VN - Unity - Completed - Nie No Hakoniwa – Dollhouse of Offerings [v1.1.0] [Chatte Noire]

Not sure I am capable of writing a well structured review right now so I may edit this later. Anyway:
Nie No Hakoniwa is a fascinating game but it is also, as other reviews have mentioned gory as fuck. By this I mean that it is worse than Clockup or Tinkerbell titles. So be aware of this when you start the game.

Story
The story offers many interesting subplots and characters each with their own motivations. I personally am not a huge fan of occult horror but I think if you are you will enjoy this. I personally foresaw the final twist very early on but I feel like how it actually worked wasn't explained at all (?).
The game is a kinetic novel so no annoying choices and finding perfect routes and so on.

The sex scenes
The hentai scenes are hot, well voice acted and drawn. There are also relatively few of them (and if you aren't into guro there may be factors limiting your enjoyment of them). Not much more to say, there is a gallery where you can replay if you like.

The biggest plus (for me)
So, so far this would have been 3 stars from me - not really my kind of genre or story and too few hentai scenes to just play it for those.
However: This game has one of the highest production values I have ever seen in a VN. The soundtrack is a complete banger, this will be the first hentai soundtrack I add to my Spotify. Everything is voiceacted. Yes, every spoken line. The backgrounds and characters are drawn extremely well. There is a tool for viewing the character sprites. There even is a well done License section where you can see what Unity plugins they used (I know you probably do not care about this but as a dev myself I really liked seeing it). The UI feels great, works great and sounds great.

For this alone, my rating goes up to 4*. Now I am going to buy this on steam to support the devs and then instantly hide it from my library for obvious reasons.

It´s an pretty amazing horror game, I would highly recommend playing it, if you want a good horror story, if you want a good porn game maybe it isn´t that.

Here are some of my thoughts, with some spoilers but I try not to say too many because I think it is best to see the story as blindly as possible.


The story is pretty good and the twist weren´t too obvious but I always had the thought in my mind before the twist were revealed so they never felt random, they made sense in the story.

The characters are very well written, I loved learning about the houses. There were a lot of characters that I really liked and hated at the same time, some who I just hated, and even a few especially touka who I just really liked and didn´t want anything bad happen to her.

The translation is nearly perfect maybe two or three typos but that doesn´t really matter it is good to read.


The sex scenes, and the game in general is very brutal, so if you have any second thoughts about gore or stuff don´t play it there are some extreme scenes. But personaly I have to say the sex scenes are the weakest part of the game, they are still very good and have amazing art, the art in general is pretty fantastic, but I thought there could have been some more and some could have been a bit shorter.

The music is amazing it always fit and I loved that each house had a unique soundtrack.

The gameplay is a kinetic novel, so no choices or anything and you often change the perspective of the character, so if you only want to see the perspective of one character look somewhere else.

The last things that are amazing that I want to mention are.

In the rollback or how it is called, you can go back to the moment where the sentence was said which is a nice feature.

There is a option to reduce gore, I haven´t tried it because I think full gore is better, but it is nice to have such a option.

The gallery is amazing. you can move the CG´s around a litte and see a little bit more then you could in the gameplay nothing special but it is nice to see that the pictures weren´t cut off or anything. And you can see all the sprites with all different clothes and expression, these two things aren´t really important and most people won´t even notice them but that is exactly why I liked it because it feels like a lot of effort was put into it even when it wasn´t needed.

And the last thing which is one of the best things and makes this game so much better. Is that all characters are voiced, not just the girls but also all man they feel like real characters instead of just objects like in a lot of other VN´s which is really important especially for a horror game, not to mention that it makes the game feel more like quality.


So yes play it if you want horror, gore, or just a tragic story, but not if you want a quick fap.

Artwork
The artwork of Nie no Hakoniwa is really good, and has a very consistent design theme to the characters.
+Very high quality CG artworks for each of the characters.
+Character portrait fully reflects the attire (or lack thereof) of the character, even in cases where the character is partially undressed.
+/- Well proportioned character design in CGs, though the proportions in some portrait variations can seem a little off.
-In one of the scenes, the character’s portrait does not match the CG (white shirt, when the portrait is black shirt)

Literary
+Professionally translated with no grammatical errors.
+May actually increase your vocabulary. (I learnt that wont is a word, and no, I didn’t miss an apostrophe lol)
+Proper formatting for every line, with no instance of texts going out of the box.
+Translation is faithful to the spoken lines.
-In a few instances, the text refers to a character’s eyes and limbs (plural) even when it is established that a said character only as a singular one of those.

Audio
I’ve never considered myself someone who cared too much for the music or voice acting in a VN/KN, and so long as it is fitting I’d take it as good enough, but precisely because of that, the music and voice acting in Nie no Hakoniwa deserves a special mention for how much of an impression it left on me.

+The voice acting for each of the characters is some of the best I’ve ever come across. While most Japanese VNs/KNs published by a studio have professional voice acting, most VNs/KNs do not demand so much from the voice actors/actresses. The way the voice acting conveyed stronger emotions like fear, anger, disgust and pain is frankly awe-inspiring. More than a few times I’d go back to a certain line just to listen to it again.

+The music in Nie no Hakoniwa is also top-notch, with each track tying the scene together, emphasizing the tone from uplifting to somber to jazzy to tension and everything in between. Each main character, as well as the seven noble houses all have their own fitting theme.

