I’ll make this one short and sweet as I couldn’t put up with the blatant misogyny in this “otome game”.
First off the MC (Main Character) and her friend both look like they were referenced from a “bishoujo game” basically a for male audience game, thus the skimpy outfits, broken uncomfortable arm anatomy to show off breasts etc. This is supposed to be an otome game, I am playing this to get away from bishoujoge bullshit. Yet.. there it is!!

These next ones speak for themselves. Let’s to say Mr. Misogyny was sure that I was hitting the kill switch on this game fast.

Firstly the “FEEEEMALES!!” one… He refers to old men as MEN.. not “Old males”, but women are clearly FEMALES. A dehumanizing term.

Next is the “Excuse me this is NO JOB FOR A LADY” bullshit. Yeah seriously, GTFO of otome games Mr. Misogyny.

Lest to say I hit the exit button and didn’t look back. It MIGHT have been a better game except for this bullshit. I am NOT going to sit through this crap.

Phenomeno is one of those game that I would have given a ten… IF it didn’t descend into objectification of the characters. Really there’s no need for it other than to tell me the main character is a misogynist to where the only thing he sees first and that matters on a woman is her breasts, followed by her looks. Especially the Krishna character that gets a dose fetish going on. Creepy rapist fetish too. It really took me out of the mood that was set up.
Otherwise the sounds effects and mood for this horror novel are really done well and not overdone to the point of sillyness. Another annoying fact is the translators changed the font from a Mincho font to more of a Gothic font which also kills some of the atmosphere.

Story:

The story is about a student who wants a cheap house so of course he buys the most out of the way, haunted looking house ever ‘the house that grants wishes’. Promptly the house starts creaking and making noise and numbers start appearing which leads him to want to get the house investigated. Enter Yoishi, Karasu and Krishna. Who if the story treated them as human would make the mood even more creepy.

Characters: All the characters are sexualized in some way to the point that the story suffers for it and you are wondering if they are even really needed. Yoishi is the “Manic Pixie Dream Girl”, Karasu  is the skatily clad, large breasted beer drinker, and Krishna is the lolicon fetish with the distended and grotesque looking breasts. Seriously the artist needs to learn anatomy. None of these chracter really feel believable because of all that and in the end your hoping the main character dies a horrible death.

Music & Sound:  The music and sound fit really well and set a good mood for the whole game, it it wasn’t being destroyed by the horrible character designs.

Overall: If you really can’t stand characters to be given the misogyny snapshot, then give this one a pass. There a few other horror games out there that will probably set the same mood. Otherwise just try and ignore the silly designs and try to stay in the mood of the game.

Dysfunctional systems was a game who’s execution is nice and the opening is awesome and the music is awesome, however it disappoints in a lot of minor ways that add up to a lot of papercuts that bleed and hurt.

The main flaw of this game lies in the characters, which for a visual novel is crucial. You have the two main characters Winter and Cyrus. Winter is 14 and Cyrus is a misogynistic asshole. Cyrus is also Winter’s mentor so she had to jump whenever he says to. This power dynamic is terrible.

When you start off with him he treats her like a pet than a human being. Constantly calls her “girl” and dismisses anything she has to say. There a scene where she is going to punch him and the creators decided that since she’s a girl she has absolutely zero force behind it, where in Cyrus just pats her on her head. They obviously know shit about fourteen year old girls. I though this would just be his character as terrible as writers feel the need to keep using these shitty characters. Later towards the end of the game however I see that other shittiness peek out.
The main thing that first killed me on this is when they get to Sule and Cyrus is forcing Winter to drink. Winter over and over says she doesn’t want to, so Cyrus overrides her bodily autonomy and forcefully coerces her to drink in the bar using both his status as a mentor and his supposed knowledge. You find out his oh so great experience is a pile of beans. This is where I was shaking my head. Here we have a male character forcing a female character to do something against their will, I might add she’s 14 and considered underage to be drinking here in the real world, there on Earthen and even on Sule. So now her morals are compromised too, all so the writer could sneak in her having him do something for her. Whoop de doo. In stead of writing a good character and a good plot in Cyrus, they chose to write a shitty one. I seriously wanted him to be pulled off the mission. Seriously, the time it comes up for you to use that bit, it could be solved different ways.. like oohhh.. him finally being convinced to do things her way. No she basically has to be mentally assaulted to resolve that.

I did my best to try and ignore that glaring garbage, and was about to write a somewhat better review, then I decided to try for the other ending……. That’s when we get into the fat shaming, gender shaming and homophobia. Oh they also make fun of a characters accent too, because that’s always funny. I would say it’s racist, but the character Irie isn’t described in any detail and the accent to me seemed Irish. I should not that Earthen is constantly being described as a “Utopian/Egalitarian Society”
Anyway, here’s a screen of the dialogue, Waverly (Winter’s Roomate) and Irie (Random Person):

Waverly "She's not gaunt."
Her smile vanishes.
Irie "Aye, you're right, V: ‘er thighs..."
Her smile returns.
Irie "What does she do to fill those thighs, V? Hath she let you give ‘em a
squeeze, yet?"
Waverly "'Y-Yet'!?"
Irie "She's a mess of a girl-'ardly e'en looks a girl-but those legs..."
Irie "Who gave ‘er the idea to wear those stockings of 'ers? Goodness!"
Waverly "You sound like a lesbian."
Irie "V, I'm just admiring another beau'iful woman, as a beautiful woman
m'self. Nothin' lezzy about tha'."
Her lips twist a little, and she looks right into my eyes.
Irie "Tell me, who here would think of another girl with lustful eyes? Who's the
man, Waverly?"
Waverly "..."
Irie but I digress! Winnie could stand to be much more beautiful, eh
right?

