hoshizoralone
2018
everyone saying this game doesn’t have enough mini games, i agree, where is the minigame for yagami to have rough sweaty sex with kaito ? pretty disappointing .
2022
to contribute to the theme of misery in the game, i highly suggest playing this on a switch with joycon drift for an immersive experience!
1998
i think the whole thing should have just been a visual novel tbh
MY VIRTUE IS TO LAST TIL SHE GIVE ME MY REWARD
i would have fixed ryan gray by having crazy upside down 360 til the room stank jungle gym sex w him 🤷♀️ ashley’s dad could have done this too if he wasn’t a coward.
2022
genuinely more power to you if this game and other games in its genre are your cup of tea but i have never had such an unfun, frustrating experience playing something before up until this. like, i stuck it through, i did beat it, but i don’t even feel anything for completing it aside from “thank god it’s over so i don’t have to turn this on anymore”. i don’t feel any sense of accomplishment at all.
i like playing games for plot/story/characters, and maybe i could have liked this game just riding solely off of that (stranger of paradise is my favorite game of the year thus far and there’s about 10 minutes of story in it total), but whatever the plot is is not only spread incredibly thin across the entire runtime of the game, but the characters all speak in riddles and are all named similarly and i have no idea what anyone is like or who anyone is after a while. when i pull up at a new grace and melina goes “hey time to loredump to you about this location”, this doesn’t endear me to her character, i literally don’t know anything about her because the only time she talks to me she just wants to speak exposition at me. how am i even supposed to care when she goes human torch mode i don’t even know her! we’re not friends!!! this is like the driver ahead of you paying for your meal at the drive thru, like thanks dude, i don’t really know you but that was cool of you to do i guess?
this is probably the main reason why i like ranni the most since she has like 3 or 4 lines where she doesn’t just loredump at you, but then i minus points because she was angry at me while she was in amiibo form like girl i am trying to HELP YOU. anyways we’re gay married so i don’t mind that too much anymore.
again big power to you if this genre of game is something you enjoy, everyone has different things they like, i’m not trying to say “everyone should hate this it sucks”, this is probably a fantastic game, but this was so not fun for me personally. i was fine at the start but by the middle of the game and especially toward the end i was just frustrated and. Not Having Fun. and games are supposed to be fun. so idk.
the fact you can’t pause this game even in offline mode gets a full star taken off from me what the fuck dude
i like playing games for plot/story/characters, and maybe i could have liked this game just riding solely off of that (stranger of paradise is my favorite game of the year thus far and there’s about 10 minutes of story in it total), but whatever the plot is is not only spread incredibly thin across the entire runtime of the game, but the characters all speak in riddles and are all named similarly and i have no idea what anyone is like or who anyone is after a while. when i pull up at a new grace and melina goes “hey time to loredump to you about this location”, this doesn’t endear me to her character, i literally don’t know anything about her because the only time she talks to me she just wants to speak exposition at me. how am i even supposed to care when she goes human torch mode i don’t even know her! we’re not friends!!! this is like the driver ahead of you paying for your meal at the drive thru, like thanks dude, i don’t really know you but that was cool of you to do i guess?
this is probably the main reason why i like ranni the most since she has like 3 or 4 lines where she doesn’t just loredump at you, but then i minus points because she was angry at me while she was in amiibo form like girl i am trying to HELP YOU. anyways we’re gay married so i don’t mind that too much anymore.
again big power to you if this genre of game is something you enjoy, everyone has different things they like, i’m not trying to say “everyone should hate this it sucks”, this is probably a fantastic game, but this was so not fun for me personally. i was fine at the start but by the middle of the game and especially toward the end i was just frustrated and. Not Having Fun. and games are supposed to be fun. so idk.
the fact you can’t pause this game even in offline mode gets a full star taken off from me what the fuck dude
this game has the pacing of all time
evan smith as junpei might have been the greatest casting choice of all time he sounds like some random guy who just walked into the booth. it’s peak
they’re going to hell for what they did with mizuki in aini after this
2001
no one is more eager to commit suicide than your red/yellow pikmin when they're within a mile of water
this game sucks so bad. it's really great.
