PARANORMASIGHT is a mystery VN with great visual aesthetics and underwhelming story.

I love the edited photos as background imagery, the character sprites look fairly unique and are expressive enough. The menus also look great. My only complaint about the visuals is that chromatic aberration is a bit annoying and there's no way to disable it. The music is fitting though repetition got to me a bit by the end.

That being said, the presentation is probably the weakest part of the game when the writing is concerned - most of the playtime will be spent reading character's accounts on the information you are already aware of, or on the cool stuff they apparently did offscreen.

The story doesn't really have a hook or an overarching theme that would give the player a reason to care about what's going on. I have seen every ending in the game, and I still can't tell you what the story is supposed to be about. The game tells you that it's about the different perspective on resurrection, but it doesn't really explore the concept, it just uses it as a prop. Stuff just happens until the story is over. Every mystery VN has at least one Epic Twist that's supposed to recontextualize what's happened before then, and in PARANORMASIGHT you guess this twist immediately if you've played games like this before, and then the ~10 hours between the start and the end are filled with faffing about doing things that don't really tie together into a cohesive narrative.

Random meta gimmicks would've been cool, if they weren't already overdone by dozens other games that do a better job of tying them into the narrative. The game has nominally non-linear structure, but the progression through the game's story is almost entirely devoid of actual choice on the player's part: the flowchart is full of arbitrary roadblocks that force the player down the single available path.

The characters personalities are fairly weak and I don't think I could recognize most of their lines without seeing their names/sprites. Their motivations are often contrived and the game even draws its attention to it, only to handwave it with a "women be shopping" kind of remark.

The bottom line is that this VN doesn't do anything better than the other VNs with a similar focus already have done.
I recommend PARANORMASIGHT only to people who are really desperate for another fix of a story similar to Zero Escape or AI: Somnium Files.

The best way I can describe Class of '09 is that it's a South Park episode in a VN form.
It doesn't really have anything interesting to say, the setting is greatly hyperbolized to the point of absurdity (if this really is accurate to american highschool experience then Jesus Christ, America is even more cooked than I've realized), and progression between some scenes makes absolutely no sense, but it's decently funny (even if the jokes are one-note and get old pretty fast) and short enough to not outstay its welcome too much.

Also, Nicole's VA must move on to the bigger leagues, she did an amazing job at voicing the character exactly how the obnoxious selfish teenager would talk, from the first voiced line you hear you immediately know who you're dealing with.

I recommend this VN to anyone who enjoys crass cynical humor of the shows like South Park.

A surprisingly well developed universe brimming with intresting lore set in an incredibly grounded setting featuring political strife, interplanetary wars, corporativism and a techno-magical ether/lifeforce known as Lumen. I would totally watch an original series set in the world of Opus. It's fantastical.

It's also bogged down by one of the most aggressively mediocre stories I've ever seen in a videogame. Borderline one dimensional characters who are basically walking anime stereotypes with zero personal growth aside from the final hour and a trope-filled narrative with minimal development.

If you've seen the first scene where the cast is introduced: congratulations, you've already seen it all. The honorable male protagonist with a savior complex and a tendency to apologize for everything he does, the female idealistic pariah with a heart of gold (who's obviously also the MC's platonic love interest) and her sidekick slash adopted protegé - a kid with a troubled past who literally spends the entire playthrough cussing and belittling the protagonist on every dialogue interaction they have. It's as grating as dragging your face through a mile of broken glass. Their motives stay the same throughout the entire game - and you'll be reminded of them quite a few times. Basically all the time.

Hilariously enough, the only character with any semblance of a well written story was the bandit leader known as Bones, who initially shows up as an antagonist and after being unexpectedly saved by the protagonist, gradually comes to term with his own life choices while serving time in prison.

As if the story wasn't bad enough, the gameplay revolves around an absolutely terrible system of RNG encounters, dice rolls and an abysmal resource management mechanic. Your reward for guessing the right outcomes is getting enough money to buy fuel and resources to continue your journey. Your penalty for being unlucky is having to do even more dice rolls... so you can continue doing the aforementioned dice rolls. Exhilarating.

