I've come across this game many times when I've been looking for something to play, but I've always stayed away because of the weird previews with 90s-style graphics. When I finally had nothing to play, I decided to give it a chance, and I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised at first, but ultimately disappointed in the end.
Well, I'll start with the good things about the game, that got me interested, and end with the bad things that made me drop it without going through to the end. So, It is up to you to decide how critical this is for you and whether it is worth downloading the game.
Pros:
Plot/Dialogues.
The driving force of the whole game is the narration, and the dialogues of the characters. This is the strongest aspect of the game, and kept me moving forward no matter what. The characters feel alive, their reactions are realistic and quite logical. However, there are characters with typical anime archetypes in the game, but the girls I chose to team up with at the beginning kept me entertained. I also liked the main character's answer branches, which allow us to more or less roleplay our character. I feel that I have completed the game, somewhere around 70-80% (although I could be wrong), but I generally enjoyed the story I managed to see.
Neutral:
Horror atmosphere.
The horror atmosphere is a bit hit and miss. I only felt tension in the prologue, afterwards the game didn't surprise me much. The graphics and sound effects could have been a lot better, and there wasn't enough art to back up the scenes that should have made us feel uneasy. I can't say that the lack of frightening or suspenseful moments bothered me too much, because overall I found the story interesting and I enjoyed following the characters trying to figure out what's going on. But compared to similar horror games made with RPG Maker, "Corpse Party" would be more tense, but the plot and characters are much weaker than here.
Cons:
Graphics.
The game has terrible pixel graphics, and the camera is positioned so that you see the characters from above from a very odd and unfamiliar angle. Because of the poor graphics, the game has a lot of conventions that you, as the player, will just have to put up with. However, thanks to the well-done text descriptions, I didn't really want to close the game. Even though I used to the graphics with time, the feeling of playing something primitive never left me throughout the game. The game could have benefited a lot if at least the RPG MV engine was used. There is also a real lack of in-game artwork to accompany the scenes, but I've already mentioned that above.
Sexual content.
I managed to romance one girl who acted like a tsundere bitch, as she just seemed more interesting than the other two. As for the others: the first one is a typical childhood friend who's always asking if you're okay and looking out for you, and the second one is an enigma. The second one doesn't talk much and by the time the game gives us the chance to choose a second companion, I didn't really learn much about her and took her only because I didn't want the clichéd lovey-dovey first girl. Later on in the game, when you have a team of two girls, I found it odd that the only person you talk to throughout the game is the one you first took on your team. In my case, it was Bitchy tsundere. I probably should have tried swapping the formation of the squad, to see if the girl in the tail would stay silent and you could talk to the one closer to you, but I didn't want to experiment and focused on the Bitchy tsundere.
Basically, the whole romance takes place when you're sleeping in rest areas with limited use, and it's done in a very clumsy way. Were you chased by a bunch of monsters trying to kill you? Did some girls faint from fear? Don't worry about it! Now it's time for a break! As soon as you choose a girl to talk to during your break, the music changes to a cheery romcom tune, her mood shifts by 180 degrees, and she immediately starts flirting with you. Honestly, it completely ruined the atmosphere for me. While the first resting scenes were tolerable, the more often you rest with a girl, the more you feel how forced these scenes are. But with the bitch tsundere, I felt that I was not emotionally ready for such a connection, and the dialogue leading up to the sex scene did not help at all. It felt like the sex scenes were just thrown in, so people would download the game. The sex scenes are short, with a very sharp transition to the act itself, and there's hardly any buildup or foreplay (and this is something that's generally a sore subject in most erotic games). They might chat for a bit, take off their clothes and go straight to fucking, right away. The art is actually pretty good, but the way it's set up is terrible. There's 1-3 pictures with loads of text explaining what's going on and no animations. So as a porn game, it didn't really work for me.
⚠Gameplay.⚠
And finally, I'd like to say that's the reason I gave up playing this game. Random battles. I think that most people who have played a fair share of games on the RPG Maker engine will agree that this is the most disgusting mechanic that can be in the game. In this game, they've taken it up to 200%, maybe even 300%! Some games have wandering monsters you can just run away from, and others use a script that triggers random encounters after certain steps or just random chances. This game uses a script version. By the time I reached nearly the end of the game, I was getting attacked literally every three steps! I was cursing at my screen by this point, and I thought I was going to lose it. I was so bloody sick of it. Add to that limited lives for your characters, low number of healing items on the map and you've created a recipe for disaster! It's just about the most disgusting gameplay you could ever hope to experience. These fights don’t even matter for the story, their only purpose is to make you kill time and press the button to start a new game+ with the loot you have earned during your playthrough.
On a more positive note, one of the best parts of the game was how diverse the storylines were. You could choose different characters for your team, and even the areas you explore were different, which was really cool. However, the fighting system ruined this feature completely. At first, it’s just annoying, but by the end, it becomes unbearable. There’s an escape button, but it doesn’t work well late in the game because enemies still have time to hit you before you can run away. And a few meters away you'll be attacked again.
Overall, I’d say if you can find cheats, or if you don't mind spending an extra 3 hours going through the game again, but with good loot and powerful heroes, you can give it a try. I had no such desire. In the late game, I was stuck with no healing and couldn’t even explore the area properly to progress the story. The monsters kept attacking my already half-dead team, and every fight meant certain death. Loading the save 10 million times just to find a shortcut to explore the area and advance the plot was, frankly, exhausting.
TLDR.
In short: Good story and dialogue, disgusting combat system and weak pixel graphics.
