Category: Game Reviews

I will preface this review with the following. Much like Subahibi the less you know going into this, the better. In this review I will have a spoiler section that I will clearly label and that section will contain spoilers for this game and one other. The other game I am referring too will be openly apparent but despite it being a spoiler section I will try to keep things vague regardless. So if you don’t want to be spoiled then do not read past the obvious warning but also I strongly say that if you hold any interest in this game then it is best to experience it without foresight. The game will be released on Steam on May 25 at time of writing but is currently available on the JAST USA store fully uncensored. I will say that it does hold some content that could rub people the wrong way but if you are a veteran of VNs or even completed Subahibi then you are more than capable of getting through it. This is a fairly liner visual novel that took me 11 hours to complete and it is strongly recommended to do three playthroughs.
Continue reading “YOU and ME and HER: A Love Story Visual Novel Review – 80/100” →

 

I have been thinking of doing this for a while but now seems like a good time to write a review on the thing I have been obsessing over for the past few months. As I have no doubt made clear on this site, I am a massive fan of the Fate series and one particular part of it that has eluded me for quite a while has been the mobile game, Fate/Grand Order. I saw hope when it was confirmed for a overseas release but got disheartened when it was confirmed to be only for America with no plans of a European release. I originally intended to wait for a European release but as time went on that prospect was looking to never happen and around Halloween I caved and used an API app to download Fate/Grand Order. It has proved to be both a blessing and a curse in a way. A blessing in that it makes for a magnificent time waster and introduced me to a whole batch of new servants and lore never present in other Fate works. And a curse in that I have put a significant amount of money into this game, an amount I would be ashamed to admit. But what is this game like?

One particular thing that makes Fate GO stand out from other mobile offerings is that there is a higher emphasis on story and this is very apparent with the exceedingly long prologue the game makes new players go through before they get to the meat of the game. The story is told in visual novel style though with more limited resources such as each character only having one sprite with changing expressions. As such I am afraid that despite the extra effort put into it, story is not this games strongpoint. The incredibly limited nature of mobile as well as the games mechanics often get in the way of the story reaching the level of its contemporaries. There is a Fate GO OVA which should give you an idea of the stories quality and for a mobile game story it may be above average but as far as Nasuverse works go, it’s passable at best. Even without the limitations of the device, the story suffers from having inconsistent writing quality due to different writers for each story arc. Even then each story scene pretty much ends with “Oh no, monsters showed up and we must fight them!” The protagonist has no real character as they act mainly as a player surrogate and while Mash does grow on you, she is admittedly a rather plain character. Roman has some character but mainly acts as the story’s whipping boy for comic relief. Honestly when it comes to story I find that the games special events often hold the best it has to offer as it’s when they stop taking things so seriously and just have fun with the concept. One can also get valorant aimbot for a special code and gateway into the game.
Continue reading “Fate/Grand Order Video Game review – 80/100” →

This may be one of the most difficult reviews I have ever had to write as Wonderful Everyday, which I will refer to from this point forward by its abbreviation SubaHibi, is a story that very much depends on the viewer not being prepared for it. Now I have been looking forward to this game quite a bit, as word online was that it is a visual novel unlike most and delves into some rather dark themes. I backed the Kickstarter and was waiting adamantly for the the release with hope that this could be a title to add to my all time favorites. In retrospect it was the wrong way to approach this story as many overhyped the game and failed to remark on it’s rather large shortcomings. You can buy this game currently on steam but if you do so please do remember to apply a free patch to the game. The reason this is critical is that only the first chapter of the game has been put on Steam and to access the remaining six chapters this patch must be applied. The reason for this is mainly to get around Steam’s rather odd stance against pornographic content and making SubaHibi an All Ages game(Aka, removing the sex scenes) is impossible due to their importance to the story.

A question you are likely asking is what is SubaHIbi about? Answering that question for any other story would be an easy matter but here I must mind my words as I could very well spoil what may be the best part about this story. For you see SubiHibi takes an odd approach to storytelling in that the game is split up into seven chapters. Each which features a different unreliable narrator going through the strange events that took place during a two week period. The goal of SubaHibi is to take these different perspectives on the same events and piece together just what exactly happened and what caused it. As such this visual novel does not follow the standard model of having routes based on which heroine is chosen but instead follows a mostly linear route that has some small side endings. As a fan of murder mysteries I love this approach of taking stories told from different perspectives to piece together an overall narrative and was quite engaged by it. However the first chapter acts as a poor introduction to this story as it is mainly preoccupied with trying to convince you that SubaHIbi is a dime a dozen Yuri visual novel. Walking in with high expectations and reading what is equal to a fairly trashy waste of time is likely to turn many off before they get to the real story. You can argue that the first chapter holds symbolic merit upon completing the story but well you only would see that if you make it to the end of the visual novel.
Continue reading “Wonderful Everyday(Subarashiki Hibi) ~Diskontinuierliches Dasein~ Visual Novel Review – 84/100” →

