I've had this one in my backlog for the longest time. I bought it on GOG like 2 years ago but for some reason I never got around to reading it. Now I decided to finally sit down and give it a shot, and oh boy am I glad that I did! This is easily one of the best VN's I've read so far, and I've read like over 30 of them already. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.
Kimagure Temptation is a mystery visual novel from Wasabi and Silky Plus. I have no idea which one of those is the dev and which is the publisher since I don't follow the japanese eroge scene very carefuly, but I must give my hat's off to the devs. This is apparently the third in a series of novels which starts with Nanairo Reincarnation, which is already translated, and Akeiro Kaikaitan which is yet to be translated. I hope that Denpasoft and Sekai Project get off their asses soon and get that novel released in the West, dammit!
So anyway, at first glance when you look at the screenshots, the VN looks fairly innocuous. The first thing that stands out is the main heroine Annelise with her long pink hair, her helium-filled tits, and her skimpy outfit that lives nothing to the imagination. However as soon as you hit the start game button things start going in a different direction from what you were expecting.
This is a mystery/horror/romance VN where you play the role of some guy called Haruhisa (weird name huh?), who is a diviner in the employment of an occult organization called the Bureau of Divination whose task is solving supernatural cases. His task is solving a murder case which took place in an apartment building. Four people were found brutally slain, and one of them went missing, as a result of despicable ritual. The police weren't much help, and to make matters worse the building is now haunted with the souls of the deceased. Haruhisa teams up with Anne, who is a demon which came all the way from England to help solve this case, in exchange of letting her gain permanent residency in Japan. She's an otaku, what did you expect? Originality?
As far as main characters go, Haruhisa ain't half bad. In fact he's pretty badass. He's a competent investigator that knows how to get the job done and doesn't let his emotions get ahead of him, not unless you pick certain choices. More on that later. When it comes to women, he starts off with loser tendencies, but then quickly learns how to get the upper hand and how to lead in a relationship. He also has this cool katana which he is not afraid to draw if the situation calls for it. Not the best, but definitely not the worst MC either. If he were the baseline when it comes to VN protagonists this medium would be in much better shape.
The other protagonist of the story is of course Anneliese. She is fully animated using the e-mote system which I've seen used quite a bit in recent years. As a result she is a very lively character and I'll be frank, I never got tired of watching her tits jump up and down on screen. She also comes with many different outfits. My favorite one is the tank top with the hotpants. Dayum that looks hot, let me tell you! As far as her personality goes, being a succubus you can already tell that she is always horny af and will not hesitate in seducing the MC. I'd expected her to be more of a klutz based on how she looks, but thankfully she's quite a competent person in her own right. I really liked her voice acting too; playful but still down to earth. In a way she plays the role of the stand in for the player, since she is also new to this whole supernatural thing, and there are several instances where Haruhisa sits down and explains to her the lore of this universe. Thankfully the pacing is good so it never bogs down with too many details. Of course Anne comes with her own mysteryous past as well that you have a chance to explore if you pick out the correct choices..... Overall I really enjoyed my time with Anneliese, and can definitely say that she is waifu material!
As for the other characters, all of them are the spiritual remains of the deceased persons. They call themselves angels. All are female and each comes with her own quirk and backstory that you will get to investigate throughout the course of the novel. As this is a mystery story I will stop here since I don't want to spoil any suprises. They are all voice acted, obviously, however they don't come with animated sprites like Anne does. They're just static CG's with alternate looks.
The entirety of the story takes place in the apartment building during the course of several days. As such, the novel manages to create a nice sense of place. The atmosphere gets more and more intense as time progresses. There are some horror aspects here as well, but they aren't that strongly present except for a few moments that caught me by surprise. It is, after all, more of a mystery novel.
The "gameplay", if you could call it that, is a bit more involved when compared to your usual VN. When you are in a scene you can choose to talk to the present characters, or you can "explore" the surroundings by clicking on different hot spots. It's not much, but I think it gets the job done in getting you to imagine that you're doing the actual investigation. There are quite a few dialogue choices and what you choose will definitely impact the ending that you'll get. There are 2 bad endings, a solution end, 2 normal endings, and a true end. I did them in exactly this order. I read somewhere that the true end is only available if you've unlocked all the rest, but I can't confirm or deny that. Anyway the bad endings come with their own CG's so you at least want to do those if you want the full gallery unlock. You should definitely consult a walkthrough, otherwise you will end up mindlessly clicking through choices. The novel is actually quite short, barely over 15 hours, which is totally fine by me. I'm kinda burned out on all these 30-40+ hour VN's if I'm being honest with you, so this was a nice change of pace.
