Kinetic Chronicle is one of the jankiest H-game I've ever had the displeasure to play. It is built on a neat concept and good execution in the places that does work, but whenever the game breaks, oh it is shattered to pieces.
-Art: the game's art quality is not very good. It is crudely drawn and colored, looks like something straight out of Newgrounds Flash games from the 2000s. The animations are fine, janky sometimes but much better than one would expect, but it carries very little impact, despite those same attacks supposedly dealing a lot of damage. Credits where credits is due, it's not unserviceable and you definitely won't get turned off as opposed to much worse cases, and the CGs are actually pretty decently drawn.
-Sounds: it carries a lot of the same problem art has. The sounds are rudimentary, sometimes crispy and low quality. The character voices are not great at all, as for the few times they speak up it sounds really low quality and the voice acting in of itself is unimpressive. The repeated use of several sounds is also really annoying, especially the explosion sound that seemingly everything uses. Music is... fine I guess, they serve their purpose in their respective places, but much like the other sounds, really unimpressive.
-Story: I'm all for a good story but this one is just confusing. Sure, some of the events and abilities from the story are explained decently well but other times, it's just confusing how it "works". Also, it mash many elements that doesn't really feel connected, and even if you make a decent reason to connect them all (in this game, being the whole time travel thing), it themes just doesn't line up to make the story appealing. And well the worst offender is definitely BAD GRAMMAR. Yep, it really does feel like a Newgrounds Flash game from the 2000s. Bad grammar makes the whole tension really dive down and makes story elements that is already confusing all the more hard to digest. Granted, what is there isn't so bad as the story, when you can piece all of the very loosely connected pieces yourself, is not bad.
-Gameplay: Kinetic Chronicle is a mix of platforming, puzzle solving and simple combat. It certainly did its job well... at first. All of it comes falling down as you progress the game.
+Combat: is relatively simple. Left click and right on your mouse will perform melee and ranged attack respectively. You have a 3 hit combo on the ground, one jumping attack, stones and water arrow. Your stones can be thrown instantly, charge to 2x - 3x the damage after a certain amount of time and the 3x damage charge can be "stored" by left click after the charge is done. You can also store more stones by right clicking after a 3 hit combo and right click instead of left click at the third hit for a different attack that stores a stone. There's also a 2 hit combo where you left click and then right click for additional range. These attacks each have their own uses as you go so they're not useless throughout the game if you decide to stick to the basics. Compared to other games, combat in this one is much simpler, as they don't require nearly as much execution as well as having less options to attack than your usual action games.
+Platforming and puzzle: is pretty well done. For the times that you have to do puzzles to progress, they're fun to figure out the way to solve them. There's also places where you have to do puzzles and combat at the same time, which is also very fun. What isn't fun sometimes is the platforming. In here, you don't have any additional movement option ability until the end of stage 4. You only have walking, jump and grab ledges until then. Grab ledges in particular is really janky and can sometimes glitch out or backfire you during a boss battle. Overall, decent but janky at times.
+Enemies: now here's come the problem. Enemies are boring at times, extremely annoying and downright unfair at other times. They're relatively simple enemies, with most of them are just ground attackers and there's only two projectile enemy in two stages of the game. What's bad is that due to your lackluster movement, it's easy to get into checkmate situations where you cannot escape, as you have next to no i-frames after being hit and no way to quickly get out of a slime sandwich, the only way to escape is to surrender and get knocked down, initiating a mash sequence and get a lot of i-frames from there to escape. Oh, and if the enemy is camping the ledge, you're doomed cause' they can just hit you right as you jump up and you'll fall to oblivion. What's worse than the enemies?
-Boss: This game's bosses are pretty bad. The first three bosses are fine, albeit very hard to learn the patterns of the later two, but even from the third boss, Pellucia, is where you'll start to find the bs. Like the bubbles attack which have non-sensical hitbox, luckily they deal no damage and removing them means you can stop them from exploding on you when Pellucia does the next attack. Circeria, the 4th boss, has time stop and can throw knives at you which will point to your general direction, you'd assume you can point them away but nope, turns out after time stop ends, they all go to your side of the screen even if the knives was facing downwards. And the dragon, ohhhh the dragon, it's one of the most painful experience I've got from an H-game, with plenty of bugs, a few nearly unreactable attacks and softlocking you at the 1st phase if you don't meet a really specific condition. And yet, this isn't even the final boss, as Lenene is even worse than the dragon. As I'm writing this review, I haven't beaten her although I'm still trying.
+Difficulty: all of that to say that this game is genuinely brutal. It's one of the hardest H-games I've played but unlike some of the hard games I've played before, this one is hard for all of the wrong reasons. You have to evade bugs, constantly praying to RNG and hope you don't get into a checkmate situation for both the stages and the bosses and it's not fun at all. Granted, I was playing on Tendril difficulty, but even the times I toned the difficulty down to easy just to learn their patterns, it's still brutal and the precision and RNG needed to not get hit is still preposterous for a platforming puzzle. Well, like I said, just like Newgrounds Flash game in the 2000s, minus the fun.
-H-scenes: here's something that isn't so bad. The H-scenes are pretty fine, like I said the CGs are well-drawn and even in-game H-scenes animations are dope too. Appreciate the addition of a simulation room although I do wish the diary comes with replaying the whole CG scene and not just the animation.
-Overall: Kinetic Chronicle is a good concept but it is riddled with bad execution at times. It's not for the easy casual players and is leaning pretty hard on the hardcore side of difficulty. It's overall very janky and unpleasant, but it can be enjoyable at certain points. I would recommend this game if you enjoy some really hard stuff, but I really wouldn't want an innocent soul to go through the torment of this game. 6.75/10, could be better with less bugs.