I don’t plan to do this often but after playing this I wanted to make a post recommending it. I could have done a review like I usually do but in this case the story is so short and the VN can be downloaded for free so if I was to write a full review of it i would most likely spoil the experience. The length of the game is about 3 to 4 hours and while it likely doesn’t look like something all that interesting I can guarantee that it is well worth reading. The first hour is a bit tough to get through as it is rather dull and starts up slowly. But once things get going this story picks up immensely so power though till you get to that point. The visual novel was made in 2 years by a former Smash Bro’s Modder and despite it’s style it is an English Only Visual novel, meaning that it is not made in Japan. You can download the game from this site but it will also be available from Steam here. I highly recommend checking it out as it’s certainly a fascinating experience.

In the Visual novel fandom there are certain titles referred to Kamige.(God(ly) games) I previously thought the term referred to the best the medium has to offer but in recent times come to realise that a game can be referred to as a Kamige while not necessarily being the best. So Kamige as I understand it are Visual novels which stand out from the rabble and sadly many of these cannot be experienced by those of us who don’t speak Japanese. Fortunately due to the efforts of localization companies we now have several Kamige on the way. Baldr Sky, Subahibi and more are coming. Thus the first to grace our shores is Dies Irae and believe me that it wasn’t easy. As a backer of the kickstarter I watched this thing go through hell to reach our shores, from horrible mismanagement of the kickstarter to the embarrassing moment where Dies Irae had yet to reach it’s goal when a Nekopara anime kickstarter running at the same time raised one million in funds. It was dark days, truly dark days, but now we have it. A title once called untranslatable and forever out of gasp is in my hands. Now having played it, what do I think of Dies irae?

Dies Irae has four main routes and five side stories and while this version has the option to lock you into a girl’s route before starting a new game, I highly recommend that you don’t make use of it. I used these buttons to lock me into each girl’s route and encountered a glitch where I couldn’t unlock the final side story due to having missed dialogue in choices. So I recommend you use the common route button and get to the girls routes using a walkthrough. On that note as a very important rule of this visual novel is that while you can chose any girls route from the start, you should complete the girl’s routes in the following order: Kasumi, Kei, Marie, Rea. The reason for this is that later routes expect you to know knowledge from previous routes and playing them out of order can leave you confused as to just what is even going on. More importantly is that Rea’s route is clearly the finale of the entire story so playing it first would lose it’s impact. The strict route structure is a bit of pain, in particular as the quality of the story goes from worst to best. However it is interesting to see events of earlier routes subconsciously affect events of later routes. Things which previously didn’t make much sense or felt out of nowhere take on new meaning when you take into account the matter of eternal recurrence. But alas, what is the story of Dies Irae? It’s difficult to go into detail without spoilers but lets say it starts with a matter regarding a serial killer which evolves into a full blown battle which pits our main protagonist Ren against a group of superpowered nazi’s from the remnants of World War II known as the Obsidian Round Table.
Continue reading “Dies Irae ~Amantes Amentes~ Video Game Review – 80/100” →

 

When I heard about the reveal of a sequel to Nier my initial reaction was of relative apathy. Even upon hearing it was coming to PC I was relatively unhyped. To say I was uninterested would be wrong as I did previously hear of Nier being a game with a interesting and strange story but I couldn’t really find myself all that invested in it. Around the release of Nier Automata my interest in the game went higher as I learn more about the writer, Yoko Taro. Taro is a strange fellow who likes to write strange stories. He has a desire to test the boundaries of video game storytelling and his previous efforts were noted for being strange but refreshingly unique tales. The biggest problem is that while Taro has wrote some interesting stories for his games, ones enough to gather him a fanbase, even the most dedicated of fans would struggle to say they were good games. A Yoko Taro game was something you played for the plot and the gameplay was often the thing you had to struggle through to get that plot. This is another one of those things that had me rather apprehensive about a new Nier game. However this time is different as Platinum games steps up to lend a helping hand. Thanks to that while people could debate the quality of the story compared to his previous work, this is clearly Yoko Taro’s best game. One which has me rather interested to experience the rest of his work. Before playing Nier Automata I watched summery videos on youtube of Nier and Drakengard 3(As Nier is a spinoff of the Drakengard series.) Not that you need to know anything about those works as Nier Automata is clearly it’s own self contained entity. For this review I played the steam version of the game and I will try to avoid spoilers. Lets dive in.

