Currently Playing/Mini-Review Thread

Visual Novel Community Visual Novel Talk
#1

I’ve seen similar threads on other boards, so I though there might be some interest for it here too. The purpose of this thread is to offer mini-reviews on eroges, without needing to repeat any information on the hompage or write a large amount of text, or in other words, to give a brief assessment of what can’t be ascertained from reading the game’s homepage.

Natsumero

Positives: For the most part, high quality CGs and famous seiyuu. Dedicated slice of life summer game with a backstory that contrasts well with the events in the present.

Negatives: Compared to the trunk, the character routes are very short, and still have a lot of common text and scenes. There’s frequent of discussion of future events that don’t take place within the game’s timeframe. Some sub-characters have very little screentime and no purpose or meaningful role in the story.

Subjective: Ero is quite dense, and in terms of frequency/content, it’s probably akin to what you’d find in a nukige. It doesn’t quite feel ‘in character’ with the rest of the game (fairly big negative for me, but may be a positive for others). The story is very ‘ordinary’, as there are no significant ups or downs on any of the routes, and the ending is more of a cut-off than a conclusion.

Summary: Probably a recommendation only if the concept, art style and ero interest you. Natsumero’s decent, but there are better titles along similar lines to choose from.

#2

Idzuna Zanshinken (Getchu)

Positives: Great CGs and effects, full voicing everywhere, thrilling pace and decent characters.

Negatives: Overly convenient plot, doesn’t go into detail about anything- there are parts of most missions where the characters need to investigate something (the chapters generally start to follow a pretty episodic pattern but this is fine) and, while I don’t mind this by itself, it’s all way too easy. Every person talked to gives hints that point either directly to the solution or to the next person to talk to. This isn’t a gameplay element, just what the characters are doing, but it all feels extremely contrived.

Subjective: Four times or so per chapter you get four choices that just select, from two choices, which mini-chapter you’ll get next. For the most part (with exceptions, most of which are fairly clear) these are utterly unimportant but to clear it / see the most of the story you’ll have to save, choose one, reload, choose another - and I don’t know why, even for events that happen at the same time, why they can’t just show one followed by the other. On the other hand it is slightly novel. So far the routes also seem to be fairly independent, although that’s not a problem by itself. It remains to see if the game shapes up for a thrilling conclusion.

Summary: Good enough to be a general recommendation, particularly for people that like actiony titles, but it’s no kamige.

#3

Midori no Umi (DLsite)

Positives: Good story, art, atmosphere, characters… most things, really. The game has a great twincest story so Narg has already played it.

Negatives: This is a minor point but there’s a thing that SkyFish do (and Cabbit is a brand of SkyFish) as well as some other companies, like DreamSoft/F&C FC03 occasionally- the OP is at a really low framerate. I love OPs. I keep them around- I have a directory full of them and sometimes I just like watching the things. Low framerates reduce their enjoyability an awful lot- even moreso than incorrect framing (see: Purple Software’s Memoria) and there is seriously no reason for it. It doesn’t reduce the filesize by much. The romance subplots that are pretty much a stock-standard requirement for most story-centric eroge are here but they can be a bit lacking. I’ve seen worse, though, and I guarantee just about everyone else has too.

Subjective: The story dances around quite a bit and you get your perception of the story thrown out quite a lot. Not necessarily a bad thing, but it leaves you wondering the sort of mood the writer was going for. Some routes just seem uncharacteristically happy and end far too well- others are incredibly miserable. A lot of the H scenes feel a bit contrived and unnecessary, although I guess you could argue this for most eroge successfully.

Summary: Across-the-board, this is a recommendation unless you’re only into eroges for romance stories, because romance-wise this does feel quite contrived and unconvincing. Everything else though- it’s quite good. At this rate probably not quite a kamige but still a title I’ll continue to remember as something standout from the ashes of an otherwise mediocre company (SkyFish)

#4

Kotowari

Positives: Interesting story and characters, rather more thought put into this than the average low-budget students-with-hitherto-unseen-powers-fight-youkai story some brands push out occasionally, hoping they’ll hit the right note and set off a spark of popularity. The action sequences are well created and feel that vital sense of desperation and danger that is lacking in Idzuna and that titles like AYAKASHI, Ayakashibito and Fate/stay Night pulled off so well.

Negatives: The art. Okay. It’s a style, so this doesn’t bother me anything like White Album 2 IC’s pre-patch art did, but it does feel five years old (or even more.) The routes, as far as I can tell, totally lack cohesion and I dunno what the ‘appendix’ chapter that becomes available after clearing the rest of the game is going to have to work with, but we’ll see. There’s certainly potential here but for the sort of game, the plot is not as strong as it could be. It could be a lot weaker though.

