So this is another Aksys Games translation even though their logo isn’t on the cover. And it shows.

Overall this game is short and if you get the passwords you can blaze through the game. It’s short only needing around 20 hours to complete it. Definitely a game aimed at kids unlike the new games aimed at adults. It’s worth a playthough if you like the Digimon franchise.

You start as a tamer on the bottom of the pyramid and then after going around saving the world you slowly work yourself up to the top.

The plot is thin. There’s an evil Digimon going around wrecking havoc and you have to do the various quests associated with said shenanigans. Then the game is over. I thought I wasn’t even on the last battle when I was.

So, I’m not getting what’s so good about this game. It kills off every woman in the story and even Harry’s wife ahead of time. You can save Sybil, however that’s not really considered canon.

It’s the same story every other horror game seems to have. We have a male, always a male, who has lost his wife/GF/daughter maybe all three and is plunged into this hell world with “sexy nurses” wearing outfits from 50 years ago as modern nurses wear scrubs, zombies or zombie adjacents, insects and “abominations”. Basically regular humans with some deformities. Also there will be a hospital of some sort.
There will be female characters however all of them will die by the end.

This game is no exception. Saving a woman is considered an “extra” ending as if you shouldn’t go out of your way to do it. We have the daughter, that dies, the teenage girl that’s suffering, that dies, the “sexy nurse” that of course dies. The mom/parent dies and the cop you meet at the beginning dies. Then at the “good” end you are left with a baby. I like the bad end, where Harry is dead and it was all his misogynistic dying dream.

Of course this isn’t the last Silent Hill game to be made. I’m honestly glad that Kojima didn’t get to make his misogynistic ode to the series.

I had trouble with the game back when I first played it and was rudely told by the creator that “It was playtested and not broken/unbalanced!”
So, I found out I could get a Steam key and tried it again.
The game is still essentially still broken/unbalanced because the stat system is terrible.

There is really no plot to speak of and the only world building you get are little snippets here and there.

The stat raising itself is garbage. You have the option to choose random dice to add up to a number without going over OR Auto Job, which just gives you a random outcome. Honestly, you’ll just want to pick Auto Job everytime as it’ll give you more favorable results.

Speaking of! Of you do poor you get nothing, if you do average you get half and if you do Good you get the amount you are supposed to. Perfect I think nets you 1/3 more or something. Considering how bad the dice fail is, Average should net you the full amount with Poor netting you half as you’ll be seeing POOR more often than not.

STATS! It seems stats go up randomly if you get Average-Perfect and even then it seems that the stat gains are random as well, I’ve gotten perfects and have had 0 stat gain.

ALSO BTW! You can have multiple events that steal your money, lower your health AND lower your stats. Stats you worked hard to raise through the crappy dice system or the meager wages you scraped up. So I’d often find myself taking 6 weeks or more just to recover from everything to Work/Train again.

ROMANCE! SO the romance is based on random chance. As other’s have said, you’ll randomly encounter your love and then have to pick the right choice to make the meter go up. Fail to do so and you didn’t pick the right choice.. I hope you can get that character to show up again. So really you’ll be switching off the boys and girls in the options to increase your chance of an encounter, or at least eliminate choices you don’t want to appear.

In the end, the game where everything is made up and points don’t matter. No really the points just seem to be there to get you a second tier job and I don’t think there is a third tier despite the graphics looking as if there are more tiers.

Comparing this to Princess Maker 2 and Prince Maker Braveness (MSN2), it fails to do stat sim and romance decently.
Using PM2 as an example, the marriage options were strewn throughout the game and the points were more or less used to get them. Want to marry the prince, talk to him every January and raise the Decorum, Social and such stats. Want to marry a dragon? Become a warrior and go on an adventure in the dragon ruins, thus all the combat stats go up. The prince is in the no time advancement Social menu, the dragon is on an adventure and there is yet even MORE people you can meet. There were things like talking to the character, going to town, talking to the palace people. Stuff that gave you a goal to focus on.
Spirited Heart? There is no point to the stats. At least in Long Live the Queen the stats were useful to try and maybe stay alive (though that game has issues). You could try and focus on combat to war your way through the game or dancing and such to try and socialite your way through the game. Magical Diary? Mandatory to get through the game (Even though a lot of spells were useless). The three character stats affected if you were going to romance anyone.

There seems to be a sequel in the make, hopefully it will be better than this and actually try and emulate the games it seeks to copy from. It just seems here the person didn’t ‘get’ what was fun about those games and thought kludging stats + romances without meshing them with a story in some way was going to work.

[Title Image]

Rising Angles: Reborn is a sci-fi mystery visual novel. You’ve been sent to investigate some ruins and somebody doesn’t like what you found.

Story:

Honestly the story is a bit weak. It could have been so much better if it didn’t take the path of least resistance. For a while there I thought that demon guy was just a petty smuggler and the REAL culprit behind everything was someone else. I was sadly mistaken. The makes what happens in the story seem bland and cliche and take any mystery out of it.

Characters:

Overall the characters are good, except Sol. He’s the resident racist, and in the end he’s more or less treated as the “cute/funny oh look at him so racist” character, rather than getting torn apart for still calling others “housecat” and “lizard brain” when they have stated they didn’t like it. What’s worse is that Rasoona is played off as the “cold bitch” character so when Sol kills her, it very much looks to me as a horrible misogynistic act. Not only did the “cold elf bitch” get “put in her place” it was by a man, and a man who was a racist fuck. She never gets a chance to learn that you aren’t a terrible SITO person, just just gets killed. By a racist fuck who’s racism is just ignored at the end.
I’m not sure she’s saveable as the ending I got was the “TRUE END” which means she had to die, which I find rather bullshit. (I did Zuri’s path)
The rest of the characters are cliche for their race, however they are given more of a depth than most other games do. While Zuri want to be the super dragon warrior, she also struggles with it.

Music & Sound:

Music was appropriate for the game. No track really stuck out to me as anything special.

Overall:
Overall this game is good to OK. It’s worth playing but don’t expect any deep mystery. The obvious looking evil demon guy did it. That’s it… That being said it’s worth exploring the story itself as there is more going on than just the mystery of who keeps sabotaging stuff.

[Screenshots]

[Title Image]

This game actually impressed me a bit, as most OELVNs tend be be cliche recycled crap. (See (P)lanets, Halloween Otome, etc.)
This one looks like it values story over trying to be “just like those other VNs” out there. Honestly it’s worth a play.

Story:
The story itself is one of oppression and “last of their race” scenario. Overall it’s done well, BUT, what really killed some of my enjoyment was this “God” bit. Almost as if the game was trying to shove Christianity into it. For one why would the Dragon people ever follow a human god..ever. People make their gods in their image, so having the human god be the “one true god” didn’t feel all that believable in the end. I know I expected there to be a dragon god that was discovered or that “god” didn’t exist or was some outside alienish force. That never happens so the narrative feels broken that in the end the dragon people still believe in the human “God”.
The story is one you need to replay to get it all, which I didn’t mind since it’s short enough
Characters:
The characters are solid and they are all given backstory. None of them felt out of place.
Music & Sound:
The music was appropriate, nothing to write home about though.
Overall:
Overall this is a decent game that actually explores some of the social justice issues around different races, however it’s marred by having the “God” story bits in them. It’s worth a play through or two.
[Screenshots]