What an absolutely tragic, beautiful experience all around. I figured I would enjoy it based on the general vibes I got from it before it was picked up for localization, but I didn't expect it to consume my thoughts as it did. This game has soared into becoming one of my top otome of all time ^w^

The visuals and music are very high quality and gorgeous. The character designs are top-tier as well though some took a little bit to grow on me (namely Mathis's and Lucas's).

And as for the writing... phew, what a ride this story was. It intrigued me right from the start and never once bored me. The mysterious and dark nature of the setting were well-established and the foreshadowing was intricately woven through both the common route and all the characters routes. The world-building was also great, reminding me a bit of Olympia Soiree (another all-time fave of mine). The subject matter definitely isn't for the faint of heart, but I gotta say I was expecting waaaay worse on that front based on all the trigger warnings that people were putting out... or maybe I just have a high tolerance, lol. Yes, there was lot of blood and violence and despair as advertised, but I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of "cozier" moments (usually when Ceres was bonding with the LIs) that happened in between the despair. It does touch on some scientific topics... which are outlandish and best not taken too seriously, lol, but I can't say it bothered me too much.

Now as far as the forced bad endings before you can get to the better/bittersweet ones goes... I get what they were going for and I totally see why people would complain about it. I generally don't play bad ends in otome myself unless they're required for CGs/etc. But in this particular case and largely because I was pre-warned to the format, it didn't bother me too much. It's quite a test in delayed gratification, but it made it all the more satisfying to unlock the Salvation endings.

Regarding the Le Salut route... I do dislike that it had an unskippable prologue that lasted for a chapter length of so; felt unnecessary to rehash details that we already knew. But the further you get into the route, the better it is with reveals dropping left and right. Some were fairly predictable, but others totally blew me away :O Overall, I think the route wraps the story up well and even has a more satisfying conclusion for some characters than even their Salvation ends, lol.

Now onto my best boy rankings~
1.) Scien - he absolutely took me by surprise because he's a character type I normally don't go for in otome games. He has a god complex... he's arrogant and discourteous and largely treats Ceres as his (literal) personal maid at the start; I definitely wouldn't want to date this guy IRL, lol. But there's something about his confidence and voice and bluntness that wore me down until I was fangirling at his mere mention ^^""" lol. He's arguably the most important character plot-wise in the game too.
2.) Yves - literally impossible to dislike him. Love his story and his upbeat-ness which contrasts so nicely with the despairing elements of the story. If Scien didn't exist, he would have been my #1 boy from this game~
3.) Lucas - a sweetheart through and through though the student/teacher thing with Ceres was a little odd; I couldn't really grasp the logistics of it either with them being so close in age .w."" It's... a shame the writers seemed to hate him particular ^^""" lol
4.) Ankou
5.) Adolphe
6.) Mathis - I don't hate him, but he's my least fave of this bunch. Great voice acting and twists in his route, but he feels too shota for me to consider him a LI.

So...yeah. Loved the heck out of this one and I'm begging on my knees for the fandisc to be picked up for an English release this year >w<

I have to hand it to Virche for its sheer confidence in itself: it expected me to complete over 50 hours of reading, a full repeat of the game’s lengthy introduction, and all routes before giving me a single good ending. And clearly, I did that. I played this game to the point of viewing all endings, CGs, and text.

My impression was lukewarm at the start — even quite negative at times — but the big and little mysteries and their assorted clues that started piling up kept my attention. It really does give you just about everything you need to guess what the truths are behind the story, and I respect that too. I picked up on a lot of them, but I was very pleasantly surprised that I missed things and eventually got caught off guard as well.

Virche does rely a lot on pseudoscience, however. If you try to predict the story based on real-world facts, good luck. It’s best to just roll your eyes and move on when these things come up, considering it threatened to take me out of the story several times. The world of Virche does whatever the hell it wants with terms and biological realities, and you’re just along for the ride!

