitter end. They also have the gall to have CGs where Toyotomi makes his move on Ayumi. Is this what NTR is? Cuckold? Ayumi is technically a widow, and there was no greater-than-familial -love established between Ayumi and Takuya at the point, so technically not really? But GODDAMN I felt Takuya's anger lol. Simply INFURIATING!!!
AYUMI STAHP PLS NO OH GAHD NO
CAN'T YOU SEE IT'S THAT FFFFFUCKER TOYOTOMI WHO'S BEEN SCREWING YOU OVER, BOTH LITERALLY AND FIGURATIVELY?? IT'S HIM, FKING BELIEVE ME AYUMI PLS
Then in the final showdown you are FORCED TO FAIL because you get the evidence against Toyotomi AFTER failing and getting the bad ending in which you can then time travel to before you failed and use said only-obtained-after-failing-item in order to finally secure the good end. But I'm jumping the gun. Ultimately in the first round of the final showdown without evidence to make Ayumi believe Toyotomi's transgressions Takuya just physically lashes out at Toyotomi and Ayumi slaps Takuya to stop him, effectively completing the "she sides with Toyotomi over Takuya to the bitter end tragedy":
I-....AYUMI ...WHY WON'T YOU BELIEVE ME.... IT'S TOYOTOMI... HE'S THE BAD GUY.... HE'S THE REASON ALL OF THIS WENT TO SHIT, WHY OUR TRUST... OUR FAMILY... IS BROKEN....IT WAS ALL HIM...I WAS DOING THIS ALL FOR YOU..........;-;
NGL, Ayumi's contrived ignorance was ALMOST enough to make me dislike her, but in the end I could appreciate that her route was able to invoke such immense feelings of helplessness on why she wouldn't believe Takuya and absolute anger on how oblivious she was to Toyotomi's false white knighting. It was some good emotions.
Oh, and that bad ending. We need a proper BGM theme playing before I discuss it:SpoilerWelp, Ayumi sided with Toyotomi over Takuya and actually slapped the poor boy. Takuya then runs off, being the rebellious teenager that runs away from his problems that he is, and then runs into and bangs Kaori the journalist with hidden ambitions who thanks him for his good work with the 20th document and then gives him the photographic evidence he needed against Toyotomi's shady dealings for Ayumi to finally believe him. Great! All our problems will finally be solved! Let's go back home to Ayumi and settle everything once and for all!
...
...
...
HOLY SHIT NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
What can I say...this one hit HARD. I haven't cried this hard on a heroine death in a long while. Again, don't know why I'm so fond of Ayumi. Like, even all of Mitsuki's deaths in this VN were whatevers for me.
But yeah, there was just something eerily beautiful about this ending, from the suspenseful build up as Takuya optimistically mutters in front of the bathroom door thinking he would be able to reconcile with Ayumi, to the slow realization that something is horribly, horribly wrong, and finally to the dreaded opening the door to confirm his worst fears. I even braced myself for the reveal but as soon as this CG popped up I just turned my head away and bawled LMAO
...
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Luckily Takuya can time travel, THANK GOD for that, and so you jump back to before Ayumi slaps Takuya, show the damn evidence incriminating Toyotomi, and stepmom and stepson finally get to cross the boundaries of familial love and bang each other as romantic equals. Hot diggity. LOL
Yo dw Ayumi, Time Traveler's Omniscient Burden ain't got nothing on mah boi Takuya. Just gotta play the Song of Time like Link in Majora's Mask and we can fix all problems eventually after a bunch of trial and error and skipping text, np~
Oh, but Ayumi and Takuya getting together poses a whole 'nother issue if her husband/Takuya's dad Koudai ends up being alive, which the possibility is heavily hinted at. Errrrrr, awkward~~
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Alright friends I'm sorry, I couldn't get into Ao Kana, I know, I know, blasphemy, it's one of the more favored high school slice of lifes out there, but I'm just waaay passed my SoL honey moon phase lol. Absolutely loved the artwork, and coupled with the flying thematics/settings I just know it would've been one of my tops alongside all the others I've red in the past.
I can probably get back into it some other time, but after going through MuvLuv / Al Somnium Files / Chaos;Child / Utawarerumono this year I'm still hungry for some more plot heavy shenanigans rather than mindless eye candy moe droolzie fests.That being said, I did get another VN for my Switch in addition to Ao Kana:
YU-NO.
Now I didn't really read the synopsis for it, so when I was slogging through the prologue for a good 2-3 hours I was like uh oh, but then BAM it's a VN that involves timetravel/multiuniverse YEEE thank the VN gods!
~~You are protagonist (first) Takuya Arima (last), an "acts obnoxious and perverted" high school boy who is kind of in a slump and slacking with his life and studies after his father, a fairly renowned researcher/historian, goes missing for a month and is eventually presumed dead. Takuya now lives with just his stepmother Ayumi, a very gentle and caring woman who's only about 10 years older than Takuya. Cuz she was a student of Takuya's dad and they fell in love. Whew.
Takuya is an obnoxious loudmouth, and 50% of his dialogue with any female character is plagued with early 2000s perverted protagonist humor; hopefully he'll grow out of it in some semblance of character development come later. He even pervs out on his stepmother Ayumi at times lol, but at least he's mindful about that:
Yo dw Takuya, I won't judge, you're only looking because I'm making you, because I'm the one who wants to stare
Yada yada yada, Takuya eventually gets a package delivered to him. The sender? His father! And inside is the deus ex machina of deus ex machinas, your very own time machine device! Now YU-NO came out in 1996, so it's the OG time travel/multiverse VN and I'm going to just enjoy it for what it is instead of trying to compare it with Steins;gate / Zero Escape and whatnot.
So far I dig the concept, you know how VNs have flow charts and save points? These are seamlessly implemented as a natural feature of Takuya's time travel device so he can set a jewel (checkpoint) and jump between them at will, though he only has a limited amounted of jewels (checkpoints) to place. Basically you using this limited saving or loading feature is him using his time machine device, pretty meta for a VN made in 1996.
The only drawback so far is that it doesn't seem like Takuya himself is aware of any jumps you're doing early on in the story, though I'm assuming come late game it'll probably be heavily integrated with the plot.
The VN narratively plays like a point and click adventure, where you are given breaks in between dialogue to move to your next destination or examine your surroundings. Pretty neat feature, though I've already developed the habit of holding skip and clicking everything in the map and then glancing through backlogs, because there is a LOT of fluff / boring descriptions:
Yuck, too much stuff to examine. Doesn't help that you can literally leave the room and come right back and then all the things you just greyed out (indicating that it was read content) will be white again (unread content).
~~
Naturally I'm playing the remastered Nintendo Switch version of YU-NO. It comes with remastered tracks (though you can change the BGM to the OG 8-bit sounding ones at any time, always nice to have that feature) and modern moe graphics, which I always love so that's a plus. I saw some comments about diehard purist fans going 'Ohh the old artstyle was better, the new one is lifeless'/ Well i say y'all needa get your eyes checked and get with the times, I bet there are even OLDER purists who would think black and white pixelated pre-1970s artstyle trumps the old 2000s janky artstyle lol.
Yes, I had Takuya stare at her butt. For the longest time ever. Sue me
~~
Pretty interested to see what kind of story this VN will do -
Wow, it's an end of an era. I actually played soooo many VNs on my Vita, ranging from the thrilling Danganronpas and Zero Escapes to sci-fi shenanigans Steins;gates and Chaos;Child's to fantasy funtimes like Ar Nosurge and Utawarerumono trilogy, even Muv Luv, and a whole crapton of Otomes. All on a "dead" device that is the Vita:
....But now it's time to Switch it up
Yup I finally caved and got a Nintendo Switch. Originally wanted to wait for a New Nintendo Switch Pro XL or something, but they came out with the fking Lite instead. Pretty excited~
- Seraphim, Silvz and Plk_Lesiak
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And so my Utawarerumono marathon finally comes to an end. 30 hours for the first game, 30 hours for Mask of Deception (MoD), and 45 hours for Mask of Truth (MoT). I didn't write up a review thingy after Mask of Deception because it kind of ended on a cliffhanger; a bit of a shame cuz I thought I could get a full story via MoD and then another full story via MoT but they both together make one big story. Considering Mask of Truth released only a year after Deception I guess they simply ran out of time and so they pushed out Deception first and then went straight back to the dev room to finish up the rest via Truth.
