deijiokzen
Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward, Ever17’s cousin
6 years and I finally finish this mess
Before I start this review I have to genuinely mention I am so sick of watching the same door animations and the map constantly showing you walk from A to Z a BILLION TIMES EVEN ON SKIP.
(-) Models, Lighting and Animations
Horrendous, ill-looking game and just completely confusing why they have an entire 2D sprite-set for the characters that matches the sprite aesthetics for the first game and then purposefully choose to never use it in favor of objectively uglier graphics. Literally BLOWS MY MIND. I originally started this game in Ramadan back in 2016-ish I believe and I remember just looking at the game back then gave me a headache, this is one of the ugliest games ever made.
Additionally, there is no concept of lighting everything is lit up exactly the same so there’s no depth of shadows or realistically any reason to even go out of their way to source 3D models for a story in which there’s such limited animations. Many times, there’s going to be a door or an elevator animation and you never see characters actually interacting with them, the doors open and close with default animations like old RE door animations.
The graphics of this game have aged like milk.
(-) Gameplay
The flow system is something I’ve supported in Uchikoshi games, it reduces walkthrough dependency that traditional VNs can have and it greatly streamlines the routing process the diehard VN enjoyers can probably have a court session on this topic I don’t really care, but what I do care about is the puzzle gameplay. It is bad. Holy SHIT is it bad. Oh, and I cheated like 40% of these I could not be fucked to care.
Throw darts to make a score of 91, connect voltage paths to generate 120V, move dice around, move ice around, move jellyfish around, Uchikoshi why don’t you fucking move your ass around and get a new job. Often times you have to remember a numerical pattern or combination (many times you are tasked with making calculations on the fly), its BAD gameplay, AI Somnium seems like the logical next step for Uchikoshi considering how the “puzzles” are far more intuitive and original
There’s an in-game explanation (spoilers) for the puzzles that allow the MC to be better at jumping between timelines and interacting with the 4th dimension and I was like shut the fuck UP its just there to fill airtime
Additionally there’s straight up quality of life stuff missing from the game, whenever you end a route if you accidentally click a box on the flow map (which WILL happen trust me), you can’t zoom out of it, so you are forced to press the return button, which means having to REWATCH sigma get gassed in his car 1 billion times. Other times when you use an item instead of putting the next item in your item-list in your hand you have to go to the menu physically and do it. In the crew quarters if you input the green password first you can get locked out of the room from entering the blue password afterwards…. Like WHAT? There’s a dice puzzle in the archives and both blue and green passwords have the same pattern the colored dice are supposed to be in, but the green password requires them to have a specific number facing upwards, the issue is if you fuck up just ONE die but get the pattern right it will consider it as you trying to get the blue password again and reset the dice. AMAZING.
BAD. -9999/10. Reason to not touch these games with a 10 meter pole.
(+) Soundtrack
I like some of the OSTs
(+) Story(i): Nonary/Ambidex Game (not the puzzles lol):
The Nonary game in 999 based its character grouping on numbers on the watch which was an extremely cool concept and I wish they continued it in this game, but the Ambidex game is also very interesting in its own right.
I like the idea of pairing based on colors or complementary colors, the dynamic between characters who don’t like each other being forced to pair up is a lot of fun, the watch switching colors after voting, the pair/solo combination of watches, a representative from each color being forced to vote or all people belonging to the color being penalized, it felt very different for Uchikoshi’s writing and I wish he added a few more layers to this to make it even more complicated and fun.
The real meat is definitely in the voting. I LOVE the voting concept, the only issue is that the game has so many repeating events in each route that the voting rarely ever changes too drastically, there’s also this weird mix of characters acting out-of-character for some BS reason in a few routes (the Bad Endings).
I do think Uchikoshi strictly put the entire voting aspect in because he just read about the prisoner’s dilemma and wanted to have it in the game but even the bland as fuck cast of characters have some cool friction with one another, expanding on the “bland” cast later in the review.
(-/+) Story(ii): The Overall Plot (Spoilers)
I’ll start this by saying this is probably the 2nd most ambitious writing I’ve seen from Uchikoshi since R11, and similarly to R11 there’s some insane flops but similarly intriguing developments that really stick with you, the time stuff is exactly like Ever17’s time loop where there’s a system that’s at play and you have to force the future (as already experienced) to happen in a certain way in order for everyone to live.
After reading this type of story for so damn long I’ve grown extremely tired, its not a good explanation to say “We do XYZ exactly so that time keeps looping”, I’ll give an example: Zero Jr. does not NEED to exist at all in this game the game rules can be relayed by literally anyone else, but the game needs a Monokuma substitute despite not even being a sadistic killing game (much like 999). Additionally, this stupid bunny does not exist for 95% of the game. Oh, but Sigma goes to the past he has to learn advanced AI to make this specific bunny for this game because grandfather paradox logic. TIRED. TIRED WRITING.
I like the idea that he really went there for some twists, but it also feels like the plot exists to serve the twists. The thing about Radical 6 and how it works EXACTLY with the gravity in order to fool the reader feels extremely contrived, even when you see Phi jumping around you’d imagine she herself would come to the moon conclusion but she doesn’t, and anyone would to a certain degree find the physical world to be a bit strange in its interactions, had there been consistent enough foreshadowing I would have loved it, or in Alex’s criticism if Uchikoshi just made it so that the facility supported earth gravity it wouldn’t feel stupid.
Another weird thing Uchikoshi does to hide this twist is straight up make the Moon a brown desert, WHY? Anyways the twist was really obvious to me even though he tries extra hard to throw you off with the lunar eclipse article.
All being said I do find it funny that he explained the JUMP OF ALL THINGS. I thought its just because the game is fucking ugly as shit. Anyways.
Another example of contrived explanations is how Sigma doesn’t realize he’s old, he specifically has cybernetic limbs so that he can’t tell his age, but on several puzzle rooms you can encounter a mirror and it genuinely feels like ludonarrative dissonance.
Additionally, the puzzle rooms themselves always get solved but you’d encounter some roadblocks like Tenmyouji having to use a picture of a girl to open the door (how the hell would they solve it if he didn’t conveniently have that? Oh nvm grandfather paradox there’s no WAY they’d get stuck XDDDDDD nice writing Uchikoshi). Unlike the moon twist, THIS one has a lot of foreshadowing and dialogue that directly references your age, which I really liked.
Even when I criticize the existence of these twist and how the plot is based around the moon and the old man twist, I still think these twists are a fun read, I like the idea Uchikoshi was going for despite the wobbly execution. I HATED the overarching plot for 999 and I think Uchikoshi just does a way better job in VLR with some ambitious twists.
Similarly to 999 and other Uchikoshi games, however, it is very clear he CANNOT kill a single character, and for that reason I don’t even think he should write these <trapped in a life or death game> Visual Novels because he wants his stories to be contrived paradoxical pacifistic muck. It was so obvious to me Akane would be alive later because Uchikoshi just does this all the time, what is the POINT of a game that can kill you if it claims no victims? If the point is the game exists because it exists in the future that needs to come to be, then it could have been ANY game or event, nothing necessitates that it needs to be a life or death game despite the shitty explanation that it boosts your consciousness to the 4th dimension or whatever.
(-/+) Story(iii): Endings (Spoilers)
(+) K Ending:
There’s other portion of the stories I liked, I enjoyed K’s route where he kills Dio (funnily enough Dio manages to escape quite a lot in the game as opposed to Sigma since he gets apprehended almost immediately for slighting someone during the voting etc), his entire route is completed while you both are dying and I also liked the clone reveal, although again there’s very little explanation given for why this is even done in the first place with a special K true ending that is now apparently non-canon. I suppose this is handled in ZTD which I never want to play.