The game is set thousands of years after the end of Nier 1 and earth has been conquered by Aliens.Humans have retreated to the moon and use an Army of Androids to go down to earth to take back the planet for the human race. Likewise the Aliens combat these androids with an army of Machines and this battle has been raging between the two for hundreds of years. You play as an android by the name of B2 who is send down earth and works together with a hacker android called 9S to fight the machine menace. Said androids also happen to fight with samurai swords while in gothic maid and butler outfits with heads up displays in blindfolds. I mentioned this before, but Yoko Taro does indeed write strange stories. The story is certainly intriguing as it explores the nature of what makes something human and whether the self is truly a irreplaceable thing. The androids are the most humanlike creatures on earth but have a rule against feeling emotion. Though expressing emotion isn’t so much as a reinforced law as plenty of androids break it. I saw that a android repressing emotion was more out of decorum rather than a genuine law. The androids hold humans to a high regard so it’s fitting that they would find imitating them to be disingenuous. I do admit that the story has very interesting idea’s and execution but I found my biggest gripe with the story is that it is just how disconnected the events of it where. Each part of the story has very little correlation to the other and there isn’t really much of an overarching goal besides the matter of reclaiming the earth. Though how that is accomplished is never made particularly clear. For most of the game you are ordered to investigate an area and often take down a certain robot but there isn’t any real sense of progress on what you are doing. One thing that really speaks of this flaw is that in the second half of the story suddenly a massive robot appears and the entire android army is tasked with taking it down. Is this massive robot related to the antagonist? No. Is it used for character development or to shed insight into Nier Automata’s themes? No. Does it affect the plot in any way? Not really besides giving a reason for 2B and 9S to be separated. Overall the whole section feels like their was a big section of the script which had “Insert multi stage boss fight here” on it. This is what really bugged me about the story of this game, it’s so disjointed. Like Yoko Taro wanted to present a series of idea’s but didn’t really attempt to weave them into an ongoing narrative. If you’e looking to play something different, you can play satta king online by visiting a satta king website.
Continue reading “Nier Automata Video Game Review – 83/100” →

 

When watching anime you are bound to come across a Chuunibyou character. The normal human being who acts like they are the protagonist of some terrible power trip anime. But did you ever wonder just what it was that gave them the idea to act like this? Well wonder no further because these people likely played 11eyes. This visual novel is essentially a distillation of every tired anime trope under the sun so your enjoyment of it will likely depend on how exposed to these tropes you are. Most would know this title from an anime adaption made in 2009 and I remember reading the anime’s synopsis and getting interested. However I heard that the anime adaption was poor and having recently got into visual novels I wanted to experience the story in it’s original format. Lucky for me, there was an ongoing fan translation of 11eyes so I waited patiently for it to be completed. Unfortunately that fan translation went the way of many a fan translation and ended up going silent with work stopping completely. It’s things like this that make me appreciate companies like Mangagamer and Sekai as while a kickstarter may be necessary and it takes time, at least it gets done. Eventually I just gave up on playing the story entirely when suddenly in 2016 an English patch for 11eyes was released. Thus I saw this as an opportune moment to see what I missed all these years. As it turns out, it wasn’t all that much.

Our story involves a Heterochromatic eyepatch wearing boy called Kakaru who along with his childhood friend Yuka find themselves thrown into an alternate version of their town which they refer to as the red night. A world shaded in red with is filled with monsters that seek to kill them that disappears after a certain period of time. Soon they run into a group of monsters calling themselves the black knights who swear to kill Kakaru and Yuka as well as the four other people who were pulled into the red night. So they work to join the other people dragged into the nightmare, work together to beat the black knights and hopefully regain their normal lives. The thing that mainly intrigued me about this concept was that at any moment of their lives they could be pulled into the red night without warning and the idea of a bunch of superpowered teens fighting off a nightmare world on a regular basis is a rather interesting. However this story has serious pacing issues as the beginning really drags due to the characters. A big feature of this visual novel is something called crossvision. For you see the majority of this VN is read from the perspective of Kakaru and crossvision allows you to see a scene from the perspective of another character. In theory this is interesting as it allows you to see what the characters are thinking at particular moments and see things which happen to other people when Kakaru isn’t around. However in practice you find that you can only see certain scenes from a specific person’s perspective rather than the freedom to move between characters at any moment. In essence it’s like watching a movie where every now and again you have to pause and go to the scene selection menu to watch a scene that wasn’t included in the movie. This is a game with bad pacing as is so this certainly kills it. What doesn’t help that some scenes are  exactly the same as a scene from Kakaru’s perspective, just with some extra lines of inner monologue. For the best video games, why not find out more here and buy the best game units.
Continue reading “11Eyes: Sin, Damnation, and the Atonement Girl Video Game Review – 45/100” →