Favorite MoD BGM:
A nice surreal nostalgic reflective theme
~~
I'm probably part of the small demographic that got to binge this entire series in one go instead of reading the original and then waiting a decade for the sequels. So whereas the original Utawarerumono started you off as this amnesiac protagonist that wakes up in the arms of a beautiful nice girl-next-door type with animal-like ears and a tail whom he gropes out of curiosity, the sequel Utawarerumono Mask of Deception instead starts you off as this amnesiac protagonist that wakes up in the arms of a beautiful girl next door type with animal-like ears and a tail whom he gropes out of curiosity. Yup, you red that right. It's the same exact setup!
Why hello there, Eruru- I MEAN UHH, WHO ARE YOU?!
Spoiler
I wonder what life would be like if people actually had tails...it would redefine what kind of Sekka-Harra you could do lmao
The main heroine this time around is named Kuon. She's a well meaning girl who contrasts herself from the passive obedient nice girl-next-door Eruru by being the clever strong independent type. She just happened to be on a solo self identifying carpe diem journey around the world when she happened upon the unconscious protagonist and decided to become his caretaker. And she's quite the looker indeed. After exchanging some pleasantries, Kuon decides to give the protagonist a name: Haku.
Hoh... Haku, as in Hakuowlo from the first game?!
Naturally the first thing on my mind is whether this Haku is some reincarnation of the first Haku(owlo) and Kuon is some reincarnation of Eruru. Kind of like The Legend of Zelda, where you have multiple generations of Link and Zelda across multiple generations/timelines. That'd be cool, right? This VN however does a good job of just dangling the carrot, teasing you and never really getting around to confirming or denying your suspicions. You even meet a major character named Oshtor, and his appearance just screams a Hakuowlo ripoff complete with the mask and all and you're just like EYYY THERE'S NO WAY THAT THERE IS NO CONNECTION BETWEEN THESE GUYS LIKE WTF C'MON NOW.
Hakuowlo
Haku
Oshtor
Q: Which one of these three is the main character?
A: They're the same person
I jest. But it totally bugs me that no characters ever say "Hey Haku, you look like this one guy Hakuowlo that I knew from a long time ago". Not even Kuon, and she was the one who gives Haku his name AND Hakuowlo's trademark steel fan weapon. Hell, no one even goes "Hey Haku, you look like Oshtor", and these two will get plenty of screentime together. It's one of those audience-character red herring disjoints that will forever plague your mind as you read this. It's kind of like how Ash Ketchum and friends are always oblivious to Team Rocket's disguises when it should be an obvious as fuh thing to notice and exclaim about.
Haku's a good protagonist. I didn't realize it at the time, but Hakuowlo was actually super, like SUPER bland. He was too idk, capable and perfect? Since he was thrust into a ruler/leadership position quite early on he always had to be serious and couldn't really afford to banter and goof around. His inner monologues would be dull and to the point.
Haku instead gets the easygoing/laidback/lazy but dependable-when-it-matters persona, and his inner commentary is much more flavorful. He'll whine, complain, have snarky remarks, and oftentimes push Kuon's buttons just enough for her to want to wrap her tail around his head and CRUSH. In general the writing and dialogue in this VN flows much more nicely than its predecessor (though that could be the result of translation, or my attention span got better, who knows).
Characters: 8.5/10 Characters make or break a VN. Why the heck would I care about what's going on in the story if I don't care about the characters? Not gonna lie though, it did take me a bit to warm up to the new cast of heroines but man by the time I was reading Mask of Truth I was super fond and invested in all of them. Haku is great for his modern day protagonist revision and Kuon is the poster girl so she's obvious best girl, amplified onehundred fold when you finally learn just who she really is and consequently just want to give her a big ol' hug. Atuy is your local ditzy girl who calls everyone "-han" and has a bloodthirsty battle side; Nekone is the younger genius sister type that finds everything that the protagonist does stupid and scolds him accordingly; Nosuri is the well meaning airheaded robinhood justice thief type, Rulutieh is the nice softspoken girl that loves supporting everyone by cooking (lol how stereotypical), Anju is the spoiled bratty princess with Munechika as her strict honorable guardian. Then you get Saraana and Uruuru and while they're a bit overbearing with the absolute servitude with sexual implications towards Haku you learn to appreciate them too. The male cast is slightly underwhelming outside of the prodigy Oshtor and while they all have their bro moments with Haku none of them really stood out too much. It's always funny when you take a step back and think about how a cast this crazy ends up banding together.
Story:
(MoD)- 7.5/10. Mask of Deception is sort of like the Muv-Luv before Muv-Luv Alternate: the calm before the storm. It devotes itself entirely to establishing its new cast and setting. After Kuon declares herself Haku's guardian, he decides to accompany her on her journey and the two will eventually settle upon the land of Yamato and then spend practically all of the VN's some 30 hrs in its Imperial Capital and dealing with its shenanigans
and adding more heroines to the harem. Yamato is practically a utopia: the land is massive and flourishing and there is a benevolent ruler called the Mikado who is loved by all and recognized as a literal God for his mystical feats. He has 8 trusted generals dubbed "The Eight Pillar Generals" and two army commanders dubbed the "Imperial Guard of the Left (and Right)", and they'll all be relevant to the story at one point or another. Most of the VN is structured as slice of life; the first 20 hours you'll spend meeting new friends and allies and getting to know them while learning more and more about the land and its customs. It really gives an overall grand and satisfying feel to the land of Yamato.To keep things interesting, there are even nods to the first game's events/lore and plenty of foreshadow-candy opportunities regarding Haku and Kuon's backgrounds. Unfortunately, the peaceful tranquil days aren't fated to last forever, and Haku will be inevitably forced to make an irreversible decision, and- CLIFFHANGER LOLOL GO READ MASK OF TRUTH NOOB!!
(MoT)- 9/10 Shit hit the fan, whoop-dee-doo. No more fun and games sadface. Can't really talk much because it's a big spoiler on the ending of MoD, but Mask of Truth is basically a 30 hour war campaign. Sounds boring at a glance, I know, but like I said, if you care about the characters you'll hopefully get a massive buff in caring about the story. Each location you visit during your conquest will actually be a hometown of one of the heroines and so you'll get to bond more with that particular heroine and see their family (many of whom were only briefly mentioned in MoD, and are prominent characters such as being one of the Eight Pillar Generals). The writers made sure to prepare them sweet sweet ethos to get you to care about these locations (unlike the first game where you could care less that some random named village got utterly decimated). Although, I can definitely see some readers finding the war campaign a chore/boring, especially if they never got around to liking Anju. Which I don't blame them if they didn't, the girl really didn't offer much in the likeable department. Overall though it was just great to see the camaraderie and struggles of the cast I grew to become so fond of during this conflict.
The REAL fun though happens after the war. I thought the VN was gonna end after the war so I was pleasantly surprised that it kept going. You get another hearty 10-15 hours to finally get some much needed Haku+Kuon alone time and fully explore their backgrounds and also revisit and tie up any loose ends from pivotal events/lore from the FIRST game. And it does so so, so, beautifully. *Tear*
Art/Music: 8/10. Art is modern moe, always love that stuff. Music is nothing special since the remastered first game included tracks from all three games so I heard nothing new.
Gameplay: 8/10 I said I didn't like SRPGs but they really improved the look and feel for the SRPG gameplay that it was actually decently fun. The first game was horrifically limited, you can only mostly attack or heal units one space away, unit had only one combo attack string, etc, very outdated and played poorly. MoD and MoT gave units multiple combo attack strings to fit variety of situations/positions and your heals are AoE instead of only healing one panel etc.
Not gonna do a longwinded misc. thoughts/comments, there are TOO MANY feelsgood/bad moments across the 100 hours I spent on this trilogy (70 for MoD/MoT), but man it was all totally worth just for this
(ULTIMATE SPOILERS):Spoiler
THAT'S HOW YOU DO A SEQUEL 10/10 GODDAMN CLAP CLAP CLAP
MEANWHILE HAKU:
Spoiler
WHATTA FKING TROLL HOW COULD YOU SAY THIS TO KUON AND THEN DISAPPEAR ON HER WTF MAN
FIND HIS ASS AND BEAT HIM UP KUON!!!!!!!!!!!!!@#!
P.S. Kuon is best girl by a huge mile, but I cannot for the love of god believe she is voiced by the same VA as grumpy scientist Mio from Chaos;Child. Like wtf man. -
Theyre finally here
- Mr Poltroon, Inorin and Silvz
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I'm on a roll with VN's this year
must be cuz of the pandemic and all the staying at homeSo I managed to finish the Utawarerumono - Prelude to the Fallen. It's the 2020 remake/remaster of the original 2002's Utawarerumono. Clocked in about 32hours, more VNs need to incorporate a play time with your save file smh.
