Well... this is enough of a mess of a VN that I felt I should review it, if only because there aren't many reviews and I figure more opinions wouldn't hurt.
The reviewed version was the 1.0 Lilim/Kagura version, but in theory, version shouldn't change anything except maybe fixing one instance of b0rked CGs. The b0rked CG in question doesn't stop the scene from playing, so it won't block progression, but it does cause the game to crash if you try to access it in the gallery. It's not one of the more interesting ones, imho, so I don't feel it's that big of a deal personally. Mileage may very.
Now on to the facts.
First and foremost, this is a classic VN, which means that there's absolutely NO gameplay. It's pure story with some choices that lead to different paths, endings and bad-endings. This means that an fully objective rating is pretty much impossible, since most of the worth is in the story, the H-scenes and related kinks, the CGs and I suppose the audio if you care about that part.
---Beyond this point there WILL be tons of spoilers---
I won't rate the audio, because I always play these things muted, so I have no idea if it's any good.
The H-scenes are fairly good if you're into the kinks involved in them, though they do suffer to an extent from the fact that a lot of stuff happens in text that isn't depicted in the CGs in any way shape or form. I personally like the quality of the CGs, the art-style is to my tastes, but mileage will obviously vary on that.
The main kink in this whole thing is rape. Rape and lots of it. All three of the girls get raped, and there's absolutely no way to prevent it all from happening. Some might argue that the next fetish on the list is corruption and/or moral degeneration, but... The problem with that is that the girls are being affected by supernatural powers that are weakening their own control over their own bodies and minds. Because of that, they don't really become slutty as much as they begin losing the fight against this power that overrides their wills the more they get fucked, but they still return to normal from time to time. The most extreme example is with Miyu, who even when supposedly completely fallen, is able to completely regain her sanity with the aid of the sword, because the sword was able to purify the foreign influence in her mind. As such, I personally don't really count this as corruption.
The other fetish a lot of people will argue is present in great amounts is netorare. In this specific case, your mileage will vary. For one, the girls never seriously or willingly betray the protagonist, and even at their worst, they'd totally jump on his dick over everyone else's and the only reason why they can't do that as much as they want is because supposedly fucking him would hasten the end of the world. There's only ONE sort of netorare ending where one of the girls goes with MC's best friend at the end, and even that one's ambiguous in terms of where it ends up and the girl herself isn't exactly jumping at the bit to betray him. The only other two times where two of the girls end up with the antagonists for good involve the MC literally dying, and it's less NTR and more them going utterly insane between the thing fucking with their heads and witnessing him dying in front of their eyes.
Aside from these, there's no specific fetish that is particularly well represented. There's a handful of tentacle scenes, a handful of futa scenes, a couple of stomach bulging scenes of which only one is really emphasizing it all, one cum inflation scene, a few gang-bangs, and some vanilla. Oh, and I guess there's snuff in 3 scenes where some peeps turn into salt at the end of the scene because they die.
That's about it. Overall, the scenes are pretty good, but I wouldn't recommend this for old-school netorare fetishists. It's not that kind of story. Not for tentacle fetishists either, of which I am one. I was disappointed that there wasn't more of it.
All in all, the H-scenes alone are 9/10, I'd say, if you account the CGs and text combined. Pretty good for their intended purpose.
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Now, the story, the thing that makes or breaks a pure VN and makes the difference between something worth reading or a scene and CG collector with extra steps.
....
For me, personally, the story was garbage. I was honestly tempted to rate this 2 stars for that alone, but the H-scenes really were quite enjoyable, so I raised my rating to 3 because this thing is good for stimulation if nothing else.
No matter which route you play, no matter which endings you get, you don't really find out much of anything. You find out what the MC's deal is and why he's special as a Deep Lord unlike the other antagonists, and you find out why Miyu recognizes him, or rather, the Deep Lord inside him, when they first meet... but you never find out what's the deal with the Ritual, why it keeps happening, why there need to be "Fruits" that get fucked into insanity by Deep Lords. Why the world has to "end". Who or what made the Law.
You find out none of that stuff. The most you find out is that Betrayal, MC's Deep Lord, was originally a Bright Lord, the apparently stronger other side of the Deep Lords, and he fell because he started loving one of the girls involved in a past iteration of the ritual, of which he was an overseer of. Why was that so bad? Fuck if you find out, much like everything else.
Really, all the H-scenes could happen in a void, independent of each other, and you honestly wouldn't lose out on much, because the story is just so painfully bad with basically no real effort being put into the world building.
The whole salt thing and Bright Lords turning into Deep Lords stuff is clearly a poorly used Old Testament reference, but again, no effort was made to develop anything whatsoever. It's extra poorly done when taking into account that apparently in this setting, humans normally just die and disappear for good, fuck having an afterlife.
Leaving all that aside, the characters are all, for the most part, rather painfully stupid, failing to talk to each other like human beings and failing to have any real amount of critical thinking. There's one instance when a new character shows up who turns out to be another Deep Lord... and it's so, damn, obvious... but somehow the MC AND the girls fail to remember the detail that makes it obvious until the plot makes it convenient for them to remember. Then there's how the girls fall to dumb tricks even before the mental influence thing really ramps up because of the Law. Or how the MC just lacks critical thinking and initiative and at one point doesn't think about something that's painfully obvious until someone else points it out for him.
It just goes on and on tbh....
Obviously, this is just my subjective experience with the VN. I personally disliked how the story was handled and how needlessly vague a lot of things were. Someone else might not care, but my opinion is still that you won't lose out on much if you just use a choice guide and a long press of the ctrl key to collect the scenes and then enjoy them at your leisure.