Exploration gameplay gets the job done, you basically walk from point A to point B, but for a game that prides itself so much about its relationship with music, the "puzzles" (if one could even call those sequences as such) are extremely uninteresting and repetitive.

It's a 10h game that would've been infinitely better had it been just an average 3h visual novel. There's some good story there and touching moments ruined by everything else in between.

I only stuck through its entirety because of the raving reviews - after I realized it wasn't getting any better than that, I was already too far so might as well power through the rest - sunken time fallacy and all that. Maybe it's good enough for people who are used to generic, cheesy emotional anime narratives, but for everyone else, there's better games to invest your precious time into.

Pretty fun for a fanfic sequel to the bible!

Not having any real world language is definitely a plus for a language puzzle game, and made me feel like a more active participant than Heaven's Vault. The multiple languages were also a big plus; the best puzzles are definitely when you have to translate from one to another, and thus need to remember each language's syntax, and ways of describing the same thing.

But also, the game undermines itself by pulling its punches. Vocab is validated too often, and the picture clues are too obvious. Often times I was able to guess just because I had so few available words. And there were several instances where the real definitions were wildly different from my placeholder definitions. Hard not to compare it unfavorably to the much stricter way Obra Dinn handled the issue. All that is ultimately forgivable, but I won't forgive the stealth sections. Totally unnecessary and extremely boring!

I'd like to see more emphasis on language features. One of the best moments I had was realizing that drawing a box around a noun meant a place that holds that thing, e.g. "dead" with a box around it means "cemetery". I ended up noticing a lot of great touches like that, but never needed to again.

Still, a great weekend game

If this game were just 8 hours of figuring out made-up languages and using those languages to solve dope language-based puzzled this would be a 5/5. But alas, it is not just that. It also has some meh puzzles, weird stealth sequences, and constant running around and back-tracking.

Aside from some of those negative quirks, this really is one of the most unique puzzle games I've ever played. The process of mastering these fictitious languages is so immensely satisfying. It scratches a similar itch for me that games like Obra Dinn and The Witness scratch. Such a rad concept for a game with a really lovely story and beautiful visual design.

+ Unique, extremely cool, and incredibly satisfying mechanic for a puzzle game
+ Scratched a good mental itch that not many puzzle games do
+ Cool story
+ Beautiful world design

- Some iffy puzzles that distract from the cool language learning
- Way way way too much running around and back-tracking
- Really needs some sort of map

Xenogears is a very ambitious game and it’s clear that Tetsuya Takahashi was aiming highly with his vision. Even 25 years later, Xenogears still have more nuanced story writing than most games that came after it. It’s a game filled with interesting and complex ideas that combine Analytical psychology, religious symbolism, and scientific theories wrapped in a war-torn science fiction, mecha-filled setting spanning across centuries. As ambitious as Xenogears is, there is quite a lot of stumbling as the game approached the finish line with questionable game design, plot inconsistencies, irrelevant characters, and a very patchworked disc 2. Despite the many issues Xenogears obtains, it still entertains its promising concept from start to finish and does what it can to share a fraction of the overall scope of Xenogears.

Gameplay-wise, Xenogears is very resemblance to the golden days of the PS1 RPG. Random encounters, action time-based combat, a world map to explore and discover towns, dungeons, and hidden places, etc. all with little to no clear guidance on where to go next to progress the story. However, that’s more of a testament to what was considered standard PS1 RPG design than an element specific to Xenogears. What set apart Xenogears from other Square games such as classic Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger is the Deathblow system. Rather than having a basic attack command, there are three button inputs, square for a light attack, triangle for a heavy attack, and X for a fatal attack. Different combinations can create a Deathblow combo for more damage. In addition, there are ether attacks and abilities (or character-specific alternatives such as chi or arcane) that function similarly to the game’s magic system and the possibility to perform several Deathblows in one turn, known as “combos”, granted if the player has built enough action points (AP) to perform them.