-Art: the game's art quality is not very good. It is crudely drawn and colored, looks like something straight out of Newgrounds Flash games from the 2000s. The animations are fine, janky sometimes but much better than one would expect, but it carries very little impact, despite those same attacks supposedly dealing a lot of damage. Credits where credits is due, it's not unserviceable and you definitely won't get turned off as opposed to much worse cases, and the CGs are actually pretty decently drawn.
-Sounds: it carries a lot of the same problem art has. The sounds are rudimentary, sometimes crispy and low quality. The character voices are not great at all, as for the few times they speak up it sounds really low quality and the voice acting in of itself is unimpressive. The repeated use of several sounds is also really annoying, especially the explosion sound that seemingly everything uses. Music is... fine I guess, they serve their purpose in their respective places, but much like the other sounds, really unimpressive.
-Story: I'm all for a good story but this one is just confusing. Sure, some of the events and abilities from the story are explained decently well but other times, it's just confusing how it "works". Also, it mash many elements that doesn't really feel connected, and even if you make a decent reason to connect them all (in this game, being the whole time travel thing), it themes just doesn't line up to make the story appealing. And well the worst offender is definitely BAD GRAMMAR. Yep, it really does feel like a Newgrounds Flash game from the 2000s. Bad grammar makes the whole tension really dive down and makes story elements that is already confusing all the more hard to digest. Granted, what is there isn't so bad as the story, when you can piece all of the very loosely connected pieces yourself, is not bad.
-Gameplay: Kinetic Chronicle is a mix of platforming, puzzle solving and simple combat. It certainly did its job well... at first. All of it comes falling down as you progress the game.
+Combat: is relatively simple. Left click and right on your mouse will perform melee and ranged attack respectively. You have a 3 hit combo on the ground, one jumping attack, stones and water arrow. Your stones can be thrown instantly, charge to 2x - 3x the damage after a certain amount of time and the 3x damage charge can be "stored" by left click after the charge is done. You can also store more stones by right clicking after a 3 hit combo and right click instead of left click at the third hit for a different attack that stores a stone. There's also a 2 hit combo where you left click and then right click for additional range. These attacks each have their own uses as you go so they're not useless throughout the game if you decide to stick to the basics. Compared to other games, combat in this one is much simpler, as they don't require nearly as much execution as well as having less options to attack than your usual action games.
+Platforming and puzzle: is pretty well done. For the times that you have to do puzzles to progress, they're fun to figure out the way to solve them. There's also places where you have to do puzzles and combat at the same time, which is also very fun. What isn't fun sometimes is the platforming. In here, you don't have any additional movement option ability until the end of stage 4. You only have walking, jump and grab ledges until then. Grab ledges in particular is really janky and can sometimes glitch out or backfire you during a boss battle. Overall, decent but janky at times.
+Enemies: now here's come the problem. Enemies are boring at times, extremely annoying and downright unfair at other times. They're relatively simple enemies, with most of them are just ground attackers and there's only two projectile enemy in two stages of the game. What's bad is that due to your lackluster movement, it's easy to get into checkmate situations where you cannot escape, as you have next to no i-frames after being hit and no way to quickly get out of a slime sandwich, the only way to escape is to surrender and get knocked down, initiating a mash sequence and get a lot of i-frames from there to escape. Oh, and if the enemy is camping the ledge, you're doomed cause' they can just hit you right as you jump up and you'll fall to oblivion. What's worse than the enemies?
-Boss: This game's bosses are pretty bad. The first three bosses are fine, albeit very hard to learn the patterns of the later two, but even from the third boss, Pellucia, is where you'll start to find the bs. Like the bubbles attack which have non-sensical hitbox, luckily they deal no damage and removing them means you can stop them from exploding on you when Pellucia does the next attack. Circeria, the 4th boss, has time stop and can throw knives at you which will point to your general direction, you'd assume you can point them away but nope, turns out after time stop ends, they all go to your side of the screen even if the knives was facing downwards. And the dragon, ohhhh the dragon, it's one of the most painful experience I've got from an H-game, with plenty of bugs, a few nearly unreactable attacks and softlocking you at the 1st phase if you don't meet a really specific condition. And yet, this isn't even the final boss, as Lenene is even worse than the dragon. As I'm writing this review, I haven't beaten her although I'm still trying.
+Difficulty: all of that to say that this game is genuinely brutal. It's one of the hardest H-games I've played but unlike some of the hard games I've played before, this one is hard for all of the wrong reasons. You have to evade bugs, constantly praying to RNG and hope you don't get into a checkmate situation for both the stages and the bosses and it's not fun at all. Granted, I was playing on Tendril difficulty, but even the times I toned the difficulty down to easy just to learn their patterns, it's still brutal and the precision and RNG needed to not get hit is still preposterous for a platforming puzzle. Well, like I said, just like Newgrounds Flash game in the 2000s, minus the fun.
-H-scenes: here's something that isn't so bad. The H-scenes are pretty fine, like I said the CGs are well-drawn and even in-game H-scenes animations are dope too. Appreciate the addition of a simulation room although I do wish the diary comes with replaying the whole CG scene and not just the animation.
-Overall: Kinetic Chronicle is a good concept but it is riddled with bad execution at times. It's not for the easy casual players and is leaning pretty hard on the hardcore side of difficulty. It's overall very janky and unpleasant, but it can be enjoyable at certain points. I would recommend this game if you enjoy some really hard stuff, but I really wouldn't want an innocent soul to go through the torment of this game. 6.75/10, could be better with less bugs.