Subjective: The routes are of a decent size but due to the fact that they actually have a story to get through, they have their work cut out for them fitting 5 H scenes into every route. As such, they tend to crowd out things and despite the fact that the writers have tried to keep things balanced, the H scenes really do start to get in the way.

Summary: Might be better to wait for this to come out for DL sales, preferably at a discount.

#5

Yu-no

Positives: For the most part, high quality CGs and great seiyuu. Dedicated fantasy/mystery with a backstory that contrasts well with the events in the present.

Negatives: Compared to the trunk, the character routes are very short, and still have a lot of common text and scenes. There’s frequent of discussion of future events that don’t take place within the game’s timeframe. Some sub-characters have very little screentime and no purpose or meaningful role in the story.

Subjective: Ero is quite dense, and in terms of frequency/content, it’s probably akin to what you’d find in a nukige. It doesn’t quite feel ‘in character’ with the rest of the game (fairly big negative for me, but may be a positive for others). The story is very ‘ordinary’, as there are no significant ups or downs on any of the routes, and the ending is more of a cut-off than a conclusion.

Summary: Probably a recommendation only if You like god-tier games.

[size=50]Fuck I’m lazy.[/size]

#6

… really? It’s been a while since I played yu-no, but I can only recall 1 H scene per girl at most. Though I guess there’s a lot of partial and not so partial nudity scattered throughout it to compensate.

Certainly nothing approaching a nukige, though, given the game’s length. Less ero than your average story-centric eroge nowadays, most of which include several H scenes per heroine.

#7

I was too lazy to fix that.

#8

Um, there’s a much bigger problem.Am I the only one who noticed fujifruit ripped off Ignosco’s mini-review almost word-for-word. :expressionless:

#9

Oh, I didn’t notice that =P Yeah, that makes sense now. Nobody would seriously say yu-no has too much ero, whereas it’s a legitimate point for Natsumero (which is rather short and has 3-5 scenes per heroine >_>)

#10

Rance IV -Kyoudan no Isan-

Positives: Free (easiest to use this version over the ones on RetroPC), provides a lot background information about key characters and settings within the Rance world, automatic battles option (highly recommended for all the random encounters), effective climax to the story. For the time, the production values were very high, and almost 20 years later, some of the mini-animated segments are still very effective and convey the atmosphere of a scene much more effectively than a CG could.

Negatives: Even taking age into account, the system is unnecessarily cumbersome (saving/loading is a four step process), and although there’s more depth to the combat than the earlier Rance games, the system in Rance III is generally better. Game follows directly on from the end of Rance 3, and because of that, the first third or so features few familiar characters (I’m counting this as a negative because most of the new characters aren’t particularly memorable, and very few appear in future Rance games). The story-related events in some chapters are quite far apart, and the random encounter rate is too high.

Subjective: The game is quite long, and even with a walkthrough, it’ll still take a reasonable chunk of time to clear. Setting is far more confined than Rance III’s, and there’s a large amount of dungeon crawling, which for me at least, made the game feel less epic in scope. Above all, it’s an old eroge, and a lot of the convenient features of modern games aren’t present.

Summary: Recommended only if you’ve played Rance III and are looking to complete the entire series in order. Otherwise, just play Kichikuou, and Rance VI onwards, as IV is definitely inferior to those games + a lot of the references will be lost without having played 1-3 first.

#11

Rance 4.1

Positives: Free, one very memorable NTR scene, and some amusing dialogue. Effective use of art

Negatives: Combat is different from 3 + 4, and is a crude prototype of what’s used in the later Rance games. Battles are very unbalanced (far too easy), as Rance alone is stronger than any enemy. I levelled up once on my playthrough, obtained the only new piece of equipment available and never came remotely close to losing a fight. None of the villains seem so far have been at all interesting, and the story could have been much better thought through. Game uses the menu selection system, but doesn’t provide a lot of the choices with interesting dialogue.

Subjective: Very short, and definitely clearable within half a day. Atena 2.0 is Rance’s companion for the adventure instead of Sill, and there are very few familiar characters from the earlier games. Also, there are the usual points that apply to the menu system for every really old eroge.

Summary: Even though this was sold for 3800 yen when it was released, it still feels like they cut too many corners. Hopefully Rance 4.2 will be a bit of an improvement. Probably only worth playing if you’re aiming to complete the series.