(+) Luna Ending:
This one was a lot of fun, it has some cool reveals with a sappy emotional ending which doesn’t feel all too bad. I liked how Uchikoshi rationalized all of the murders even though extremely contrived story telling with the “Sayaka Maizono” number twist (it genuinely makes no sense how blood would copy thigh to thigh its not like thick ink, also Dio is strangely opposed to killing them himself, but whatever it was fun)
(-) Quark Ending:
This is a non-ending actually Quark is just here for the SAKE OF IT HE GENUINELY HAS NO REASON TO BE IN THE GAME
(-) Tenmyouji Ending:
“I love my grandpa” that’s the ending Uchikoshi you are so jobless
(-/+) Dio Ending:
Because of the horrible graphics I thought this ending was actually extremely creepy, even though I was very adamant on the fact that they were on the moon it was still creepy the way they made it so that it looks like a wasteland. I’m neutral on this ending since I hate the stupid cult plot.
(-/+) Phi Ending:
Not necessarily a Phi ending but ehh I’ve already discussed at length how much I dislike this paradoxical pacifistic storytelling in ZE games
(-/+) Sigma Ending:
Its just there to explain the sperm in your arms
(-/+) Alice Ending:
Enjoy manually decoding shit anyways it’s a fine ending
(-/+) Clover Ending:
I thought everyone killing themselves was cool but also how the fuck does Radical 6 even spread, additionally isn’t everyone sick with this disease? Then why are only Quark and Alice affected in each route? I was so confused about this.
(-) Bad Endings:
With a minor exception of the Luna Ending which felt like it at least had some variety with her escaping with Quark, all the Endings are the same where sometimes someone will escape leaving you all behind or you would have the ability to escape but everyone restrains you, I thought it would have been very smart to have a variety of creepy Bad Ends and seems like an extremely missed opportunity.
(-) Characters
Horrible, Uchikoshi has never been good at banter its very clear from his games (now his protagonist is just a straight up pervert so funny guys) but yeah I felt like the cast of characters was extremely fucking bland and the voting game made them interesting if anything. Zero Jr. the rabbit wasn’t even a mainstay like nigga is the bunny there for merch? Shut the FUCK up.
Dio could have been an interesting dude but he’s so in-your-face evil that it felt like Uchikoshi wanted to hang a billboard on his body that read “I’M THE BAD GUY”, and even then there’s a fun way of doing that but Uchikoshi missed so hard. Clover was annoying straight up, Quark deserves to be boiled. Tenmyouji’s entire personality was “where is Quark”, Alice’s personality is being betrayed the first round and then killing herself, Phi is good especially with the lack of explanation about her origins but then you have Sigma making perverted jokes at her that ruin everything.
(-) Conclusion
I don’t like ZE games, puzzles are shitty browser games that have never been the appeal and I genuinely don’t get why Uchikoshi bothers framing these as survival-type games when he always saves everyone. Its annoying storytelling which I don’t enjoy, additionally I’m sick of the grandfather paradox storytelling methodology and I’m glad at the very least with AI Somnium he did not return to this format because he KEEPS writing them with the very purpose of making everyone survive. Kill one person for stakes, Uchikoshi, and not just the bad guys. With a horrendous cast of characters, dated garbage archaic gameplay elements, horrible graphics, an ambitious but extremely contrived story, I do not recommend this game to a single other person. I don’t like ZE and I think it’s the gutter of the trapped-in-a-facility games.
6 years and I finally finish this mess
Before I start this review I have to genuinely mention I am so sick of watching the same door animations and the map constantly showing you walk from A to Z a BILLION TIMES EVEN ON SKIP.
(-) Models, Lighting and Animations
Horrendous, ill-looking game and just completely confusing why they have an entire 2D sprite-set for the characters that matches the sprite aesthetics for the first game and then purposefully choose to never use it in favor of objectively uglier graphics. Literally BLOWS MY MIND. I originally started this game in Ramadan back in 2016-ish I believe and I remember just looking at the game back then gave me a headache, this is one of the ugliest games ever made.
Additionally, there is no concept of lighting everything is lit up exactly the same so there’s no depth of shadows or realistically any reason to even go out of their way to source 3D models for a story in which there’s such limited animations. Many times, there’s going to be a door or an elevator animation and you never see characters actually interacting with them, the doors open and close with default animations like old RE door animations.
The graphics of this game have aged like milk.
(-) Gameplay
The flow system is something I’ve supported in Uchikoshi games, it reduces walkthrough dependency that traditional VNs can have and it greatly streamlines the routing process the diehard VN enjoyers can probably have a court session on this topic I don’t really care, but what I do care about is the puzzle gameplay. It is bad. Holy SHIT is it bad. Oh, and I cheated like 40% of these I could not be fucked to care.
Throw darts to make a score of 91, connect voltage paths to generate 120V, move dice around, move ice around, move jellyfish around, Uchikoshi why don’t you fucking move your ass around and get a new job. Often times you have to remember a numerical pattern or combination (many times you are tasked with making calculations on the fly), its BAD gameplay, AI Somnium seems like the logical next step for Uchikoshi considering how the “puzzles” are far more intuitive and original
There’s an in-game explanation (spoilers) for the puzzles that allow the MC to be better at jumping between timelines and interacting with the 4th dimension and I was like shut the fuck UP its just there to fill airtime
Additionally there’s straight up quality of life stuff missing from the game, whenever you end a route if you accidentally click a box on the flow map (which WILL happen trust me), you can’t zoom out of it, so you are forced to press the return button, which means having to REWATCH sigma get gassed in his car 1 billion times. Other times when you use an item instead of putting the next item in your item-list in your hand you have to go to the menu physically and do it. In the crew quarters if you input the green password first you can get locked out of the room from entering the blue password afterwards…. Like WHAT? There’s a dice puzzle in the archives and both blue and green passwords have the same pattern the colored dice are supposed to be in, but the green password requires them to have a specific number facing upwards, the issue is if you fuck up just ONE die but get the pattern right it will consider it as you trying to get the blue password again and reset the dice. AMAZING.
BAD. -9999/10. Reason to not touch these games with a 10 meter pole.
(+) Soundtrack
I like some of the OSTs
(+) Story(i): Nonary/Ambidex Game (not the puzzles lol):
The Nonary game in 999 based its character grouping on numbers on the watch which was an extremely cool concept and I wish they continued it in this game, but the Ambidex game is also very interesting in its own right.
I like the idea of pairing based on colors or complementary colors, the dynamic between characters who don’t like each other being forced to pair up is a lot of fun, the watch switching colors after voting, the pair/solo combination of watches, a representative from each color being forced to vote or all people belonging to the color being penalized, it felt very different for Uchikoshi’s writing and I wish he added a few more layers to this to make it even more complicated and fun.
The real meat is definitely in the voting. I LOVE the voting concept, the only issue is that the game has so many repeating events in each route that the voting rarely ever changes too drastically, there’s also this weird mix of characters acting out-of-character for some BS reason in a few routes (the Bad Endings).
I do think Uchikoshi strictly put the entire voting aspect in because he just read about the prisoner’s dilemma and wanted to have it in the game but even the bland as fuck cast of characters have some cool friction with one another, expanding on the “bland” cast later in the review.
(-/+) Story(ii): The Overall Plot (Spoilers)
I’ll start this by saying this is probably the 2nd most ambitious writing I’ve seen from Uchikoshi since R11, and similarly to R11 there’s some insane flops but similarly intriguing developments that really stick with you, the time stuff is exactly like Ever17’s time loop where there’s a system that’s at play and you have to force the future (as already experienced) to happen in a certain way in order for everyone to live.
After reading this type of story for so damn long I’ve grown extremely tired, its not a good explanation to say “We do XYZ exactly so that time keeps looping”, I’ll give an example: Zero Jr. does not NEED to exist at all in this game the game rules can be relayed by literally anyone else, but the game needs a Monokuma substitute despite not even being a sadistic killing game (much like 999). Additionally, this stupid bunny does not exist for 95% of the game. Oh, but Sigma goes to the past he has to learn advanced AI to make this specific bunny for this game because grandfather paradox logic. TIRED. TIRED WRITING.
I like the idea that he really went there for some twists, but it also feels like the plot exists to serve the twists. The thing about Radical 6 and how it works EXACTLY with the gravity in order to fool the reader feels extremely contrived, even when you see Phi jumping around you’d imagine she herself would come to the moon conclusion but she doesn’t, and anyone would to a certain degree find the physical world to be a bit strange in its interactions, had there been consistent enough foreshadowing I would have loved it, or in Alex’s criticism if Uchikoshi just made it so that the facility supported earth gravity it wouldn’t feel stupid.