The reviewed version was the 1.0 Lilim/Kagura version, but in theory, version shouldn't change anything except maybe fixing one instance of b0rked CGs. The b0rked CG in question doesn't stop the scene from playing, so it won't block progression, but it does cause the game to crash if you try to access it in the gallery. It's not one of the more interesting ones, imho, so I don't feel it's that big of a deal personally. Mileage may very.
Now on to the facts.
First and foremost, this is a classic VN, which means that there's absolutely NO gameplay. It's pure story with some choices that lead to different paths, endings and bad-endings. This means that an fully objective rating is pretty much impossible, since most of the worth is in the story, the H-scenes and related kinks, the CGs and I suppose the audio if you care about that part.
---Beyond this point there WILL be tons of spoilers---
I won't rate the audio, because I always play these things muted, so I have no idea if it's any good.
The H-scenes are fairly good if you're into the kinks involved in them, though they do suffer to an extent from the fact that a lot of stuff happens in text that isn't depicted in the CGs in any way shape or form. I personally like the quality of the CGs, the art-style is to my tastes, but mileage will obviously vary on that.
The main kink in this whole thing is rape. Rape and lots of it. All three of the girls get raped, and there's absolutely no way to prevent it all from happening. Some might argue that the next fetish on the list is corruption and/or moral degeneration, but... The problem with that is that the girls are being affected by supernatural powers that are weakening their own control over their own bodies and minds. Because of that, they don't really become slutty as much as they begin losing the fight against this power that overrides their wills the more they get fucked, but they still return to normal from time to time. The most extreme example is with Miyu, who even when supposedly completely fallen, is able to completely regain her sanity with the aid of the sword, because the sword was able to purify the foreign influence in her mind. As such, I personally don't really count this as corruption.
The other fetish a lot of people will argue is present in great amounts is netorare. In this specific case, your mileage will vary. For one, the girls never seriously or willingly betray the protagonist, and even at their worst, they'd totally jump on his dick over everyone else's and the only reason why they can't do that as much as they want is because supposedly fucking him would hasten the end of the world. There's only ONE sort of netorare ending where one of the girls goes with MC's best friend at the end, and even that one's ambiguous in terms of where it ends up and the girl herself isn't exactly jumping at the bit to betray him. The only other two times where two of the girls end up with the antagonists for good involve the MC literally dying, and it's less NTR and more them going utterly insane between the thing fucking with their heads and witnessing him dying in front of their eyes.
Aside from these, there's no specific fetish that is particularly well represented. There's a handful of tentacle scenes, a handful of futa scenes, a couple of stomach bulging scenes of which only one is really emphasizing it all, one cum inflation scene, a few gang-bangs, and some vanilla. Oh, and I guess there's snuff in 3 scenes where some peeps turn into salt at the end of the scene because they die.
That's about it. Overall, the scenes are pretty good, but I wouldn't recommend this for old-school netorare fetishists. It's not that kind of story. Not for tentacle fetishists either, of which I am one. I was disappointed that there wasn't more of it.
All in all, the H-scenes alone are 9/10, I'd say, if you account the CGs and text combined. Pretty good for their intended purpose.
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Now, the story, the thing that makes or breaks a pure VN and makes the difference between something worth reading or a scene and CG collector with extra steps.
....
For me, personally, the story was garbage. I was honestly tempted to rate this 2 stars for that alone, but the H-scenes really were quite enjoyable, so I raised my rating to 3 because this thing is good for stimulation if nothing else.
No matter which route you play, no matter which endings you get, you don't really find out much of anything. You find out what the MC's deal is and why he's special as a Deep Lord unlike the other antagonists, and you find out why Miyu recognizes him, or rather, the Deep Lord inside him, when they first meet... but you never find out what's the deal with the Ritual, why it keeps happening, why there need to be "Fruits" that get fucked into insanity by Deep Lords. Why the world has to "end". Who or what made the Law.
You find out none of that stuff. The most you find out is that Betrayal, MC's Deep Lord, was originally a Bright Lord, the apparently stronger other side of the Deep Lords, and he fell because he started loving one of the girls involved in a past iteration of the ritual, of which he was an overseer of. Why was that so bad? Fuck if you find out, much like everything else.
Really, all the H-scenes could happen in a void, independent of each other, and you honestly wouldn't lose out on much, because the story is just so painfully bad with basically no real effort being put into the world building.
The whole salt thing and Bright Lords turning into Deep Lords stuff is clearly a poorly used Old Testament reference, but again, no effort was made to develop anything whatsoever. It's extra poorly done when taking into account that apparently in this setting, humans normally just die and disappear for good, fuck having an afterlife.
Leaving all that aside, the characters are all, for the most part, rather painfully stupid, failing to talk to each other like human beings and failing to have any real amount of critical thinking. There's one instance when a new character shows up who turns out to be another Deep Lord... and it's so, damn, obvious... but somehow the MC AND the girls fail to remember the detail that makes it obvious until the plot makes it convenient for them to remember. Then there's how the girls fall to dumb tricks even before the mental influence thing really ramps up because of the Law. Or how the MC just lacks critical thinking and initiative and at one point doesn't think about something that's painfully obvious until someone else points it out for him.
It just goes on and on tbh....
Obviously, this is just my subjective experience with the VN. I personally disliked how the story was handled and how needlessly vague a lot of things were. Someone else might not care, but my opinion is still that you won't lose out on much if you just use a choice guide and a long press of the ctrl key to collect the scenes and then enjoy them at your leisure.