#12

I finished Rance 4.2. While it’s an improvement over 4.1, there are no interesting scenes, and the characters that appear in it only have very minor roles in future Rance games. Although Alice Soft were trying to make a short 1-day low price eroge, they should have put a bit more effort into connecting it with the rest of the series. Even though it’s free, I can’t recommend it.

White Album 2 -closing chapter- (tentative evaluation after clearing 3 (out of 8?) routes, although none of the main ones involving Setsuna/Kazusa)

Positives: Writing is at a very high level. Art (mainly CGs) are significantly better than those in IC, and the songs are excellent. The sub-characters are much better developed than in IC, and many characters that only had a minor role in IC have a chance to shine in CC. Fullly voiced game (protagonist included), with excellent seiyuu (although unfortunately Leaf hasn’t revealed their names). The two light novel tokuten have been integrated into the game as voiceless VNs using the music and backgrounds from the game (no CGs/tachie).

Negatives: Not enough new BGM (probably 70%+ of the time, the tracks are recycled from IC). The ero is essential for the story, and none of the game’s scenes are out of place, but it’s pretty painful to read through.

Subjective: The biggest sticking point is likely to be Haruki, as amongst other things, he’s very indecisive, and if he’s able to, he’ll lie to get out of any difficult situation (which often only serves to exacerbate the problem). A protagonist like Haruki is necessary for the game, but if someone isn’t willing to accept a character like that, there’s probably not much point in playing the game. While I don’t think the game has any villains as such, at certain points in the story, it’s quite difficult to like and/or sympathise with a few characters, including the protagonist. Although it’s not quite a capital ‘U’ utsuge, there are a lot of depressing and sad moments in the story. There’s also almost no slice of life or comedy, and the overall mood of the game is quite serious.

#13

Now that I’ve cleared White Album 2, and have had a day to think about it, here are my provisional thoughts about it. I don’t want to write a full review, as I can’t make a consistent overall evaluation of the game. For me, some sections were just about perfect, whereas in others, I couldn’t sympathise with any character. There may be some mild spoilers below.

Positives: Very high production values, excellent writing, songs and music. All of the seiyuu give excellent performances, some who have very difficult characters to voice. The combined sum of raw text for WA2 + tokuten light novels is over 4mb, which does justice to the fairly epic scale of the main heroine stories (Setsuna + Kazusa). Almost all of the story is purely driven by characters, without relying on any ‘villains’.

Negatives (+ some subjective points): Too much of the drama in the story (especially in the final portion) relies on the protagonist lying and/or taking actions that lead him to break promises, which continues through out almost all of the game, only as the characters move from being students to adults, the consequences become far greater. It’s very difficult to understand some of his actions, and then sympathise with him when he apologises and/or cries after things blow up in his face. WA2 has no outright bad endings, and this is a game that needs at least one ending like this, for example a route where every character abandons the protagonist after being fed up with his lies and having to deal with the fallout he leaves behind. As it is, certain characters (including Setsuna) may come across as being doormats. Chiaki’s route has a very tenuous and forced connection to the main story, and her character and actions are very odd, and for me, definitely too unrealistic for WA2. Once you enter the main heroine route, the three sub-heroines introduced in CC are very quickly written out of the story. Although WA2 isn’t a music game as such, rehearsals take up a reasonable chunk of IC and some routes in CC, and the performances are all important to the overall plot. The writer doesn’t know much about music/hasn’t done the research that other top-tier eroge scenario writers might have done, making those segments tedious and repetitive to read through. There’s a lot more to a good performance than playing it with ???.

Overall: WA2 is an important eroge that’s likely to influence the development of subsequent eroges in this genre. It’s a very well made game, and one that will probably collect most of the eroge awards from 2011, but it may still divide people, as while the game needs to balance the need to create drama from character interactions, while still being likeable enough to allow the player to empathise with them. For me, WA2 didn’t always get this balance right. I think ???12? fairs much better in this respect, as it’s around 1/6th the length of WA2, and takes place over a short time-frame. Tenina’s characters are all probably a bit more ‘damaged’ than Haruki/Setsuna/Kazusa, but WA2 takes place across several years, and Haruki + Setsuna in particular tend to repeat the same mistakes (if they can be called that) throughout.

#14

Rance Quest (using the 1.15 patch). I haven’t cleared it, but I think I’ve finished 75-80% of the quests and know enough to make a good assessment of the overall game, and how Alice Soft will further improve on it with the 1.6 patch and Rance Quest Magnum.

