Sencha
2014
I love this for the same reasons I love Natsume Yuujinchou. It's comfy, it's slow, it's melancholic and achingly sad at parts and sweet in others. Ayakashi Gohan doesn't really jump out and grab you. It grows on you slowly, gently.
The art is gorgeous. The music makes me want to cry now after finishing the game. The game is fully voice acted, including fully voiced heroine. Rin is a wonderful heroine with actual character development in the human routes. She's a real character and not just a self-insert. The only minor issues I have is that some bits are really slow and/or kind of predictable/uninteresting and they really shove "eating together with everyone is happiness" in your face.
This game will always have a special space in my heart. If you think you would be remotely interested in this otome game, please give it a try.
Favourite routes: Asagi > Yomi > Uta > Haginosuke > Suou > Manatsu
The art is gorgeous. The music makes me want to cry now after finishing the game. The game is fully voice acted, including fully voiced heroine. Rin is a wonderful heroine with actual character development in the human routes. She's a real character and not just a self-insert. The only minor issues I have is that some bits are really slow and/or kind of predictable/uninteresting and they really shove "eating together with everyone is happiness" in your face.
This game will always have a special space in my heart. If you think you would be remotely interested in this otome game, please give it a try.
Favourite routes: Asagi > Yomi > Uta > Haginosuke > Suou > Manatsu
2018
Plays perfectly on native settings on Steam Deck.
The game is beautiful and the gameplay engaging enough as a simple Metroidvania-lite with a bit of puzzling on the side. What I had issues with was the story. The worldbuilding is fantastic but the way the narrative is pushed just didn't jive with me. I like the idea of it and see what the creator was getting at, but I just couldn't care about any of the characters (except Royal) and at some points felt like I was getting the narrative pushed down my throat with its stiff writing.
The game is beautiful and the gameplay engaging enough as a simple Metroidvania-lite with a bit of puzzling on the side. What I had issues with was the story. The worldbuilding is fantastic but the way the narrative is pushed just didn't jive with me. I like the idea of it and see what the creator was getting at, but I just couldn't care about any of the characters (except Royal) and at some points felt like I was getting the narrative pushed down my throat with its stiff writing.
A solid game with colorful design but it felt really janky. Backtracking was a pain with the map not being that great and teleporters never in convenient locations. Luckily it's a short enough game to get through.
2020
On paper, this would be a perfect game for me. Murder mystery x picross! Unfortunately, Murder by Numbers doesn't do either part particularly well. I personally found the story forgettable which may be due to literally pixel-hunting and solving many puzzles in between bits of story. While I do really like the character design and bright artwork, the story never managed to make me care. I found myself just skipping through the story as quick as possible to get to the next puzzle. The puzzles were also kind of meh. It's perfectly serviceable picross but if given the choice I think I'd rather just pick up a Jupiter picross game and all the polish that comes with it.
Murder by Numbers has charm and some theoretically good ideas but the execution left a lot to be desired in combining the parts of visual novel and picross together in an enjoyable way,
Murder by Numbers has charm and some theoretically good ideas but the execution left a lot to be desired in combining the parts of visual novel and picross together in an enjoyable way,
I still prefer the original trilogy over the Great Ace Attorney Chronicles but only by a fine margin. The Great Ace Attorney may not have reached the same heights of storytelling that the original trilogy did but it was certainly tighter written with most cases being of similar quality. Unlike the original trilogy which has cases of inconsistent quality and where some cases drag on way too long, the Great Ace Attorney Chronicles doesn't waste a word. This creates a sharply and intelligently written story that comes to a head in Resolve. I cannot imagine playing this duology as anything but at a single game or at least back to back.
As always, the cast is as distinctively and lovingly endearing as always and it is a breath of fresh air to get a whole new cast, a brilliant new setting and new mechanics while still calling back to what has always been core to the Ace Attorney series. I would love to see a return to Naruhodo Ryunosuke's adventure's at one point but even if that's not in the cards, the Great Ace Attorney Chronicles has set a new bar for future installments. This is the best the series has been since the original trilogy--you can argue this is the best the series has ever been period--and I can wholeheartedly recommend The Great Ace Attorney to anyone remotely interested in this beloved franchise.
As always, the cast is as distinctively and lovingly endearing as always and it is a breath of fresh air to get a whole new cast, a brilliant new setting and new mechanics while still calling back to what has always been core to the Ace Attorney series. I would love to see a return to Naruhodo Ryunosuke's adventure's at one point but even if that's not in the cards, the Great Ace Attorney Chronicles has set a new bar for future installments. This is the best the series has been since the original trilogy--you can argue this is the best the series has ever been period--and I can wholeheartedly recommend The Great Ace Attorney to anyone remotely interested in this beloved franchise.
I've tried to play this three times. The first time when it came out on the PSP and I dropped it about 2 hours in. The second time I got a bit further before again dropping it. Third time's the charm apparently.