Mind you that Winter is sleeping and under the covers so they have basically invaded her privacy here.
They start off with the fat shaming, the move on to going “She’s not a girl because I’m a girl and pass judgement on what girls should look like!” then onto “Your a lesbian how terrible!”, “I’m not a lesbian, that’s a terrible thing to be”, finished with “You are a MAN if you look at women like this!” Because… lesbians are bad, if you look on a woman a certain way your sexuality changes JUST LIKE THAT aaaand you must be a dude becausee… heterosexism? Seriously were they trying to say, if she’s a lesbian she must be the ‘man’ in that relationship?
If you are in the kind of society they seem to keep alluding to I doubt people would go “Your a lesbo!” like that and would just accept what the person was saying without judgement and would be like “She likes to pass judgement on women’s bodies…..” which in that kind of society WOULDN’T BE HAPPENING IN THE FIRST PLACE. (Shit Cyrus wouldn’t be happenigin the first place.)
This dialogue is just all kinds of fucked up and made me just finally table flip on this whole visual novel. Cyrus was terrible then with this…

The final “paper cut” (really these are more like knife wounds) is finding out ALL the mentors are older men and the proteges are girls. C R E E P Yand truly sexist.
In one of the ending Waverly’s mentor even rubs her shoulder. DX!!!

So the overall: Music was good, art/style execution was good, overall plot was good, story and characters were all sorts of bigoted garbage that I’m tired of seeing in gaming.

I really hate how pink is being used as a cage for women and girls, especially girls. Examining toys at how every freaking toy for girls is pink in some way is very heart breaking. While boys get the plethora of colors. It’s a cage because at one time it was used to empower women as it was a masculine color. Then it was used to DEFINE women.

It also sucks in anime that to be the hero of a shoujo anime, you need to LOVE PINK. If you like any other color, too bad, you are the second stringer.
It didn’t start off that way. Going back to Sailor Moon, her colors were red, white, blue and if you include hair, yellow. If you didn’t like those four colors, then yeah you were out of luck, but there was nothing bad associated with those colors. Nothing bad like the associations with pink. After Sailor Moon there’s Wedding Peach, with the main girl’s hair… IS PINK. After that in Futari wa Pretty Cure with back with pink highlights, then more pink, then Splash Star and Oooohhhh fucking… pink it all out!!

So if you want to be a modern day shoujo hero, you have to conform to femininity. You have to love pink, because your outfit will be pink, all the items will be pink, the small creature following you is probably going to be pink in some way. Your room will be pink, it will be your favorite color. If you don’t believe that pink define femininity, they just go to a hard ware store and you’ll find the pink this and that “for women” of course. Pink you see is this color that will melt the flesh off men.
Pink is also associated with babies, and nurturing, and weakness, submission, and helplessness. Despite it being just a color. Funny how all those things are what men (and brainwashed women) use to define women as. Weak, helpless, infantile… One one hand men want us to conform to those traits and on the other find it annoying when we do. Pink is no exception. Guys will kill themselves (yes sometimes literally) if they have to do anything related to the feminine. Pink is no expectation. The guys wearing pink is a parody a joke. They are gay one because that is also associated with being feminine.
And here we have a position that has all this crap behind it, that if you don’t want to deal with, too bad, you can’t have the empowering female fantasy you want because blue and black aren’t colors a proper shoujo hero wears. You want to wear pink!! It’s every girls dream!! That’s they way they sell it to girls and brainwash them into thinking they want the color in the first place. The hero is pink so I must like pink to be the hero. I must CONFORM. it’s shitty where there is exactly ONE anime targeted at you where you don’t have to wear pink. ONE!
Thus we have the cage. That cage girls can’t escape because there is nothing out there that telling them they can also like other colors and be other colors and also feel the ultimate empowerment in being a hero. You can only watch Sailor Moon so many times. You either conform to pink or you get to be a side character.

Yeah you can tell I hate the color pink. I’m not a feminine person and having likes I want to be into and not having a deep selection makes one hate the color, it makes me hate being a woman in the first place. You can’t deny pink is currently a feminine color. So of course you have people that will lash out against the color, it’s currently being used as a weapon to beat women into submission.
So really people, lay off the damn pink already.

Last of the first batch, going to have to record some more when I want to put up with the game.
We explore the city, Grathmeld and do some character development.

Rrha ki ra tie yor ini en nha
Wee ki ra parge yor ar ciel
Was yea ra chs mea yor en fwal
Ma ki ga ks maya yor syec

Continue–>