I tired to like The Silver but couldn't. I did not like Silver Case. So I wanna start off by saying I pre-ordered the Switch version. I was genuinely looking forward to trying it out. And I wanted to play some Suda51 games before No More Heroes 3 came out cause I'm hyped. But yeah...ended up kinda disappointed instead.

You know I originally wanted to go through this trilogy. But in all honesty. I cared so little for Silver Case that it pretty much wiped any interest I had in playing Flower, Sun and Rain and the 25th Ward.

I felt Silver Case started interestingly enough but the more it continued the more confused I started to get. And the more confused I started get the less engaged I was getting with the plot. And I also realized part way through that I wasn't caring all that much for cast of characters either. This game talks about solving riddles and such. Well this whole piece of writing is a riddle. I just felt like the more played and read the more it become unintelligible word vomit. And it reminded me of when I was in high school, forced to read a book and there would times where I'll read an entire page and had no idea what happened on that page. I just did not like it's way of writing at all. I also found parts of the dungeon crawling aspect pretty tedious. Like going to room 402 repeatedly in case 2. Or having to check every floor in case 5. Overall I had hard enjoying The Silver Case. I really wanted to. The aesthetic is really cool. The soundtrack is moody and atmospheric. I'll give it points for that. But the in the end I just felt both frustrated and confused. I don't mind a story being complicated. I enjoy stuff like 13 Sentinels and Xenogears after all. Heck I'd say there parts of those stories where I didn't fully understand or found it confusing. But there were still other aspects of them that I liked, that I look can look past that and enjoy them regardless. I just don't feel the same about The Silver Case. As much as I would want to like it. It just didn't do anything for me. And that kinda does bum me out. Perhaps I'm just too stupid to understand The Silver Case I can accept that. No, I wouldn't consider it "bad" but it's definitely not for me at all.

I'll probably still play 25th Ward at the very least since it was bundled on Switch but needless to say I'm not looking forward to it and when I do play it, it probably will only be after playing No More Heroes 3.

Fun read, was so engrossed I read it all in a day,

The actual END of the VN is pretty ass but everything before that is really fun,

Centers around Sakura but Rin fans got enjoyment out of it too (thank god she isn't inactive or has just minor amount of usefulness my god), rape was a bit goofy infact so were the h-scenes........at least I got a laugh out of them

Good

So bad its genre defining

The game is fundamentally broken, hitboxes are janky, none of the places are designed with a proper thought, adp is suddenly a fucking stat because why the fuck not, parries are worse idk how they fucked that up, all the bosses (most of which are like knight + sword or XYZ + sword) with either cheap movesets with bad i-frames or just bad design

Game is also genuinely ugly and I don't know why it departed from it's original intention of being dark which would genuinely fix it's washed out textures that make my blood boil

No compliments, not just a bad souls game, a bad game

Also I will never not find it funny that Drangleic Castle has a fucking poison room bro why in the fuck is that there? For the queen? Stupid

I liked some of the OSTs though

Replaying Subarashiki Hibi isn't just affirming my initial impressions from reading it one word per week(I was homeschooled), it's blowing them out of the water.

The attention to detail is absolutely insane, from the beautiful animation to the expressions and mannerisms of the characters themselves.

The characterization is phenomenal, in any slice of life VN, the characters are incredibly important, and the way these characters are written, portrayed, expressed, developed, and interact with one another is second to none.

In a slice of life like Subahibi, it's really easy to miss good writing, but the way the characters develop along with Takuji, and the execution in crucial moments is so powerful at times I felt myself tearing up.

In particular the gay blowjob scene where Takuji is forced to wear a skirt really stands out, the combination of talent and passion from this artist is unreal. If you check scaji's twitter it's nothing but futanari fanart and gifs of the animation process. Subahibi has some of the most beautiful CGs I've ever scene.(Image attached)

This is all complemented by the production, the use of lighting, camera angles, contrast, brightness. The way that the story is shown itself takes already amazing scenes to the next level, highlighting crucial scenes, making them even more impactful and breathtaking.