While it’s common for otome games, I have to voice my usual problem: where are the girls and women? Why doesn’t the protagonist get a female friend/acquaintance her age? There are so many recurring male characters with sprites, including non-love interests, and only two female characters. The female characters that do exist, sprite or not, get quite the unpleasant treatment by the narrative. While they suffer plenty too, the male characters get far more agency to work with.

The protagonist is one of those suffering, struggling girls, and she may or may not make the experience tough for you. To be blunt, she’s a deeply depressed doormat. Her backstory justifies her willingness to accept a lot of abuse, but it could be unpleasant to watch for certain players. And she gets a lot of abuse from so many characters (including love interests, whether they want to do it or not), from verbal abuse to physical violence to murder.

The romance may also be hit-or-miss. The love interest could be a lot older than the protagonist, or someone she calls her brother, or this or that other questionable spoiler thing. They are heavy romances, to be sure, filled with suffering and very little sweetness or spice, but still a whole lot of devotion to the protagonist. As dark tales (rather than something to dream of), they work.

I have mixed feelings on Virche’s approach to love and how people feel it, but I do give it two thumbs up for including a significant male character with feelings for another male character that is never the target of homophobic abuse. They all have bigger problems, fortunately(?).

As for my experience physically playing the game, there were only scattered typos in the text that didn’t intrude much, and it generally flowed well. I hated the way the screen would go bright white before and after every flashback, though; I probably already remembered what happened in the past and didn’t need to get blinded while being reminded of it. Getting different endings was often more tedious than it needed to be, sometimes seemingly requiring the entire route to be skipped through again to enable a different one to happen.

I appreciated the skip-to-choice button, as slow as it could be sometimes; the easy to access and understand flowchart; the gorgeous CGs; and the clear, definitive “you’re headed for a bad ending” screen effect it did most of the time that was going to happen. It makes the screen all glitchy for a few seconds, which is really difficult to miss.

The music deserves an honorable mention as well. While not something I’d listen to outside of the game, it really works in context.

My recommendation: play Virche Evermore if you want some truly wild and tragic times with beautiful male characters.

I'll be the first to admit that I'm not the target audience for this game. I'm a trans lesbian whose enjoyment of otome games typically stems from either the bizarre stories or the (often unintentional) exploration of kink, trauma, and relationship dynamics.

That being said, Virche Evermore is fascinating to me. On one hand, it's got a really neat setting, some genuinely likable character writing, and tries to tackle some themes that I rarely see games even acknowledge. On the other hand, it's a fifty-four hour long slog that's filled with a bunch of half-assed story threads, a distinct lack of anything romantically appealing, some of the worst attempts at Sci-Fi that I've ever read, and some genuinely uncomfortable depictions of abuse that are handled really, REALLY poorly.

[i]The TL;DR is that I would recommend Virche Evermore, but only to those players like myself who enjoy playing a lengthy, middling game every now and again. Virche Evermore likely isn't going to change your life, but it will worm its way into your brain and fester there. This game is fascinating, but that doesn't make it good.[/i]

[b]- CW // Mentions of Spousal Abuse, Death, Violence -[/b]

From here on, this is more my stream of consciousness thoughts.

I think that Virche is at it's best when it's simply telling you a story. The story of Arpéchéle, of the people who live there and the history of the setting, is some genuinely solid background. For the first few routes, that was enough to pull me in. The routes that have a narrative focus feel far sharper than the routes that focus on relationships, and while the romance didn't land for me, I think that this narrative-precedence would still affect me even had I fallen for one of the guys. Without spoiling, there's three routes that feel far more important than the rest, and as a result, everything lands so much better for them.

I also appreciate how much of the story revolves around its core themes: that of life and death. Each character interacts with and approaches these issues differently, and while I don't always agree with the conclusions, I like how much variety there is in the LI's thoughts on the subject. It helps to flesh them out, and the world as a whole too.