fundamentally, all the pieces are there. the backdrop of something weird (and alien in nature) in chicago that's just hinted at through some dialogue and pieces of lore you can find scattered around. the conflict of "should you keep filming because this'll make a great scoop even if this makes you a monster?". the vibes where everything is just slightly off in an unsettling way, everyone moves slow and reacts even slower like you're watching a nightmare in slow motion.
i even think that the really terrible voice acting further compliments the game rather than hinders it, because it goes with the vibe that something is just WRONG. i always describe michigan as "this game feels like it was made by aliens" and it's just so true, in the best way possible.
now is this the most entertaining game? absolutely not. honestly i do kinda get bored toward the middle/middle-end, but not only is michigan short as hell, you can actively choose to speed up getting to the end by killing off the newsreporter you're with, and these moments are also pretty funny.
i do like the framing device of "you're seeing this through a camera" and occasionally you don't have control of what's happening ingame, but i'm also the biggest fan of lifeline for ps2 so what do i know, anyways? similar to lifeline though, michigan is so good because it's bad, but if this game was remade today to be better, would it even be good? for example, if the game had a strong narrative, better voice acting, better scares, and characters with actual writing... well, that would be a good game from everyone else's point of view, but i love michigan because it sucks. i'd probably like the remake, too, but nothing will beat the sheer kusoge that is michigan report from hell.
fundamentally, all the pieces are there. the backdrop of something weird (and alien in nature) in chicago that's just hinted at through some dialogue and pieces of lore you can find scattered around. the conflict of "should you keep filming because this'll make a great scoop even if this makes you a monster?". the vibes where everything is just slightly off in an unsettling way, everyone moves slow and reacts even slower like you're watching a nightmare in slow motion.
i even think that the really terrible voice acting further compliments the game rather than hinders it, because it goes with the vibe that something is just WRONG. i always describe michigan as "this game feels like it was made by aliens" and it's just so true, in the best way possible.
now is this the most entertaining game? absolutely not. honestly i do kinda get bored toward the middle/middle-end, but not only is michigan short as hell, you can actively choose to speed up getting to the end by killing off the newsreporter you're with, and these moments are also pretty funny.
i do like the framing device of "you're seeing this through a camera" and occasionally you don't have control of what's happening ingame, but i'm also the biggest fan of lifeline for ps2 so what do i know, anyways? similar to lifeline though, michigan is so good because it's bad, but if this game was remade today to be better, would it even be good? for example, if the game had a strong narrative, better voice acting, better scares, and characters with actual writing... well, that would be a good game from everyone else's point of view, but i love michigan because it sucks. i'd probably like the remake, too, but nothing will beat the sheer kusoge that is michigan report from hell.
this game made me pregnant
2007
junpei nation rise up
2022
This review contains spoilers
i would like to note im not a digimon fan, i was just interested in this game because it was a “vn/srpg”. calling this a vn is like calling anything with dialogue a vn but who even cares. but i was curious to try it out!
i dropped this game in part 4 because it was insufferable. here is every problem i have with digimon survive that i can think of right now.
storywise:
- clunky translations, errors and typos and all that
- i’m not a fan of how the characters are proportioned like high schoolers/college age students (long legs, generally modern fashion teens and young adults would wear, mature voices, how they all have smartphones tho this might be a generational thing), but they’re in middle school. you might think this is a nitpick, but it causes a disconnect in the story for me because they look older than they actually are but keep insisting they’re kids/in middle school. i feel like if they actually looked and sounded like middle schoolers (12-15 year olds) it would be much easier to excuse some of the dumber things they do.
- the characters meet the professor during the trip right before they get sucked into the alternate world. he later dies and for some reason despite knowing him for about maybe 30 hours total every character is totally obsessed with him, saying things like “the professor wouldn’t have wanted this” and so on. don’t get me wrong, it’s reasonable to mourn a guy you just saw die, but he should not be influencing your decisions/thinking to this degree. you should want to be good people because it’s good to be good people, not because some guy told you to be. you guys don’t even know his fucking name?