Another weird thing Uchikoshi does to hide this twist is straight up make the Moon a brown desert, WHY? Anyways the twist was really obvious to me even though he tries extra hard to throw you off with the lunar eclipse article.
All being said I do find it funny that he explained the JUMP OF ALL THINGS. I thought its just because the game is fucking ugly as shit. Anyways.
Another example of contrived explanations is how Sigma doesn’t realize he’s old, he specifically has cybernetic limbs so that he can’t tell his age, but on several puzzle rooms you can encounter a mirror and it genuinely feels like ludonarrative dissonance.
Additionally, the puzzle rooms themselves always get solved but you’d encounter some roadblocks like Tenmyouji having to use a picture of a girl to open the door (how the hell would they solve it if he didn’t conveniently have that? Oh nvm grandfather paradox there’s no WAY they’d get stuck XDDDDDD nice writing Uchikoshi). Unlike the moon twist, THIS one has a lot of foreshadowing and dialogue that directly references your age, which I really liked.
Even when I criticize the existence of these twist and how the plot is based around the moon and the old man twist, I still think these twists are a fun read, I like the idea Uchikoshi was going for despite the wobbly execution. I HATED the overarching plot for 999 and I think Uchikoshi just does a way better job in VLR with some ambitious twists.
Similarly to 999 and other Uchikoshi games, however, it is very clear he CANNOT kill a single character, and for that reason I don’t even think he should write these <trapped in a life or death game> Visual Novels because he wants his stories to be contrived paradoxical pacifistic muck. It was so obvious to me Akane would be alive later because Uchikoshi just does this all the time, what is the POINT of a game that can kill you if it claims no victims? If the point is the game exists because it exists in the future that needs to come to be, then it could have been ANY game or event, nothing necessitates that it needs to be a life or death game despite the shitty explanation that it boosts your consciousness to the 4th dimension or whatever.
(-/+) Story(iii): Endings (Spoilers)
(+) K Ending:
There’s other portion of the stories I liked, I enjoyed K’s route where he kills Dio (funnily enough Dio manages to escape quite a lot in the game as opposed to Sigma since he gets apprehended almost immediately for slighting someone during the voting etc), his entire route is completed while you both are dying and I also liked the clone reveal, although again there’s very little explanation given for why this is even done in the first place with a special K true ending that is now apparently non-canon. I suppose this is handled in ZTD which I never want to play.
(+) Luna Ending:
This one was a lot of fun, it has some cool reveals with a sappy emotional ending which doesn’t feel all too bad. I liked how Uchikoshi rationalized all of the murders even though extremely contrived story telling with the “Sayaka Maizono” number twist (it genuinely makes no sense how blood would copy thigh to thigh its not like thick ink, also Dio is strangely opposed to killing them himself, but whatever it was fun)
(-) Quark Ending:
This is a non-ending actually Quark is just here for the SAKE OF IT HE GENUINELY HAS NO REASON TO BE IN THE GAME
(-) Tenmyouji Ending:
“I love my grandpa” that’s the ending Uchikoshi you are so jobless
(-/+) Dio Ending:
Because of the horrible graphics I thought this ending was actually extremely creepy, even though I was very adamant on the fact that they were on the moon it was still creepy the way they made it so that it looks like a wasteland. I’m neutral on this ending since I hate the stupid cult plot.
(-/+) Phi Ending:
Not necessarily a Phi ending but ehh I’ve already discussed at length how much I dislike this paradoxical pacifistic storytelling in ZE games
(-/+) Sigma Ending:
Its just there to explain the sperm in your arms
(-/+) Alice Ending:
Enjoy manually decoding shit anyways it’s a fine ending
(-/+) Clover Ending:
I thought everyone killing themselves was cool but also how the fuck does Radical 6 even spread, additionally isn’t everyone sick with this disease? Then why are only Quark and Alice affected in each route? I was so confused about this.
(-) Bad Endings:
With a minor exception of the Luna Ending which felt like it at least had some variety with her escaping with Quark, all the Endings are the same where sometimes someone will escape leaving you all behind or you would have the ability to escape but everyone restrains you, I thought it would have been very smart to have a variety of creepy Bad Ends and seems like an extremely missed opportunity.
(-) Characters
Horrible, Uchikoshi has never been good at banter its very clear from his games (now his protagonist is just a straight up pervert so funny guys) but yeah I felt like the cast of characters was extremely fucking bland and the voting game made them interesting if anything. Zero Jr. the rabbit wasn’t even a mainstay like nigga is the bunny there for merch? Shut the FUCK up.
Dio could have been an interesting dude but he’s so in-your-face evil that it felt like Uchikoshi wanted to hang a billboard on his body that read “I’M THE BAD GUY”, and even then there’s a fun way of doing that but Uchikoshi missed so hard. Clover was annoying straight up, Quark deserves to be boiled. Tenmyouji’s entire personality was “where is Quark”, Alice’s personality is being betrayed the first round and then killing herself, Phi is good especially with the lack of explanation about her origins but then you have Sigma making perverted jokes at her that ruin everything.
(-) Conclusion
I don’t like ZE games, puzzles are shitty browser games that have never been the appeal and I genuinely don’t get why Uchikoshi bothers framing these as survival-type games when he always saves everyone. Its annoying storytelling which I don’t enjoy, additionally I’m sick of the grandfather paradox storytelling methodology and I’m glad at the very least with AI Somnium he did not return to this format because he KEEPS writing them with the very purpose of making everyone survive. Kill one person for stakes, Uchikoshi, and not just the bad guys. With a horrendous cast of characters, dated garbage archaic gameplay elements, horrible graphics, an ambitious but extremely contrived story, I do not recommend this game to a single other person. I don’t like ZE and I think it’s the gutter of the trapped-in-a-facility games.
2021
This one isn't funny its just edgy, the re-up is the funny one play that
God Re-Up has funny moments, from freebasing crack to leaking nudes to joint suicide as you play as a complete sociopath, the game exactly captures early 2000s humor, huge props to the voice acting its truly the crown jewel of the game,
Nicole and Jecka are one of my favorite characters of all time
Nicole and Jecka are one of my favorite characters of all time
2024
It should be illegal to make something this bad and throw this out for gay people and femcels to consume. It has 3 routes that get progressively worse and the more the story revealed itself the more it soured my mood.
Paradise is about a group of men who have a chance to vacation at an island, only to realize they’ve been tricked, and they will not be arriving back to the mainland any time soon. The first route I did was Matsuda because he is the only character besides the MC who actually looks attractive, the route starts off just fine and he seems to be endearing and overly-cautious towards your well-being, then his character slowly devolves as he starts displaying his cartoonishly bad sadism. After ending the game this is by far the only interesting characterization I’ve found in this VN, Matsuda’s route is admittedly polarizing as he does a 180 switch out of nowhere, but as he establishes himself as the king of the pack it makes for an interesting scenario, at least on paper.
This is where I have to make something abundantly clear, the MC has no self-preservation, he is a self-hating loser who enables evil people to exist and thrive by discarding or forfeiting his own rights by being treated like a pig. Matsuda takes full advantage of this and punches and rapes him repeatedly, and I soon realized rape is the only form of sex this VN has to offer.
Matsuda’s ending makes no sense (especially after how the VN climaxes) but you basically stand by him despite the fact that he has exhibited the most damning, disgusting and outright criminal behavior. It is never explained why the MC keeps toxic leeches around him.
Shimada has a bad end in this route which is basically that he drugs and rapes the MC forever, very cool pill/slash.
Mitsugi is supposedly everyone’s favorite which is a headscratcher for me, I thought I had escaped the MC victimization but I was completely wrong. Mitsugi tortures and rapes the MC and unlike Matsuda contributes little for the actual construction of the boat, which is the only thing under his supervision. He is disinterested in even fetching the body drifting ashore, and his warped justification for torturing the MC is that the MC resembles his master in face, but not in any other way. They start to warm up to each other a bit where at the end Mitsugi sabotages the chances of everyone’s escape by burning the very boat the MC builds day in day out because he was blackmailed into doing so. They are imprisoned for this and later have sex in a basement cell.
