That Cheap and Sacred Thing is a kinetic visual novel, meaning if you bang on the enter key long enough, you’ll get to the ending. There are no branching paths, it’s like an electronic storybook.

What attracted me to this was the description of androids, male androids. I loves me some androids as they are uncommon compared to the gynoids that seem to populate everything. I can name very few pieces of art that have androids as a central character, but can name tons and tons of things with gynoids as a central character.

This novel didn’t disappoint me. Jude is the android in question and he’s a sex worker (or sex slave considering his status to serve humans) which is a double rarity. That’s what got me to download this as I don’t usually like kinetics.
The story is a simple one about robot love between Autumn and Elly, her MyPal that had to be destroyed. Jude comes in when her well meaning friends decide to buy her a sex toy (which is Jude’s function basically) for her seventeenth birthday.

The Good: The story was very emotional and the characters were well realized. The only one I felt that didn’t get too much of the spotlight was Rick. I liked his design the best :3 I also like the fact that nobody said anything disparaging against Nadiya and her love of AmorBots. The ending was satisfying and even the stinger wasn’t disappointing and added to the wrapping up of the story versus setting up a part two. The ending it should be noted, is quite emotional and might leave you crying or at least tearing up. So, don’t go into this novel if you want to feel happy/spunky afterwards.

The Bad: The world is very… sad. It seems even in the future men haven’t been taught to not rape people, thus women are assigned the MyPals and GuardBots. Even worse is that the male AmorBots are basically taught to rape women by coercing them into sex despite the fact they’ve already said no. Jude does this to Autumn even go so far as to whining about it. If robots are to serve humans I would like to think that they’d program in the “No means no” and start to execute some other program. Maybe romantic cuddling, back massage or something else. It also seems the only reason Jude stops is because of the “error” that Autumn triggers in robots. This is stated in the “bonus” section of the novel.
It’s something that seems to plague Sci-Fi novels and games, that humans can’t get over socially constructed behaviors such as that. (David Weber does it too and oh boy is it worse >.<)

The Extra: I’m wondering if the author knows about Phantasy Star Online and the CAst character :3 As CAsts are androids and TCAST and yes, my mind went there. Just an observation as I played a few CAsts in my day. (*sniff* Dannie ;^;)

The Nitpick: The music I felt wasn’t that good. At least one in particular I wanted to mute (Happy Mood). The rest were too short and the looping was a bit repetitive. Which some scenes can get a bit long. Having longer and more varied pieces would probably have been better. However the ending song was most appropriate. Another nitpick is that the sprites jump a couple pixels when they emote. I don’t know if that was intentional, but from other visual novels it seems that staying in place is the norm.

Lots and lots of places where I don’t really say anything. HOWEVER I get my avatar at the end !

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This episode was created in the first batch of 4 episodes like #3. Once again the video and commentary is under a cut for those with slow browsers. Also you get to hear voice acting better than NISA!111 Maybe not…

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

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This is an argument I see often when someone has the tenacity to ask:

“Is this game dubbed? Is there a Japanese voice option? I won’t play it without Japanese voices.”

The usual answer amongst all the trolling and flaming and insults is:

“The English Voices are really good/excellent!”

Great. You’ve been dismissed, and these people don’t seem to understand one fact. So I’m going to break that fact down for them. This is like pie. What these people have basically asked is:

“Is there going to be Apple Pie at the party? I only want to come if there is Apple Pie. Are there other pies at the party and is Apple one of them? I can only eat apple pie.”

What they got in response is:

“THE CHERRY PIE IS GOOD!”

Now get this. I don’t care if that cherry pie is good. That cherry pie could have been made by the top chef from France or something. The thing is, I HATE cherries. Cherry pie makes me throw up, and if I’m forced to eat it I’ll gag it down and try to change the flavor in my mouth ad swear never to come to that party again even if it was a free party. Cherries are a vile fruit to me.
All these people are basically saying is:

“WTF is wrong with you?! We’re in AMERICA, you eat the goddamn cherry pie and LIKE it! HOW DARE YOU ASK FOR APPLE PIE! This cherry pie is great.”

Yeah, you can see what’s going on here. Cherry pie is the only pie at the party and you want apple. Simple as that. Do these people respect that? Of course not. They’ll sit there and bemoan the fact you don’t like this $200 gourmet cherry pie when you’ve already stated you want the apple pie, PERIOD. They’ll call you a weaboo (WTF does that even mean), japanophile, otaku and a few other unpleasantries just for having likes and opinions that differ from theirs. Game companies also miss this fact and think EVERYONE wants cherry pie, when in fact a good majority of us don’t but some of us are willing to put up with the half baked sour as hell cherry pie.

Heck even having no pie at the party is also an option and there are games that are better off just dumping the pie. That way no one is disappointed.

Many people I know have played a little game from around the 1997 era known as “Azure Dreams”. Some people will quip that it was the best game on the PSX of that genre and other will counter with “PSX? Wasn’t it on the GBC?” and both parties will be right.

I’ve played both versions of the game and enjoyed it for the most part. I do have issues with the dating part of the game and the subsequent misogyny that goes on with that aspect (damsel in distress, bathing suit scene, harem, etc.) however you can tend to ignore most of that and enjoy the monster taming mystery dungeon aspect. The GBC version has less of that as they took out most of the dating aspect and actually put in more dungeon to explore.

However the one on the PSX didn’t come to the United States intact. Many people will gloss over the changes by saying that only the voices were taken out however that wasn’t the only change made to the game. The reasons for these other changes are a bit puzzling to me, especially the Monster Book graphics. True the way it was arranged accommodated the Western text layout, but the other graphics?

From the two videos below (Lord Smapy’s Let’s Play of the game is being used for comparison) you can see that the intro was devoiced completely and cropped a little at the bottom (feet get chopped off). The title screen back ground and title font were changed completely. Other noticeable changes were the changing of the angel in the beginning a new angel was made and animated and the graphics on the Monster Book were also changed.

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