The characters are...alright? Having gone through all the routes (and most of the bad ends), I have my favorites. But unfortunately, because of the awkward pacing and the (at times) bizarre lead-ins to the third act conflicts, you get very little time to actually get to know them. Hell, most of each character's characterization comes from the common route. Generally for each character, their route is a third fun and cute fluff, and two-thirds drama. That only amounts to an hour or two of romance per LI, and while the true endings give you a bit more, I could see people interested in Virche Evermore's romance being sorely disappointed. The only genuinely interesting character, in my opinion, is Ceres. And even then, she often takes a back seat while plot is dolled out.

This undercuts much of the drama. It's hard to get emotional over character deaths when even side-characters tend to be constrained to a single route. And when there's so many deaths, murders, and suicides in one game, the raw, visceral impact of such gruesome writing evaporates. By the end it starts to get comical, and you'll be counting how many times you see the same alleys and the same bedrooms covered in blood.

This leads into my biggest issue with the game; it seems completely unaware that all of these relationships are - in some shape or form - abusive. I'm not a prude about toxic dynamics, and I enjoy some unhealthy and violent dynamics myself from time-to-time. But Virche Evermore gets under my skin with how uncritically it leads Ceres into terrible situations. Again, I won't be specific, but one of the routes feels eerily similar to real-life abusive relationships that I've witnessed. And in that route, Ceres' determination to love her abusive husband is framed as a genuinely noble and good thing by the game, which feels very...bad.

Beyond that though, most of the routes involve men completely controlling Ceres. Doing things to her against her whim, going to great lengths to control her, controlling her autonomy. There are some instances where this is clearly in service of kink, and I don't mind those cases. But it happens so frequently, and is so unaddressed by the game, that it gets uncomfortable if I think about it for too long. That, combined with every non-Ceres woman in the game being written as a cruel noble or a jealous prostitute, paints a really unflattering picture of those behind this game. Though I don't think this game is actively malicious or anything, just poorly written.

Virche Evermore wants to be a shocking, violent, cruel otome with brilliant sci-fi writing and a pile of plot twists meant to keep players talking for ages. What it is, however, is a confused, floundering mess that is just as charming as it is infuriating. It never delivers on its metaphors, it never even seems aware that it's as complex as it is, and despite all of that, some of it's shots land true. It's like a child swinging at a baseball on a tee. Every miss is infuriating. "You had it! It was right there!" But every so often it manages to hit the ball, and you can't help but smile.

I have a lot to say about this game, far more than I can squeeze into this review. But though I felt frustrated and annoyed most of the time, I'm still glad that I played this game. If you can enjoy bad games - if you love picking through the muck and looking for the pretty stones within - give Virche Evermore a shot. But don't expect a diamond in the rough. Just expect a pretty flower, one that wilts hours after it's plucked.

4 stars for actual game but im gonna have to give it half a star because my playthrough was ruined by fromsoftware elitist fans who have been ableist and stupid as shit to disabled people asking for an easy mode or using summons.

I genuinely will never interact with anyone who says "youre bad if you use summons" i do not give a shit, yes its easier and you can say the boss is boring now, but i dont give a shit. I cant play games like elden ring without help because im fucking disabled in my prominent hand so having to make my fingers work and do everything needed to beat a boss drains me mentally. Oh and thats not even it because there will always be that one mentally unwell basement dweller who says "git gud"

Gacha games are always a hard sell because they are grindy, time gated, and really just want you for your money. Despite such gold digger status, I genuinely do think that Honkai Star Rail is a gacha game that has used the past games of the HoYoverse to give a compelling argument for such a live service game that keeps updating and growing. While there certainly is some problems with Star Rail's delivery, and potential down the road; ultimately Honkai: Star Rail provides a solid answer to a space adventure RPG.