With the entourage of boring, mediocre writing, the bad end where the MC kills everyone because he can’t reason his way out of an accidental killing is pretty fun. Too bad it ends with the MC killing himself rather than Mitsugi, which I would have much so preferred.
This route also has the Hongou bad ending, where him and Kido rape the MC. Clapping.
Finally Takara’s route, this was my final hope that I had escaped the rapey sado-masochistic writing but I was wrong, much like Matsuda’s route its perfectly fine up till the half way point, and then the VN reveals its absolutely terrible plot about this cannibalistic lineage that has been tracking and hunting everyone for revenge. It was so bad I couldn’t even laugh, I wish I could unwind and make it so that I never even read this VN. Unlike VNs like Room No. 9 that don’t even bother explaining the main culprit, which in my opinion is a far creepier and superior approach, Paradise bothers explaining the entire island situation where the main villain forces the MC to go on a treasure hunt. They also forgot to insert an actual rape scene so Takara has to come to the MC’s apartment separately at the end JUST TO RAPE HIM. DUDE.
I played the bad end for Takara's route before the happy ending and when he gouged his eyes out and left I felt like it was the only ending where I could respect the MC.
Anyways bad VN that doesn’t deserve this long of a write-up but I had to force myself to finish this over a period of a week almost so I had to vent.
Paradise is about a group of men who have a chance to vacation at an island, only to realize they’ve been tricked, and they will not be arriving back to the mainland any time soon. The first route I did was Matsuda because he is the only character besides the MC who actually looks attractive, the route starts off just fine and he seems to be endearing and overly-cautious towards your well-being, then his character slowly devolves as he starts displaying his cartoonishly bad sadism. After ending the game this is by far the only interesting characterization I’ve found in this VN, Matsuda’s route is admittedly polarizing as he does a 180 switch out of nowhere, but as he establishes himself as the king of the pack it makes for an interesting scenario, at least on paper.
This is where I have to make something abundantly clear, the MC has no self-preservation, he is a self-hating loser who enables evil people to exist and thrive by discarding or forfeiting his own rights by being treated like a pig. Matsuda takes full advantage of this and punches and rapes him repeatedly, and I soon realized rape is the only form of sex this VN has to offer.
Matsuda’s ending makes no sense (especially after how the VN climaxes) but you basically stand by him despite the fact that he has exhibited the most damning, disgusting and outright criminal behavior. It is never explained why the MC keeps toxic leeches around him.
Shimada has a bad end in this route which is basically that he drugs and rapes the MC forever, very cool pill/slash.
Mitsugi is supposedly everyone’s favorite which is a headscratcher for me, I thought I had escaped the MC victimization but I was completely wrong. Mitsugi tortures and rapes the MC and unlike Matsuda contributes little for the actual construction of the boat, which is the only thing under his supervision. He is disinterested in even fetching the body drifting ashore, and his warped justification for torturing the MC is that the MC resembles his master in face, but not in any other way. They start to warm up to each other a bit where at the end Mitsugi sabotages the chances of everyone’s escape by burning the very boat the MC builds day in day out because he was blackmailed into doing so. They are imprisoned for this and later have sex in a basement cell.
With the entourage of boring, mediocre writing, the bad end where the MC kills everyone because he can’t reason his way out of an accidental killing is pretty fun. Too bad it ends with the MC killing himself rather than Mitsugi, which I would have much so preferred.
This route also has the Hongou bad ending, where him and Kido rape the MC. Clapping.
Finally Takara’s route, this was my final hope that I had escaped the rapey sado-masochistic writing but I was wrong, much like Matsuda’s route its perfectly fine up till the half way point, and then the VN reveals its absolutely terrible plot about this cannibalistic lineage that has been tracking and hunting everyone for revenge. It was so bad I couldn’t even laugh, I wish I could unwind and make it so that I never even read this VN. Unlike VNs like Room No. 9 that don’t even bother explaining the main culprit, which in my opinion is a far creepier and superior approach, Paradise bothers explaining the entire island situation where the main villain forces the MC to go on a treasure hunt. They also forgot to insert an actual rape scene so Takara has to come to the MC’s apartment separately at the end JUST TO RAPE HIM. DUDE.
I played the bad end for Takara's route before the happy ending and when he gouged his eyes out and left I felt like it was the only ending where I could respect the MC.
Anyways bad VN that doesn’t deserve this long of a write-up but I had to force myself to finish this over a period of a week almost so I had to vent.
Cancer of the Wild
A lot of my opinions aren't brand new or something that I haven't complained about earlier at great length, but I wanted to condense my thoughts into single post now that I've gone through the game
Pros:
(+) The shrines, even when I can whisk out the combat shrines, or the maze ones, or the ones that forced me to break my weapons or whatever, all of the shrines come together to bring an extra dimension to this game, I thought all of the gimmick tools were unique and the shrines really had some out of the box ways of making you use them,
(+) While on the topic of shrines, amongst the 60 I've done, I didn't need a guide for any of them, they've successfully made shrines that make logical sense even if you sometimes have to trial and error to figure out the exact system at play, and I really have to emphasis, some of these shrines with the extra mini-challenge for chests really DO an amaaaazing job, while others don't explore their mechanics in totality and just end as soon as they begin
(+) The story is nothing to write home about, but I think it works, anything that's more showing less telling is better and they don't exposition dump you genshin style where the text is literally bleeding out of the tiny text box
(+) On some occasions the game really has an interesting sense of cartoon-ism, oh you're destroyed a beast made out of bones? Well they can re-animate AND use each other's heads. You throw a bomb at a pig and the weapons knocks out of their hands, you can shock a horse and THEN find a way to tame it
(+) And finally and possibly the most underrated thing about the game, a layer of unpredictability, the game is filled with "aha" moments where you're like "will.....this work?" and then it does, I've solved countless of shrines where I was coming up with techniques on the fly to make my life easier and it was honestly astonishing how much creativity you can come up with
This is me scratching the boney frame of this game to dig out some positives, onto the negatives
Cons:
(-) The combat was designed by a team of developers who made it and then refused to let anyone playtest it, absolutely fucking cancer, the combat is at the level of atrociousness where it should be enshrined in the hall of fame for experience-ruining sections for games, the best thing you can do in the game is don't even hold up your shield to try to parry or dodge anything, go up to the enemy and spam normal attacks, or literally if you don't want to exhaust your weapons just throw bombs at them
(-) The OSTs are insanely fucking bad, I was running away from most combat encounters not only because they suck, but so that the fucking blood worm they unleased on my eardrums would stop burning up my ear canals, the composer took inspiration from pieces of rock falling down a mountain, and it's THE SAAAAAAAAAME IT DOESN'T CHANGE
(-) Open bodies of land that have nothing in it (believe it or not the game is actually pretty fucking short most of my time was actually spent going from A to B trying to unlock towers, hell if I even stopped doing that I'd have been done with the game in a week)
(-) Weapon breaking bad,
(-) Rain == slippery bad,
(-) "Grab this blue torch and go from A to B" bad,
(-) Horse kicks you off if you oversprint bad,
(-) Thunder shocks you if you equip a metallic weapon bad,
(-) Environmental hazards that require specific gear bad (they do this on 3 separate occasions, heat, fire and snow, all of them different variations of cancer)
These are mechanics that you're constantly dealing with and they put a damper on your experience insanely fast, the first time rain hit me outside the fish area I was like "oh.....so it's THAT kind of game", for the sake of pseudo-realism it creates embarrassing hurdles to simple tasks whose only way of completion is at the risk of being annoyed as opposed to being challenged,
Yes, these hurdles don't make the game meaningfully challenging, they make it ANNOYING
(-) Lack of direction splits two ways, for shrines and for the overworld,
Shrines:
I've talked about this at length but I can't emphasis how important having invisible direction is, some of the shrines are straight up "hit ball so it goes in hole" and it's as if they forgot that weapons break in 2 seconds in this godforsaken game, just put an invisible funnel or fix the shooting direction so that the player can go through the process more easily, why in god's earth are the puzzles designed so that you KNOW the solution but it takes FOREVER to solve, when in reality it should be the other way around, you should know the solution and the puzzle should solve immediately,
Other times the shrines NEEDS you to use arrows while it provides you with none, all of these are fixable issues if the game just GAVE YOU WHAT YOU NEED, don't make me go hunt for materials for trials,
Gyroscope puzzles are a better case for "how the fuck did they not add invisible walls or helpful direction to make this easier?" and they just didn't they didn't really give a fuck, on one hand there's 60 ways to solve a puzzle on the other executing the puzzle in it's intended format is a pain in the ass
Overworld:
The game teaches you about combat at specific parts of the game that you can entirely miss, this is also why I think the game's idea of freedom of choice is a veneer of bullshit, it fucks with the game's OWN interests, on some occasions you need to talk to a specific NPC so that ANOTHER specific NPC can pop up and sell you a bra and panty so you can enter le woman village,
(-) Bosses:
Thunderblight was cancer because the combat is cancer others were gimmicky and I don't really give a fuck about them, Ganon LOOKED really cool though, props to them for making him look all mushy and gross, very Silent Hill 5 final boss of them
Closing thoughts:
BOTW is a game where every critique you have for the game is at something that was designed with pure intention, none of this is an oversight by the developers, whether come rain or lightning, the game speaks to it's roots and builds on it's own archaic design
This is a PS1 game masking itself as a modern game, all of these elements you can find dating back to that era, even the beloved gliding of the game which brings ease of access you can find as a core mechanic in spyro the dragon (not to say gliding is some copyright design)
BOTW at it's core has all the right things to make it playable and interesting, but it's downfall is the inclusion of elements that exist only to beat and extend otherwise straightforward tasks,
Something as easy as climbing a pile of rocks is only an activity that could be made tedious and annoying in a game like BOTW, which perfectly summarizes why I did not like it at the end of the day
Cancer.
