VN - Others - Completed - Daibanchou -Big Bang Age- [AliceSoft]

Very fun gameplay eroge with one major flaw.

The story and characters are very charming. The MC is an honorable chad. He is self assured, confident, with the skills to back it up. Normally, I don't like Gary Stu's or anime harem cliches, but when it is self aware like this and and they make sure the MC doesn't come off as unintentionally cringe, I can sit back and enjoy it. There is an overall lighthearted tone throughout, with a large dose of japanese anime humor and a bit of emotion/heart thrown in. It was quite enjoyable from a story and character perspective.

Now the main appeal to this is the gameplay. If you are not interested in a tough but engaging gameplay system, the game probably isn't for you. The game works under a time crunch. There is a certain amount of turns for you to get things done. This allotted time per different phases is not enough to do everything. You make decisions on what is more important to you. You could recruit characters, go on dates, go through dungeons, unlock secrets, look for scenes, improve your infrastructure, etc etc. The combat is quite fun and finding the occasional "carries" and making them into ultimate fighters feels great.

Now the major flaw in all this... The game just isn't "playable" without the wiki. I mean, it's certainly beatable without the wiki, but for people who have a bit of a completionist streak in them, it is pretty much mandatory to consult the wiki unreasonably frequently. Most characters have 5 stars that could be unlocked by meeting certain conditions. Doing so will boost their stats and even give perma bonuses for that character in NG+. These conditions are impossible to know. You either look at the wiki, or you find it randomly by chance (which is pretty unlikely for a lot of star conditions). Furthermore, even just recruiting some characters is incredibly complex where you need to take specific steps that is nearly impossible to know. Personally, I got tired of it after some point, and just did whatever I wanted for a single run.

Truthfully, maybe this isn't enough to take a star off in the review since it's not a mandatory aspect to beat the game. Those who really love unlocking everything and doing multiple NG+ runs might find it even enjoyable. That said, I found it a bit annoying because I do have some completionist genes in me, but the obscure nature of the unlocks combined with the time constraint meant that I was constantly looking at the wiki, trying to optimize the run, rather than just enjoying the game. It kinda stressed me out tbh lol, at least until I said fuck it and started playing blind.

A completly underated game. To me maybe better than Rance Series, since MC isn't a dick. The heroines in general are very likeable, and there is a ton of character diversity. I just hoped we had more time to clear stuff, not to mention that some girls can't be obtainable Still, a great game which is a must play, even for non-eroge fans.

One of the best AliceSoft games, which is a standard of quality in and of itself. Everything they put out is top tier smut. This one's a strategy game where you try to take over a high school with your goon squad. Somewhat challenging if you're normie-adjacent, but well worth it for the characters and scenes. I wish its sequel received the same translation efforts.

Big Bang Age is an excellent mesh of visual novels and strategy games. It has an excellent battle system and tons of heroines to acquire, all of which have interesting personalities and backstories. My first playthrough of it took me tens of hours, and yet after that playthrough I had seen less than 30% of its content due to the abundance of time restricted events and heroines and not having enough time to do all you wish for in one playthrough. The only thing that annoyed me while playing it is that it is very hard, but despite its high difficulty it is still a very enjoyable experience. It may be a hybrid instead of a pure VN, but it is the best hybrid VN I have ever played .

A good alice-soft title, as always higher production value than most vn, great art, sex scene, voice acting, music and tons of content.

Obviously also gameplay, this game is pretty hard, mix between jrpg and managagement game but once you get good and understand the system it can be fun.

Recommanded for Rance/alice-soft fan !

This is one of those games that I really would like to discuss with people, but that I never see anybody talk about. Even though this game is very similar to Sengoku Rance, which is also made by AliceSoft except I frequently see people talk about it as there favorite eroge.

This game like Sengoku Rance except more modest in scale. Also unlike Sengoku Rance, your units level from battles. This is one of those games where you try conquer Japan, deploy units to areas in order to capture them, manage those areas and go around triggering events. This game has a nice twist on the conquering formula in that is scales up.

You start the game by conquering a school. Every optional character you can get here will lock you out of another one, so it's like choosing your starting party. Weirdly enough the game shows you UI for mechanics that aren't relevant yet. It's mostly getting the hang of battling and defending.

After you conquered the school, you go on to conquer the district. There will be two opposing fractions and which one you defeat will determine which of the two story routes this game will take, each with there own characters and events. The game starts to introduce money, items and the prison as mechanics. Capturing enemies and recruiting them is something I really like about this game. Manly because this is one of the few games where you will most likely be using faceless NPCs. You need characters spread out to get money, defend and keep loyalty in every area. So while you still want unique characters for there events or skill., there's really no such thing as a useless character in this game. O yeah this game has perma-death for every character, so it's nice to have characters you can sacrifice.

After that you are on the Nation chapter, all mechanics are open and the real game begins. There are a bunch of fractions, each with there own unique characters and things going on. Similar to Sengoku Rance, the main story of this game is not as interesting. The game truly shines when it comes to the stories surrounding all the fractions and the characters you can recruit from them. Most of these characters have 5 event stars (doesn't mean they just have 5 events), aside from boosting there stat upon completion, they are there to showcase character-story progression. You can trigger the characters events by doing ridiculously specific things you will most likely just find on accident or by following the wiki.

Speaking of the wiki. Even though the game gives you room between mechanics, it never bothers explaining them. Unless you don't mind wasting runs or turns, this game is impossible to play without a wiki. Especially when you don't wan't to miss characters, seriously take a look at how complicated some of their requirements are: http://alicesoft.wikia.com/wiki/Big_Bang_Age:Character_walkthrough/PGG

Alright finally the H-scenes, lots of female characters so there are a lot of scenes. In fact completing the gallery is like good old fashion trophy hunting, aside from completing the characters stories which also have their own menu check. You would think you can get a character's H by going through there story but nope, some of them mean failing to rescue the characters at certain points in the story. Also some characters require the sacrifice of other characters so multiple save files galore if you are a completionist. The quality of the scenes themselves are meh, they only have one CG per scene. At least they are the only times when the characters start being fully voice acted.

I think that's as good as an overview as I can give. It's a really addicting game, one of those that you get better at with each playthrough that results in you discovering new things. The character's are unique and fun, with typical AliceSoft humor. I think that you can judge if the game is for you just based on what I described, so check it out if that's the case.