Disclaimer:
The copyrights to the game in this review and anything associated with it belongs to their respective copyright holders. In short, I claim no rights to anything related to this game - expect this review itself of course. Further, everything that I have written in here expresses only my own opinion and nobody else’s. In particular, I am not liable for financial losses because of purchases that have been done, based on my own biased descriptions in here.
First and foremost, you who’d want to read this review should know beforehand that the game in this review is of the kichiku kind of b-games. This kind of games often contains things such as rape, non-consensual sex, torture, bondage, slavery, etc… So if these things bothers you, then you probably aren’t interested in this review of mine in particular. In short: Abandon all hope, all ye who enter here!
Being hearing impaired I won’t say too much about the sound nor the voices - especially not the later, as I’d not dare to consider myself a good judge of whenever a voice suitable or not - but I may say a word or two on those subjects, nonetheless¬Ö
This is an amateur review, so don’t take it all too seriously. My views here are mine and mine only, so if you have any problems with them or just want to comment on them, feel free to do so. This review is also mine and mine only and not to be put out on someone’s homepage or such without my permission (but feel free to tell others about this review and direct them to it by linking).
Game: Wana - hakudaku mamire no houkago
Company page for the game: Wana1
Getchu page for the game: Wana2
Synopsis:
At a school somewhere, a student committed suicide at night by jumping off the school roof. After that event, half a year pass and a new student enter the school. This student is the main character of the story, Misaki Raika, little sister if the student who committed suicide. But she hasn’t come to this school mainly for studying! Rather, it’s to make some… investigations! See, half a year after her brother died, she found a letter from her brother, which somehow indicated that his death wasn’t suicide after all! So, with that in mind, she decides to try and find out the truth, for both her brother’s and her own sake. However, there’s a little problem… The school in question’s an all-boys school! So how’s a girl like her to enter it? Simple: she cuts her hair short, puts bandages over her breasts to make them appear flatter and gets a pair of glasses… In short, she disguises as a boy!
Thus she enters the school… but can she find out the truth? Can she penetrate the darkness that surrounds the school? And can she do so without risking to bring herself or those around her in harm’s way…?
Gameplay:
Standard ADV-style, like most bishoujo-games; you follow the story by reading it and at times, you get to make choices that affect the story and it’s outcome… However, this game goes a bit further than that: it’s a multi-perspective game, meaning you don’t play/see/follow the story from only Raika’s view only! You’ll also apart from Raika get to see/play through things from the POV of:
Amagiri Haruna: a middle-age or such woman who’s the mathematics teacher at the school.
Mamiya Maiko: the young schoolnurse at school who’s a bit strange but nice to everyone in general.
Amagiri Sakuya: Haruna’s much younger sister who’s still going to school (another school than the one her big sister works at through) but hangs around her sister quite a bit and often visits her at the school.
Hiiragi Nozomi: Raika’s quiet roommate; a boy of about her age who never seem to waste much time at useless talk…
There’s a couple more characters from whose point of view you’ll follow the story from time to time too. From the POV of these characters, you’ll get to follow the story and make choices that will decide the outcome of things and whenever the truth will ever be uncovered. However, unlike some multi-perspective games, you don’t get to choose yourself from hose POV to follow/play the story; the game switches from character to character from time to time… Not an unusual thing to see in a bishoujo game ¬ñ and yet, this game switches view more frequently than most bishoujo games of this kind that I’ve played so far.