A lot of my opinions aren't brand new or something that I haven't complained about earlier at great length, but I wanted to condense my thoughts into single post now that I've gone through the game
Pros:
(+) The shrines, even when I can whisk out the combat shrines, or the maze ones, or the ones that forced me to break my weapons or whatever, all of the shrines come together to bring an extra dimension to this game, I thought all of the gimmick tools were unique and the shrines really had some out of the box ways of making you use them,
(+) While on the topic of shrines, amongst the 60 I've done, I didn't need a guide for any of them, they've successfully made shrines that make logical sense even if you sometimes have to trial and error to figure out the exact system at play, and I really have to emphasis, some of these shrines with the extra mini-challenge for chests really DO an amaaaazing job, while others don't explore their mechanics in totality and just end as soon as they begin
(+) The story is nothing to write home about, but I think it works, anything that's more showing less telling is better and they don't exposition dump you genshin style where the text is literally bleeding out of the tiny text box
(+) On some occasions the game really has an interesting sense of cartoon-ism, oh you're destroyed a beast made out of bones? Well they can re-animate AND use each other's heads. You throw a bomb at a pig and the weapons knocks out of their hands, you can shock a horse and THEN find a way to tame it
(+) And finally and possibly the most underrated thing about the game, a layer of unpredictability, the game is filled with "aha" moments where you're like "will.....this work?" and then it does, I've solved countless of shrines where I was coming up with techniques on the fly to make my life easier and it was honestly astonishing how much creativity you can come up with
This is me scratching the boney frame of this game to dig out some positives, onto the negatives
Cons:
(-) The combat was designed by a team of developers who made it and then refused to let anyone playtest it, absolutely fucking cancer, the combat is at the level of atrociousness where it should be enshrined in the hall of fame for experience-ruining sections for games, the best thing you can do in the game is don't even hold up your shield to try to parry or dodge anything, go up to the enemy and spam normal attacks, or literally if you don't want to exhaust your weapons just throw bombs at them
(-) The OSTs are insanely fucking bad, I was running away from most combat encounters not only because they suck, but so that the fucking blood worm they unleased on my eardrums would stop burning up my ear canals, the composer took inspiration from pieces of rock falling down a mountain, and it's THE SAAAAAAAAAME IT DOESN'T CHANGE
(-) Open bodies of land that have nothing in it (believe it or not the game is actually pretty fucking short most of my time was actually spent going from A to B trying to unlock towers, hell if I even stopped doing that I'd have been done with the game in a week)
(-) Weapon breaking bad,
(-) Rain == slippery bad,
(-) "Grab this blue torch and go from A to B" bad,
(-) Horse kicks you off if you oversprint bad,
(-) Thunder shocks you if you equip a metallic weapon bad,
(-) Environmental hazards that require specific gear bad (they do this on 3 separate occasions, heat, fire and snow, all of them different variations of cancer)
These are mechanics that you're constantly dealing with and they put a damper on your experience insanely fast, the first time rain hit me outside the fish area I was like "oh.....so it's THAT kind of game", for the sake of pseudo-realism it creates embarrassing hurdles to simple tasks whose only way of completion is at the risk of being annoyed as opposed to being challenged,
Yes, these hurdles don't make the game meaningfully challenging, they make it ANNOYING
(-) Lack of direction splits two ways, for shrines and for the overworld,
Shrines:
I've talked about this at length but I can't emphasis how important having invisible direction is, some of the shrines are straight up "hit ball so it goes in hole" and it's as if they forgot that weapons break in 2 seconds in this godforsaken game, just put an invisible funnel or fix the shooting direction so that the player can go through the process more easily, why in god's earth are the puzzles designed so that you KNOW the solution but it takes FOREVER to solve, when in reality it should be the other way around, you should know the solution and the puzzle should solve immediately,
Other times the shrines NEEDS you to use arrows while it provides you with none, all of these are fixable issues if the game just GAVE YOU WHAT YOU NEED, don't make me go hunt for materials for trials,
Gyroscope puzzles are a better case for "how the fuck did they not add invisible walls or helpful direction to make this easier?" and they just didn't they didn't really give a fuck, on one hand there's 60 ways to solve a puzzle on the other executing the puzzle in it's intended format is a pain in the ass
Overworld:
The game teaches you about combat at specific parts of the game that you can entirely miss, this is also why I think the game's idea of freedom of choice is a veneer of bullshit, it fucks with the game's OWN interests, on some occasions you need to talk to a specific NPC so that ANOTHER specific NPC can pop up and sell you a bra and panty so you can enter le woman village,
(-) Bosses:
Thunderblight was cancer because the combat is cancer others were gimmicky and I don't really give a fuck about them, Ganon LOOKED really cool though, props to them for making him look all mushy and gross, very Silent Hill 5 final boss of them
Closing thoughts:
BOTW is a game where every critique you have for the game is at something that was designed with pure intention, none of this is an oversight by the developers, whether come rain or lightning, the game speaks to it's roots and builds on it's own archaic design
This is a PS1 game masking itself as a modern game, all of these elements you can find dating back to that era, even the beloved gliding of the game which brings ease of access you can find as a core mechanic in spyro the dragon (not to say gliding is some copyright design)
BOTW at it's core has all the right things to make it playable and interesting, but it's downfall is the inclusion of elements that exist only to beat and extend otherwise straightforward tasks,
Something as easy as climbing a pile of rocks is only an activity that could be made tedious and annoying in a game like BOTW, which perfectly summarizes why I did not like it at the end of the day
Cancer.
2022
Rape End Aegis
This is a regular nukige which is entirely made up of rape content, and when I mean rape content I mean gargantuan amounts. This is in the same special genre of games that clockup pushes out which have extremely intriguing scenarios surrounding hyper fetish content, it's completely normal to not engage with this type of media but there's definitely a lot of creativity to come up with scenarios that outrape each other
I think what sets DEA apart from clockup titles is that clockup actually engages a lot with scat and gore content while DEA is mainly focused on rape, but it doubles the stress of reading it by attaching humiliation to it, all the content up to End 1 has the central theme of absolute embarrassment, you see the MC's vanity and self-righteousness completely collapse one rape after another, being reduced to a literal human semen toilet
Anyways, my honest thoughts are End 1 is extremely self indulgent to read and I found everything related to the forced impregnation to the "Grand One"/"Little One" plot extremely exhaustive, there's an entire part where Nana's boyfriend Satoru comes back and betrays her and it was the most lousily hamfisted thing ever, after the August attack reducing the MC's power and making her a designated cum dumpster was difficult to read not because it was disgusting but moreso because it was just yet another contrived scenario to completely destroy the MC's will, it felt like the writing was cyclic and it was the 26th time she was being reduced to a sex toy for the purposes of being gang raped (that's just what the VN is I can't really complain)
End 2 has 1/500th the rape (just 2 scenes) and deals with the politics of moon residents asking for independence and housing 1.2 million citizens on mars and it was fine, I'm glad it didn't stretch as disgustingly as End 1 did which I can't emphasis how much I hated reading End 1 so it was so much better to read about what was happening outside the Cathedral, it's probably the only optimistic piece of writing in the VN where the main cast survives and even though End 2 in it's entirety is anticlimactic it's still short and "sweet"
Pros!!! (HOW?)
