VN - Others - Completed - Trample on Schatten!! The Shadow Stomping Song-Revolution Plus [Tail Wind]

Haven't finished it yet, but it seems like a rich story with lots of chuninbyuu and tokusatsu nonsense. Jungian terms under the lense of Japanese insanity, mixed with high octane action and some genuinely heartfelt scenes. More of a kinetic novel than anything else since most of the few choices so far are between partially clothed or fully naked sex.

It does lose points for the gratuitous rape scenes though, some of which lock the main story progression until watched (all of a sudden, shadow monsters spawned from the repressed human psyche have slime covered tentacles and secrete aphrodisiacs? Not to mention that infamous removed child rape scene that really had no reason to exist) and some jarring sudden tone shifts. It gets worse in tone and more convoluted in the latter parts, as if the writers lost the plot.

The dialogue in this game is unbearable, and the antagonistic force sucks. The 'Schatten' pretty much power up and down randomly, and even though it's shown at one point to get to a level they can't handle, EWAEB or whatever don't really seem to put any plans in place to contain it. And that Schimehl guy is a LAME antagonist. He literally straight up says LOVE is the power of mankind. Makes me sick to my stomach. Dropped.

The sex is good, though. I ctrl'd through the rest for them. I like all the 'what-if' scenes. This'll make you go mad if you're a vanilla fag.

If you are looking for a quick fap, this game is not for you. Most of the erotic art is contained in final parts of the game, which takes many hours of reading to get to (unless you don't care about the story at all). There are optional "what if...?" scenes that are completely unrelated to the story and probably just exist to at least show the reader some porn in between. The actual art is pretty good, though.

In the end, I stayed for the story and really got invested in the characters and the mystery. The plot has some Bleach/Sailor Moon-esque "monster of the week" vibes, but contains some surprising plot twists. It also helps that there is no plot armor in this game, so if you are a fan of Game of Thrones, you will have one hell of a time with this.

Don't expect much gameplay from this, though. You can sometimes choose to view scenes from the perspective of other characters to better figure out their motivation or the story itself, but there are no decision paths that you need to figure out. Once every while you get a single decision that will branch out from the main story path to put you on an alternate ending path with a specific girl, but there is no puzzle or guesswork involved in this. You could almost consider this more of a kinetic novel than a visual novel, which is why I give only 3 stars.

Preliminary thoughts, not completed review.

A VN heavy on the N... After more than 2 hours of enjoying the story, I remember making one (I suspect insignificant) decision, wether someone should get to keep some clothes or not. So far, I cannot in good conscience call this a game, so far, but it is a cute story, even if I find the highpitched anime-voices to be somewhat grating sometimes.

I like the art, dislike most of the sounds, like the story, even if it could have had a bit faster pace in the beginning. But the sence of being the protagonist refuses to make an appearance. If reads a bit like watching an anime that doesn't introduce the plot before the 3rd episode. The ability to experience the story from several 'pov' is a nice and to my experience, novel thing, and I hope the other pov's will be better at pulling you into the story.

That all said and done, even experiencing the story from outside is was enough to keep me in the seat for 1½hour longer than I intended.

I hope you will have even greater enjoyment of this than me, and if it's a game you'd think suck, that this review help you reach that conclusion faster.