The sound, music, and VA are average for the most part. The main menu song is cute and bouncy, but other than that none of the tracks really stood out to me. The backgrounds are kinda plain. I'm not sure if this was just to aplify the horror atmosphere, or if it was just a budget issue. The CG's on the other hand are gorgeous and come with tons of detail.
How are the H-scenes you ask? They're all vanilla, however they come with a wide variety of sexual positions which kept things fresh throughout. My favorite was the front to front masturbation scene. That was so hot omg! Best news? They're all animated! Yes, that's right, every single H-scene is animated. Of course there's an option in the menu to turn off the animations if for some reason you don't like how they turned out, but I think they look really good! I wish this was an industry standard. I heard that some people have techincal issues with slowdowns during the H-scenes and turning the animations off seems to solve this issue, so there's that. Also for the lazy coomers out there there's an "unlock all" button in the gallery. You're welcum. The only downside is that you can't view the animated versions in the CG gallery, it's just the stills. Speaking of which the extra section also comes with a pose mode where you can play with Anne however you want, dressing her up, and having her do certain gestures. My favorite is action 171.
If there is one negative aspect that I want to point out is that the true ending felt a bit rushed. I won't spoil it, but at the very end there is a time skip where they don't go into detail what happened in the mean time. I think they just ran out of money and half-assed it. It's a shame because if they had given this a proper conclusion this would have been a 10/10 from me.
Overall Kimagure Temptation is an excellent mystery novel with good production values, intruguing plot, and hot succubus waifu. What more can a man ask for? Technically I found this to be flawless. I ran it on Linux under Wine and ecnountered zero issues.
Verdict: 5/5 stars, an (almost) masterpiece. Fans of mystery, horror, and fun loving, big boobied, pink haired succubuses should not miss out on this one!
Total read time: 17 hours and 30 minutes, 100% gallery unlock, listening to almost all the moans.
Kimagure Temptation is a mystery visual novel from Wasabi and Silky Plus. I have no idea which one of those is the dev and which is the publisher since I don't follow the japanese eroge scene very carefuly, but I must give my hat's off to the devs. This is apparently the third in a series of novels which starts with Nanairo Reincarnation, which is already translated, and Akeiro Kaikaitan which is yet to be translated. I hope that Denpasoft and Sekai Project get off their asses soon and get that novel released in the West, dammit!
So anyway, at first glance when you look at the screenshots, the VN looks fairly innocuous. The first thing that stands out is the main heroine Annelise with her long pink hair, her helium-filled tits, and her skimpy outfit that lives nothing to the imagination. However as soon as you hit the start game button things start going in a different direction from what you were expecting.
This is a mystery/horror/romance VN where you play the role of some guy called Haruhisa (weird name huh?), who is a diviner in the employment of an occult organization called the Bureau of Divination whose task is solving supernatural cases. His task is solving a murder case which took place in an apartment building. Four people were found brutally slain, and one of them went missing, as a result of despicable ritual. The police weren't much help, and to make matters worse the building is now haunted with the souls of the deceased. Haruhisa teams up with Anne, who is a demon which came all the way from England to help solve this case, in exchange of letting her gain permanent residency in Japan. She's an otaku, what did you expect? Originality?
As far as main characters go, Haruhisa ain't half bad. In fact he's pretty badass. He's a competent investigator that knows how to get the job done and doesn't let his emotions get ahead of him, not unless you pick certain choices. More on that later. When it comes to women, he starts off with loser tendencies, but then quickly learns how to get the upper hand and how to lead in a relationship. He also has this cool katana which he is not afraid to draw if the situation calls for it. Not the best, but definitely not the worst MC either. If he were the baseline when it comes to VN protagonists this medium would be in much better shape.