- every character is extremely passive and actively lets bad things happen. this is apparently supposed to be because you’re supposed to do the NG+ route to save them or whatever, but this has worked in the opposite direction because i hate everyone so much i’m dropping the game.
ryo goes insane because the characters do not engage with him or emotionally reach out to him. after ryo dies, everyone is upset and says how they should have spoken with him more and helped him more. the next day, lopmon is being verbally abused by shuuji nonstop and none of the characters do jack shit, despite just having multiple conversations about how they should do more. lopmon then transforms into a horrible monster and kills shuuji, and this is somehow surprising to the rest of the cast, who are very upset despite literally standing around and watching this guy abuse the fuck out of lopmon. are they stupid?
- the pacing of the story is extremely slow and not in a good way. now i like ryukishi games, i’m used to slow stuff. but typically those slow sections aren’t tedious and add something interesting, like fun character interactions, worldbuilding, or a slow trickle of interesting plot. it’s hard to do either of these in digimon survive, not only because every character and free time event feels laser focused on the “plot” that’s taking forever to piece itself together, but because of how the story is told. the game is told almost entirely through dialogue and has no prose or fluff writing, and this removes a lot of opportunities to get into the heads of other characters, talk about the world around them in a deep way, or give interesting flashbacks or information. we are firmly locked within takuma’s thinking and perspective of the world, and everything he thinks/says is very simple.
- on top being slow, sometimes the story is really repetitive, and makes nothing really stand out.
- during the amusement park with miu, kaito suggests beating up the kidnappers, aka the digimon that were just trying to kill them and will probably try again later. everyone chides him for this for some reason, calls him a thug, and says violence isn’t the answer. against monsters that were trying to kill them. again, are they stupid?
gameplay:
- srpg section feels really simple in a bad way. i don’t know, i’m easy to please, i liked how simple utawarerumono (an actual vn/srpg, play that instead of this) and triangle strategy are with their pretty streamlined gameplay in comparison to something like ff tactics/fire emblem, but a lot of the maps of digimon survive from what i played look the same, don’t have anything interesting going on on them (like special tiles, fun gimmicks), and require very little strategy to actually complete them.
- evolutions also make everything very easy.
- the free events are so repetitive. i don’t know, it really does not feel interesting at all. either make them elements where you can walk around ingame or make the entire game a streamlined visual novel. this half and half take on the idea is tedious, boring, and makes free time events more of a slog to get through so you can get to the main plot.
- they had all that space on the battle conditions and battle start screen, they really couldn’t be assed to write “conditions” and “battle” out in full? they had to keep it as “cond.” and “bat.”?
misc thoughts:
- i’m not a digimon fan. so many of these fuckers are ugly, i would cry if my cute digimon pal evolved into an ugly freak
- it feels like there are only 6 songs in this game
- i didn’t really care for the voice acting but was neutral enough on it, but outright muted it when agumon appeared. again, not a digimon fan so maybe i haven’t built up a digimon voice tolerance, but he is so annoying i’m sorry.
for anyone who wants a GOOD visual novel/srpg, i would highly recommend the utawarerumono series.
i saw other reviews calling this game dark and mature, and maybe that’s true for digimon, but what i experienced (for example, ryo’s mother being dead and ryo being murdered) had the depth of an above ground pool that hadn’t been filled yet. the clunkily slow pacing, passive characters, lack of prose, and stilted writing makes it hard for me to believe this game is very deep at all or is deep in a way that other games don’t do a million times better. i would also recommend utawarerumono as a good example of a “deep” game, or any other vn really.
1.5/5 idk. this just pissed me off so fucking bad.
i dropped this game in part 4 because it was insufferable. here is every problem i have with digimon survive that i can think of right now.
storywise:
- clunky translations, errors and typos and all that
- i’m not a fan of how the characters are proportioned like high schoolers/college age students (long legs, generally modern fashion teens and young adults would wear, mature voices, how they all have smartphones tho this might be a generational thing), but they’re in middle school. you might think this is a nitpick, but it causes a disconnect in the story for me because they look older than they actually are but keep insisting they’re kids/in middle school. i feel like if they actually looked and sounded like middle schoolers (12-15 year olds) it would be much easier to excuse some of the dumber things they do.