First off, I'll post my favorite BGM from it so I can be all nostalgic while I type this out:
(OK, this BGM is a bit misleading because this track totally sounds waaay too tragic- this VN is actually pretty lighthearted throughout LOL- but the few times something sad/tragic happens and this music plays I always loved it).
I read Chaos;Child before this, which was a modern high school SoL/pseudoscience adventure. Utawarerumono is a medieval light fantasy adventure featuring animal people and was originally written in 2002. Big contrast
The protagonist is a nameless amnesiac guy (go figure) who wakes up in a rural village called Yamayura. He was apparently found gravely injured and slowly nursed back to health by a local villager cutie by the name of Eruru- the main heroine of the story. She's the typical nice girl next door supportive caring type with good mannerisms but can also throw the occasional jealous fit. And she also has fluffy ears. And a fluffy tail. Which the protagonist gropes after pondering if they were real or not (they're real by the way). Anyways before the protag can question this any more its revealed he also has an unconventional feature of his own: an unremovable mask which further adds to his mystery:
Whoop dee doo, nameless amnesiac protagonist with a unremovable mask further obscuring his identity. And I still don't know what animal the folk from this VN are based off of. Squirrel? Fox? Lemur?
Protag then is introduced to Eruru's younger sister, Aruru, and their grandmother Tuskur, the chief of the village who welcomes him with open arms and grants him the same name she gave her late son: Hakuowlo. Haku would spend the next few weeks recovering and mingling with the villagers. He's a capable protagonist: he teaches them how to properly cultivate their land to grow crops, and even how to forge iron to trade and bolster their economy. None of the villagers were knowledgeable in these aspects at all. Gives you some good brainstorm candy for just who Haku is or where he could be from for him to know these things (you'll probably be wrong lol).
Eventually the peaceful slice of life days will come to an abrupt end and the VN will shift to a warring nations adventure narrative and throw in some SRPG gameplay. There's about 30-40 SRPG levels/battles that you'll play through in the entirety of the 20-30 hours it takes for you to read through this VN:
Spoiler
The SRPG was aight. Your characters are pretty OP; the only way you could lose is if you try to rush through things and so you let a unit go too far and they get mobbed to death. I built all my characters as glass cannons (minus Aruru- she's a beast of a tank) so I could just one shot enemies. Who needs defense. Though I didn't bother playing HARD mode...probably'd get my ass kicked lol.
There are many friends and enemies, love and betrayal, ups and downs, happy and sad moments to be had as you expand your empire. The story is linear but in between battles you are given a bit of freedom in which slice of life events you want to read (none are missable, thank god, because you'll eventually exhaust them anyway so feel free to pick whatever order you want). There's also a glossary to help with all the fantasy terminologies like the different races, locations, religions, etc... Definitely helpful. The total overall narrative is effectively 15% peaceful village slice of life, 75% warring nations conflict + the slice of life in between battles, and 10% Hakuowlo revelations.
Story: 7/10 It's a solid medieval adventure light fantasy thing. Some of the conflicts between nations were meh and probably could've been cut imo but ultimately they do help expand the world and lore. Slice of life moments were pretty good. End game revelations about Haku are pretty cool, nothing meta or mind blowing.
Characters: 7/10 They're all extremely one dimensional, I mean c'mon its 2002 whattaya expect heh, but they're all given their own little story arcs and were likeable nonetheless. Particularly fond of Eruru & Aruru, they're the poster girls ofc they'd win. Oboro was a total bro, they totally pulled off the 'starts off a complete prick and then becomes your right hand man' pretty well for him. Hakuowlo himself was entirely capable and leader material, no complaints.
Art: 7/10 Pretty good looking despite 2002. Idk if they improved or just used the original assets.
Music: 6/10 (original), 8/10 remake. The remake version I played offered two BGM settings: original: offering only the original Uwatarerumono tracks, and remake: offering the original + sequel tracks. Original is pretty lacking, I would change the settings back and forth just to see what the original played on certain scenes and yeah it's pretty limited. Remake would change tracks in the middle of scenes based on what was happening whereas original would use that one track for the entirety of the scene.
Gameplay/SRPG: 6/10 I'm just not a fan of SRPGs, lel. But it was aight.
Overall 7/10 enjoyable VN. I may watch the 24 episode Utawarerumono 2006 anime, I heard it's what many people would do before reading the next entry back then since it was the only translated version of the first entry at the time, but I'm ready for Mask of Deception! Pretty interested in seeing what they'll do with the narrative, there's literally 13 years between the release of the first and second VNs. So the writers were like, oh yeah, y'all remember that VN we made a decade ago? Let's make a SEQUEL!
Misc Thoughts/Comments (SPOILERS)!!
Spoiler-This VN has tragic moments, but typically tends to lean towards the lighthearted end of the spectrum and so darker events would get glossed over. Tuskur, the chief of Yamamura village dies after a scuffle with one of the feudal lord's grunts, but not before entrusting Haku with her granddaughters and the village, and so Haku goes on his conquest to liberate the land. He does so successfully, becomes the new owlo (emperor) of the country and renames it Tuskur.
Then in one of the random warring nations conflict, Yamamura village gets decimated entirely along with all of the villagers, leaving Eruru and Aruru to be the sole survivors of their village. The VN never really gave Haku and the girls a dedicated scene to reflect/mourn over such a big loss. They get sad for a bit and then kind of just get over it.
-I didn't get Yuzuha's purpose. She was this frail terminal sickly girl who everyone loved and cared for unconditionally and wanted her to grant all of her wishes. Ultimately she ended up having Hakuowlo's child before passing, to leave proof that she existed in this world. But Haku already has Eruru as his love, YO WTF MAN I WONDER HOW ERURU REACTED TO THAT. I MEAN, DIDN'T HE BECOME ONE WITH ERURU ALREADY:
Spoiler
I heard the original VN had some light Hscenes. This one only goes as far as saying they become one and then fade to black kekeke.
-Same with Kuuya. Didn't get her purpose. She was the owlo of another country and randomly took interest in Haku when he became the owlo of Tuskur and kept having random middle of the night meetings with him. Then she and her nation becomes the big bad and declare war on everybody because they were tired of being outcasted. Eventually she downfalls and due to trauma regresses to a childlike mental state. What was the point.
-There's a very weird powerspike that happens when Tuskur is battling Kunnekamun's Abh-Khamus (the 5meter tall robot army). Literally they give you an SRPG battle where you have to survive X amount of turns and all of your units deal 0 damage to the Abh-Khamus. Once of those forced lost battle types. Then Haku goes one on one vs a general Abh-Khamu to buy time for his people to evacuate, then he gets oneshotted, and Aruru + her pet legendary tiger Mukkuro try to protect and they get oneshotted and Aruru almost dies... TL;DR the Abh-Khamus are pretty well depicted as an unbeatable foe. Narratively they also took out an entire top3 power ranking country in 4 days. Then all of a sudden in future battles they're not invincible anymore you can one shot whole armies of them with no explanation provided.
-I liked that the beginning mystery questions that were just brushed off- like Haku's mask, why the people of this world have ears and tails, etc. turned out to be vital to the late game lore. Regarding humanity: Earth's surface has unfortunately regressed to become inhospitable to humans, and so the only people that do live on the surface are the anthropomorphic animal-human hybrids races. As for Haku: his mask is a mark of his deity origins- he is the God Uitsualnemetia that the people of this world worship and can make contracts with (give me your mind body and soul and I'll grant your wish). Eruru was actually initially only at his side because she sold herself to him in exchange to save Aruru prior to the Haku waking up at the very beginning of the story. I too felt the guilty shocking distant revelation of "all this time Eruru was only loyal and caring because she was forced to" though we all know her feelings of love towards Haku are indeed genuine by the end. But alas, he is sealed away...
I really really wonder if the sequels will deal with this:
10+ YEARS LATER DEVS BE LIKE, EYYY LET'S MAKE A SEQUEL CALLED MASK OF DECEPTION!@#
COINCIDENCE? I THINK NOT!!!!!
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I've been looking for another VN series that I can binge on my Vita. I did Muv Luv earlier this year, a handful of otomes (still have like 6 more in my backlog) and recently did Chaos;Child
And it looks like I'll settle on Utawarerumono. They apparently released the (translated) second and third Uta games Mask of Deception and Mask of Truth a few years ago but barely released the first game retitled Prelude to the Fallen this year, lucky me
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Welp so much for September lol, I just binged the rest of Chaos;Child last night, meaning Hana's route, then Uki's route, then Nono's and finally the true route.