The game starts so incredibly, almost excruciatingly, slow but once the game clicks it's such an enjoyable journey it's hard to put down. Trails in the Sky is the JRPG equivalent of an anime slice-of-life and coming of age story with all the strengths and pitfalls of a classic JRPG. The game is wordy. Almost too wordy but it helps bring the game to life when NPCs have different things to say after a big event, flesh out character personalities, and let the story unfold slowly. All the characters are endearing with distinct personalities and it is the characters that made me fall in love with the game. The JP voices are excellent and really help get you through the game and it's many many dialogue boxes. Download the JP voice mod, I can't imagine playing the game without it. The OST doesn't stick out all the time but there's a fair number of real good tracks to appreciate.
The game starts so incredibly, almost excruciatingly, slow but once the game clicks it's such an enjoyable journey it's hard to put down. Trails in the Sky is the JRPG equivalent of an anime slice-of-life and coming of age story with all the strengths and pitfalls of a classic JRPG. The game is wordy. Almost too wordy but it helps bring the game to life when NPCs have different things to say after a big event, flesh out character personalities, and let the story unfold slowly. All the characters are endearing with distinct personalities and it is the characters that made me fall in love with the game. The JP voices are excellent and really help get you through the game and it's many many dialogue boxes. Download the JP voice mod, I can't imagine playing the game without it. The OST doesn't stick out all the time but there's a fair number of real good tracks to appreciate.
The Girl Who Stands Behind builds on the first game and improves the game design with the incorporation of a "Think" command that often gives a hint in what to do first. In general, TGWSB seemed less obtuse than The Missing Heir in moving the game forward but I did end up consulting a walkthrough for the last half of the game anyways. The characters were also more interesting and likeable in this game than in TMH, especially fan favourite Ayumi.
The story is still rather predictable but I would say less so than TMH and is just as engaging. Personally, I preferred TMH's story but that's more personal taste than anything to do with TGWSB's story which is just as fantastic.
I really hope to see a third game in the series at some point in the future as the Famicom Detective Club remakes are really a gem even with its outdated gameplay.
The story is still rather predictable but I would say less so than TMH and is just as engaging. Personally, I preferred TMH's story but that's more personal taste than anything to do with TGWSB's story which is just as fantastic.
I really hope to see a third game in the series at some point in the future as the Famicom Detective Club remakes are really a gem even with its outdated gameplay.
2021
I want to like Cris Tales more than I did. It has the foundation of something that could have been great but fails to deliver on almost every aspect.
The gameplay had the potential to be fun and creative with its time travel gimmicks but the tutorial battle is as complex as the game ever gets with the time travel mechanics. In the end it's relegated to a few creative spells and quick and easy puzzle solving.
The barebones of the story is fine. It's unimaginative in parts and overstayed its welcome in the end with all the backtracking but the biggest issue is that the writing is bland, cheesy and much too condensed. The characters never have room to grow aside from maybe K (and for that smidgen of character development alone he's my favourite character). The story never managed to make me really care about anything because it didn't manage to get me invested, a failure of storytelling and character development.
The soundtrack is fine with quite a few nice tracks and the art style is gorgeous, but it feels like they spent their entire budget on art and didn't focus enough on the rest of the game. Cris Tales has good ideas and it's frustrating to see the potential in it that is never realized. I went through the entire game hoping it would get better but it never did.
The gameplay had the potential to be fun and creative with its time travel gimmicks but the tutorial battle is as complex as the game ever gets with the time travel mechanics. In the end it's relegated to a few creative spells and quick and easy puzzle solving.
The barebones of the story is fine. It's unimaginative in parts and overstayed its welcome in the end with all the backtracking but the biggest issue is that the writing is bland, cheesy and much too condensed. The characters never have room to grow aside from maybe K (and for that smidgen of character development alone he's my favourite character). The story never managed to make me really care about anything because it didn't manage to get me invested, a failure of storytelling and character development.
The soundtrack is fine with quite a few nice tracks and the art style is gorgeous, but it feels like they spent their entire budget on art and didn't focus enough on the rest of the game. Cris Tales has good ideas and it's frustrating to see the potential in it that is never realized. I went through the entire game hoping it would get better but it never did.
There's a lot I will forgive for a good story and ridiculously opaque dialogue and event triggering is one of them.
Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir shows its age in its gameplay. I'm used to brute forcing my way through games like this but some points were so confounding I gave up and followed a walkthrough. I don't necessarily mind Mages keeping true to the original game but you may want to keep a walkthrough handy if you don't want to click the same menu options over and over again hoping for new dialogue. Despite that, the story was gripping enough for me to eagerly press on. It's a bit of a classic Japanese murder mystery, but somehow despite its age and lack of originality, it's still fascinating seeing everything unfold.
The game is fairly short, clocking in at roughly 7-8 hours due to limitations of the system it was originally on, but there is no moment wasted in those seven hours. There is no filler or moments where the pacing is off. The story clips along at a sustained pace, tensions building up as events unfold, only slightly faltering at the very end but wraps up nicely nonetheless.