- the characters meet the professor during the trip right before they get sucked into the alternate world. he later dies and for some reason despite knowing him for about maybe 30 hours total every character is totally obsessed with him, saying things like “the professor wouldn’t have wanted this” and so on. don’t get me wrong, it’s reasonable to mourn a guy you just saw die, but he should not be influencing your decisions/thinking to this degree. you should want to be good people because it’s good to be good people, not because some guy told you to be. you guys don’t even know his fucking name?
- every character is extremely passive and actively lets bad things happen. this is apparently supposed to be because you’re supposed to do the NG+ route to save them or whatever, but this has worked in the opposite direction because i hate everyone so much i’m dropping the game.
ryo goes insane because the characters do not engage with him or emotionally reach out to him. after ryo dies, everyone is upset and says how they should have spoken with him more and helped him more. the next day, lopmon is being verbally abused by shuuji nonstop and none of the characters do jack shit, despite just having multiple conversations about how they should do more. lopmon then transforms into a horrible monster and kills shuuji, and this is somehow surprising to the rest of the cast, who are very upset despite literally standing around and watching this guy abuse the fuck out of lopmon. are they stupid?
- the pacing of the story is extremely slow and not in a good way. now i like ryukishi games, i’m used to slow stuff. but typically those slow sections aren’t tedious and add something interesting, like fun character interactions, worldbuilding, or a slow trickle of interesting plot. it’s hard to do either of these in digimon survive, not only because every character and free time event feels laser focused on the “plot” that’s taking forever to piece itself together, but because of how the story is told. the game is told almost entirely through dialogue and has no prose or fluff writing, and this removes a lot of opportunities to get into the heads of other characters, talk about the world around them in a deep way, or give interesting flashbacks or information. we are firmly locked within takuma’s thinking and perspective of the world, and everything he thinks/says is very simple.
- on top being slow, sometimes the story is really repetitive, and makes nothing really stand out.
- during the amusement park with miu, kaito suggests beating up the kidnappers, aka the digimon that were just trying to kill them and will probably try again later. everyone chides him for this for some reason, calls him a thug, and says violence isn’t the answer. against monsters that were trying to kill them. again, are they stupid?
gameplay:
- srpg section feels really simple in a bad way. i don’t know, i’m easy to please, i liked how simple utawarerumono (an actual vn/srpg, play that instead of this) and triangle strategy are with their pretty streamlined gameplay in comparison to something like ff tactics/fire emblem, but a lot of the maps of digimon survive from what i played look the same, don’t have anything interesting going on on them (like special tiles, fun gimmicks), and require very little strategy to actually complete them.
- evolutions also make everything very easy.
- the free events are so repetitive. i don’t know, it really does not feel interesting at all. either make them elements where you can walk around ingame or make the entire game a streamlined visual novel. this half and half take on the idea is tedious, boring, and makes free time events more of a slog to get through so you can get to the main plot.
- they had all that space on the battle conditions and battle start screen, they really couldn’t be assed to write “conditions” and “battle” out in full? they had to keep it as “cond.” and “bat.”?
misc thoughts:
- i’m not a digimon fan. so many of these fuckers are ugly, i would cry if my cute digimon pal evolved into an ugly freak
- it feels like there are only 6 songs in this game
- i didn’t really care for the voice acting but was neutral enough on it, but outright muted it when agumon appeared. again, not a digimon fan so maybe i haven’t built up a digimon voice tolerance, but he is so annoying i’m sorry.
for anyone who wants a GOOD visual novel/srpg, i would highly recommend the utawarerumono series.
i saw other reviews calling this game dark and mature, and maybe that’s true for digimon, but what i experienced (for example, ryo’s mother being dead and ryo being murdered) had the depth of an above ground pool that hadn’t been filled yet. the clunkily slow pacing, passive characters, lack of prose, and stilted writing makes it hard for me to believe this game is very deep at all or is deep in a way that other games don’t do a million times better. i would also recommend utawarerumono as a good example of a “deep” game, or any other vn really.
1.5/5 idk. this just pissed me off so fucking bad.
They see me rollin…… they hatin