The reviewer sits in front of his computer, mulling over which words would best convey his feelings. His fingers on the keyboard, a symphony of clicks and clacks; a sharp contrast to the cacophony of the thoughts inside his head. The hum of his computer, beneath the shade of his table, with its stuttering neon lights - the stage is set, the actors in position, and all that is left is a choice: be a detached extra in this theater, or become the prot-
The entire game is written like this. Obscenely annoying. Overly pretentious and grand for zero reason. Not only that, but sometimes, it's clear the author just really liked a specific word, and he overuses it within a couple of textboxes in a row in a scene; you'll see "symphony", "flicker", "hum", "neon", "stutter", "myriad", "desolate", "shade", "extinguished", "punctuation", and many others are words off the top of my head that I read several times in succession being used in places where they'd really have no reason to be used that many times in a row - in fact, no word should be used that many times in a row because the reader can spot it and it starts feeling a bit weird, but it's made worse when you go out of your way to insert words that you wouldn't normally find that many of in a text in the first place. There's "good english" and then there's "overusing pretty words for no reason", and this game is the latter; which is a shame, because if if it were a bit more subdued, it'd be incredible as the former. All of this makes the game overly dramatic for no reason in scenes where there's really no reason to be that dramatic. The dialogue is mostly fine (apart from places where it should pack a punch/be really emotional and it just kind of isn't, but that's mostly due to a lack of worldbuilding and properly setting up some characters like Luna), but the narration is just not it, man.
This is a huge gripe, but other than that, the game is fine! The renders are a bit emotionless/lifeless, but overall, the plot is interesting thus far; things move a bit too fast in the action sense such that it seems that you're either resting or fighting the entirety of the novel. It's not hard to keep track of, but it's definitely to the point that these guys' lives are a bit too eventful. The characters get attached to eachother a bit too quickly in general - It's like they're traumabonding but you never really get the feel the trauma is properly being explained - which is nonetheless understandable given the overall theme of the VN and their circumstances (several quickpaced death-filled scenes one after the other) BUT does nothing to make me, as a reader, invested into them or their relationship. Why should I care about this one chick who spent like 20 total minutes of storytelling with me and her big reveal or emotional scene right after? I have zero emotional investment into her character. I take a shower in 20 minutes. Locations suffer from the same issue, compounded by the narration style - oh, Zane's apartment, our safe haven, extremely well guarded, beautiful, furnished, secure, comfortable, and the new girl he's picked up and how they're shopping for clothes for her move to his apartment and then you just don't see the apartment again for hours before seeing it for like 10 more minutes and then never going back to it again. Yep, that's our safe haven right there. To the games credit, it hasn't really used HScenes at all, which helps in lowering the whole character bonding issues, which is something that I have to praise the developer for as others might've at this point used HScenes even in a dream just to keep people interested.
There is no soundtrack, but there are SFX's such as sword swishes and gunshots. They make no difference and are simply there to jolt you into thinking "what the fuck" when you first hear them after the first 5 minutes of silent gameplay. Not cool and probably worse than having nothing, because remembering that I forgot to lower my volume just to be met with SWIIIIISHHH SWING BOOM at an action scene ain't it.
Overall, not bad, but the writing is a bit overly grand for what it ultimately is - yet another hentai mystery indie visual novel, where ultimately, we're 9 chapters deep and we've not really pieced out much of anything yet despite how fast-paced the game appears to be. Therefore, I can't say the game is good. It's lacking technically in a couple of aspects, and it's good in a couple of others such as the overall idea, but it ends up just being average at the end. Time will tell if it goes up a bit into a 4.
The entire game is written like this. Obscenely annoying. Overly pretentious and grand for zero reason. Not only that, but sometimes, it's clear the author just really liked a specific word, and he overuses it within a couple of textboxes in a row in a scene; you'll see "symphony", "flicker", "hum", "neon", "stutter", "myriad", "desolate", "shade", "extinguished", "punctuation", and many others are words off the top of my head that I read several times in succession being used in places where they'd really have no reason to be used that many times in a row - in fact, no word should be used that many times in a row because the reader can spot it and it starts feeling a bit weird, but it's made worse when you go out of your way to insert words that you wouldn't normally find that many of in a text in the first place. There's "good english" and then there's "overusing pretty words for no reason", and this game is the latter; which is a shame, because if if it were a bit more subdued, it'd be incredible as the former. All of this makes the game overly dramatic for no reason in scenes where there's really no reason to be that dramatic. The dialogue is mostly fine (apart from places where it should pack a punch/be really emotional and it just kind of isn't, but that's mostly due to a lack of worldbuilding and properly setting up some characters like Luna), but the narration is just not it, man.
This is a huge gripe, but other than that, the game is fine! The renders are a bit emotionless/lifeless, but overall, the plot is interesting thus far; things move a bit too fast in the action sense such that it seems that you're either resting or fighting the entirety of the novel. It's not hard to keep track of, but it's definitely to the point that these guys' lives are a bit too eventful. The characters get attached to eachother a bit too quickly in general - It's like they're traumabonding but you never really get the feel the trauma is properly being explained - which is nonetheless understandable given the overall theme of the VN and their circumstances (several quickpaced death-filled scenes one after the other) BUT does nothing to make me, as a reader, invested into them or their relationship. Why should I care about this one chick who spent like 20 total minutes of storytelling with me and her big reveal or emotional scene right after? I have zero emotional investment into her character. I take a shower in 20 minutes. Locations suffer from the same issue, compounded by the narration style - oh, Zane's apartment, our safe haven, extremely well guarded, beautiful, furnished, secure, comfortable, and the new girl he's picked up and how they're shopping for clothes for her move to his apartment and then you just don't see the apartment again for hours before seeing it for like 10 more minutes and then never going back to it again. Yep, that's our safe haven right there. To the games credit, it hasn't really used HScenes at all, which helps in lowering the whole character bonding issues, which is something that I have to praise the developer for as others might've at this point used HScenes even in a dream just to keep people interested.
There is no soundtrack, but there are SFX's such as sword swishes and gunshots. They make no difference and are simply there to jolt you into thinking "what the fuck" when you first hear them after the first 5 minutes of silent gameplay. Not cool and probably worse than having nothing, because remembering that I forgot to lower my volume just to be met with SWIIIIISHHH SWING BOOM at an action scene ain't it.
Overall, not bad, but the writing is a bit overly grand for what it ultimately is - yet another hentai mystery indie visual novel, where ultimately, we're 9 chapters deep and we've not really pieced out much of anything yet despite how fast-paced the game appears to be. Therefore, I can't say the game is good. It's lacking technically in a couple of aspects, and it's good in a couple of others such as the overall idea, but it ends up just being average at the end. Time will tell if it goes up a bit into a 4.