Positives: Best map and battle system in the Rance Series that combines the strengths of VI’s and Sengoku’s (unlike Rance VI, where the limiting factor is the number of battles a character can participate in, in Quest, it’s the number of moves they have, which I think is a more logical method and one that creates more strategic choices.) Best range of items, skill selection and possibilities for character specialisation in the series. Best writing in the Rance series (significantly better than VI’s and a slight improvement on Quest’s), and some great new characters (particularly Reset). Good mix of quests, ranging from the straightforward to those that require strategic thought instead of high levels.

Negatives that will be fixed in 1.6/Magnum (might have forgotten some, and there may be others that weren’t mentioned in Alice Soft’s diary): The most obvious one is the curse. Compared to the time it takes to relevel from 1 to 35, the benefits provided are far too small, and there’s no reason to H the characters who don’t have quests. With 1.6, it should become a viable means of strengthening characters, as H-ing a girl with the curse only drops them by 5 levels and provides far more bonuses. Unlike Rance VI, where the party members who didn’t participate in a battle also gain XP, only the five active characters gain XP in Quest, and when you have a roster of 30+ characters, a lot of them will never see much use.

Negatives that won’t be fixed in 1.6/Magnum: There are a wide range of ‘sub-characters’ that can be recruited (acquired via optional quests or through completing certain conditions), many of whom have had prominent roles in previous Rance games, but in Quest they don’t have any important role in the story and have almost no dialogue (I think this was to a lesser degree, a problem with Sengoku too). I think they may have made the roster of available characters too large as well, as many only have very specific uses. Only one save file (understandable, but if you make a mistake with say skills, it can be very expensive to undo it). Game is unvoiced, and it’d be great to hear someone attempt to voice Rance. :stuck_out_tongue:

Subjective: Story isn’t ‘epic’ (well epic in Rance terms) and the game is shorter than VI or Sengoku and is more like a fandisc, that also foreshadows the Helman setting of Rance 9. It’s probably not a spoiler to say that Sill isn’t freed in Quest. I think the game’s difficulty is well balanced, but unlike earlier Rance games, where the basic skills provided are strong enough to clear the game, if you don’t select skills that complement the strengths of that character in Quest, the game will be significantly more difficult.

Overall: Wait for the 1.6 patch and/or Rance Quest Magnum before playing. My score using the 1.15 patch would be around 70-75%, but with the improvements I think it will be around 85%.

#15

I’m playing Tears to Tiara and it’s not very good.

#16

Played a bit of Hitozuma Hime Club. Bought the game on its 2003 release, didn’t anticipate it being terribly good, so it went to the bottom of the pile. Now, 8 and a half years later (I have a lot of backlog), I finally got around to playing it.

Sadly, it basically lived down to my low expectations, and then some. Hitozuma Wife Club is a pretty crappy yarugee basically in every way. There’s hardly any character to the 4 main characters (including the PC), and the others are perfunctory at best. The scenario is pretty terrible. Aside from the prologue, which approaches being OK, the scenario is all disjointed scenes in-between the almost-kinda sim-based h-scenes. They’re all repetitive and hackneyed, and then the game seems to run out of them. About half of the way through, you simply begin picking which girl needs pizza delivered over and over with no interruption. The ‘gameplay’ involves filling bars, and technically it’s a sim, but it’s brain-dead simple since there’s only 1 stat for each of the 3 girls (how many times you … delivered pizza).

And it isn’t even a good yarugee; even considering its advanced age, the number of event CG is pitifully low, with an enormous amount of recycling. There are just too many too repetitive h-scenes. And despite the sim trappings there’s no choice at all, you have to fill the bars in order, and each bar is associated with a particular type of sex. I’m not terribly into the kinks past the first few levels, but even if I was, there’s no variety: you have to proceed in order from least kinky to whatever the game thinks is kinkiest for each winnable girl. Which ending you get is determined by how many girls have filled how many bars.

So I started skipping through the game to see what the ending I got was like … It wasn’t any better than the rest of the game.

There is one reason this game isn’t completely worthless; it remains, I believe – even now – the only game in English catering to this particular fetish. I’d be willing to bet there are enough Japanese h-games in the protag-frees-older-women-from-their-boring-lives vein to qualify as at least a sub-genre, but in English, it’s HWC, or nothing. If you are desperate for content of this type … Well, honestly, you’d likely do better with the other games in English featuring winnable older women (like Come See Me Tonight), but it might be worth a look at Hitozuma Wife Club. If that’s not you, then this game isn’t you either.

Verdict: SKIP.

#17

Rance VI.

I’ve cleared all of the main game, and have completed some of the postgame sections. Lots to write about, but I won’t bother with a full review as most people would already know whether or not they’d want to play it.