Show, don't tell. Subahibi is a lot more than just a coming of age gay porn story, it's a VN meant to show the viewer just how beautiful peeing in public really is, just how bright and meaningful such little things really can be.

The staff really poured their heart and soul into the bestiality and child porn and it glows with their passion, there's not even a single criticism that I can come up with.

11/10

The worst game from the franchise

At release it had a keyboard input issue and the optimization for the game was so outstandingly bad but I remember feeling like the absolute most baddest person playing this during my IGCSE, anyways,

I'll go off on the negatives:

-Only the first class trial is genuinely good, which was also partly in the demo (a demo which probably raised my expectations more than it should have), if you base it off of emotive quality I can give you the benefit of the doubt but every single mystery was so predictable, what a disappointment

-The ending is the worst thing ever made, it's genuinely bad, I know people are like it's polarizing and "divides the fanbase" but I don't get how this even has supporters, as if we did not play the same game

Let me explain to you something I didn't like about the overarching plot in SDR2, the leaps of pseudoscience where they are in a fucking VR and monokuma can source specific character data and like craft scenarios like a goddamn arcade machine with a mini game Twilight Syndrome Murder Mystery, like it's actually absurd how "it's possible they just develop the technology in the future" is used as the worst patch up job ever to justify some of these........

I usually only ever excuse it because it wasn't that offensive there and I take most of danganronpa as high camp or goofy on purpose (which it REALLY is)

But V3? Oh the engineers developed a completely realistic visual where earth is charred ......... oh we can just straight up give you an ultimate (that's like actually real like Miu is straight up a genius who ends up being the reason why they manage to escape after she edits the shit out of Kubo)........ here's a fleshlight that restores fragments of memory like BRUH THIS IS A NON-EXPLANATION at this point

That's not the part that upsets me the most, the part that upsets me is that the game has a genuine disease called "Cospox" which the Ultimate Cosplayer has where she can't cosplay as other people (much like the Ultimate Imposter could)........ are you fucking kidding me V3? And this is accepted AS EVIDENCE IN THE FIRST TRIAL? AND THIS REMAINS TRUE FOR THE ENTIRE GAME EVEN WHEN ITS REVISITED AT THE END? like this is the VILLAIN, who's literal
"twist" schtick was that she didn't follow the damn rules of the killing game and willfully fucked with the game and eliminated one of the participants

When I was reading it I was like yo this is embarrassing,

-Ouma and Kaito try to catch Monokuma up on a technicality with their switcheroo and they manage to do this after they incapacitate the monokuma surveillance.... again Miu literally the only candidate who breaks the entire fucking game is the reason why they manage this thanks to her fucking Electrobomb I just can't fucking go on Miu is such a nonsense character anyways this should have been entirely irrelevant because in this dumb sci-fi reality it should have been easy to tell who's in the fucking Exisal thanks to idk heatvision or something? Like this fucking game allows you to straight up give people Ultimates and has like an entire engineering team behind it what the fuck is even going on

-Retconning the Hopes Peak Academy arc by making it part of a fictional universe did irreparable damage to the franchise, DR3 had to be rushed out before DRV3 because V3 retcons everything before it as fiction, a lot of people complain about DR3's painful execution or lack thereof but I wholly blame the existence of V3, in service of the worst twist ever made they had to RUSH DR3 and conclude the Hopes Peak Academy arc in its entirety, IT'S ALL because of V3

-Garbage characters

-Class Trial #3 is always camp and pretty easy to guess, here it was just bad

-Ouma is overrated I did not like him as much as you guys did that's for sure

The good:

-OST as usual

-Executions are literally actually brutal this time around and I dig that

That about wraps it up, this is not peak fiction or like the goat, one of the worst games ever made it, "it was all a dream!!!" tier ending, straight up bad.

