Arkham is a dating sim mixed with RPG and management elements that puts the player in the role of a young man, Charles Ward. As he finds himself in the midst of a Lovecraftian tale, with his sanity spiralling down in his obsessive quest to unveil his own mysterious legacy, will he succumb to the temptation of the dark forces set against him?
Play is centred around building relationships with the various girls that you can meet and managing Charles' needs and stats. The game works on a 24-hour time system, with various actions, interactions, and abilities locked out until the correct time of day. This game has a total of six endings, each with their own outcomes and epilogues that are different depending on how the player has gone through the game.
At first, I liked this game and enjoyed spending time leveling my stats and working on my relationships with the various girls. However, at the midpoint of this game, I felt that it just lost its way and became a tangled, overly complicated mess. The various storylines didn't come together at all cleanly and left me wondering what the hell was going on. It almost felt like someone had put the game down midway through the development cycle and then picked it up again at a later date, but had all but forgotten what was meant to happen and where. For instance, the 'true ending' or harem ending can only be reached if the player nearly completes each of the girls relationship arcs but then stops at an unspecified point and then completes the occult arc. Even then, it can sometimes not trigger properly and force a reload, or even worse, a complete restart. I saved at so many points and had to save scum so many times that I all but gave up caring about the plot and felt something close to relief come the end. I also didn't like the writing for Asenath and found her to be a thoroughly unlikeable female lead with nearly no redeeming qualities. The only way that she becomes any better is after going with the other girls and 'breaking' her by convincing her that you don't give a rats ass about her. Even then, it only changes a few lines of her dialogue towards the end of the game and doesn't carry over to her standard interactions. I also found that Elizabeth was an oddity; it was like she was written to be a completely different girl. The overly promiscuous sort that would jump on anything with a pulse and working package, only to then be blindsided by revealing that she was in fact a virgin. She had to be one of the sluttiest virgins that I have ever met in an adult game, or possibly even in real life. I don't feel that it worked at all, and I was instead left confused and thinking that my game version was bugged. I also found that there just wasn't enough of a solid link between the characters, and I felt that things only got worse the more that the game went on. I didn't like the way that the male characters were written and portrayed either. They were either like Charles, slightly creepy, wet blanket yes men with no spines or overbearing assholes that were in need of a sound beating. I just didn't like the way that they were written and found them to be annoying for the most part and just plain unnecessary tropes at others. The ending that I chose to chase made little sense at the end, with all manner of things referenced and then ignored. It left me wondering just what the developer and writers had been sniffing; whatever it was must have been strong. Even after sitting for hours looking through various forum threads, I (and many others) could not make sense of the tangled mess that was vomited up before us. This was one of those games that I honestly regretted giving so much of my time to. It bothers me, as I do honestly believe that this game could have had a pretty damn good title with some better writing and more effort put in.
Visually, I thought that this game left a lot to be desired too. The menu and interface items looked basic at best, and I didn't like that the character dialogues were at the bottom of the screen. Some better positioning for this text would make knowing who was talking so much easier. The character models and their clothes were all straight lines with jagged turns and edges, with no smoothing or curves. Charles's body looked weird and angular when nude, and his muscle structure looked out of place and odd, almost like his skeleton had gone on holiday or crumpled away. The girls were all over the top busty goddesses, but their breast and body lines were much the same. The girls faces looked wrong, with strange shapes, proportions, and feature sets chosen. During the sex scenes, the close-ups just looked plain bad. Charles' penis looked like it had an oversized condom made of his own skin on it, with really weird, sharp-looking shapes and protrusions jutting out of it. The girls vaginas had some serious issues as well. They looked square! Seriously, they had squared labia majora and literal square button clitorises, with odd-looking wings spiking out in strange directions, which I can only guess were supposed to be their labia minora. I laughed so hard the first time that I saw this and nearly fell out of my chair. I literally had to quit and come back to this game a day later because of this. Something else that I noticed was that everyone's skin tones were somewhat off and were shaded wrong, that and they all had teeth so bright they could call Gondor for aid; they were so stupidly white.
Really, this whole game was something of a mess, and if I knew then what I do now, I don't think I would have bothered playing at all. Which is a shame, as there was a solid foundation and a fairly decent game at the start.