Perhaps the biggest selling point of Honkai Star Rail is just how big it can get, and how much can easily be added without giving much disturbance to what most gacha games need for an overarching story. Not to say there isn't an overarching story, but the real point of interest is exploring new planets, cultures, and developing the world of Star Rail over any actual take down of a big bad. This is something that Star Rail even has over such mammoth games like Starfield, No Man Sky, and Fate Grand Order. There is legitimately a massive amount of text, voice overs, and side missions that would make even the Mass Effect series blush. To say that Star Rail is a massive game is honestly an understatement at this point, already rivaling the 1st two arcs of Fate Grand Order in terms of size, as of May 2024. The first two main areas, Herta Space Station & Belobog, are a great start to the game, and impressed me with how much lore and content there was initially to began with. Belobog even feeling more like it's very own game when compared to the Herta Space Station opening.

Sadly, due to how big Star Rail can be, and how it utilizes both it's time, upgrade, and promotion currencies this makes the game a massive time sink. There is just something blatantly scummy and cruel about how Star Rail's combat works, and how the progression of the Equilibrium (difficulty) gets in Star Rail that rubs me the wrong way. See combat in Star Rail is pretty lax for the most part as long as you have the correct affinities to take down enemy weaknesses. In a lot of ways, both Fate Grand Order and Star Rail have similar combat prep and style. Use the enemy weaknesses while having characters equipped with proper light cones (Craft Essences) and hopefully be at a good skill level to make the battle easy to win. Where FGO and Star Rail differ however is that Light Cones are a bigger part to the stat equation, there is a mildly higher character growth when summoned from the gacha (6 compared to FGO's 5), and leveling up costing far more at the higher levels compared to FGOs requirement to fully upgrade a servant. This makes leveling up all the way far more difficult, and nearly a week endeavor just to get a character to the final level. This isn't accounting for other parts in Star Rail's character system like the fully upgraded light cones, skills, or relics that you can use. Plus on top of all this the game's promotional currency gets equally pushed out because you keep using it upgrade characters abilities/skills/levels/light cones. It's kinda insane how much time and effort it takes to fully invest into one character in Star Rail, let alone 20 of them, which the game honestly intends for you to do with some of it's higher required side content. So if you mess up like I did, and upgrade too fast on your equilibrium (difficulty) you end up being locked out of both story and side content till you can grind the rest to enjoy the game again.

Really the only thing I can say about Honkai Star Rail is that you'll be investing a lot of time in it if you want to experience it. For some that can be a deterrent, but for others this may be a blessing. While a vast majority of your time will be spent grinding/ leveling up your characters and equipment; the game does have proper story, characterization, lore, world building, and some pretty cool animations to boot. It really is just a cool role playing space adventure that keeps making cooler and interesting characters so you can spend money on, and frankly I like that a lot more compared to something like skins. It's still a scummy practice, but at least there is some substance behind that. If you can tolerate that, and a bit of grinding, I absolutely recommend Honkai Star Rail.

It's mediocre. I gave it a hell of a chance by trying to complete it 100% and even started NG+ but by god does this game not have anything that stands out. It's Oblivion in space.

One of my biggest issues with it and which made it such a bore to properly finish is the fact that it's way too easy. I had to change the game from normal, to hard, to very hard and even then I was breezing through all fights on land and 90% of the ones in space.

Then not surprisingly there's no point to anything. They ask you to sneak if you don't you get a three different pieces of dialogue and nothing else. They give you the option to persuade you don't/fail, you get the damn information anyway. You join one faction and then you immediately join another faction that doesn't like the first one and nothing is said (plus the options for special dialogue from being part of a faction happen like what, 3 times per faction?).

One of the focal points is exploring planets and yet, what's the point? What's there to see? Same ten bugs and plants and scan and then what?

This game is wasted potential because things are designed beautifully, it's also one of the most sciency sci-fi games I've seen which to me is a positive and yet nothing is done with it. It's empty, nothing matters and still, bugs a bit too much.

I've played one too many games with these exact same mechanics but this one is by far the worst. Some levels are absolutely impossible to pass without trying 100 times so you get the right blocks or by using resources which one or two "events" aside you can only get by spending money. Which brings me to to the gacha system which exists for what exactly? It's not giving me anything useful. And the decorations it gives so you can make your scenario pretty like CRK aren't that appealing and that ones that do something useful are absolutely impossible to get and have limited uses like, what?