Not Treasure Hunter
released on Dec 20, 1996
A visual novel with action elements that features heavily branching paths and fifty endings. Boasts the full adventure experience in five minutes or less. Notably features the voice talents of Mobile Suit Gundam's Shuichi Ikeda.
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Somewhat of a "choose your own adventure" kind of thing. It claims to have fifty endings but most of those just end with Not Treasure Hunter getting unceremoniously killed. This game isn't translated to my knowledge, so I suppose I can't really comment on the dialogue, but I had a general idea of what was going on in each real ending I got. Despite the title suggesting otherwise, Not Treasure Hunter is in fact a treasure hunter of some sort and he finds things and meets people and gets double crossed and so on and so forth. Nothing you haven't heard before, really. Very reminiscent of Indiana Jones or James Bond or something, which will both undoubtedly provide a lot more entertainment.
It's pretty awful as a whole, honestly. It looks more like a 3DO game than even the standard set in early PS1 era. The background music is too loud and often doesn't fit the mood in any capacity. Moving around is a hassle too, somehow. It's similar to Resident Evil with the tank controls and fixed camera angles, but a lot more poorly thought out and uncomfortable. On the other hand, combat is so simple that it's pretty much completely pointless. Both are pointless, actually. For what is described as a visual novel I think I'd rather just watch my character do these things than lug him around with bad controls.
Finding actual branching paths is rather obtuse as well, like at the beginning for example you have to wait around for a lizard man to spawn and whether or not you kill or run past it will determine where you end up next. There are hardly any helpful videos online that I could find, so I spent a lot of time with trial and error of this sort. After finding about three or four endings I figured I was wasting my time.
Gets an extra half star because the running animation and overall poor quality is funny as fuck. This is Acti-Art Corporation's only game. Wonder why.
It's pretty awful as a whole, honestly. It looks more like a 3DO game than even the standard set in early PS1 era. The background music is too loud and often doesn't fit the mood in any capacity. Moving around is a hassle too, somehow. It's similar to Resident Evil with the tank controls and fixed camera angles, but a lot more poorly thought out and uncomfortable. On the other hand, combat is so simple that it's pretty much completely pointless. Both are pointless, actually. For what is described as a visual novel I think I'd rather just watch my character do these things than lug him around with bad controls.
Finding actual branching paths is rather obtuse as well, like at the beginning for example you have to wait around for a lizard man to spawn and whether or not you kill or run past it will determine where you end up next. There are hardly any helpful videos online that I could find, so I spent a lot of time with trial and error of this sort. After finding about three or four endings I figured I was wasting my time.
Gets an extra half star because the running animation and overall poor quality is funny as fuck. This is Acti-Art Corporation's only game. Wonder why.