+ Within it's own contrived rape scenario, the character writing for the MC is pretty interesting, they keep her tethered to her self-righteous attitude and keep the dial up and down just enough to not completely break her
+ The story is definitely very interesting with some decent reveals, although much of the contributions to the pacing are made by the absolute rape cage the Cathedral is but there's still general intrigue that keeps everything connected and gives the plot a sense of direction
+ The 3 main characters are extremely enjoyable and had not only distinct personalities but very well written chemistry
+ Illyusha
+ The fact that you can play soltaire in the extras menu on top of the fucking hentai CGs
That's all I have to say about Rape End Aegis, this is the type of content you engage with when you want to read something extremely taboo with very difficult to consume but interesting writing on the subject matter
This is a regular nukige which is entirely made up of rape content, and when I mean rape content I mean gargantuan amounts. This is in the same special genre of games that clockup pushes out which have extremely intriguing scenarios surrounding hyper fetish content, it's completely normal to not engage with this type of media but there's definitely a lot of creativity to come up with scenarios that outrape each other
I think what sets DEA apart from clockup titles is that clockup actually engages a lot with scat and gore content while DEA is mainly focused on rape, but it doubles the stress of reading it by attaching humiliation to it, all the content up to End 1 has the central theme of absolute embarrassment, you see the MC's vanity and self-righteousness completely collapse one rape after another, being reduced to a literal human semen toilet
Anyways, my honest thoughts are End 1 is extremely self indulgent to read and I found everything related to the forced impregnation to the "Grand One"/"Little One" plot extremely exhaustive, there's an entire part where Nana's boyfriend Satoru comes back and betrays her and it was the most lousily hamfisted thing ever, after the August attack reducing the MC's power and making her a designated cum dumpster was difficult to read not because it was disgusting but moreso because it was just yet another contrived scenario to completely destroy the MC's will, it felt like the writing was cyclic and it was the 26th time she was being reduced to a sex toy for the purposes of being gang raped (that's just what the VN is I can't really complain)
End 2 has 1/500th the rape (just 2 scenes) and deals with the politics of moon residents asking for independence and housing 1.2 million citizens on mars and it was fine, I'm glad it didn't stretch as disgustingly as End 1 did which I can't emphasis how much I hated reading End 1 so it was so much better to read about what was happening outside the Cathedral, it's probably the only optimistic piece of writing in the VN where the main cast survives and even though End 2 in it's entirety is anticlimactic it's still short and "sweet"
Pros!!! (HOW?)
+ Within it's own contrived rape scenario, the character writing for the MC is pretty interesting, they keep her tethered to her self-righteous attitude and keep the dial up and down just enough to not completely break her
+ The story is definitely very interesting with some decent reveals, although much of the contributions to the pacing are made by the absolute rape cage the Cathedral is but there's still general intrigue that keeps everything connected and gives the plot a sense of direction
+ The 3 main characters are extremely enjoyable and had not only distinct personalities but very well written chemistry
+ Illyusha
+ The fact that you can play soltaire in the extras menu on top of the fucking hentai CGs
That's all I have to say about Rape End Aegis, this is the type of content you engage with when you want to read something extremely taboo with very difficult to consume but interesting writing on the subject matter
If you want to skip to my overall thoughts with the game, I'll save you the trouble of scrolling and relay them here at the start,
I do not like RE VII,
First thing I should mention is that the game does reflect design choices from the original resident evil games, and even though you are free to explore additionally and uncover secrets, the progression is entirely linear, and the backtracking is always considerably short,
These are not negatives btw, even when I joke about the shadow puzzles etc, all the puzzles were doable and didn't require me to look up a guide or require an impractical or inconceivable alternative to solve them, they weren't particularly imaginative however, some requiring me to just match the orientation of picture frames on opposite walls to one another, while others requiring me to look at a clock, I wasn't too fond of them at the end of the day
========================𝗟𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗹 𝗟𝗮𝘆𝗼𝘂𝘁=============================
If you're expecting me to sing praises for the house section of this game you are perhaps sorely mistaken, even though it has locked doors that can be opened by keys you get late game, and has areas that are interconnected, there is no need to conflate "interconnected design" with "good design", when anyone talks about the house being a good section I imagine them talking about the basement section which links some critical parts of the game, the rest of the house sections will be left thoroughly unexplored by you unless you're treasure hunting or something,
You can argue much of the same for the original REmake where many areas of the mansion are never revisited, and although I find that true, there are still many areas/hallways/stairways you DO frequent in REmake, and the more you risk traversing them the more you are led into remembering the game's exquisite layout, maneuvering through these in late game is not only fun, but can be the deciding factor between ammo wastage and conservation,
The same is not true for RE7, the main house floor has two black creatures that you can just skip by standing behind a table and picking the route they aren't coming from, and the rest of the creatures are in the basement, that's it, the layout doesn't require you to have a good memory, it's quite literally just a basement and 2 doors on the top floor that are relevant,
But Deiji? There's also the tunnel that connects the old house (with the insects) to the RV outside the main house, to which i will say
"Yeah, that exists",
Again it's not mindblowing design, am I supposed to marvel at the fact that you can open a gate behind the RV? I appreciate it but surely it isn't some bayeux tapestry masterpiece in level design
It might seem like I'm trying to say:
large police station with interconnected paths==good(RE2Remake)
large mansion with interconnected paths == good(REmake)
small house + small veranda with some interconnected paths == bad(RE7)
But in reality I don't think RE7's design is bad, it's just very very small in comparison,
========================𝗚𝘂𝗻 𝗣𝗹𝗮𝘆=============================
Capcom was completely out of it's element when making a fps and it shows, this gameplay is BAD, the only aspect I liked were the chem fluids, having to pick between making heal items or ammunition was such an interesting in-the-moment gameplay choice you had to make,
The gunplay is atrocious, and the fact that the backwalk speed is so slow makes NO sense, it felt cheap to do that when it makes no sense logically,
The knife was the only weapon that allowed me to have the most fun with enemies otherwise standing and shooting black tar was just fucking agonizing, absolutely horrendous gameplay, if I had the opportunity I would always speed past the enemies I just did NOT like fighting them LOL
That said the burner weapon is pretty fun in the insect level despite the fact that I know many people don't like that section lol
========================𝗘𝗻𝗲𝗺𝗶𝗲𝘀=============================
There are like 3 black tar enemy types, that's it, you already saw this complaint coming from miles away, I don't need to ramble on it more, and the gunplay having this congested FOV + slow walkspeed is also the reason why they couldn't go for much variety with not only the enemies, but the bosses,
I disagree with people, insect baker mom was quite literally the only technical and good boss fight, baker son was fucking cringe my god the same bullseye boss I've been fighting since RE4 please Capcom give me a break with this shit,
If there was a jumping option it would have allowed them to get some good broken maps to with bosses so navigating across patches of walkable platforms would have been interesting, as opposed to falling into the water and climbing back up like in the baker son fight, did I mention how much I hate it already?