It's a pretty good VN. Chaos;Child takes place 6 years after the key events of Chaos;Head's New Generation Madness killings and the Shibuya Earthquake, but focuses on a new cast, so an indirect sequel. The protagonist is an upgraded version of Chaos;Head's (first) Takumi Nishijou by the name of (first) Takuru Miyashiro: upgraded in that he's less of an extreme hikkikomori (shut in) who avoided social contact at all costs and was a stuttering mess if he did interact with people, and more of just a typical awkward high school boy with his own hard beliefs on him being a right-sider and everyone else a wrong-sider. A much more bearable protagonist if you ask me.
Takuru is the president of his own newspaper club, with the members being his inseparable ditzy childhood friend Serika Onoe, his naggy but evercaring foster sister Nono Kurusu who's also the student council president and VP of the newspaper club (she's my best girl btw), Hana Kazuki the 'mute' gamer girl who only ever utters "Mmm" and mainly just plays her online ESO2 game in the newspaper clubroom, and Shinji Itou the male protagonist best friend support guy. Other characters include Hinae Arimura: a blonde twintail kouhai who acts very superficially friendly around her friends and Mio Kunosato, the "what if we take Steins;gate's Kurisu and make her completely unlikeable" cold hard facts scientist type.Takuru used to be a part of Dr. Sakuma Wataru's household: Sakuma is an easygoing doctor who owns his own Aoba Clinic and he adopted Takuru, Nono, and siblings Yui & Yuto Tachibana- orphans from the Shibuya Earthquake 6 years ago. The family eventually grew fairly tight-knit, always gathering for supper to exchange pleasantries about their days under a "keep no secrets from each other" policy. However, Takuru angrily moved out into his own trailer 6 months prior to the start of Chaos;Child after feeling betrayed when the secrets policy was violated against him by none other than Nono (resulting in him calling her Kurusu, her last name, from that point on. Ouch).
As president of the newspaper club, Takuru has a thirst for chasing exotic cases he feels would shake the world. Fortunately for him, a new set of bizarre murders start occurring in Shibuya- and interestingly enough they are dated to occur on the same days as the ones that occurred during the New Generation Madness killings from Chaos;Head 6 years ago! Takuru easily gets hook-line-and-sinker'd and begins to obsess over investigating and solving the case, much to Nono's dismay. The first 6 chapters will meander between Takuru's everyday slice of life with his newspaper club shenanigans, his friends, and his adoptive family as the New Generation Madness Killings continue to make headlines all over Shibuya. Will Takuru be able to solve the case, or is he getting in way over his head?!
Story: 8.5/10. Common route starts off slow with the slice of life and preparing for culture festival but once the term Gigalomaniac makes it onto the screen the story starts picking up. It involves a lot of pseudoscience/supernatural powers that can affect reality jargon and are channeled via Di-Swords (A.K.A. BIG F*CKING exotic supernatural swords) btw so it can feel a bit Chuuni at times. The concept of delusions was interesting. There are a fair amount of plot revelations that change the very nature of characters entirely that can add some "let me go back to this scene now that I know this" reread value. Overall enjoyable.
Characters: 9/10. Takuru was nowhere near as unbearable as Takumi. Nono would probably be on my top 5 heroines if I did have a list. Idk, the student council president + nagging worrywart but legitimately caring older sister type was a complete and utter win for me. Hinae was the guilty pleasure. Hana and Uki were kind of like the filler heroines, but passable.Art: 9/10. Has that clean modern moe look. Particularly loved all of best girl Nono CGs. Some CGs can look a bit low quality though.
Spoiler
Nono (right) so pretty uwuu
Music: 8/10. They got some good tracks. The title theme World is pretty up there along with their other works like Steins;gate + (0). Visible Essence is the revelation theme and its quite badass when you do get it.Spoiler!!!SPOILERS!!! MISC. THOUGHTS/COMMENTS (MAJOR MAJOR SPOILERS)
Finally can rant about the juicy bits.SpoilerI guess I'll try to go in order. I read common route -> Hinae -> Hana -> Uki -> Nono -> True route based on some walkthrough on STEAM, and yeah it's a pretty good flow. I was so tempted to read Nono's route first because best girl, but I actually am glad I saved her for last. Made the whole revelation about Nono that much more impactful for me.
Common route:SpoilerRIP YUI TACHIBANA
Ok, I liked Yui. Especially after she said she would beat up all the bullies who were bullying her little brother Yuto. There were some MAJOR MAJOR goosebumps to be had when Takuru called Itou to confirm Yui was with him and you could just tell by the way he was talking that something was horribly horribly off. Made even more disgusting when you learn later on who the true killer is. But Itou was a nice distraction. I was truly like, wait wtf are they really gonna make this guy the mastermind, there's no way...
The killer is one of those three?! The newspaper club room investigation segments in general were decently fun, minus the first one where you had to match the dates with the Chaos;head murders, it's like how the hell are we supposed to know. Btw I was at first hoping for the killer to be Takuru, as in he had a split personality and he orchestrated this entire thing as a game for himself. Well, technically he was indirectly responsible...
Then the writers had the fking gall to kill off Kurusu shortly after while revealing Serika the childhood ditzy best friend as the culprit behind the murders. Probably one of the bigger WHAMS I've ever had the pleasure of experiencing:
Many manly tears were shed for Nono ;-;. I actually read through Yui's and Nono's deaths on the same day, and it didn't really register to me during the read until I was in bed sleeping. Then it hit me and I mourned for them HARD lmao.
They even had a secondary NPC mourn for Nono, she's just that great a character:
Amen.
Then to continue beating the dead horse we get slapped with LOL SAKUMA IS ACTUALLY THE BAD GUY, HE WAS WORKING WITH SERIKA THE WHOLE TIME SO THEY'RE BOTH THE MASTERMINDS BEHIND THE NEW GENERATION MADNESS KILLINGS PT.2, OH BTW HE DID THE WHOLE ADOPTING GIGALOMANIACS PURELY "FOR FUN" LOL YOU FELL FOR IT SUCKERRRR
The level of betrayal felt here was actually really well done. This dude had a cute ass family, but it was all done purely for his research. Just look at some of his quips with his kids:
Really sounds like a normal parent. The shock factor of this reveal is equivalent to, say, having Naruto's dad actually being the big bad. Or maybe Ash Ketchum's mom being the big bad. Yup. I genuinely never expected Sakuma to be the big baddy. Nono legitimately dies believing in her father and never suspecting him. Very thematically tragic.
Unfortunately we will never get to see Nono actually confront him since she's either dead or he's dead. A shame. Would've liked to see that interaction.
~~
Serika originally being Takuru's imaginary friend turned real when he got his Gigalomaniac powers from the Shibuya Earthquake with her only purpose being fulfill Takuru's desires thus resulting in her masterminding the New Generation Madness Killings pt.2 so he could solve the case and be crowned as a hero ala Nishijou Takumi from C;H was an OK reveal. Didn't shock me too much, especially since I remember Chaos;Head doing something slightly similar with Shogun and Takumi but yeah. Pretty decent stuff.Hinae
SpoilerOk, ngl, I forgot a lot about what happens in her route. Uhhh her family had trust issues so when she got her lie detector powers it made her distant from everyone because knowing whether people are truth or lying made everyday conversation superficial. Hinae and Takuru flirt a bit, he's really easy to read and typically genuine with his interactions so she falls for him a lot, unfortunately murders UNRELATED to the New Gen Madness start happening, Hinae randomly starts seeing her dead brother (who was apparently real booted into existance due to Hana, oops + nice foreshadowing on Hana's power), then Hinae's mom tries to kill her because of the 'you ruined my life, you should've never been born!' trope. Oh no.
Hinae in general is my guilty pleasure character, she definitely bolstered the slice of life interactions with her superficially friendly banter and ability to call people out when they lie, but also when the time is right she is able to provide key insight such as whenever Nono says a lie regarding Senri for them sweet sweet foreshadow points.
Takuru dies protecting Hinae from her mom, and for some reason even though he's dead his consciousness still exists.
EERIE AS F*CK
That kind of REALLY went over my head until I finished the VN and started reading up on various analyses and reviews. But apparently that was supposed to be a big hint that all the heroine routes are delusions for when they are in a coma between the common route/Sakuma duel and when the true route takes off 3 months after: the routes are all just a looping synchro delusion between Takuru and the heroines. Really really cool concept.
Nice fanservice shot of Hinae btw. Though, it's technically fan disservice when you learn about the truth about Chaos;Child Syndrome lmao.Hana
SpoilerEyyy gamer girl finally gets to talk! I wonder how the VA is compensated, did they pick a lower tier VA/she get less pay since she had significantly less lines to record and whatnot lol. Hana's route was alright. Had some touching moments like how Nono forcing her to join the Newspaper Club actually gave her a sense of purpose and how she genuinely appreciated being a part of something even though she didn't talk at all. Hana in general throughout the various routes is pretty consistent in being the just there to support person, which to her credit she pulls of well and she definitely felt like a part of the team.