== TAGS ==
Creampie / Vaginal / Interracial / Oral / Paranormal / Virgin Female / Pregnancy / Handjob / Harem /
4/10 – Could've Been Better!
Signed Off – Leonardo – PSJ
Play is centred around building relationships with the various girls that you can meet and managing Charles' needs and stats. The game works on a 24-hour time system, with various actions, interactions, and abilities locked out until the correct time of day. This game has a total of six endings, each with their own outcomes and epilogues that are different depending on how the player has gone through the game.
At first, I liked this game and enjoyed spending time leveling my stats and working on my relationships with the various girls. However, at the midpoint of this game, I felt that it just lost its way and became a tangled, overly complicated mess. The various storylines didn't come together at all cleanly and left me wondering what the hell was going on. It almost felt like someone had put the game down midway through the development cycle and then picked it up again at a later date, but had all but forgotten what was meant to happen and where. For instance, the 'true ending' or harem ending can only be reached if the player nearly completes each of the girls relationship arcs but then stops at an unspecified point and then completes the occult arc. Even then, it can sometimes not trigger properly and force a reload, or even worse, a complete restart. I saved at so many points and had to save scum so many times that I all but gave up caring about the plot and felt something close to relief come the end. I also didn't like the writing for Asenath and found her to be a thoroughly unlikeable female lead with nearly no redeeming qualities. The only way that she becomes any better is after going with the other girls and 'breaking' her by convincing her that you don't give a rats ass about her. Even then, it only changes a few lines of her dialogue towards the end of the game and doesn't carry over to her standard interactions. I also found that Elizabeth was an oddity; it was like she was written to be a completely different girl. The overly promiscuous sort that would jump on anything with a pulse and working package, only to then be blindsided by revealing that she was in fact a virgin. She had to be one of the sluttiest virgins that I have ever met in an adult game, or possibly even in real life. I don't feel that it worked at all, and I was instead left confused and thinking that my game version was bugged. I also found that there just wasn't enough of a solid link between the characters, and I felt that things only got worse the more that the game went on. I didn't like the way that the male characters were written and portrayed either. They were either like Charles, slightly creepy, wet blanket yes men with no spines or overbearing assholes that were in need of a sound beating. I just didn't like the way that they were written and found them to be annoying for the most part and just plain unnecessary tropes at others. The ending that I chose to chase made little sense at the end, with all manner of things referenced and then ignored. It left me wondering just what the developer and writers had been sniffing; whatever it was must have been strong. Even after sitting for hours looking through various forum threads, I (and many others) could not make sense of the tangled mess that was vomited up before us. This was one of those games that I honestly regretted giving so much of my time to. It bothers me, as I do honestly believe that this game could have had a pretty damn good title with some better writing and more effort put in.
Visually, I thought that this game left a lot to be desired too. The menu and interface items looked basic at best, and I didn't like that the character dialogues were at the bottom of the screen. Some better positioning for this text would make knowing who was talking so much easier. The character models and their clothes were all straight lines with jagged turns and edges, with no smoothing or curves. Charles's body looked weird and angular when nude, and his muscle structure looked out of place and odd, almost like his skeleton had gone on holiday or crumpled away. The girls were all over the top busty goddesses, but their breast and body lines were much the same. The girls faces looked wrong, with strange shapes, proportions, and feature sets chosen. During the sex scenes, the close-ups just looked plain bad. Charles' penis looked like it had an oversized condom made of his own skin on it, with really weird, sharp-looking shapes and protrusions jutting out of it. The girls vaginas had some serious issues as well. They looked square! Seriously, they had squared labia majora and literal square button clitorises, with odd-looking wings spiking out in strange directions, which I can only guess were supposed to be their labia minora. I laughed so hard the first time that I saw this and nearly fell out of my chair. I literally had to quit and come back to this game a day later because of this. Something else that I noticed was that everyone's skin tones were somewhat off and were shaded wrong, that and they all had teeth so bright they could call Gondor for aid; they were so stupidly white.
Really, this whole game was something of a mess, and if I knew then what I do now, I don't think I would have bothered playing at all. Which is a shame, as there was a solid foundation and a fairly decent game at the start.
== TAGS ==
Creampie / Vaginal / Interracial / Oral / Paranormal / Virgin Female / Pregnancy / Handjob / Harem /
4/10 – Could've Been Better!
Signed Off – Leonardo – PSJ