===================𝐌𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐃𝐢𝐬𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭========================
Predictability is another key complain I have with RE7, much of this is just unfortunate design choices that give away interesting surprises, a very good example is when you fight the Baker dad and the room has just one snake door, I was fully aware that this door was going to open late game when I would have to go through the basement and get mobbed, which is exactly what ended up happening,
This is isn't "oohh haha big galaxy brain i am so smart i predicted what the devs would do" it's just how games are sometimes lol
Same turnout on the stupid boat section with Mia (I'll dedicate an entire paragraph to it later in the review don't worry) when you're on floor 3F and get mobbed by a giant black vomit tar guy while retrieving the wire piece for the elevator,
Once more when you're retrieving the hand for the serum in the long series of corridors,
Just because I can predict it doesn't make it bad, but I feel like the opposite is came much of a detriment, when I would expect something and the game would never push the envelope,
I like the gameshow type segment with the Baker son, and I liked how it made sense how you escape since you already see the Birthday cassette, but they didn't do anything much besides putting string bombs all over the level, and baiting with wooden boxes filled with bombs, again I need to mention how just the opportunity to jump could have helped them put some variety into these sections,
The first disappointment I had was with the bubbling water at the start of the game, I knew they wouldn't try to scare me at all so I went into the water again and again, and as you can imagine nothing happens, and perhaps that would have made it too predictable, but the lingering feeling from that point never escaped me, which is that Capcom was too afraid to actually scare the players,
This game is gross, disgusting sometimes, but never scary, all the panic inducing mob spams are predictable, but still never scary, for a game that had the perfect setting to scare the shit out of it's players,
This could be me misjudging the intentions of the developers, but then I wish it was really fucking cheesy horror done in the most corny way possible, but it's just nothing,
Well, the Baker Dad was pretty funny anyway
======================𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝗕𝐨𝐚𝐭=====================
The boat section with Mia is probably universally hated, let's talk about it,
-It has 2 saves, one on 1F and one on 3F, and the rest of the navigation requires traversal with very little ammo, so you have to strategize when it comes to managing saves in this section, which I kinda liked
-It's extra frustrating because all the weapon management with ethan is thrown in the bin for this particular section, so you're stuck with a pistol and (later after you get the cabin key) the machine gun, this makes this entire level VERY stressful to play, but then they gave me a knife and the level was pretty much over and done with from that point lol
-This is where all the important storytelling is done, and the story is utter garbage, literally the worst tropes ever, I would have rather there was no story at all, little biological abomination with a mommy seeking imprint UGH, it's not that the level is entirely bad, it's just that having to do all this shit with such a terrible incentive makes it much harder, also makes this level extra shitty to go through especially since you've been fighting these black tars the entire game......doing it now without all the weapons you've accumulated lol
-The corrosive key item was a fine inclusion but it was just an excuse to hoard even more unnecessary items,
-The child itself ruins the game and knocks it down by like 6-7 points that's how bad this abomination is
======================𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝗦𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲=======================
RE stories have never been good is something I've always said and I maintain that sentiment, but RE7 doesn't fall under the same conditions of storytelling with the same Umbrella corporation again and again and again, and yet it still decided to not tell a compelling story(ends up being the same Umbrella schpiel with Mia's backstory reveal but eh), disappointing but not unexpected
The entire ending was just abhorrent I would like to forget it immediately, literally stockpiling all that ammo meant nothing by the end, didn't use the grenade launcher properly in the game even once LOL
=====================𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬======================
Cringe.
I liked the old woman on the wheelchair I thought her appearing in the different sections of the game was cool but they ruined her too with that stupid end reveal, just ugh
Ethan is deadpan, I like him but that's BECAUSE he's so lousily written, I can't tell if they were going for mentally unhinged, like James Sunderland from SH2 where he doesn't show much of a reaction to anything
Love him for wrong reasons, at least I didn't have to bear with him being traumatized by stupid shit but like, at least show a reaction to killing your wife in the start of the game my god
Hate the bakers except the Dad and Zoe but I don't LOVE them either lol
=====================𝐎𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐒𝐭𝐮𝐟𝐟====================
-Hated the cassette segments, at least there are like 4 of them, they are pretty stupid storywise too, im in a dilapidated boat time to watch a cassette so i can recover my memory! I'm being chased by the Baker mom let just tape this for my husband real quick! So stupid
-Unskippable obnoxious cutscenes,
-Long irritating intro making replays hell
-The blocking feature is redundant I literally forgot it existed until they forced me to do it at the end lol
=======================𝐎𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐥𝐥============================
I didn't like it, it has some really ambitious ideas but it's so far from reaching it's potential, whenever I'd thing it would get good the game just decided to let me down again and again
I do not like RE VII,
First thing I should mention is that the game does reflect design choices from the original resident evil games, and even though you are free to explore additionally and uncover secrets, the progression is entirely linear, and the backtracking is always considerably short,
These are not negatives btw, even when I joke about the shadow puzzles etc, all the puzzles were doable and didn't require me to look up a guide or require an impractical or inconceivable alternative to solve them, they weren't particularly imaginative however, some requiring me to just match the orientation of picture frames on opposite walls to one another, while others requiring me to look at a clock, I wasn't too fond of them at the end of the day
========================𝗟𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗹 𝗟𝗮𝘆𝗼𝘂𝘁=============================
If you're expecting me to sing praises for the house section of this game you are perhaps sorely mistaken, even though it has locked doors that can be opened by keys you get late game, and has areas that are interconnected, there is no need to conflate "interconnected design" with "good design", when anyone talks about the house being a good section I imagine them talking about the basement section which links some critical parts of the game, the rest of the house sections will be left thoroughly unexplored by you unless you're treasure hunting or something,
You can argue much of the same for the original REmake where many areas of the mansion are never revisited, and although I find that true, there are still many areas/hallways/stairways you DO frequent in REmake, and the more you risk traversing them the more you are led into remembering the game's exquisite layout, maneuvering through these in late game is not only fun, but can be the deciding factor between ammo wastage and conservation,
The same is not true for RE7, the main house floor has two black creatures that you can just skip by standing behind a table and picking the route they aren't coming from, and the rest of the creatures are in the basement, that's it, the layout doesn't require you to have a good memory, it's quite literally just a basement and 2 doors on the top floor that are relevant,
But Deiji? There's also the tunnel that connects the old house (with the insects) to the RV outside the main house, to which i will say
"Yeah, that exists",
Again it's not mindblowing design, am I supposed to marvel at the fact that you can open a gate behind the RV? I appreciate it but surely it isn't some bayeux tapestry masterpiece in level design
It might seem like I'm trying to say:
large police station with interconnected paths==good(RE2Remake)
large mansion with interconnected paths == good(REmake)
small house + small veranda with some interconnected paths == bad(RE7)
But in reality I don't think RE7's design is bad, it's just very very small in comparison,
========================𝗚𝘂𝗻 𝗣𝗹𝗮𝘆=============================
Capcom was completely out of it's element when making a fps and it shows, this gameplay is BAD, the only aspect I liked were the chem fluids, having to pick between making heal items or ammunition was such an interesting in-the-moment gameplay choice you had to make,
The gunplay is atrocious, and the fact that the backwalk speed is so slow makes NO sense, it felt cheap to do that when it makes no sense logically,
The knife was the only weapon that allowed me to have the most fun with enemies otherwise standing and shooting black tar was just fucking agonizing, absolutely horrendous gameplay, if I had the opportunity I would always speed past the enemies I just did NOT like fighting them LOL
That said the burner weapon is pretty fun in the insect level despite the fact that I know many people don't like that section lol
========================𝗘𝗻𝗲𝗺𝗶𝗲𝘀=============================
There are like 3 black tar enemy types, that's it, you already saw this complaint coming from miles away, I don't need to ramble on it more, and the gunplay having this congested FOV + slow walkspeed is also the reason why they couldn't go for much variety with not only the enemies, but the bosses,
I disagree with people, insect baker mom was quite literally the only technical and good boss fight, baker son was fucking cringe my god the same bullseye boss I've been fighting since RE4 please Capcom give me a break with this shit,
If there was a jumping option it would have allowed them to get some good broken maps to with bosses so navigating across patches of walkable platforms would have been interesting, as opposed to falling into the water and climbing back up like in the baker son fight, did I mention how much I hate it already?
