May 3rd, 2021

Period Cube – Review

This game just love to force things on the MC that she never asks for, but of course accepts it because she’s such a doormat.

Of course the MC has convenient amnesia and needs a MAAAN to fill her in on what happened.

I was hoping that it would be a decent game about MMOs and stuff like Sword Art, but not here. The MC is completely useless unless the plot calls for it. She can’t do anything herself and needs men to save her. Even the 14 year old boy is stronger than her and it’s pretty bad.

Like she rationalizes because he was trying to keep his promise it’s OK that he’s a murderer/rapist. When you look at it, it’s basically what Shiki wants and nothing about what she wants at all, but she just goes with it for no real reason.

The ending is of course a “reset time and none of this stuff ever happened” bullshit. Almost like what was the point of playing the game.

Let’s also talk about the incest going on. It’s stated he loved her the minute he saw her. At the end of Shiki’s route you can see they meet when she’s not even old enough to form words.

And the ultimate insult is the harem ending is the BAD ending. Women can’t even have an ending where they get all the guys and are happy like males are catered to all the damn time. The MC is then punished of course by being raped by her own brother.

THe best routes out of all of this are Libera, Radius and to a degree Astrum. The rest go way over the line. Zain was a good candidate for being a good one, but the writers decided to toss in the Demento shit and make him evil.

May 3rd, 2021

Collar X Malice – Review

Let’s feel bad about a pedo rapist and bring him flowers despite the fact he kidnapped and abused a 9 year old girl and a 16 year old boy.

This whole game is “be nice to the oppressors and they’ll be nice to you”

This game also sets it up that people will regret the “crimes” they have done. Rapists and serial killers don’t regret their crime, only that they get caught.

Yoshinari is too cute for this game.

Yoshinari is so cute… pity you can’t date him. That and Mochida. Gotta have all the trash men available.

Of course the MC is a police officer, yet is constantly hesitating and getting knocked out and kidnapped.

Ultimately it falls on the shoulders of the oppressed to “stop the circle of hatred”. Which is bullshit.

The problem that this game throws out is the same you hear from “All Lives Matter” fuckers. They put all crime on the same level and then play the “Well, if you are going to shoot a person that is a murderer, you should shoot a person that was committing a victimless crime.”
It doesn’t work like that, but this game wants you to sympathize with murderers and rapists because “All Lives Matter” When, no they fucking don’t. There are some people that deserve death for their crimes because they have harmed innocent people, or enslaved them, driven them away from their homes. Rich people, rapists, pedophiles, homicidal men, cops…

It ignores the power structure in play and waves it away as “well it was too bad, BUT YOU SHOULDN’T KILL” Like, “Fuck no. They could have saved someone but because police/money they didn’t so that person deserves revenge.” Of course this game throws a lot of fucking strawmen into the mix as well.

Yeah I’d say skip this otome game. It’s cop propaganda, it’s pro-oppressors propaganda. That whole “These people were abused to death, but don’t hate the person that did it to them because they are a person to and deserve to live a happy life because human” bullshit.

And now let’s have sympathy for a pedophile rapist. “Oh no I destroyed someone’s life!” and of course she’s all scared and shit because she was saved from a pedo-rapist, because we can’t EVER hate rapists as women ever. They always have to be ‘brought to justice’ in a system that fucking hates women and let’s them get away with raping and murdering women all the fucking time.

Murder those raping shits. Give no fucks.

There’s also the man that saves the woman in a violent way that traumatizes her UNTIL she finds out that he was saving her from a rapist or something and of course falls madly in love with him.

I hate how in these games the woman can’t remember anything and it’s usually a trauma. Then of course later on she needs a man to remember that trauma and “work through it” as he’s related to it some how. Basically save her from it.
Also that the man will sometimes erase her memories “for her own good” yet will be the one to remember things.

Then there’s Idea Factories obsession of having a man lock a woman away “for her own good” and it being played off as romantic……… (7’s Scarlet, Collar X Malice and Amnesia I’m looking at you also Diabolik Lovers is all of this and more)

I really hate the whole idea that oppressed people should just keep their heads down and keep going forward and aren’t entitled to justice as that would be ‘criminal’ as the justice system has failed them.

I hate that the game outright states that you cannot sympathize with a murderer. Even if the person murdered in self defense or that they exacted their own justice to those that murdered their family and got away with it because they were affluent.
It’s like, miss me with that shit.

Protag tells Shiraishi that’s it’s demeaning being pat on the head like a kid (which is why I hate seeing it in other anime things as ‘cute’) and of course he doesn’t stop and she doesn’t stop him. UGGGGHHHHHHH Protag set your boundaries and enforce them. Doing that just tells other players that they are supposed to just let men do whatever they want because ‘cute’. It’s not cute it’s DEMEANING!

This is the Touma route of Collar X Malice. Now because people are trash talking him our protag is going to go all soft and “OHhh I didn’t realize he had it soooo bad” and make an effort to talk to someone who was about to rape her. Gods ugh.. I hate that I have to complete this route to get more of the base story and to open the next route.

Yeah Mochida, because a rapist brings gifts he’s “not the worst”! GROSS! Who OKed this fucking storyline. Also that’s the way men really are. Don’t give two shits about women.

Also if you hate the guy don’t accept his gifts. Since it’s food just give it to Mochida. Also fuck you Idea Factory for thinking characters like this are SOOoooOOo romantic. They aren’t.

Noooo protag, don’t spend any energy on this shitbag. This is what men do, let you waste all the energy while they get all the reward.

“He treats me like garbage, but because he likes cats he’s a nice guy” NOOOoo people can like animals and be complete and utter trash.

And now it’s time for Shiraishi the misogynist and me the woman who has to bring out his “true” self all the while he calls me stupid and condescends to me.

Enomoto is probably going to be my fave romance, only because he’s the least squick inducing.
He’s the cute one and I DO like that he asks for a kiss rather than just “stealing” it. He’s also awkward in romantic situations so he feels ‘safe’. Unlike the other two.

When a woman decides a man’s future, she’s evil.
When a man decided a woman’s future, she should be grateful. =_ =

So it’s OK for a police officer to make up charges and destroy people’s lives, but when he’s executed for it, because you knew him, suddenly it’s a tragedy.
Ever think he may have deserved it?
This game is hard to play as it makes the police out to be ultimately good even though the plot is about people being murdered because they got away with crime. Especially police officers.

The only reason the public would think a bastard cop’s death was “wrong” is if the media spun it like a tragedy like they always do and that people are just so fucking brainwashed thinking cops are hero’s because they saved someone’s puppy that one time.

In the end people had to die before the police even considered restructuring. So, ADONIS, in the end, was correct in what they did.

Rika Sugawara is played up to be “hysterical” in wanting to ‘kill all men’. To me however she seems quite rational.

Also the writers have no idea how people act online. People know about bugs in games and stuff and one bug isn’t enough for everyone to turn on someone.

December 26th, 2014

Review – Spirited Heart (Deluxe)

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.

December 24th, 2014

Review – Rising Angels: Reborn (SPOILERS)

[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]

December 23rd, 2014

Review – Elvine

[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]