The other protagonist of the story is of course Anneliese. She is fully animated using the e-mote system which I've seen used quite a bit in recent years. As a result she is a very lively character and I'll be frank, I never got tired of watching her tits jump up and down on screen. She also comes with many different outfits. My favorite one is the tank top with the hotpants. Dayum that looks hot, let me tell you! As far as her personality goes, being a succubus you can already tell that she is always horny af and will not hesitate in seducing the MC. I'd expected her to be more of a klutz based on how she looks, but thankfully she's quite a competent person in her own right. I really liked her voice acting too; playful but still down to earth. In a way she plays the role of the stand in for the player, since she is also new to this whole supernatural thing, and there are several instances where Haruhisa sits down and explains to her the lore of this universe. Thankfully the pacing is good so it never bogs down with too many details. Of course Anne comes with her own mysteryous past as well that you have a chance to explore if you pick out the correct choices..... Overall I really enjoyed my time with Anneliese, and can definitely say that she is waifu material!
As for the other characters, all of them are the spiritual remains of the deceased persons. They call themselves angels. All are female and each comes with her own quirk and backstory that you will get to investigate throughout the course of the novel. As this is a mystery story I will stop here since I don't want to spoil any suprises. They are all voice acted, obviously, however they don't come with animated sprites like Anne does. They're just static CG's with alternate looks.
The entirety of the story takes place in the apartment building during the course of several days. As such, the novel manages to create a nice sense of place. The atmosphere gets more and more intense as time progresses. There are some horror aspects here as well, but they aren't that strongly present except for a few moments that caught me by surprise. It is, after all, more of a mystery novel.
The "gameplay", if you could call it that, is a bit more involved when compared to your usual VN. When you are in a scene you can choose to talk to the present characters, or you can "explore" the surroundings by clicking on different hot spots. It's not much, but I think it gets the job done in getting you to imagine that you're doing the actual investigation. There are quite a few dialogue choices and what you choose will definitely impact the ending that you'll get. There are 2 bad endings, a solution end, 2 normal endings, and a true end. I did them in exactly this order. I read somewhere that the true end is only available if you've unlocked all the rest, but I can't confirm or deny that. Anyway the bad endings come with their own CG's so you at least want to do those if you want the full gallery unlock. You should definitely consult a walkthrough, otherwise you will end up mindlessly clicking through choices. The novel is actually quite short, barely over 15 hours, which is totally fine by me. I'm kinda burned out on all these 30-40+ hour VN's if I'm being honest with you, so this was a nice change of pace.
The sound, music, and VA are average for the most part. The main menu song is cute and bouncy, but other than that none of the tracks really stood out to me. The backgrounds are kinda plain. I'm not sure if this was just to aplify the horror atmosphere, or if it was just a budget issue. The CG's on the other hand are gorgeous and come with tons of detail.
How are the H-scenes you ask? They're all vanilla, however they come with a wide variety of sexual positions which kept things fresh throughout. My favorite was the front to front masturbation scene. That was so hot omg! Best news? They're all animated! Yes, that's right, every single H-scene is animated. Of course there's an option in the menu to turn off the animations if for some reason you don't like how they turned out, but I think they look really good! I wish this was an industry standard. I heard that some people have techincal issues with slowdowns during the H-scenes and turning the animations off seems to solve this issue, so there's that. Also for the lazy coomers out there there's an "unlock all" button in the gallery. You're welcum. The only downside is that you can't view the animated versions in the CG gallery, it's just the stills. Speaking of which the extra section also comes with a pose mode where you can play with Anne however you want, dressing her up, and having her do certain gestures. My favorite is action 171.
If there is one negative aspect that I want to point out is that the true ending felt a bit rushed. I won't spoil it, but at the very end there is a time skip where they don't go into detail what happened in the mean time. I think they just ran out of money and half-assed it. It's a shame because if they had given this a proper conclusion this would have been a 10/10 from me.
Overall Kimagure Temptation is an excellent mystery novel with good production values, intruguing plot, and hot succubus waifu. What more can a man ask for? Technically I found this to be flawless. I ran it on Linux under Wine and ecnountered zero issues.
Verdict: 5/5 stars, an (almost) masterpiece. Fans of mystery, horror, and fun loving, big boobied, pink haired succubuses should not miss out on this one!
Total read time: 17 hours and 30 minutes, 100% gallery unlock, listening to almost all the moans.