Summary, own opinions, etc:
In many ways, I’m in something of two minds concerning some of the issues of Wana. Firstly, we have the issue of the multiple views in the game. Indeed, this is the first multi-perspective game I’ve played where so many views are offered - and at the same time, too. But is this a good thing? Not necessarily; while it adds something unique to this game for sure, it also makes things confusing, with the switching from point of view from point of view all the time, one can easily get confused and start asking himself “Who am I playing, really?”. I think they should instead have done like it’s done with some multi-perspective b-games today: offered the views as clearly separately, either by making it your choice at the beginning which character you want to play or by making them unlock one by one after you’d finished a character’s scenario (much like in Ruf’s Rasen Kairou). This is in my opinion by far more effective ¬ñ and interesting, since you only know what’s happening from your character’s POV at the time and may have to put work into unlocking other charqacter’s pov to know what was going on from their POV at certain times and places. Or they should have narrowed down the availably of views a bit; some of the views - including those which appears temporarily - feels unnecessarily for many reasons. For example, you get to play from Hiiragi Nozomi’s point of view - but you never get to make any choices while playing as him! Now that’s what I’d call a waste, even if his POV is interesting at times…
The scenario of the game’s interesting though! And I have to give my praises to both the interesting prologue and the conclusion of the game (in form of the True ending), which has quite a few surprises to reveal, even if I think they might have gone a bit too far here (although the conclusion do make quite a few things that happens earlier in the game logical). However, as for the “middle” part of the game… Well, I shouldn’t say that it’s bad, but it’s not as good as in the beginning nor towards the end either. Not too much important happening, not all that many too important decisions etc… Overall, I feel that the potential of the middle part of the game haven’t been properly used. Had they added more decisions, more paths - and perhaps a more narrowed view (meaning not all too many point of views at the same time), the middle part of the game could have been much better ¬ñ but that is perhaps to ask for too much on the behalf of Will/Guilty.
The game’s also rather short - and with not too many endings available, it shouldn’t take all that many playthroughs for you to find them all and be completely finished with the game, which is why I complain about there not being too many paths or such available - had there been that and some more endings (which I feel there’s room for), then I’d not have minded the fact of the game being rather short… It also makes me wonder if that’s why they made so many point of views available in the game - because they want to try and “mask” the fact that the game’s short? Could be… Or possibly, they ran out of their budget or something.
The art’s very good through! No less to be expected from Guilty! Yes indeed the art’s of top quality and there’s a point one can’t complain about in regard of this game…
A few things also works a bit… illogical in the game. For example, in one event outside of school, Raika has once again the long hair she had before she disguised as a boy - but there’s no explanation of how this can be - either she supposedly’s using a wig or something like that - or possibly she has the ability to grow hair VERY quick (even if this is rather unlikely as no one in this game shows any hint of possessing any strange powers like that). More likely through, the artists might just’ve been lazy or something like that about this particular event…
Overall, I feel that I, thanks to the good art, the interesting story, the conclusion of the story, plus of course the cute and fighting-spirited main character Raika herself, can rate this as a good game - despite the lack of use of the full potential of this game. And those looking for a detective-like story may be disappointed here, as it isn’t one - at least not in the “Sherlock Holmes” or “Hercule Poirot”-way. Rather you might say that this game’s divided into two sides - those who try to reveal the truth and those who try to keep the truth hidden. In short: if you want a game that is not all TOO long with a certain amount of mystery, many point of views, a girl who disguises as a boy plus a quite an amount of kichiku - then this is the game for you!
Misc stuff:
It’s a pity that they didn’t let Raika keep her hair short in any of the endings related to her - truly a pity, as short hair suits her better . But I suppose I can understand why - through Raika acts quite tomboyish in quite a few ways, she was never intended to still be that much of a tomboy at the end in any case, since that was just her disguise…
The game has many save slots - 99, rather a bit too much for a game that I count as one of the shortest b-games I’ve played. Maybe just a matter of an old game-engine with this large a set of saving slot being re-used through¬Ö
Very regrettably, the game doesn’t really have an “ending-replay”, meaning you can’t do anything but saving before an ending occurs - or the decision critical to that ending occurs (which shouldn’t be much of a problem anyway if you think of my previous point about the game having 99 saving slots). All sex-scenes are recorded as usually in a CG-gallery (meaning a set of small pictures for each scene is displayed, just like in a CG-gallery but clicking on the picture will replay the ending, not just show the CG), even the endings which contains a sex scene…
The kichiku-scenes in this game focus much on group-rapes and to a certain amount on cosplay too - which makes me wonder whenever the creators were at least partly inspired by Flying Shine’s Kuraimirai series, some games which puts focus on much the same things in terms of kichiku…
The OP of the game plus the manual contain many of CGs from the game - too many if I may say so, because I prefer being surprised as much as possible and not seeing anything which might spoil upcoming events for me. So it would have been better if Guilty had used as few CGs from the game as possible in here. Other companies seem to solve this by making at least a few CG’s intended for the OP only which never appear in the game itself - why couldn’t they have done this too…?
[This message has been edited by Spectator Beholder (edited 04-20-2006).]