Another major factor in Xenogears’ combat is mecha battles, which are known as Gears in the game. Considering Gears are an essential part of Xenogears’ story, there are several Gears battles to engage in. They share similarities to on-foot combat such as using regular and ether attacks. However, each attack requires fuel to perform and a certain attack level is required to perform Deathblows. The player can also engage in boosting, which will increase the characters’ speed in exchange for more fuel usage. In addition to “special options” that feature Gear-specific attacks or repairing damage granted the Gear has the correct part for the command.

Despite featuring both on-foot and Gear battles, there isn’t much to Xenogears’ battle system. In fact, besides unlocking more Deathblows and ether attacks, the player will see the full extent of its combat system within the ¼ mark of the game. Combat will eventually feel repetitive, especially with the high encounter rate in dungeons and in the world map. Not to mention, the party can only truly get stronger by grinding out battles for more EXP or obtaining better gears to increase stats such as attack and defense for both physical and ether attacks as well as agility to increase speed. However, considering its age and the period the game is from, it’s ultimately serviceable at least.

That said, one of the biggest flaws of the game is at times, the dungeon designs are atrocious and frustrating to deal with. I do not know whose idea it was to include platforming, but it’s some of the worst I’ve ever played in a game. In fact, platforming through Babel Tower was one of the most unenjoyable experiences I had in recent memory and I wanted to just give up on playing the game a few times, especially since it’s quite a time waster to redo certain areas of the dungeon and it have created so much stress and anxiety for me. Plus there are a few dungeons with confusing layouts that feel maze-like and very easy to get lost in without a map. On top of the high encounter rates….exploring dungeons is definitely one of the weakest areas for Xenogears.

Despite its gameplay, which is presented enough at least for the majority of the game, Xenogears biggest strength that often receives praise is the story. It’s a sprawling epic featuring protagonist Fei Fong Wong traveling across the Ignas content to discover the mysteries of the Aveh/Kislev war, the all-ruling Solaris nation, the floating country of Shevat, the religious deity of Ethos, and within himself alongside Elehayym Van Houten, Citan Uzuki, and others. Xenogears have a large scope between various countries, lore, and terminology covered across the game’s narrative and it’s especially impressive considering its age and its fellow contemporaries don’t even come close to the amount of detailed worldbuilding Xenogears contains. One aspect that I’ve particularly found impressive was the occasional updating of NPCs with different dialogue as the story progress. It’s not as text-heavy compared to say…the Trails series that would emerge a few years from now after Xenogears, but it was a pleasant surprise to see this feature in a PS1 game as it helps fleshes out the worldbuilding a tad bit more.

Xenogears starts off very promising with its scale, as the game quickly pushes the plot forward in a very dramatic execution that forces Fei to travel around begrudgingly. During his journey, the player sees Fei develops as a character and understands his role as a Gear pilot as he met key characters that would eventually join his party and understands the current state of each country. However, as the stakes increase all across the country, this means there is more ground to cover and focus for Xenogears. Meaning as the game progress, character motivations and purposes for half of the playable cast will be forgotten and plot points will be more inconsistent and rushed through quickly.

Xenogears serve very well for the protagonist, deuteragonist, and tritagonist. Which are respectively, Fei, Elly, and Citan. These three characters are introduced very early on in the story, within the first few hours, and remain a constant device to advance the narrative. Fei and Elly in particular are explored fully with their own psyche and how both of them play a critical role in the game’s themes of human existence and purpose throughout religious mythology, self-identity, and using technology to achieve the state of godhood and ascension. The two characters complement each other well beyond their surface relationship for each other, but also as the subtext of the role of Psychoanalysis and Metempsychosis. Citan also serves as a foil character to Fei with his calculated methodology approach and juxtaposition to Fei’s emotional and uncontrolled outbursts along with Citan’s own motivations.