Positives: Some of the best humour to be found in the Rance series, lots of great characters and a very large amount of art (significantly more than in Sengoku or Quest). RPG system is addictive, good + for the most part well balanced, but there are numerous improvements to it that were made in Rance Quest. Although some reviewers suggest that VI has a better system than Quest, the only justification I can see for that is the removal of unrealistic factors that made it too easy for the player (in VI, amongst other things, a few characters allowed you to escape from almost any non-boss fight with an 100% success rate, you could leave one enemy alive and heal all your troops before ending the combat (ie. no timed battles or restrictions on the number of actions you could take) and you had the ability to withdraw from most missions without having to backtrack and redo any events). All of the quests have clear objectives, and for the most part, the game can easily be completely without recourse to a walkthrough.

Negatives: Writing isn’t particularly strong, which is particularly evident in the serious sections of the story. The map exploration system is a complete pain, and the battle points aren’t much better. The money/items received from the battle points scales according to chapter instead of area, thus it’s quickest and easiest to accumlate them on the earliest missions, which shouldn’t be the case (this is fixed in Rance Quest). While most of the party members are great, Rocky, the first character who joins you, can’t be removed and is fairly annoying + underpowered. Late in the game, you get an option to push him off a cliff, but unfortunately that fails :P.

While I’m not going to include it in my overall assessment of the game, the postgame sections are quite extensive, but from what I’ve played, are generally dull + very often unbalanced. After clearing the main story, more than half of your party will have reached their maximum level, you will have already fought all of the non-boss monsters before and most of the quests are far far too easy for your party. I think much of it could and should have been integrated into the main story.

Subjective: Lots of (often gratuitous) ero, but all of the scenes are pretty short, and very few of them have any CG variants (Alice Soft were probably the last of the major eroge brands to implement them). The RPG component makes up a significant portion of the game, and certain stages need to be replayed more than once to collect all of the important items from them, plus a fair bit of grinding is necessary on top of that. Even for a 2004 eroge, the graphics for the RPG component feels pretty retrogameish. Rance is much more of an anti-hero in VI than he is in Sengoku or Quest.

Summary: There are quite a few references to earlier games in the series, but unless you want to start from Rance 1, VI, combined with reading the spoilers from the earlier games here would the best entry point. Alice Soft’s made the game available for a very reasonable price on dlsite and elsewhere, and there’s at least 40 hours of gameplay all up, so it’s well worth the investment. Although the amount of text in Rance VI is probably greater than the average pure ADV has, the RPG component will make up at least half of the total time spent on the game, so it’s difficult to recommend to non-RPG fans.

#18

I finished Exodus Guilty a while ago. It was pretty good.

#19

Here’s a review I made of Guilty’s Last Waltz:

http://www.blisteredthumbs.net/forums/e … u-Gasshuku

All in all that game was a testament to why I should never ignore the warning signs I’ve learned to idenitify when it comes to bad eroge. Not unless I read reviews that say otherwise.

#20

Genrin no Kishougun

Positives: Only one, but it’s the most important component. The gameplay system is very well designed, and although there are some balance issues in the latter stages (some of the class changes for the characters are too powerful, and for some inexplicable reason, certain bosses are immobile while having a shorter range than some of your units :roll:), much of the game was still fun. Despite all the problems with Genrin, Eushully’s eroges have had good systems from early on, which later enabled them to produce much better and higher budget eroges without needing to reinvent the wheel each time.

Negatives: The scenario amounts to this: If you’re a male character, you die, if you’re a female character, you join the protagonist’s harem (in a loose sense). Story, writing and characters are all pretty awful.

The other major negative is that in order to clear all of the game’s endings, you need to play it through three times. As there’s no option to adjust the difficulty upwards on replaying, and from what I’ve read, no variation for most of the battles, plus you get to keep all of your items + money after clearing the game, it’s nothing but tedious to replay stages that are now far too easy. The ending I saw, which I’m presuming is the true ending (gained by fulfilling all of the mission objectives - for the other endings, iirc you need to overstep the time-limit on some/not complete certain optional requirements) was the expected but not particularly well executed conclusion, so I doubt the others are worth seeing.

Subjective: None. The game’s nearly 11 years old, and in retrospect it’s easy to see the good and bad of this title.

Overall: Genrin no Kishougun was one of the first dl sales eroges I bought. I finished half of it or so a few years ago, and recently felt compelled to clear it once, to justify the purchase. Not recommended as this is probably Eushully’s worst eroge that’s still in print. That said, I still enjoyed much of the gameplay, and once Genrin 2 is discounted on dlsite, I’ll probably pick it up, as most of the negatives in this review seem to have been improved on/fixed.