I would really like to enjoy Yurukill. The batshit idea of a Escape room adventure visual novel crossed with a Shooting game, with the former being written by some guy who wrote a manga about getting off to gambling, and the latter being developed by STG veterans G.Rev. It sounds stupid enough to work.
And y'know, it actually does. Replacing what would be for instance, a trial in a danganronpa game with a STG sequence intercut with answering questions and minor deduction that kinda works really well? The flashiness and flow of a Shmup battle actually works well with the heightened emotion of these sequences, as each prisoner tries to prove their innocence/why they deserve to live to their victims. It's a bit wonky and certaintly contrived in the flow of the story, but its where the game's best moments are.
And the STG segments themselves are decent. It's certaintly not G.Rev's best, and suffers from a severe case of being an extremely bland shooting game in it's own right, but I feel that was also definetly the point, to keep the shooting simple as an accompaniment to the story rather than the main focus.
Well, shame the Adventure/VN side of the game completely lets the side down. It's remarkably dissapointing and feels bizzarely rushed for a game that's been in development for a game that was announced in 2019. The first chapter is good, focusing on our two main protagonists, with lightining fast pacing and a good conflict.
But the cracks show. The rest of the "Prisoner confronts Victim" stories are pretty ok, albeit quite repeitive and really fail to inject much jeopardy into what's ostensibly a death game, but it's after that where things really fall apart. Two chapters of blatant filler are the most egregious, with cases and mysteries that barely tie into the core plot, what i'm sure is actually a straight up plot hole in one of them and pointless padding in the other, and a final chapter with an utterly pathetc resolution to the game's crimes and plotlines that leaves an incredibly sour taste in the mouth. Imagine if the mastermind of Danganronpa just came out with this and that was all you got. The game builds up to what feels like should be some dramatic untangling and it's so fucking shit.
And whilst many of those individual chapters especially in the first half arent neccessarily worse than the first, the game's poor tendancies in the adventure sections really begin to dig in. The puzzles pendulum between either being the easiest things on the planet or requiring some pretty ridiculous leaps of logic with basically no middle ground, there's no CGs or even moving character sprites for most of the game leaving a lot of stuff very abstract and making a lot of the more climactic moments feel very weird, and one of the 5 character pairs' contribution to the narrative is so bizzarely pointless and throwaway I legitimately don't know why they're in the game. I think it's meant to be comic relief but it honestly reads more like characters that were left in the first draft that dont have any contribution to the plot. By the end I was glad it was at least short - barely 9 hours.
And in the end, despite the strength of the shmup argument extravaganzas, there just feels like there's so little reason to bother with it. The Adventure part lets the side down too hard to care, and the STG side whilst is fine, but also mid as fuck and outclassed so handily by G.rev themselves on every platform you can buy this game that you have no reason to bother.
There are sparks in Yurukill. Moments which really hit, strong emotional beats in dramatic boss battles, and I really like that this game's equivelent of monokuma is just an overworked tour guide. But the end result is super dissapointing and not worth your time and money. I haven't been this dissapointed with a VN since Zero Time Dilemma, and at least that was a beautiful train crash.
And y'know, it actually does. Replacing what would be for instance, a trial in a danganronpa game with a STG sequence intercut with answering questions and minor deduction that kinda works really well? The flashiness and flow of a Shmup battle actually works well with the heightened emotion of these sequences, as each prisoner tries to prove their innocence/why they deserve to live to their victims. It's a bit wonky and certaintly contrived in the flow of the story, but its where the game's best moments are.
And the STG segments themselves are decent. It's certaintly not G.Rev's best, and suffers from a severe case of being an extremely bland shooting game in it's own right, but I feel that was also definetly the point, to keep the shooting simple as an accompaniment to the story rather than the main focus.
Well, shame the Adventure/VN side of the game completely lets the side down. It's remarkably dissapointing and feels bizzarely rushed for a game that's been in development for a game that was announced in 2019. The first chapter is good, focusing on our two main protagonists, with lightining fast pacing and a good conflict.
But the cracks show. The rest of the "Prisoner confronts Victim" stories are pretty ok, albeit quite repeitive and really fail to inject much jeopardy into what's ostensibly a death game, but it's after that where things really fall apart. Two chapters of blatant filler are the most egregious, with cases and mysteries that barely tie into the core plot, what i'm sure is actually a straight up plot hole in one of them and pointless padding in the other, and a final chapter with an utterly pathetc resolution to the game's crimes and plotlines that leaves an incredibly sour taste in the mouth. Imagine if the mastermind of Danganronpa just came out with this and that was all you got. The game builds up to what feels like should be some dramatic untangling and it's so fucking shit.
And whilst many of those individual chapters especially in the first half arent neccessarily worse than the first, the game's poor tendancies in the adventure sections really begin to dig in. The puzzles pendulum between either being the easiest things on the planet or requiring some pretty ridiculous leaps of logic with basically no middle ground, there's no CGs or even moving character sprites for most of the game leaving a lot of stuff very abstract and making a lot of the more climactic moments feel very weird, and one of the 5 character pairs' contribution to the narrative is so bizzarely pointless and throwaway I legitimately don't know why they're in the game. I think it's meant to be comic relief but it honestly reads more like characters that were left in the first draft that dont have any contribution to the plot. By the end I was glad it was at least short - barely 9 hours.
And in the end, despite the strength of the shmup argument extravaganzas, there just feels like there's so little reason to bother with it. The Adventure part lets the side down too hard to care, and the STG side whilst is fine, but also mid as fuck and outclassed so handily by G.rev themselves on every platform you can buy this game that you have no reason to bother.
There are sparks in Yurukill. Moments which really hit, strong emotional beats in dramatic boss battles, and I really like that this game's equivelent of monokuma is just an overworked tour guide. But the end result is super dissapointing and not worth your time and money. I haven't been this dissapointed with a VN since Zero Time Dilemma, and at least that was a beautiful train crash.
Cassius_Bright
1 year ago
YURU KIRU!