Her muteness was explained as being a conscious result of her power: whatever she says has the potential to real boot based on anyone who hears what she says. She has no control over it, so things can easily get out of hand and so she stays mute.
Annnnd of course her route involves her accidentally summoning portals and monsters from her online game all over the Shibuya. She's thus deemed a threat by the Committee of 300, a Steins;gate SERN equivalent off screen big baddie organization and so Mr. Wakui, previously just an aloof friendly teacher, turns out to be from said organization and tasked with assassinating them and so Hana real boots an attack-on-titan equivalent of a sumo sticker and they do battle.The Mr. Wakui = bad guy reveal was done pretty well, almost comparable to the "something's off with Itou right when he's about to kill Yui":
OH SHIT
Speaking of Knightheart, one of the definite highlights of this route is the existence of Hana's online game friend KnightHeart A.K.A. Chaos;Head's Takumi Nishijou. I totally have a hard-on for characters to show up in the sequels so even though I hated Takumi's guts in C;H he was a total badass here:
LMAO, I TOTALLY BET TAKUMI HAD A DELUSION ABOUT HANA FLASHING WAKUI WTF MAN.
SUMOOOOOO TIIIIIIIIIIITAAAAANNNNNNNNNNNNN
Uki
SpoilerAnother filler girl that doubles as the Yui Tachibana replacement. Uki was found in the basement of the Hospital that experimented on Gigalomaniacs and while Takuru spends a good amount of the common route suspecting her of the evils she eventually turns out to be just a little girl who wants to fulfill people's desires. She's adopted by Sakuma and becomes the new little sister of the family.
Her route was surprisingly entertaining due to its nature of being a complete delusional world created to keep Takuru alive after he intercepted and was impaled by an enraged Uki's Di-Sword lunging towards Itou who freshly killed Yui. Takuru is HAPPY in this world- there are some high quality fun slice of life moments to be had and is oblivious to the truth of this world.
A+ Banter.
Eventually Nono and Serika are able to call out to Takuru in this delusion world and tell him that he needs to wake up or he will never be able to. The reason? It wasn't Takuru who was impaled by Uki, it was Takuru who impaled Uki when he was trying to protect Itou! And this was HER delusional world, not his! So if his consciousness was trapped in her world and she died, it's game over.
Takuru still almost accepts his happy delusional world fate (it's one of the badends actually) before real Uki comes in to fix things. Delusional Uki doesn't accept reality and so they battle.
Cute lolis with swords
Route ends with either Uki dying for real or ending up in a vegetative state, to which Takuru decides to spend the rest of his life atoning.
NonoSpoilerYay, best girl time. Also thoroughly enjoyed her route too, no bias included (jk).
When it comes to VNs with branching paths I always like to see if the choices made make sense in splitting the timelines; in this case Takuru apparently had enough positive delusions involving Nono during the common route that he was able to make it to the Nono vs Serika duel in time to save Nono this time!
WHOOOOO GO TAKURU YOU'RE SO MUCH MORE MANLY A PROTAGONIST THAT TAKUMI EVER WAS!!@#NGL I lowkey wanted this route to involve Sakuma more and have Nono learn the truth about his fakeness and confront him about it and then maybe he would see the light and realize that he had a wonderful thing going on with his family and change his ways, but l0lnope Serika offscreens him moments after the above encounter ggez. With Sakuma dead, Nono steps up evermore as the affectionate eldest sister worrying about where the family would live now and even contemplating quitting school to go work so they could pay for living expenses. God Nono is such a great character.
The surviving members of Aoba Clinic: Takuru, Nono, Yuto and Uki then move to a run down dinghy apartment (right next to the cold scientist Mio Kunosato, much to Nono's disappointment). Takuru begins calling Nono by her first name again after a heart to heart session. They lie low and avoid going to school for a while out of fear of Serika, but eventually Hinae and Hana track them down and begin regularly visiting under the guise of newspaper club room activities.
Desperate lovesick loserboy Kawahara Masashi (who was part of Nono - Senri - Kawahara childhood friendship) eventually tracks Nono down as well and goes on a spitballing "your family isn't truly your family, Senri wasn't your best friend, Takuru is a nobody, I AM THE ONLY ONE WHO UNDERSTANDS YOU, THE ONLY ONE WHO LOVES YOU!" like a dumbass in front of the household before finally getting shoo'ed away. This unfortunately causes the group to casually inquire about Senri to Nono, who responds rather awkwardly, causing Hinae to pick up that she's lying about something. Takuru attempts multiple times to find out what and why exactly Nono is lying, but she continues to dodge much to his frustration especially due to the family's 'no secret's' policy.
And so the big reveal, courtesy of Serika's mind reading powers? Nono Kurusu- the real Nono Kurusu- died 6 years ago from the Shibuya Earthquake. Senri Minamisawa, a girl who had nothing who looked up to Nono and wanted to become her, awakened the power to shapeshift. She took on Nono's appearance to the exact, and in the heat of the moment burned Nono's body and claimed the body to be that of Senri's. Senri, looking exactly like Nono, would live on as Nono Kurusu.
Now I didn't find that lie- that "Nono" was actually Senri- to be all that bad. Cuz I knew her feelings all this time were indeed genuine. Naturally we need drama though and so Takuru would blow up in her face about being a liar and a fake and call her out on what other potential things she could be lying about (which is totally valid). (Luckily in the true route, the writers gloss over this and Takuru simply goes "idiot, you should've told me sooner" to the Nono = Senri reveal). Btw, sucks to be Kawahara. The real Nono is long dead so he's been chasing SenriNono all this time, all while having already loudly claiming his hatred for Senri in his earlier outburst. Talk about awkward.
Takuru would go on a heroic BSOD and find life to be pointless at this point, so Serika appears to grant him his wish of ending his life. Nono, having resolved herself to no longer live a fake life and instead be true to herself, appears as her original Senri self and vows to protect her little brother at all costs. This touches Takuru deeply and so he is able to finally forgive her. Serika, staying true to her purpose of satisfying Takuru's desires, knows she has no place in their future and so she makes one last valiant stand as the big bad:
It's a very touching route. Nono- no, Senri- was a girl who started out with nothing but a best friend whom she looked up to dearly and dreamed of becoming. She eventually did get her wish out of some twisted fate and became Nono Kurusu, but to be fair everything she built up for herself from that point on- her family at Aoba Clinic, her position as student council president and reputation among classmates as the "Empress"- was the result of her own efforts. Admittedly a part of me was sad at the fact that Nono Kurusu is dead, and it did feel weird to have Senri Minamisawa be the true identity of the best girl I fawned over this entire VN. But alas,
True Route
SpoilerYou just need a couple screenies and 'nuff said:
Like holy f*ck I know they explicitly said in the very beginning of the VN that Chaos;Child Syndrome was a psychogenetical schizophrenia disorder or whatever that resulted from the Shibuya Earthquake and that the patients didn't realize they had a disorder but man this was by far one of the biggest mindblows I've ever gotten from a VN lol. Let me repost the normal looking screeny of the one above because goddamn I never knew you could make Nono look bad LOL
Ahhh... much better...
Not much else to say. Takuru takes the fall as the mastermind behind the New Generation Madness Killings and is locked up, but not before succeeding in becoming the first patient to break out of Chaos;Child syndrome and thus allowing Mio to develop a cure for the rest of the patients, and atoning for Serika by real booting her to become a regular normal girl and living a normal life. No problems with this ending.
Overall: 8.5/10. Legit did not think I would like this sci-fi adv VN as much due to how much I despised Chaos;Head. It was good enough that I actually want to reread Chaos;Head so I can catch up on all the story beats and whatnot, but ahh nvm. Will look forward to reading Robotics;Notes + DaSH when they do come out to EN on the Switch later this year.
I'll watch the 6.5/10 MAL rated anime of Chaos;Child real quick because I like to see things animated even though they'll probably butcher it so bad since only lol12episodes for a 30-50+ hr VN.E: lol yeah, the anime is only enjoyable as a "let's watch a recap of Chaos;child" right after finishing the VN itself. So many disappointed people who were like I don't get it or it's a rushed mess (which it definitely was, but I obviously was able to keep up and just enjoy seeing everything animated)
- Mr Poltroon, Seraphim and Ruvik
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3
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Still slogging through Chaos;
HeadChild
LOL LOOK HOW BAD MY SAVE TIME STAMPS ARE:Spoiler
So it's been a little more than a month and a half now that I've been casually reading through this?