While Fei, Elly, and Citan are overall excellent characters that embody the central message of Xenogears, unfortunately, I can not say the rest for the playable characters. It’s common for the PS1 era to let the player form their own three-person team and only the required characters have speaking lines during story moments while the rest are awkwardly silent as if they’re not there at all. However, I personally found that Xenogears mistreats a huge chunk of its characters even for PS1 standards. Besides, Fei, Elly, and Citan, Bart is the most important playable character and does have some significance throughout the game. However, Billy, Maria, and Rico all have a minor arc early in the game that is ultimately used just to spread insight into the game’s world, and beyond that, they have very few lines in the overall story, and if they were cut out from the game, hardly much of anything would be drastically changed. In fact, Chu Chu is merely nothing more than a cutesy mascot character and I’m sure Xenogears will almost be exactly the same game without her. Perhaps Emerlada is the most snubbed playable character. She is introduced right before the end of disc 2 and Emerlada is never a required character to use not once in the game. However, she has so much important lore behind her character that is easily missable and it’s only found at a hidden location right before the final dungeon of the game. It’s quite frustrating and even sad to see how the game eventually forgets about the importance of ⅔ of the playable cast.

Aurbably, a major reason why most of the cast become irreverent overtime is because of the dramatic change of story presentation in disc 2. disc 2, half of the time, is completely narrated by either Fei or Elly at a black void with one of the two sitting down in a chair with a backdrop of still images of them explaining what has occurred. In comparison to how the events of disc 1 unfold, disc 2 feels like a quick summary at times. From my understanding, some say budget cuts are the result of disc 2, while others have said Tetsuya Takahashi felt like he and his team could not fully complete Xenogears within 2 years and have to settle for a compromise. Either way, it’s very evident between the lack of dungeons, open map exploration, and detailed story writing, the development team at some point began to rush through Xenogears.

However, I personally believe not all of disc 2 is messy and incomplete. With how the story presentation is formatted, it serves well to gain and study an introspection of Fei’s psychology and mental state in a way that would be jarring and out of place to do during disc 1. Not to mention the heavy usage of backstory and flashbacks to conceive how much of Xenogears’ setting is built before the start of the game. Disc 2 is rather excellent to enforce the Psychoanalysis and Metempsychosis themes without disrupting the game’s pacing of the present state of events too much.

Xenogears, at a quick glance, is a sci-fi epic that has a lot to tell. Upon further inspection, however, there are some areas that are superior such as Fei and Elly being excellent character studies that enforce the core themes of the game. While other parts such as the rest of the cast slowly become forgotten and the rushed pacing of the plot near the end of the game, there’s still much to be desired as well on top of the awful dungeon design. Xenogears is very flawed but it uses its flaws the best it can to come to a conclusion no matter what, rather than leaving it incomplete, and it’s quite admiring that Tetsuya Takahashi does what he can to tell his vision. While it will be years from now until Takahashi can fully realize his ideas with the Xenoblade Chronicles series, Xenogears is the first example of the boundless potential Takahashi is capable of. As rough and unpolished as it is, there is a diamond underneath the psyche of Xenogears.

So many reviews have been written of this game, expressed more effectively than I'm able to, so rather than even try to put my thoughts together in a coherent review I'm just going to put a TL;DR at the top and vomit out random thoughts underneath (much like how this game approaches its storytelling... ooooooooh!)

TL;DR - I'm so conflicted about this game. 2.5 star reviews usually mean I'm lukewarm about the game, but in this case it's anything but. The game is so ambitious and large in its scale, with an inimitable soundtrack and sense of style that I can't bring myself to give it a negative review. But literally every aspect of its gameplay is a chore, the translation is clumsy, and its storytelling is needlessly clunky (more on this below) so I can't bring myself to give it a positive review. So 2.5 it is.

Random thoughts:
- First off. If this were an anime I'd give it 5 stars

- Enough has been written about how the camera angles and platforming make exploring a chore. But this game somehow managed to make talking to NPCs a chore too! The text scrolls uncomfortably slowly if you're a fast reader, and there is no option to change the scrolling speed. Then sometimes, NPCs will seem to finish talking (the text box even closes), but after 2 seconds they start talking again! This is usually just enough time for you to move on, see the dialog box reopen then close immediately because you walked offscreen, forcing you to go back and talk to the same guy again through like 5 windows of slowly-scrolling text.

