Definitely a game that starts very good but starts to lose steam at around the halfway mark or so. Not to say it becomes bad or anything, just not as good. There really is not much that can be said without getting into spoiler territory and I do think its worth playing if youre into Adventure Games/VNs, particularly Uchikoshi's work but with Occult Theming rather than Pseudoscience.
The music and character art are very good, even if it started to get distracting a few hours in when you notice that a lot of it uses seemingly rigged animation or recycled stuff for different characters? I don't exactly know how to put it but it does add an air of cheapness. Admittedly the game weighs 800mb and the director is most well known for mobile ADV games so maybe Squeenix really did give them a small budget.
The puzzles and navigation of the branching paths are okay for the most part, fairly intuitive and even predictable at points, with the glaring exception of one point of maximum confusion where the game asks you about a situation that ocurred at a specific time, but there is no visible time in the "story chart" , you have to manually select the chapter for it to tell you what time it was, and that couldnt be done without restarting the current chapter, seemingly that would be cheating apparently. But, this is a 10 hour VN with twists and turns! You expect me to remember all that shit in detail?! The kicker is, after brute forcing the solution and then finishing the rest of the game... I still don't know what the hell was up with that question?! Its the one thing I still dont understand. Maybe someone smarter will inform me, its the question with "8 am".
The characters are lnteresting to see, ranging from sympathetic to psychopathic and everything in between as you would expect. In particular enjoyed the "Dan from Game Grumps going to a rodeo"-looking private eye. The prose itself can get a bit confusing, the pacing isnt perfect with some mighty info dumps at times and odd placements of events but for the most part I enjoyed enough to keep playing and am fairly satisfied with its conclusion. And I enjoyed a couple of the, lets say "unconventional" puzzles. Just good spooky vibes, well worth the price of admission I would say.
SPOILER WARNING - I want to very briefly go over something about the plot details. You have been warned, spoilers beyond here.
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I have played a few japanese adv games/vns whatever you want to call them, in particular I am a fan of Uchikoshi's work, but I have to ask the VN heads who are reading : Is the whole "Story Flowchart/Branching is contextualized as canonical and the transfer of information between branches is diegetic/part of the plot" not Uchikoshi/Spike Chunsoft's thing? I might be showing my ignorance but I thought that was the particular innovation theyd come up with. Is it just a common feature of these games? Does it predate Uchikoshi? Did he popularize it and now everyone does it? Am I just "Man who has only seen boss baby watching another movie - Getting boss baby vibes from this"? Any answers would be appreciated, thanks
Cause this game definitely does it, in several ways. At first I thought it was just a gameplay mechanic but I definitely held out hope it would tie into the plot by the end and it did. Its definitely an interesting idea which I enjoy and I can see why it would become popular, if you are going to require the player to navigate a series of choices to get to a true ending, the act of navigation and correct choices being another puzzle in itself, why NOT incorporate it into the plot? Makes a lot of sense. I also would like to say I though the psycho mantis-esque puzzle to beat the Foot Washing Mansion curse was clever. At first you look at the options and see "voices" and wonder "huh, this isnt voiced?" and then you realize its only there to defeat a curse which is activated by listening to a voice. It did seem slightly silly but in context it makes sense that seiman would just disable that aspect if he was in control and knowledge of the various curses. Anyways, it was a good experience even if it fell off a bit towards the end.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fu4e96tRCnY
The music and character art are very good, even if it started to get distracting a few hours in when you notice that a lot of it uses seemingly rigged animation or recycled stuff for different characters? I don't exactly know how to put it but it does add an air of cheapness. Admittedly the game weighs 800mb and the director is most well known for mobile ADV games so maybe Squeenix really did give them a small budget.
The puzzles and navigation of the branching paths are okay for the most part, fairly intuitive and even predictable at points, with the glaring exception of one point of maximum confusion where the game asks you about a situation that ocurred at a specific time, but there is no visible time in the "story chart" , you have to manually select the chapter for it to tell you what time it was, and that couldnt be done without restarting the current chapter, seemingly that would be cheating apparently. But, this is a 10 hour VN with twists and turns! You expect me to remember all that shit in detail?! The kicker is, after brute forcing the solution and then finishing the rest of the game... I still don't know what the hell was up with that question?! Its the one thing I still dont understand. Maybe someone smarter will inform me, its the question with "8 am".
The characters are lnteresting to see, ranging from sympathetic to psychopathic and everything in between as you would expect. In particular enjoyed the "Dan from Game Grumps going to a rodeo"-looking private eye. The prose itself can get a bit confusing, the pacing isnt perfect with some mighty info dumps at times and odd placements of events but for the most part I enjoyed enough to keep playing and am fairly satisfied with its conclusion. And I enjoyed a couple of the, lets say "unconventional" puzzles. Just good spooky vibes, well worth the price of admission I would say.
SPOILER WARNING - I want to very briefly go over something about the plot details. You have been warned, spoilers beyond here.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
I have played a few japanese adv games/vns whatever you want to call them, in particular I am a fan of Uchikoshi's work, but I have to ask the VN heads who are reading : Is the whole "Story Flowchart/Branching is contextualized as canonical and the transfer of information between branches is diegetic/part of the plot" not Uchikoshi/Spike Chunsoft's thing? I might be showing my ignorance but I thought that was the particular innovation theyd come up with. Is it just a common feature of these games? Does it predate Uchikoshi? Did he popularize it and now everyone does it? Am I just "Man who has only seen boss baby watching another movie - Getting boss baby vibes from this"? Any answers would be appreciated, thanks
Cause this game definitely does it, in several ways. At first I thought it was just a gameplay mechanic but I definitely held out hope it would tie into the plot by the end and it did. Its definitely an interesting idea which I enjoy and I can see why it would become popular, if you are going to require the player to navigate a series of choices to get to a true ending, the act of navigation and correct choices being another puzzle in itself, why NOT incorporate it into the plot? Makes a lot of sense. I also would like to say I though the psycho mantis-esque puzzle to beat the Foot Washing Mansion curse was clever. At first you look at the options and see "voices" and wonder "huh, this isnt voiced?" and then you realize its only there to defeat a curse which is activated by listening to a voice. It did seem slightly silly but in context it makes sense that seiman would just disable that aspect if he was in control and knowledge of the various curses. Anyways, it was a good experience even if it fell off a bit towards the end.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fu4e96tRCnY
3 Comments
Oh and if your a fan of Uchikoshi's stuff definitely play the infinity series, there are 3 games currently available in English Never7, Ever17, and Remember11 and while the first game kinda sucks you should still play it because they reference it and bring it up in the latter 2, with said latter 2 being some of the most insane storytelling I've seen in a video game especially given how old they are. All 3 of those games are kinda crappy to play now without fan patches though so look up Never7 Eternal Edition, Ever17 Himmel Edition, and Remember11 Gestalt Edition to find the best way to play them if you are interested
(spoilers, for anyone reading the comments!) i might be misunderstanding what you're asking about the 8 am question, but the only chapter in the game set during 8 am is with yakko and mio where they meet up outside yakko's home (the sweets shop) before school. asking for michiyo's location at 8 am, the storyteller is nudging you to realize that yakko is possessed by michiyo's spirit, so michiyo would be wherever yakko was
zan3tr
11 months ago