I've finished the common route, Hinae's route, and currently going through Hana's route, then will do Uki's then Nono's and finally the TRUE route. So ETA completion at this pace should be by September or something
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I've been putting off Chaos;Child solely because I hated Chaos;Head with a fiery passion and thought it was a sequel but apparently they're not related at all story/character wise(just same setting)
So time to check it out~
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Finished Al Somnium Files
Overall a pretty satisfactory murder mystery with plenty of pseudoscience thrown in to keep you from being able to *logically* deduce the truth behind the murders until they literally spit out the secret behind said pseudoscience at you some 80% of the way through the VN. It's definitely not like Danganronpa/Ace Attorney where you can figure out the culprit early on/throughout; you'll have to wait until nearly the end for this one to learn the truth. Still was very entertaining just going through the motions though.
First off, I have this BGM playing on repeat as I type this. Glad Spike Chunsoft was able to come up with another catchy interrogation theme~
Let's get the introductions over with. In Al Somnium you play as (first name) Date Kaname, an amnesiac (go figure) police officer/detective/agent of Metropolitan Police Department's (MPD) secret elite Advanced Brain Investigation Squad (ABIS). The ABIS have access to a highly classified technology known as the PSYNC (PsychoSYNaptic Neurological Connection(?)) system, our main pseudoscience plot element machine that allows one individual designated as the PSYNCer to connect and neurologically dive into another individual's- the PSYNCee's-subconscious in order to find the secrets hidden within their "Somnia", or dream realm.So I thought this VN would have a pretty straightforward formula akin to, say, Danganronpa, which had a basic flow consisting of 1. Murder happens 2. Gather evidence 3. Solve the murder through class trials. Rinse repeat for 6 Chapters. Al Somnium would do the same: have a murder, gather evidence, then bust the perp through PSYNCs, rinse repeat right?! LOL NOPE!!! Instead what you basically get is a narrative where the once the first murder happens, you then go on a massive wild goose hunt chase only to always be a step behind and playing catch up wondering who the eff the killer is for nearly the entirety of the story. The further you go, the more bodies pile up, and instead of finding answers, you'll only pile on more and more questions. I'm making this sound like a bad thing, but I think it was actually pretty well done and effective at keeping you engaged purely on the WTF IS GOING ON, I NEED TO KNOW!@# aspect.
Date is missing his left eye, which is instead replaced by an ABIS provided advanced artificial intelligence eye-ball dubbed Aiba (clever right?). Aiba serves as Date's main investigation partner/companion- she's the Navi or Midna to Link from the Zelda series. Really great partner character, I really love stories that are able to incorporate a partner for the main protagonist. Other characters include Mizuki (Date's tsundere 12yr old roomate living with him due to special circumstances); Iris Sagan (18yr old rising-in-fame net idol) and her mother Hitomi Sagan (raised Iris single); Ota (24yr old otaku/Iris fanboy), So (a shady gruff politician). A decent bunch. Minus So.Iris Sagan. Net idol. Best Girl fo' sho
SpoilerShe has pink hair. You know me. This VN is instant 10/10 the moment she popped up on screen.
NGL, if I met her for the first time like that I would probably unintentionally stare at her for an unspecified-until-you-get-creeped-out duration as well. JK JK.
There is an accessible at all times Flowchart where you can return/jump to any point of the story at anytime. If you know Spike Chunsoft, you know the significance of these Flowcharts >.>Spoiler
Gameplay was satisfactory, although unfortunately was never able to achieve the same thrilling highs as Zero Escapes' escape rooms or Danganronpa's Class Trials imo. Throughout the entirety of the story you are given moments to cursor-point-and-click the backgrounds for extra scenic info/banter between characters. This ultimately degrades into a fluff/padding mechanic: you will never be able to miss key information that a certain Kara no Shoujo was infamous for (in that it locked you into a bad ending for missing something in one of the point and click investigation segments). So 80% of the time you will be clicking a chair in the background just to result in "this is a chair" description, but you'll find yourself checking everything anyway just so you can completionist grey out everything on the map and see all the character banters if any. Quite a chore. You can probably shorten your playthrough of this VN by half if you completely skip clicking everything.Spoiler
Don't mind the corpse, look at that cute little eyeball hamster thing- that's Aiba! I won't show you her "human" form, but it's apparently based on Date's tastes lol.Interrogation scenes. They're honestly pretty barebones and lackluster interrogation scenes compared to the bombastic DR's Class Trials or Ace Attorney's back and forth Courtroom Trials since this VN doesn't revolve around this gameplay mechanic like those aforementioned do. They were fairly entertaining to playthrough though, mainly because of that catchy theme that plays during them (linked in the youtube vid above). But yeah I would've liked there to be more substance to them.
Spoiler
The Iris interrogation scene was probably my favorite interrogation scene of them all. Mainly because it's Iris, and you all know I have a thing for pink haired grills, 'specially idols... But also because it was the one that required the most logic with the...(case spoilers)
Spoiler... 310 lbs elevator load being Renju's 160lb + 44lb barrel + Iris's 105lb body GODDAMN I felt like a genius
Then when you learn that Iris during this scene... (mega overall plot spoilers!)
Spoiler...was actually Saito in her body, with actual Iris herself being long dead in Renju's body, I just HAD to replay this scene again. Got some MEGA goosebumps. ASETONCHAN ;-;
PSYNC/ entering Somnia worlds: the flagship core gameplay mechanic of Al Somnium Files. This is the trumpcard method Date utilizes as an agent of ABIS to interrogate key persons of interest. By Psyncing with them and entering their subconscious (Psyncees are usually rendered unconscious/sedated beforehand), Date is able to visit their Somnia, an ethereal dream realm where the Psyncee is "the author, director, and actor of their play" (without any conscious control over it), and Date is the Psyncer "the audience witnessing this play".
It's all very abstract- the VN shifts to a 3D free roam surreal environment where you can move around and perform tasks while in another person's mind with the goal of breaking through their Mental Locks to reveal their secrets buried deep within. Btw, did I mention that PSYNCs have a 360 sec (6min) time limit? Any further and the Psyncer risks having their mind/consciousness absorbed by the Psyncee completely. Walking around and performing Actions consumes Time, so Date is always racing against the clock. It's an artificial way to add difficulty to this gameplay, but you're never really punished too hard for failing since you can always reload and then skip to where you last left off.Unfortunately, even this flagship PSYNC mechanic left me feeling unsatisfied: while there are indeed some epic wow moments to be had, most of the time Somnia experiences are RNG/trial and error based; you cannot logically deduce what action would progress you deeper into someone's mind. What should I do with this fan? Blow on it? Kick it? Grab onto it? Whoops one choice was wrong. Whoops the second choice was wrong. Whoops the third choice is wrong. So the fan's not the answer, how about that random pot over there? Shit, out of time, gotta restart and try again.
One of the lategame PSYNCs is ESPECIALLY guilty of this: After going through a fairly lengthy and confusing labyrinth to break through several Mental Locks and actually running fairly low on time by the end of it, the devs actually had the gall to slap you in the face and choose from (not really spoilers i guess?)
Spoiler
999secs for an action are you kidding me?!?! I know I said in general that Somnias were easy and not very punishing especially since you could just reload and skip through dialogue, but this Somnia was an actual "Yo fk you and your reload+bruteforce trial and error". Literal nightmare. Maybe that was the point though, given whose Somnia this was...
To give credit where it's due though, here are some Somnia moments I enjoyed: (MASSIVE SPOILERS)
SpoilerMizuki's. No words needed. Just see the screenies. Probably my favorite Somnia based on wholesomeness.
Spoiler
Mizuki picking Date THREE TIMES over her parents, with him pushing her away each time until the third, the skull time multiplier increasing with each attempt, was a LEGENDARY FEELS moment. They nailed this moment perfectly, clap clap. I kind of wish you had to do it more maybe 5-6x? Man I was OSHITT-ing my pants seeing that skull number go up as Date rejected Mizuki.
Overall I'm super super fond of Mizuki. I always thought it a bit weird how Date had this 12 year old girl as his roommate and yet barely ever interacted with her (especially on other routes) but this route really captures the untold the bond these two share together. Also when you hear Date's wish he made at the shrine...UGH just so WHOLESOME!