- I was very enthused on the concept of deathblows and combos when I first started playing; there was a lot of potential to explore in that design space. I'd always felt that menu-based RPGs should give you multiple different 'free' moves (that don't use MP or items) rather than just one regular attack - for instance, one character could have a regular attack, a weaker multitarget attack, or a weak heal spell as 'free' options, which would give the player some strategic choice even if they were trying to conserve resources. The deathblow system could very much have been this! Unfortunately, the deathblows completely lacked depth as they were all single-target attacks of varying strength. The extremely fringe usefulness of combos meant that every deathblow but the most powerful one you currently had was irrelevant. In other words, rather than adding a layer of strategy to the game, the deathblow/combo system simply added tedium, turning "press X to win" into "press TTSX to win".

- I quite like the story - it's great stuff, even today. However, a pretty big caveat: if a story is going to have plenty of symbolism and require me to fill in missing gaps through inference, then two things are required. Firstly, the translation must be immaculate - not the case here. But secondly, I believe convoluted stories need to 'handhold' the viewer to some extent in terms of what is happening in the foreground of the story so that we can then make inferences about the background better. I don't think I described that very well, so here's an example of how the game didn't do it. At the beginning of the game, some giant robots land in the middle of your small village and start throwing down. A cutscene starts, you notice the cockpit of one of the robots is open, and you catch a glimpse of a mysterious figure inside. You then climb up into the mech, and... at this point I was expecting to get into a fight with the mysterious pilot, or have him jump out of the mech to escape, but nothing. I just started piloting the mech without any acknowledgement that there was anyone in the cockpit. Now the game eventually explains who the figure is (like 40 hours later) and then that scene makes sense... but I really wish they had just paid lip service to the fact that I'm not supposed to understand what happened yet. Just a throwaway line like "wasn't there someone in this mech? What happened to him?" Imagine that sort of writing but multiplied by many many times over the course of the game, and I spent 90% of the game in a perpetual state of wondering if I was actually supposed to understand what just happened and was just missing something obvious.

- Speaking of the story, its pacing had an infuriating habit of cutting away from the action that I cared about to focus on people I hadn't met yet spouting exposition I wasn't supposed to be able to understand yet. This was presumably to offer some 'bonus' for players who were going through the game a second time. There were two problems with this, however. Firstly, the scenes make for a very weak 'replay bonus' because they are completely irrelevant on your first playthrough. (Contrast this with say FFVII, where Cloud's narration of the past is relevant and interesting on first playthrough, then comes to take on an added layer when you view it through the lens of the second playthrough). But the other problem with scenes that only makes sense on second viewing is that unlike books by Diana Wynne Jones or movies by Christopher Nolan - both of which keep you confused for 90% of the way before finally offering payoff and incentivizing a second watch/read - Xenogears lasts 60 hours at a conservative estimate and much of its gameplay is a chore. I do like the story and wish I could catch more of the nuance of it, and I'm not averse to replaying games, but I don't think I'm going to come back to this.

- Despite most of my random thoughts above being rather negative, I did also like many aspects of it. It's probably dethroned Phantasy Star III from the top of my list of 'games that deserve a remake'. Its plot and ambition and multitude of interesting (but lacking in execution) gameplay ideas deserve a more polished game.

It's cute, but overall lacking. It falls for many of the same pitfalls that many English VN's and smaller games that try and approach philosophy normally fall into, and then adds a few more, but it covers the ideas with a nice layer of style.

It's clear that Slay the Princess wants to say... something. Whether that's about how we as people owe much of how we interact with the world to other people, or about change in general, or... other things, it's hard to say. But it wants to. How do I know? Because the game won't stop bringing it up.

The problem is that all it really does is... talk about it. The core premise of the game is there, of course, but all it largely serves to do is act as the introduction to the idea. And then the rest of the game is... just bringing it up over and over again. Metaphor after metaphor, paragraph after paragraph. The dialogue becomes college-level philosophy papers but in prose.

And beyond just how messy and imbalanced TELLING of the idea is, the end result is a game that lands on the same point that many other indie game/VN's land on; 'hey, did you know life has meaning?' and 'existence is cool, you should try it'. I wanna see one of these meta-games do something else besides existentialism for once.

I did like the voice acting, and I did enjoy the overall style of the game, but now after sitting on it, all I'm left with is, harsh to say, a bit of a nothingburger. It's a great-looking and great-sounding burger, but unfortunately, there's nothing there.