Soukou Akki Muramasa, an utter mess

What carries this visual novel on it's shoulders and paints the broader strokes for the themes it explores is definitely the Law of Balance, this is singlehandedly the most interesting thing in the visual novel, giving the main character a handicap that robs him of the ability to become an actual "hero",
Someone called it the "anti-hero's journey" and I think that's pretty much the summary of it, extremely simple and yet effective concept,

To make a long story short, this VN is exhausting to read, sometimes you're starting to have some sort of fun only to have that moment be cutshort by an infodump, I tried my best to read as much of these infodumps as I could but this shit just drags on, "self-indulgent" doesn't even begin to describe the content of this game, I've never read a Visual Novel that was able to make such little use of it's existence AS a Visual Novel,
The premise is interesting, but the writer's active job is to find a way to bore you,

The banter sucks ass, Otori and Ichijou have the worst dynamic despite how they're written to compliment each other, the comedy is offputting for the most part, occasionally they're able to squeeze in some funny moments like a 4th wall break with chachamaru in chapter 3 or a meta Nitro+ universe cameo dream sequence, but I can count all of these on one hand

Most of the comedy is absolutely forced, Otori's entire persona is held back because they've written her as this indifferent cool chick who makes wisecracks but everytime "Ara....." or "Darling" escapes her lips I wanted to strangle her, every serious conversation has to STOP for Otori and Sayo to make some sort of funny remark before resuming,

Similarly they almost executed Chachamaru well with a similar personality but without all the utter obnoxiousness of Otori, but then proceeded to make her a cocksucking bootlicker clingy needy person in the main route, utterly baffling how easy it was to not fuck it up

The main reason characters like Otori are also held back is because their routes are riddled with absolute garbage level interactive segments,

The entire airship segment, the choices between fights, literally doing MATH for the final fight, going to 50 different people and asking your purpose

These segments do NO favors to the VN,

Extras:
-The very end where the MC is trying to save Muramasa and no one is helping him while flashbacks of all his kills play in the back of his head was cool, Sorimachi entirely saved that ending segment because right after fighting the final boss you're subjected to le epic bridge building truce arc FT. maid outfit fellatio which made me want to burn my eyes

-Ichijou's route is probably the most consistently enjoyable for me, it has it's downsides ofcourse, Ichijou almost represents the idealistic POV when it comes to Justice, almost shounen protag tier view of it, even the way she sacrifices her body for the Justice she wants to dish out is very reminiscent of shounen protags,
Although you can easily tell the author uses her viewpoint as a punching bag and inserts this horrible random ass part where the monk's "apprentice" materializes out of nowhere and feeds ichijou her nephew's fingers, the grand point being that no matter what Ichijou does the result will never be black and white,

Which I think is an utterly stupid way of communicating that, I got what the author intended, but it was delivered in the most unimpressive way possible, but I respect the fact that she stills sticks to her ways till the end and her post credit scene is the strongest (minus the true route I guess)

-The true route is good, until the MC is infused with Ginseigo's egg that is, the entire part where Ginseigo is Hikaru's dream was amazing (although the part where he couldn't kill her sister was irritating to read, it made sense context wise but it was still frustrating to watch him contemplate it after the pile of corpses he was shouldering throughout the VN, which is something the VN acknowledges ofcourse)

I say the Ginseigo egg thing was bad is because they truly do nothing with it, there's a standoff where Chachamaru, MC and Raichou go to kill the prince but then midway they are interrupted when GHQ starts waging war on Yamato,

You get to see Muramasa act like an utter bumbling fool only to make her way back to the castle for a teary-eyed reunion with her master, this segment for me held so little purpose it was baffling, I enjoy the Rokuhara big 4 reacting to the MC but the entire stupid schpiel about Shishuku seeing the MC as his brother and the stupid castle robbery segment was just tasteless buffoonery, and instead of making the MC a slave to Chachamaru's will (which frankly speaking would have been far more interesting and would make Muramasa saving him far more important) they decide to flip the script and turn Chachamaru into this............needy cockslave?