It's obvious now where Ace Attorney came from. There's something special in playing a game among the first in its genre and seeing where its influences lead decades later. Mages has done a very good job with breathing life in this game. Aside from the at times frustrating navigation, it feels like a modern and well thought out visual novel with stunning presentation. The game is gorgeous in terms of graphics, sound design, complete voice acting and delightful animation. If we had a more Ace Attorney-like navigation system where it was more obvious what dialogue options were new, this would have easily become one of my new favourites but I don't fault Mages remaining faithful to the original. As it is, it's still an easy recommendation for fans of the genre.
Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir shows its age in its gameplay. I'm used to brute forcing my way through games like this but some points were so confounding I gave up and followed a walkthrough. I don't necessarily mind Mages keeping true to the original game but you may want to keep a walkthrough handy if you don't want to click the same menu options over and over again hoping for new dialogue. Despite that, the story was gripping enough for me to eagerly press on. It's a bit of a classic Japanese murder mystery, but somehow despite its age and lack of originality, it's still fascinating seeing everything unfold.
The game is fairly short, clocking in at roughly 7-8 hours due to limitations of the system it was originally on, but there is no moment wasted in those seven hours. There is no filler or moments where the pacing is off. The story clips along at a sustained pace, tensions building up as events unfold, only slightly faltering at the very end but wraps up nicely nonetheless.
It's obvious now where Ace Attorney came from. There's something special in playing a game among the first in its genre and seeing where its influences lead decades later. Mages has done a very good job with breathing life in this game. Aside from the at times frustrating navigation, it feels like a modern and well thought out visual novel with stunning presentation. The game is gorgeous in terms of graphics, sound design, complete voice acting and delightful animation. If we had a more Ace Attorney-like navigation system where it was more obvious what dialogue options were new, this would have easily become one of my new favourites but I don't fault Mages remaining faithful to the original. As it is, it's still an easy recommendation for fans of the genre.
A beautiful little game of loss and love, held together by a picture book like art style and themes of music throughout. The puzzles weren't the greatest but they did their job.
It's a Spike Chuunisoft detective thriller.
If you're a fan, you know what you're getting into. If you're not, give it a try anyways if this genre interests you. The gameplay admittedly was kind of hit and miss for me but decent. The humor was really cringe at parts and is my main criticism but if you can over look that, this is a fantastic and well-written thriller with a great cast of characters and Uchikoshi's brand of brilliance.
If you're a fan, you know what you're getting into. If you're not, give it a try anyways if this genre interests you. The gameplay admittedly was kind of hit and miss for me but decent. The humor was really cringe at parts and is my main criticism but if you can over look that, this is a fantastic and well-written thriller with a great cast of characters and Uchikoshi's brand of brilliance.
Jenny LeClue is a fun little adventure with a bright and stylized presentation and very good voice acting. Its flaws lies in lack of gameplay aside from walking around and mashing the A button over and over again and lack of an ending. I also personally wasn't a fan of Jenny herself as her personality made me roll my eyes a ton but hey, that's pretty realistic for a teenage girl.
2019
An interesting storytelling mechanic was what I came for and overall it succeeded in creating relationships and glimpses into the lives of others from the POV of Lina, their cab driver. The overall story however just didn't grip me enough to stay with me. I am always happy to see more cyberpunk style games however.
I like my otome games with plot and without stupid protagonists. Piofiore mostly checks off these boxes.
The plot in Piofiore was what you'd expect from a mafia game set in the Italian 1920s, and it was pretty good if predictable at times. It wasn't afraid to get dark when needed either. Please be aware that sexual assault occurs in some of these bad ends. Some of the bad ends were really, really Y I K E S.
Liliana is a decent protagonist. She comes off as naïve but that's to be expected with her background. She adapts to her situation, depending on whichever route she's on, and though she can come off as a little passive in some routes is overall a character with her own ideals and a backbone to to stand up for them and the ability to make decisions when needed.
It's easy to say the art is gorgeous, the setting well-done, the music suiting and voice acting superb. If you're looking for an otome game with a story that moves along at a fairly quick pace due to its interesting plot and don't mind the violence and questionable content in the bad ends (or willing to skip them), Piofiore is a very easy recommend.
The plot in Piofiore was what you'd expect from a mafia game set in the Italian 1920s, and it was pretty good if predictable at times. It wasn't afraid to get dark when needed either. Please be aware that sexual assault occurs in some of these bad ends. Some of the bad ends were really, really Y I K E S.
Liliana is a decent protagonist. She comes off as naïve but that's to be expected with her background. She adapts to her situation, depending on whichever route she's on, and though she can come off as a little passive in some routes is overall a character with her own ideals and a backbone to to stand up for them and the ability to make decisions when needed.
It's easy to say the art is gorgeous, the setting well-done, the music suiting and voice acting superb. If you're looking for an otome game with a story that moves along at a fairly quick pace due to its interesting plot and don't mind the violence and questionable content in the bad ends (or willing to skip them), Piofiore is a very easy recommend.
2019
It looks pretty nice, has open world areas and some banger soundtracks are the only things Pokemon Sword and Shield has going for it. The story is insultingly bad, exploration is non-existent, and is generally too easy. Sword and Shield makes Pokemon Sun and Moon good games in comparison.