Gokuin no Sentou is probably a reasonably strong contender for worst title of the month - even if you’re going by pure immorality, STARLESS seems to have easily outdone it on that count. No interest in playing STARLESS myself, but it is rather interesting to read the reviews, as it seems like it’s one of the rare cases where the writer (or in this case artist/writer) has made a game for themselves first and everyone else second.
Starless has been released? I must have missed that…
Starless details from hongfire:
Walkthrough: http://adult.megaden.net/archives/55471400.html
10 endings
Since it contains Bestiality, an official release is out of the question without edits. Even though Jast expressed interest.
Spoilers:
One of the girls is a hermaphrodite
Even bestiality is out now? No Mugen Kairou 2, no Subarashiki Hibi? Booooo~
I’m no fan of the concept myself, but it eliminates some extremely good eroge.
Yeah their was a discussion on hongfire about it, apparently about 32 US states have laws that make it illegal, plus a lot of other countries have laws making it illegal (Its illegal in all of Australia). And as has been seen with recent cases, any depiction (which would include eroge) falls under these laws.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoosexuality_and_the_law#Laws_against_zoophilia
EROGE is illegal in all of Australia, at least at the moment; the draft 18+ category looks like it changes that for most titles but anyway
Meh… IMHO, Starless is all about shock content. The actual plot and character development is practically non-existant or easily predictable. I think it’s a case of people being caught off guard, playing a type of game they’re not expecting, and then kept playing it because of that “watching a train wreck” or “deer in the headlights” type effect. When finished they’re disgusted in reflection: at the game, and maybe at themselves.
It’s just the ero version of Goatse or 2-Girls-1-Cup… the shock is the only “value” in it. If you start deconstructing the shock factor out, you’re left with pretty much nothing. You won’t apprechiate a rainbow without color: you won’t apprechiate Starless unless you’re devoted to the fetishes. And no… I’m not one those people who actually liked Starless… but I have some online friends who are raving like it’s the second coming of God. :lol:
One of the most common complaints I’ve seen, even from people who liked the game is the extent of CG reusage. Iirc, the game has 80 base CGs and 89 scenes, but a lot of CGs are used in two and three different scenes, which is an (imo almost always detrimental) way of inflating the length of a game. Alice Soft in particular do the same thing, but generally ero isn’t all their games have to offer. I guess another interesting thing about STARLESS is the lack of variety - there are plenty of eroges that have all kyonyuu or ?S or nyphomaniac heroines etc., but a game generally only takes one of those as their sales point, and makes sure there is variety in other aspects. As for the possibility of a license, I know Shingo has bought the game so he’d be in the best position to judge, but given the content I’d agree that an uncut release is out of the question, and the outcry that would result from a cut version would make it not worth the effort.
Cyc apparently is going to announce something new on June 24:
http://www.cyc-soft.com/x-day.html
Though I bet the question on everyone’s mind is…just how much is this new game going to suck?
There’s a chance that it’s this:
in which case it could be alright!
Argh! Too many titles, too soon, too fast. This is why quality is shot to Hell. :evil: Judging from the teaser page, it’s not even Black Cyc anymore. New branch. They’re already throwing away the old useless skin? It only sucks because they made it suck. :roll:
My review for [b]Gokuin no Sentou[/b]… and in complete reverse opinion, MinDeaD BlooD Complete Edition.
EDIT
Stupid observation… bottom of the page says:
©2011 (C) Ranba amuse All Rights Reserved.
New studio is either Ranba amuse or it’s a Gundam thing! 
Played it, reviewed it, turned out to be a big disappointment. 
Then again, I shouldn’t have expected much plot from a Black Lilith title, but that’s for another thread.
I don’t think it’s that, as Itou Hiro is already listed as a writer, and Izumi’s said he’s written the whole scenario.
Given that the staff are considerably better than Inunaki’s/Gokuin no Sentou’s, at the very least, I don’t think this will be a landmine. However, I agree that it’ll almost certainly suffer from the short production time, which will lead to it being rushed, too short, or probably both.
Also, good to see erogereview back up and running again. [size=50]I need to get back to reviewing too[/size]
BALDO APPROVES!!! :mrgreen:
Awww… I was hoping the game would be better. I totally knew the nature of Black Lilith releases being “quickie sexfests” and nothing more, so shitty dialog and nonexistant plot was a given, but the paper doll laziness makes me sad. This was the Master of Ahegao ShindoL at the helm of artwork. I’ve read his manga: he can do body positioning.
I’ll just get the Pixy anime adaption this is inevitable.
Nukige generally seem to have serious ‘value’ issues- the issue with eroge being that it’s very expensive and for the money people generally expect to get quite a bit of time out of it. The problem with nukige is that you can’t fill that out with relatively ‘cheap’ stuff like scenario- you’ve got to have the H scenes, and the longer the H scenes are, the more expensive they are. As well as this, the only room there really is for innovation is in the H scenes- you’ve basically got to make your game’s H scenes unique to it, because people are not going to want to play something that just has a lot of stuff they’ve seen before- this is tricky because there’s tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of eroge H scenes out there. Tachie are also tricky because they cost money the more you have and you aren’t really going to get value out of them in a nukige where most of the focus will be on the tachieless H scenes.
I think at times making a top-class nukige is harder than making a top-class story-centric eroge- but then I look at some of the really successful nukige and I realise that I’m probably wrong =P
I think the success of a dedicated, minimal story nukige depends on a combination of the artist, the brand, and also a reasonable amount of luck in picking whichever sub-genre(s) are currently fashionable/popular. However, a better approach may be to try and make a ‘normal’ eroge first, and then include an above average number H scenes (something that a lot of the best selling titles of last year seem to have done), while also making them longer than usual. Sure, the end result won’t be a nukige, but it’ll (at least from my perspective :P) probably be a more balanced game as a result that will ideally have something to offer in every aspect. While I also think that a lot of eroges would work better with only one or two, or in some cases zero scenes per character, I don’t think companies would take that sales risk unless they knew their game had an outstanding story and text to back that up.
Well, depends on the kind of eroge, really. While most story-centric titles end up worse off with more H scenes than strictly necessary (whether that’s because the writer(s) failed to use the H scenes effectively or because H scenes by their very nature do little to improve storytelling) I think the average character-centric moege could get away with jumping up to 6-7 H scenes per character of above average length- in fact, one could argue that some of Atelier Kaguya’s better titles (like Prima Stella) are basically this. Of course, H scenes are still expensive which may be why most companies aren’t too keen on doing this.
Bad news guys. Following is a direct cut-and-paste from the README file in Gokuin no Sentou. This supposedly new Cyc branch, RaNBa amuse, is actually releasing their SECOND game. :roll: Teh future lookz grim.
I’m still hopeful, given the writer, that it will at least turn out to be a disappointment like Cthulhu, not a landmine like Inunaki/Gokuin.