-One of the sfx used is unfortunately quite distracting. It is common for eroges to include sfx for… the friction of wet flesh. Yet, one of the sfx during scenes sounded like a running faucet, and it just doesn’t seem to fit.

Story
Nie no Hakoniwa is a lengthy story spanning three different eras, ultimately stringing together to tell a much bigger story. As the name suggests, the story centers around a box of sacrifice, or better known as the Kotori Bako (translated as ‘child-stealing box’), inspired by an urban legend of the same name. It is a cursed item used by the oppressed to seek revenge by paying an ultimate price.

+There really isn’t a way to discuss the story without delving into spoiler territory, so I won’t. I will, however, say that the story is engaging, littered with multiple plot twists and a big mystery that the reader can try to figure out along the way. The story sprinkled in clues along the way, and trying to figure out the story, the intentions and the reason behind the characters’ actions made Nie no Hakoniwa very memorable to me.

+/-Reading through the story, I felt equal parts bummed and cathartic. You know how in many stories, the hero does the right thing despite losing something or someone important to them? And while we may agree that the hero did the right thing, we also felt bad for the hero because of what they had lost? The bittersweet ending? Well, Nie no Hakoniwa felt like the polar opposite of that. Seeing the protagonist make the villains pay is cathartic, but watching the same characters you were rooting for devolve and turn into monsters step by step, at some point it just feels a little depressive, somber, and gloomy.

+/-Nie no Hakoniwa is a kinetic novel, so there isn’t any sort of decision making or branching paths in the story. That said, this allows the devs to focus on the story and its delivery without distractions.

-There are some parts of the story that felt contrived, or illogical. Some of the ones I caught are:

• Rigor mortis happens within minutes of a person’s death - I am no doctor, but from what I gathered rigor mortis sets in a couple of hours after a person’s death, not within minutes.
• The Kotori Bako’s usage and powers - While the nature of the box’s power is steeped in mystery by design, many times the story will just plop in a new thing the box can do, which sadly makes the deus ex machina box feel contrived.
• The mastermind of the story’s grand plan (which isn’t overtly explored) is so far out that it requires the miracle of plot armor to pull off.

H-Scene
+The H-Scenes are of superb quality, with a buttload of variations. Unlike most VNs, Nie no Hakoniwa’s scenes are usually at least a two-parter back to back, and each part easily contains 10-15 variations of CG. Many of the subtle shifts in expression are done really well too.

+/- Having said that, the total number of scenes is relatively small for such a lengthy story. Nie no Hakoniwa took the story first, eroge second approach, which is why the scenes felt close and personal, because by the time you get your first proper scene you’d be a good 15 hours into the story and have been introduced to all the characters. This just made the scenes that much more emotionally impactful.

+/-In case the tags and the screenshots didn’t make it abundantly clear, Nie no Hakoniwa centers on some pretty heavy themes. If you are not someone who does well with these themes, best to give this a pass. Just saying, it isn’t often you see rape, loli, guro, cannibalism and snuff(?) all in a single scene.

-Due to how long it takes for the scenes to come up, this is definitely not for people who are looking for a quick fap.

Miscellaneous
Playtime: Fairly lengthy, took the better part of the month to go through, though I only had time for a couple hours a day.
Completion: 100%
Version:V1.1.0

• Being a kinetic novel meant forgoing decision making for the players, and while it is still a really good story, the idea of being able to reach different outcomes based on my decision is still a very enticing one. I can’t help but wonder the endings we could have reached if the devs made Nie no Hakoniwa a VN instead.

Closing
For the engaging story, beautiful artwork and really good music and voice acting, I’d highly recommend checking Nie no Hakoniwa out if you either like the heavy themes, or you can at least stomach it. There is room for improvement, yes, but even as is it oozes with quality, and it is hauntingly beautiful.

So... I reluctantly give it 4/5. That score is a mix between amazing beginning and... THE rest.
If you are a normal person, looking for a story more than porn:
Play this game
It is a masterpiece of storytelling. Original, intriguing, captivating.
Check the beginning of the story, all the way up to the wedding.
STOP THERE
There. Assume that it is the story wrapped up. Feel free to explore flashback that comes next.
But don't progress the main story. Delete, and be content.

Because then authors try to slowly cook the frog, throwing in some borderline illegal imaginery in act that comes after wedding, which turns into fully fledged Unit 731 things, that I literally cannot describe here in fear of ending up on multiple watch lists of 3letter agencies. And for some reason, with it comes a lot of boring meaningless filler exposition longer than some of the VNs here are on its own.

Check the amazing start, leave after wedding.

Fair warning: this game is extremely violent and gory. since it is an eroguro. You can turn off the gore, but this might still not do it for some, since there's also a lot of verbal violence, and the characters are often very descriptive of how they will deal with their victims.

Spoilers ahead:

Well, what can I say about the game. The images here are simply awesome, both their quality and angles and content. Although I’m not against any harshness, sometimes it’s even interesting (if it doesn’t cross the line). But here it seemed completely meaningless to me. And for the most part, almost every girl was given only one H-scene. In rare cases, more than one, and then only for the main female characters. Well, there is an absolute lack of choice of anything. No, I understand that this is in fact a visual novel and this is sometimes quite common practice there. But it was a little problematic for me to perceive the game as a game in which you have absolutely no influence on anything and cannot do anything at all. In Japanese visual games, of course, not much choice is often given in principle, but at least there are one or two choices, at least for show.
Despite the disadvantages, I mostly liked the game. It’s stupid to deny that this game is one of the most interesting and high-quality games released recently from the Japanese.