The only good thing that comes out of the Ginseigo egg arc is when Muramasa comes face to face with Yuhi's friend who had his eyes cut off, this was the only highlight, the rest can fucking go

-The entire god thing was stupid, it wasn't pulled out of thin air and from the entire forged bomb segment to the Prefect dying and meeting god or whatever, the god bit was already set up, but by the end of the VN it felt like an added unnecessary mess, the God segment is only saved by the part where you oscillate between the Past and the Future and you get to see stuff like Ichijou in the future with the Moon shattered,

The big golden tree shooting a laser then turning into the Prefect, as in god turning into giant man with giant sword just so the author can once again have an excuse to write a sword segment was painful to sit through

The god thing was also stupid because you have to tolerate Captain Wolf who EMBODIES the problem with Muramasa's "comedy"

-The vertical text didn't bother me, the denseness of the writing did, I was completely indifferent to it,
It's a different change of pace I guess

-I didn't like the MC being Hikaru's dad, again it's not like this was an asspull, they have a literal choice in Chapter 4 that reads "She is my daughter", but I felt like this was just a stupid thing to put in this VN

-The VN acknowledges this, but the Shogun's assassination is setup way too conveniently, not that I mind that bit anyway since Ginseigo just does her stupid mass genocide thing,

-Rape was annoying, not well written and put where it had no business of being put, the monk would have been my favorite character had they not squeezed the rape in, was the cup and mask made out of the remains of the child's family not sinister enough?

-Muramasa's past was......a thing.........? I guess I'm glad they touched on it but if I'm being perfectly honest it was a precursor to her bumbling idiot big tit black woman running across war ridden country arc, also I guess it brought MC and her closer so I can't really complain

-Finally the one thing that truly held this VN back was the OSTs, after hearing the same battle theme for 543903498504 hours I can easily say this aspect truly held it back, a lot of the scenes felt like they lacked flavor just because they kept reused the same 4 themes, they really shot themselves in the foot there
All in all? Miserable, tiring read, a lot of missed potential, self indulgent writing, painful execution of some parts,

There's something in this VN that makes you feel like you're reading something that has the potential to be the best thing you've ever read, only to miss the mark completely and taffypull the potential of things that don't even intrigue the reader,

This VN upset me to my core, it didn't feel like a waste of time but at the same time it didn't feel like it justified it's own length at all, I have never felt like a read could possibly fall directly in the middle of being "good" or "bad", and yet here we are,

Quite ironic, it's balanced just like it's core themes, neither impressively good nor gut wrenchingly bad,

Mid as hell

Danganronpa now occupies probably one of the worst reputations by the sheer existence of its fanbase, but that has more or less fizzled out after V3 and probably might see a resurgence from a future title (i say this despite the noise people made when danganronpa S dropped.......anyways)

This is one of the best mystery VNs I've read, period, but I'll have to address the flaws right away

-Has the most boring Ultimates I have ever seen it feels like the creativity department wiped their hands and called it a day, "Ultimate Breeder", "Ultimate Princess", "Ultimate Classic Dancer" this is all nonsense rubbish

-All the characters you could genuinely not care about.......survive LOL, well technically if you see DR3 anime as canon they are all kind of alive minus one person

-Some mysteries straight up have plotholes but you don't really notice because the momentum and the pace are really tight

-Overall mystery of how they end up in the killing game is as bad as ever

-You can tell Kodaka regrets the fact he killed Junko because he can't make a single title where she isn't there in form or another (I'll touch on this in my V3 review)

Now the good:

-OST killer, so fucking good

-Has some of the best class trials in the entire franchise, especially class trial #4 god that one they really decently thought about

-Actually funny at times (V3 was so fucking beyond unfunny)

-Twilight Syndrome is such a cool thing to put in a class trial and to show off the mystery in such a way, it's baffling how poorly they handled it in the DR3 anime adaption when this is probably the best iteration of how the story went down

Anyways besides the literal cringefest that hope vs despair at the end always is this game is solid, the pace is good the mystery is top tier and it's probably a shining example of what the medium can achieve if it's focused

I have to explain something very fundamental about this game, anything that pertains to the story is bad, comically bad, Genshin's likability outside of its combat and environments comes from its characters but some of them are just lifted from anime archetypes, archetypes I very much hate