MAYUMI - just pretty wholesome in general
Spoiler
Funny- I actually chose "turn time backwards" my first attempt even though I KNEW metaphorically you were supposed to move time forward for Mayumi/ Ota's mom, but with baka Date being all like "THERE'S GOTTA BE A HAPPY MEMORY DOWN THERE SOMEHWERE!@#" I thought you had to go backwards to access the memory of where she was given the kitchen knife+apron for Mother's Day. RIP.
Iris - Shovelforge. 'nuff said.
SpoilerAlso I'm totally a diehard ASETONCHAN fan as well, it's the pink hair and gleeful personality, sorry I have absolutely 0 defense against it, so I totally chose Believe Her even though all the Illuminati Naixilusterousdkjfaklf was obvious BS (though, with all the pseudoscience going on, I did think there was a slight possibility they could swing with that shit. Thankfully they didn't.)
Boss / Saito - it's the big reveal Somnia. Of course it'll be one of the favorites, even if it pulled the BS 999sec tackle the ladder BS
Spoiler
The game with its locked paths and cliffhangers actually did a REALLY REALLY good job up to this point in keeping you guessing whether the New Cyclops Murders are based off of one individual, multiple individuals, Date's pre-amnesiac self, the Boss, etc... then it slaps you with this scene of A kills B kills C kills D kills E and I was just utterly speechless. Literally for a moment (just a moment i swear!) i thought it was all one big string of motivated murders where Renju killed Shoko because she was a bad mother to Mizuki or something, then Renju who kept wanting to meet with Iris 'fessed to her and then she killed him for revenge for Mitsuki as her friend, then So went after Iris because of the Manaka cover up, then finally Boss kills So in the name of justice,,,.
But yeah nope, much easier to do the whole Eyyy Date, homie, my man, the body you are in belongs to an only-generates-oxytocin-when-he-kills psychopath, and he was the one who's been using a prototype PSYNC machine he conveniently obtained in order to do the whole A kills B kills C kills D kills E while swapping bodies each time using said protoype PSYNC machine!
Side note: while I did rip on Somnias for having RNG-trial by error methods, and particularly this one for the 999sec ladder BS, I'll give credit that up until then this Somnia WAS actually logically thematically solvable: the 1st door involves breaking the lock with a pick- the same used in the 1st murder (Shoko); the following key having a pick sitting on it. The 2nd door involves rolling an oil drum- used for the 2nd murder (Renju), the following key having an 8:00 timestamp- his time of death, etc.
Other random misc. comments/thoughts/moments: (ULTRAMASSIVE SPOILERS):
SpoilerA-SET! YOU BET! I wonder how far the translation team had to localize for those rhymes. I know "Tesa" was what they localized the verbal "A-Set-tonchan"
Spoiler
Really liked how the gang united to save Iris. Also always found it super silly yet super awesome how the head of a yakuza Moma became a powerful ally just because he's a diehard fan of her.
Too bad she DIES BY THE END OF THIS ROUTE ;-;
Like I said, I had automatic bias for her. The tears flowed endlessly with this scene. And when you finally learn the truth MUCH LATER and reflect on this scene that her last words of "Are you..." before passing was ultimately her hunch that "Date Kaname" was indeed Falco her long lost Uncle... man this route is just so damn tragic.Mizuki vs. Army of Goons- I know I've been fangirling over A-set too much, so time to give Mizuki some love too because I also downright love this girl
Spoiler
As badass as Mizuki is in this scene, overall the "combat" in this VN is one of its more jarring moments: the only real danger and deaths occur solely from the New Cyclops Killings which cause a great deal of dread and despair for the main cast, yet Date and Mizuki can end up facing a horde of goons in a shootout and they don't bat an eye.
Also weird is how Date can be one-shotted randomly despite generally being pretty capable. Getting WOK'd or StunGUNNED by Ota, getting Desk Slammed WHILE INTERROGATING 89... Also Aiba's calculation moments involving pornmags to 3.6x Date's reaction time were ehhh. Will admit the one really good Aiba Calculation was throwing Mizuki's pipe and redirecting a bullet through it to hit So. Needed more of those. The ecchi comments in general by Date throughout the VN were ehh.
Oh sorry i started ranting. Uhh i actually don't have anymore Mizuki screenshots LOL, but uhhh the epilogue scene where Date and Mizuki weren't talking to each other at Lemniscate, with Iris having to "translate" Mizuki's gestures to Date was pure gold. And the reason they were fighting? Date didn't like how Mizuki cooked the eggs for breakfast and he told her up front. RIP </3
Annihilation End - the classic "Everybody dies".
Spoiler
"Could I have had... a better future?" Practically EVERYONE was dead by the end of this route. Mizuki's parents, Iris, Ota, So, Boss...Even if Date held on to the belief that another him in a parallel world had a better outcome, he still exists in this timeline, and he will continue to exist in this timeline while we the audience can simply jump and spectate another plotline. It's one of those things you have to ponder for a moment about to really appreciate the utter tragedy and despair that this route resulted in. But you'll get depressed if you let it sink in too much so let's move on
In general one of my favorite things to ponder about with a branching plotline narrative is all the outcomes that did and didn't happen on a particular timeline. Like in this ending everyone dies but Date who is now in Boss's body. WTF is he going to do now?
In Ota's ending, the murders go up to Shoko -> Renju -> Iris/Ota averted -> So chopped up unsolved while Date goes on a wild goose chase thinking Ota's mom Mayumi could be the killer. Iris was in the hospital in a recovering from her injuries/coma... but guess what So's the one currently in her body technically at that point. Which leaves the person who chopped up So being Boss/whoever Saito bodyswapped next? I don't think they expanded on that, just left it on a happy note with Ota and his mom.
Mizuki's ending is similar to Ota's, except during the Iris/Ota averted event So's body is injured in the leg and so Date eventually finds out its him and confronts him. So's consciousness should be in Iris at this point, with Saito in So's so Date probably killed the real Saito, effectively ending the New Cyclops Killings although not knowing so. Kudos to the "Date shot in the left eye" scene btw:
Spoiler
Also find it hilarious how Saito gets absolutely cockblocked by Date just because Date tells Iris not to leave the house. That one simple decision stops Saito's entire kill streak on JUST Shoko (whereas he can do the full Shoko -> Renju -> Iris -> So -> Boss in the not telling Iris to not leave the house routes) because he then gets into a car accident and is hospitalized which makes up the bulk of "why is Renju missing?" during Iris's route.
Pewter is a little shit. I kept wondering after the whole "Date x Iris get shot at by a mob of blackops which was apparently Pewter's doing" was all about, and the narrative did mention but it wasn't really elaborated upon, but I think it was since he was Renju's love(?) who gave him that watch, when Saito who was in the body of Renju at the time asked Pewter for 'help' that's why he complied? Then there are other routes where he will assist Date and other routes (like the true route) where he opposes Date & Boss because of the "higher ups" (not his loverboy Renju) and I just simply could not keep track of whose side he's on for whatever route lol.
Regarding Manaka Iwai: NGL, it did not occur to me that the Iris look-alike found in the forklift in the warehouse would be her own mother, even with Aiba doing the whole three questions thing with Date. I was probably 50% sold on the parallel worlds and Somnia alternating reality theory. At first I was fuming at the "plot twist" of "LOLOL THAT WASN'T IRIS, IT WAS JUST SOMEONE THAT LOOKS LIKE HER, LOLOL YOU FELL FOR IT NOOB". Then Aiba is like "Impossible to determine exact time of death, this body was frozen here for maybe 10y ears?" Huh? 10 years? "Also...she was pregnant, but gave birth before she died" and I'm like uhhhh wait a minute... then it's "She died ~18 years ago" NO FUCKING WAY HOLY SHIT, IRIS IS 18! 10/10 PLOT TWIST
Kind of sucks that she had to fall in love with So. I mean, really? That old ugly ass prick? How old even was he at the time? In the flashback he still looked old af, damn shame. Definitely couldn't have had a nice personality either since he just trashed Manaka+Iris in favor of his political career. Only redeeming thing for this guy is that he's purely a plain scumbag and never actually resorted to things like murder despite all signs pointing the possibility. Real glad Iris inherited all of her mother's genes and none of her father's.
Saito can kill his half sister Iris. I mean he kills his dad So as well, but man, killing the mother and then the daughter 18 years apart is thematically creepy to think about.
I don't ever want to see Iris getting sawed in half again.
In the Annihilation End where everyone dies, wait I lied, Mizuki is also still alive, but man, both her parents and best friends Iris/Ota are now dead, and Date is stuck in Boss's body... wtf are these two gonna do now
Date will never interact with Renju ingame on any of the present timeline(s)- by the time you find Shoko's body at the very beginning, Saito is already in Renju's body. Poor Renju.