Opus Echo of Starsong is an emotional journey. It doesn't have the best narrative by far, but it focuses the storytelling on each character's growth and relationship. The gameplay is nothing special, and the puzzles are something an eight year old could do, the hard part is just finding the object to interact with.

The game is short (7-10hrs) and the good thing out of this, is that things rarely slows down for a long time, it can go from 1 to 100 in the span of a chapter or even half of it. The bad thing out of it is that the game is very lore heavy. There are so much lore surrounding the whole place that you need to process in the short span of the game.

Character developments also plays a huge part in this game, however only Eda was somewhat "stated" to grow by the end of the story (despite her actions proving otherwise so...). Whereas Jun is still the same person throughout, obsessing over "honor" and his "clan" from the beginning to the end, the only development he got is being infatuated with Eda as the story continues. Remi, as well stays the same for most of the story, she did soften up to Jun near the end and even becomes his close friend after a certain part, however their reconciliation just happens. She suddenly feels guilty towards Jun. It feels too fast, and it's just resolved after. Though, unlike Jun, I do like Remi and find her character tragic. Unfortunately, the character developments are not handled well.

The length also affects other character's relationship, as at times, things are developing too quick. Bones and Jun for example, although he did save Bone's life, he was the one that placed his life in danger in the first place, and somehow after writing him letters, they became close buddies? This is one of those they tried to explained as one of the "things" that just happens during the time skip (which happens a few times), so it feels out of nowhere.

The biggest emphasis of the problem are also on Jun and Eda's relationship (The biggest driving point of the game) which feels underdeveloped. You will get one or two major scene/s between them every chapter and the rest of it is mostly implications of their relationship developing, and the funny part is, a lot of it are actually from other characters, while other times it's merely little things like worrying about each other. Jun's feelings toward Eda however does come from a place of love, although not said explicitly, but he stated that meeting her is one of the best things that happened in his life. Though Eda does feel the same way, it is only implied, it is also apparent that she cares for Jun's wellbeing a lot. She tends to have a "tsun" attitude toward Jun whenever he's doing or saying something with romantic connotation, sometimes showing discomfort and even keeps dismissing his sincerity as "jokes" or not acknowledging it much, this never really change till the end, especially her choice at the end. It feels like they are trying to write a blooming love story while at the same time, trying their best not to make it apparent, and so the clear imbalance of what is said and implied makes it so that, in the short span of the game, not enough development between them is seen to be built. It's a very big reason why I think the game should've been longer. The ending between them didn't hit me as much as I thought it would.

MAJOR SPOILER WARNING
A good storytelling method for me, would be one that stood somewhere between "exposition" and "implication". If a story loves doing expositions, then I might as well be watching Dora the Explorer. If a story goes full implication, then nothing might as well happened. A narrative that does more implications (foreshadowing/underlying meaning) can be executed well if the payoffs are expositions (big twist/reveal), this game however pays off implications with more implications, which some may like, but not me personally. This brings me to the ending scene in which Eda planted the flowers for Jun. In this scene, it's supposed to be the culmination of their relationship throughout the game, however their relationship is still underdeveloped due to not much has been explicitly established, and so it doesn't really hit me as much as I thought it would. Eda planting the flower, could also be seen as a lot of things, I've seen a few took it as her "declaration of love" to Jun, although it might be, among other things, it just feels out of character for her. I see it more as her keeping her promise to him as well as atonement for leaving him and Remi behind. But again, it could really be any or all of these. They also seem to reunite in their young selves somehow? even though it's only explained that emotions and thoughts are the only thing that can travel through time, unless it is in the afterlife, it doesn't seem clear as it just cuts off which is why I'm disappointed as the culmination of their relationship growing being insinuated before this is even more insinuation. It's not a terrible sequence, but I am just more in awe than I am emotional.

Overall, It's still a journey, and though I've mostly mention the flaws, it's more coming from a place of wasted potential. The story is nothing grand and doesn't evolve beyond what it already is, but it'll still pull your heart strings regardless.