Episode 11: Dark Christmas
(a little bit spoilers, but not critical)
Here comes the end of another long months of waiting for the most ambitious AVN in history. And for the first time I will say – these damn 15 months were worth the result. Episode 11 is what PinkCake warned us about in the intro: “This game is not all about fun and good times”. We still have good times in this episode that give a lot of positive and funny emotions.
But the bad times have come. Game stings us from the very beginning of the episode. Everyone laughed at the cliffhanger of Episode 10: “Lol, another FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK moment, come on guys, nothing will happen to Rio, he’s just hyping up” Not funny anymore, right? The artistically dark renders at the beginning set the tone for “Deathly Hallows” and the piercing on the table, Quinn shocked and crying, tortures that Riona was subjected to throws you into a cold sweat and you realize – that’s it. This is a different game now and DPC is back to making players cry.
For a minute I believed that they really killed Roina.
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And we also saw the moment of Lana's death and I will not post this render here, you saw everything yourself. Once I noticed an analogy in DPCs writing with Rowling's books, where each new book was darker and more serious and DPC continues to follow this trend with new episode, and it scary what he can prepare for season final.
As for the story development, this is the richest Episode in new discoveries and advancement of story arcs. There is a lot to say and you can write a whole book, so in short, we learned:
1. How Lana died
2. Who is behind PsyOP against the Frats and is a shadow evil genius - I can not fully understand Magnar's motives.
3. The culmination of the Sage's family collapse and we learned Sage backstory
(I did not see the consequences of the video leak for now, just did 5 main routes)
4. Escalation among the DIKs reaches the limit and we learned that there is no traitor among them (But Nick is still a cunt)
5. Who was responsible for the leaflets Cathy and DIKs, and this is a separate group
6. Quinn effectively closes the drug ring (until the end?)
7. THE STORY ARC OF MAYA'S DEBT IS OVER! HOORAY! What's next?
8. Zoey makes a move and confesses her love to MC: I'll talk about Zoey in a separate post, since we now have two different versions of her personality with different approaches.
9. All the MGs, MC, and Derek now become a group of friends and it finally looks natural - there was never a feeling of uncanny in this episode.
10. THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS IS OPEN. What's in there? Wait another year and a half, loser!
I was glad that DPC didn't forget about fun as well - episode was well balanced between funny/sad moments, but one - Jill's visit to her sister's grave was very heavy emotionally, probably the saddest ever.
Also, it was just a huge content update - the first run took about 7 hours for me, with mini-games on. Mini-games are not so annoying and don't occur so often due to the size of the episode, still - fuck the math test and puzzle box. There were even fewer free-roams than usual on feels, although the panty party is huge - like 2/3 of a Halloween party. Probably due to the large amount of standard readable content. Great balance.
As for the Panty party, this is a fly in the ointment. The thing is that it doesn't work on MGs routes - you can't have fun if you do not want more cheating points and there are a lot of traps. DPC did the right thing with Bella's alternative party - I had much more fun there. Panty Party works in full glory only if manwhore Others run - otherwise it makes no sense.
Best lewds. I've opened 14 out of 18 so far:
1. Josy/Maya BDSM threesome: hot and funny at the same time, as they studied toys without knowing what they were for (laughed) and poor Josy withstood a nut gun.
2. Sage/Camila threesome (for some reason many wrote to me that Sage would be off after that sex, but in my run she was ok.
3. Both of Bella scenes. Good dynamics and speed.
4. Becky Okay, joking... Sage solo after confession
5. Zoey secret scene
I give this episode 9.5/10 at first glance based on the run of 4 main routes and one Others with a focus on Zoey
A
head: Lily, Quinn, Nicole and unique routes where I broke girls' hearts. In the future, I will write about each route and each girl in detail.
See you soon!
Very interesting review. As always, at a good level. In my opinion, this episode is too dark and dramatic. I love drama, but I think he overdid it. Literally in every scene you can't relax and you're under pressure. Perhaps it was the idea of DPC to make the player feel uncomfortable, or he did it without thinking. Well, as I said before, DPC encourages players to play in several ways, to replay the game from the beginning. This episode is directed against solo players. Solo players, for example, on the Sage branch, will discover little content, as they will have to leave the party in the midst of it.