Characters like Ayaka are genuinely just generic cookie-cutter waifubait for losers, her brother Ayato is somehow very influential in the political landscape but does not make him at all interesting or alluring of a character despite how committed his fans may be,

You pull up Xiao’s trailer and it’s just some dumb shounen emo MC bullshit, everything I dislike about the game is in its insistence to cater to the most rancid, acrid, putrid smelliest part of its fanbase,
Don’t even get me started on whatever they were doing with Shenhe

These however are a blip on the radar as there are plenty of endearing personalities in the game like Mona, Fischl, Keqing etc (this etc is doing overtime in this sentence because there’s like 70 billion characters).
The gacha factor that fuels enough revenue for each monthly update both ensures and bankrupts the game’s quality, Genshin genuinely markets one of the best trailers I’ve seen, with one of the best OST I’ve ever come across, I’ve listened to them till my ears have bled, with each update Genshin just does something that makes me come back and want to stick with it. It’s always experimenting, oh you hate climbing? Here’s electric totems in Inazuma you can zoom across in the air. Oh, that was a bit janky to use? Well in Sumeru we’ve made these golden symbols in the air that you can “grapple hook” onto so you can traverse the landscape much faster. It acknowledges it’s flaws and constantly reduces tedium and increases enjoyment, and having fixed updates month-wise really helps it increase its quality and potential,

But on the flip-side Genshin always wants to rush things, it can’t hold onto an interesting story beat for more than a hot minute, it’s too busy making flashy cutscenes it can showcase on YouTube, bigger shinier bosses that are cool to look at horrendous to fight just so it can be cooler to market it, and it does work, every single day I watch the Genshin Global group post a damn “Genshin Anime Opening!!!” with all of the most anime-tier shounen MC scenes the game loves pushing out, the audience it panders to really does reciprocate in full, especially the harem loving audience.
The combat is excellent and that’s all I have to say for it, it’s simple it’s responsive and plenty of room for experimentation all the time and the new Dendro element they’ve included really shows how they completely understand how their system functions and the most fun that can be extracted out of it.

All in all, with a bad story, good lore, good combat, hit or miss puzzles, ambitious environments as well as some insufferable ones, Genshin persists, and on the occasion it can truly blow your mind (like the Chinese Opera), or completely fail to meet any expectations whatsoever.

This rating is for Kokoro's route, which is by far one of the best routes I have ever read, perfect balance of intrigue and quite literally it's better to call it "Cliffhanger-The Route", I was on the edge of my seat quickly running through every single dialogue because it just doesn't stop, you're telling me a body switching scenario but it's between two people stuck in two completely different situations where one of them is being chased by an unknown serial killer while another of them is awaiting their death in a snow cabin? And that's a massive generalization, there's so many layers of mystery that I got completely lost in it

Nakazawa and Uchikoshi always do this particular thing where they patronizingly explain their pseudoscience and take away the charm of their own story and R11's tail end suffers from this, the explanation is bad, and if you took a respectable physics lecture you'd even take offense to the levels of reaching that the writers can achieve, but more offense I took is towards the explanation that is supposedly "canon" but never made it into the game,

Yup you've heard that right, this enigma of a game doesn't have a "true route" that explains everything, I don't know the fine details of the issue with development, but we have a title that really ends with perhaps one of the most shocking cliffhangers I've ever seen.

R11 does not exist without flaws, sometimes the twists are twisting for the sake of it, but sometimes the game fakes you out with a twist so dumb that it makes you really sit and think how good the author got you (I'm looking at you...the MAO inhibitor cheese explanation)

All in all from what I know about the actual explanation, I REALLY do not like it, it's bad and I need Nakazawa and Uchikoshi to stop basing their games on some off-hand random science trivia fact they find in some magazine, and I need them to stop explaining to me more than they need to because I know for a fact there's no scientific basis for their cooky sci-fi mystery VN

With one of the best first routes I've played, a solid title
I'm willing to ignore everything else even though it contributes to my obsession with this title. Also I like the OST sue me.