The Date = 89 = Rohan = Saito body swaps really hurt my mind at first. Really hard to follow in addition to the Saito -> Rohan -> Shoko -> Renju -> Iris -> So -> Boss swapping while replacing left eyes and ingesting them that you were supposed to piece together during the Boss-Saito interrogation reveal. Probably was the worst my head ever hurt while reading a VN. Lol
I'd LOVE to do a character relations chart. With the body swaps included. Renju and Shoko are Mizuki's parents, Mizuki is Date's roommate and Ota/Iris's friend, Iris parents are Manaka and So; Manaka was friends with Hitomi/Renju and So's mistress but was killed by So's son Saito and so Hitomi raised Iris, Hitomi met Falco who was associated with Kumakura mob boss Rohan who covered up Manaka's death for So and did the Original Cyclops Killings with Falco. Falco body swaps with Saito creating Date who would years later meet Iris again, the list just goes on and on it's probably the most convoluted "Every character is related to each other" VN to date.
Overall this VN is a solid 8/10. Engaging murder mystery plot that utilizes pseudoscience, fairly likeable characters, solid sound track, decent gameplay that has its moments. Didn't feel like ermergawd mindblown masterpiece, but was definitely a fun experience.
Oppai-lady- Dreamysyu, Mr Poltroon and Seraphim
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I had the most randomest "Oh hey I wonder what Spike Chunsoft made over the past couple years, I was a real big fan of Danganronpa/Zero Escape"
Not really feeling up for 'dungeon crawling rpg' so I skipped Zanki Zero
But I splurged on Al Somnium Files, an adventure sci-fi murder mystery (?) https://vndb.org/v26532
Also randomly picked up the modern 2019 version of YU-NO even though they're just the publisher for that https://vndb.org/v1377
- Seraphim and Mr Poltroon
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Muv Luv Alternative spoileryish
The first few chapters are Unlimited-recap-but-I-know-teh-futures-and-am-more-mature-and-buff
It was nice to see Takeru be considered a natural talent this time around rather than the wimpy holding everyone back loser he was in Unlimited
Then 12-5 happens and it was kinda draggy but a good outlook on the world political dramas going on and Meiya's philosophies (Yuuhi's hawt btw)
XM3 trials were nice, always liked how Takeru's Valgern-On expertise in Extra pays off for the TSFs
Then the CHOMP happens and you're like whoa whoa WHOAAA HOLD UP!!!!! THAT DID NOT JUST HAPPEN!!!
Really disappointed that Sumika and her diaries actually failed in Return to Extra, I mean Extra BEGAN with her diary excerpts, they're just so damn iconic, and then you get blasted with "Good morning Shirogane-kun" and you're like WHAT.THE. SOME CHILDHOOD FRIEND YOU ARE.
Isumi's Valkyries... Despite being introduced pretty damn late in the trilogy I was still able to grow fairly attached to them. Michiru+Mitsuki+Haruka ranting about their love lives at first felt kind of out of place, it's like huh I know there's no way we're ever gonna get to see the people they're talking about, then you learn that Kimi ga Nozomu Eien / Rumbling Hearts exists and it's like dammit, y'all told me to read extra/unlimited so I could be attached to the main cast, but you forgot about these for the secondary cast!@#$#(Jk they're not even TLed sadface)
00Unit and Causality Conductor jargon was quite interesting, it's the meat of the Sci-Fi content comparable to other VNs involving time travel / multiverses. Topics concerning the BETAs behaviorals and objectives were always worthwhile to read. Military debriefing sections were cool but often difficult to keep up with; actual combat scenes were very well done.
Would've liked some more Takeru x Sumika dialogue, it actually feels like they didn't get to interact that much all things considered.
Mass Effect 2 Final suicide mission... If I red MLA back in 2006 I probably would've loved it, but now in 2020 overall it felt pretty meh and average to have an outcome like that. Or maybe at that point I was so battle hardened and so it didn't phase me. Or maybe I'm just still in denial to the reality that THAT is the ultimate fate of all of those beloved characters in this world.
Superordinate encounter was a real climax-y moment, but writers fell short by having to wrap up the story at this point. I would've preferred this encounter being at like the halfway point and then having a whole half to explore the rest but oh well. Biggest whamline: "The superordinate will display the newest specimen designated for recycling as Soldier Class". Fking Christ the CHILLS I got.
The final letter I got was from Class Rep, admittedly shedded some tears.
Extra Alternate ending was some good feels. Overall this trilogy really does the whole "don't take peaceful everyday life for granted" theme justice. As much as Muv Luv Extra was super super basic, at the end of the day after going through the monster that is Alternative it just made me so nostalgic and really appreciative of the simpler times. 9/10
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Oh sweet, I managed to make it through Unlimited, the Shuckle Pokemon that told me about bad news must've reverse psychology'd me or something so I didn't really find it a slog to read as much as Extra was.
Not much to say about Unlimited, it was more enjoyable for me than Extra with its more "serious" tone but it's basically the same generic high school harem 'cept with mecha sci-fi military the world's ending!!@# elements thrown in to keep things interesting.
Kind of missed Sumika, never thought I'd say that l0l
..Well, now it's time to see what all the Alternative hype is all about..
- yelsha57, Inorin, Mr Poltroon and 1 other
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What are you playing?
in Visual Novel Talk
Posted
You know you got addicted to a story when you finish it within a week clocking in 30-35 hours, I don't think I've read any VN this year got me hooked this much. Robotics;Notes also clocked me about 30-35 hours, but took me a solid MONTH each entry to finish because I just read for a couple hours a day etc. And with 13 Sentinels I would boot it up and then BAM 8 hours passed already it's like huh where'd the time go.
As is with tradition, starting off with favorite BGM, this time it's definitely gonna go to the main menu music, lol. You know how sometimes a VN has a great title theme so you could spend some time just chilling while listening to it? Throughout 13 Sentinels you can switch between 3 main menu/modes: the story mode, the codex with all the key terminologies and lore, and battle mode with the real time strategy tower defense gameplay. Each menu will come with its own rendition of the main theme and when you swap between them the music also changes seamlessly. It's some great stuff. More modern games need to have seamless changing multiple versions of themes tbh.
0:00 Codex version. 1:12 main menu version. 2:19 battle version. Battle is my fav, it always feels good hearing this track as you prepare your teams for combat.
Story: 9/10. Celebration of Sci-Fi. You want giant robots? Alien invasions? Futuristic technology? Artificial Intelligence? Time travel? You name it. This game's got it all. The plot can get OVERWHELMINGLY CONFUSING to follow at times, since the story is told through the eyes of 13 protagonists, in anachronic order, in multiple time periods, with plenty of flashback/dream sequences and scientific jargon littered throughout, but somehow the writers were able to structure it in a way that keeps you thirsting for more as every scene always reveals something new about the characters and the world and as soon as you think you have a good understanding of the overall picture, BAM you get hit with another plot twist/revelation. The basic premise of 13 high school students and their giant robot Sentinels vs the Reapers to save the world is still there, but it's honestly only 10% of the story and the other 90% is understanding every protagonist's situation and figuring out what the hell is going on. There are so many revelations for the characters and the plot that I don't think there was ever a single grand HOLY SHIT moment akin to Ever17's True End, ultimately there's just a bunch of hory-shis that make you go "Ooo that was a nice reveal" and they all add up to make an overall fascinating story.
And thankfully, there is an (actually helpful!) ingame codex that lists character information (and updates as you learn more information), important terminologies and lore, and even has an event viewer for every protagonist that organizes the scenes in chronological order should you want to review the story.
Presentation: 9/10. Presentation for me includes art and music/sound, and everything Vanillaware did for this title was superb. The watercolor 2.5D artstyle was always gorgeous and captivating to look at, the sound design was fantastic making the world feel vibrant, music was surreal when it needed to be and epic when duty called, and the VAs did a splendid job portraying their characters.
Best girl is (first) Iori Fuyusaka (last), why do you think my first post was littered with her. Side note: every protagonist has a certain area on their body that is the "activation switch" to call upon their Sentinel, and of course Vanillaware made Iori's switch on her thigh so that's why she's posed like that in the screenie above. Not that I'm complaining.
Random character pulling a gun on another character montage, this cast is quite trigger happy and it's hilarious how often they will whip out a gun on each other:
Yup, even kids be pullin' out guns if you look at them the wrong way. The future is a scary place >.>
I hope they're able to port this to Switch+PC one day. I used to care about console exclusivity (lol) but 13 Sentinels is legit a story where I just want to tell everybody I see to go read it
E: Also realized I didn't mention the word mystery at all in this post lel. Mystery is a HUGE part of this story.