YUNO holds a special place in my heart and enjoys a comical spot on my dusty Visual Novel shelf especially thanks to one of the funniest adaptions I have come across

One thing you need to understand is YUNO has probably one of the most solid OSTs you'll ever hear, just oozes quality and really made me pick it up. Secondly the game is GORGEOUS, PC-98 games have that retro charm that just...... god I can gush at it for hours.

The story is actually one of the most ambitious I've seen in a sci-fi title, but the tail-end of the VN is just bloated, you're hit with far too many explanation segments, and characters make re-appearences where it doesn't really make much sense, with an ending that's just......there? The game has just embarrassing sexual bits (the incest...lord, so much incest), but then it's just straight up goofy (MC takes care of a dragon that grows up into a big-boobed dragon-girl thing that later helps him and another chick escape confinement and then dies from exhaustion, so they EAT HER? WHAT?)

It's an old title and you'd be surprised to find that once you get the time device at the start the game has a pretty damn decent pace and actually has a very interesting story, ESPECIALLY for its time.

Play it and then enjoy laughing at the adaption, brings me personal joy.

This was the first VN I ever read. EVER. And I really do think it's a good entry title for people because it has a digestible ambitious story, with good enough character banter and intrigue factor that keeps you motivated to find out the truth about all the mystery.

The OST is not remarkable at all, people mention Karma but...... it's not up there, I'll say the OP is one of my favorites take that as you will

The dumbass hologram did not need an entire route. For the love of god. Why.

Okay before I move onto my issue with the story I'll make a general statement so you can click of this review and go play it or whatever,

Ever17's story only works and operates at a level of convenience that is far too absurd. It genuinely baffles me how SPECIFIC it is, people could argue that the story's structure itself INSISTS that it must happen this way, but I really think the game is wild for just the weirdest convenient nonsense just to confuse players.

Alright now to the spoiler category:
-The game's fundamental plot twist is that both sides of story happen in different time periods of Lemmuria, the job of the game is to confuse you so you think it's all happening in the same time just different variations, so it does this twist using 3 characters:
1) A CLONE child of one of the characters in the previous time period (okay?)
2) A hologram (.......okay)
3) A literal immortal unageing person (are you serious)

THE LITERAL reason these 3 things exist is just to mask the fact that the game occurs in 2 separate time periods (iirc 17 years apart), WHY, WHY DOES THE GAME INSIST SO HARD ON THIS TWIST

I truly don't remember the next part so if anyone can enlighten me please go ahead:
We never truly find out why the original event at Lemmuria occurs, and if it occurs why isn't there a call to action to save them from the outside, why (for a facility with a damn high functioning hologram that fucking deserves a whole route) does it not have accessible means to contact the outside, this ALWAYS irked me

The point of the game is to get You(the character in 2017) to somehow recreate the exact event in (2034) which is done via Blick Winkel (I can't fucking believe I remember so damn much form this game), and lord only knows how in the actual hell Blick Winkel convince You(2017) so WELL that she just does it, also Takeshi in (2034) has red hair, WHY. THIS IS SO SPECIFIC. WHY. WHY ON EARTH. CAN SOMEONE EXPLAIN THIS? I don't get it it should be blue....anyways.

The game implies Takeshi and Tsugumi procreated in the fucking gondola

Why the fuck did they procreate in the fucking gondola, the damn sexually potent gondola are you fucking for real (trust me I genuinely enjoy Tsugumi's immortality status but it's in-service of a twist and not like a cool thing she just has which is pretty awful)

All in all? I grew up with this game, it's my first title, the first thing I was elitist about, tearing it down really doesn't bring me joy, because it has it's charm, you go into Lemmuria and you remember the experience, you remember going on youtube and seeing those weird 3D sprites and having a physical reaction, you remember searching images for it on google and finding weird promotional art, you remember the dumb Tsugumi washing machine jokes (that's apparently the only thing it's largely known for in it's longevity of an existence), the game is plot hole ridden, and it's not fun plot hole ridden, it's just a weird little hobbit (I don't know what i mean by this)