===================𝐌𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐃𝐢𝐬𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭========================
Predictability is another key complain I have with RE7, much of this is just unfortunate design choices that give away interesting surprises, a very good example is when you fight the Baker dad and the room has just one snake door, I was fully aware that this door was going to open late game when I would have to go through the basement and get mobbed, which is exactly what ended up happening,
This is isn't "oohh haha big galaxy brain i am so smart i predicted what the devs would do" it's just how games are sometimes lol
Same turnout on the stupid boat section with Mia (I'll dedicate an entire paragraph to it later in the review don't worry) when you're on floor 3F and get mobbed by a giant black vomit tar guy while retrieving the wire piece for the elevator,
Once more when you're retrieving the hand for the serum in the long series of corridors,
Just because I can predict it doesn't make it bad, but I feel like the opposite is came much of a detriment, when I would expect something and the game would never push the envelope,
I like the gameshow type segment with the Baker son, and I liked how it made sense how you escape since you already see the Birthday cassette, but they didn't do anything much besides putting string bombs all over the level, and baiting with wooden boxes filled with bombs, again I need to mention how just the opportunity to jump could have helped them put some variety into these sections,
The first disappointment I had was with the bubbling water at the start of the game, I knew they wouldn't try to scare me at all so I went into the water again and again, and as you can imagine nothing happens, and perhaps that would have made it too predictable, but the lingering feeling from that point never escaped me, which is that Capcom was too afraid to actually scare the players,
This game is gross, disgusting sometimes, but never scary, all the panic inducing mob spams are predictable, but still never scary, for a game that had the perfect setting to scare the shit out of it's players,
This could be me misjudging the intentions of the developers, but then I wish it was really fucking cheesy horror done in the most corny way possible, but it's just nothing,
Well, the Baker Dad was pretty funny anyway
======================𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝗕𝐨𝐚𝐭=====================
The boat section with Mia is probably universally hated, let's talk about it,
-It has 2 saves, one on 1F and one on 3F, and the rest of the navigation requires traversal with very little ammo, so you have to strategize when it comes to managing saves in this section, which I kinda liked
-It's extra frustrating because all the weapon management with ethan is thrown in the bin for this particular section, so you're stuck with a pistol and (later after you get the cabin key) the machine gun, this makes this entire level VERY stressful to play, but then they gave me a knife and the level was pretty much over and done with from that point lol
-This is where all the important storytelling is done, and the story is utter garbage, literally the worst tropes ever, I would have rather there was no story at all, little biological abomination with a mommy seeking imprint UGH, it's not that the level is entirely bad, it's just that having to do all this shit with such a terrible incentive makes it much harder, also makes this level extra shitty to go through especially since you've been fighting these black tars the entire game......doing it now without all the weapons you've accumulated lol
-The corrosive key item was a fine inclusion but it was just an excuse to hoard even more unnecessary items,
-The child itself ruins the game and knocks it down by like 6-7 points that's how bad this abomination is
======================𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝗦𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲=======================
RE stories have never been good is something I've always said and I maintain that sentiment, but RE7 doesn't fall under the same conditions of storytelling with the same Umbrella corporation again and again and again, and yet it still decided to not tell a compelling story(ends up being the same Umbrella schpiel with Mia's backstory reveal but eh), disappointing but not unexpected
The entire ending was just abhorrent I would like to forget it immediately, literally stockpiling all that ammo meant nothing by the end, didn't use the grenade launcher properly in the game even once LOL
=====================𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬======================
Cringe.
I liked the old woman on the wheelchair I thought her appearing in the different sections of the game was cool but they ruined her too with that stupid end reveal, just ugh
Ethan is deadpan, I like him but that's BECAUSE he's so lousily written, I can't tell if they were going for mentally unhinged, like James Sunderland from SH2 where he doesn't show much of a reaction to anything
Love him for wrong reasons, at least I didn't have to bear with him being traumatized by stupid shit but like, at least show a reaction to killing your wife in the start of the game my god
Hate the bakers except the Dad and Zoe but I don't LOVE them either lol
=====================𝐎𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐒𝐭𝐮𝐟𝐟====================
-Hated the cassette segments, at least there are like 4 of them, they are pretty stupid storywise too, im in a dilapidated boat time to watch a cassette so i can recover my memory! I'm being chased by the Baker mom let just tape this for my husband real quick! So stupid
-Unskippable obnoxious cutscenes,
-Long irritating intro making replays hell
-The blocking feature is redundant I literally forgot it existed until they forced me to do it at the end lol
=======================𝐎𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐥𝐥============================
I didn't like it, it has some really ambitious ideas but it's so far from reaching it's potential, whenever I'd thing it would get good the game just decided to let me down again and again
2011
One of a kind, literally.
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)
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)
Ambitious title, none of the games in this franchise could ever make the puzzles interesting lol, I know way too many people who just straight up looked up a guide
Anyways parodoxical ending and garbage explanation but otherwise cool attempt at "trapped in a [insert place here]" VN by uchikoshi
Anyways parodoxical ending and garbage explanation but otherwise cool attempt at "trapped in a [insert place here]" VN by uchikoshi
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
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
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
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
2017
I know 3 people myself included who got confused by the start of the game so I'll lay it out for anyone that's interested,
The game has a very linear way of clearing its content despite how you have the ability to sometimes switch the order around a bit for variety, one of the game's charms.
The start of the game is a bit confusing, and it feels weird and over the place, Forgotten Crossroads misrepresents the game and misrepresents the journey you'll have ahead, I say the best way to clear content in this game is to have the aim of clearing all bosses which gives you the perfect road map, and once you're fought the Mantis Lords you're good to go,
The OST, the visuals, and above all what fantastic lore the game has. It's charming it's adventurous it has personality, the developers claimed that they designed the areas first and kind of found the story around it and it's pretty wild how well and cohesive most of turned out (minus the hive, what's up with the hive? TF is that place? Take it out)
I have yet to do the Pantheon but would love to embark on that adventure one day. Also great pricing on the game.
The game has a very linear way of clearing its content despite how you have the ability to sometimes switch the order around a bit for variety, one of the game's charms.
The start of the game is a bit confusing, and it feels weird and over the place, Forgotten Crossroads misrepresents the game and misrepresents the journey you'll have ahead, I say the best way to clear content in this game is to have the aim of clearing all bosses which gives you the perfect road map, and once you're fought the Mantis Lords you're good to go,
The OST, the visuals, and above all what fantastic lore the game has. It's charming it's adventurous it has personality, the developers claimed that they designed the areas first and kind of found the story around it and it's pretty wild how well and cohesive most of turned out (minus the hive, what's up with the hive? TF is that place? Take it out)
I have yet to do the Pantheon but would love to embark on that adventure one day. Also great pricing on the game.
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.
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.
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown (Immortal Difficulty)
Off the bat this is easily one of the best if not the best metroidvania currently out on the market. I don’t know how Ubisoft of all companies, the company that has an assembly line that pushes out the most smelly dirt chewing Assassin’s Creed titles, managed to make this game or even decided to have a dedicated division work on it with a budget.
As usual I’ll split the game into pros and cons,
(+) Bosses
There are mainline bosses then there are fodder (mini) bosses, and honestly the mini-bosses are just fine. Of all of them Alternate Sargon was the only one I genuinely liked because it really got me to learn how to play more aggressively and utilize launchers (which greatly help in the Menolias fight), others like the Prisoner that swings a pillar and the giant possum (Elrik?) are there to teach how to get behind enemies to maximize your damage.
The funniest one is the crab which is also a boss for a side-quest… why does this boss exist again?
(+) Mainline Bosses
(-) Jahandar is extremely mediocre
(+) Kiana just blew my mind, the fight feels like a dance where you’re constantly making decisions by parrying, dodging, jumping and the like. Kiana is one of the best early game fights I have EVER played
(+) Azdaha follows up with a very similar style to Kiana’s gameplay albeit this fight felt way easier and the switch-ups are very fun to learn, the music of this fight is fucking phenomenal as well
(+) Menolias is the first skill-check in the game where you really need to be fast on your feet, the fight requires you to clear the field and keep Menolias on his toes since he really doesn’t like to stick in one spot but he’s susceptible to launchers which puts the fight greatly in your favor
(+) Orod was the hardest fight in the game for me, the switch-ups threw me SO off, and he hits VERY, VERY hard, with large AoEs.
(+) Vahram was the one I thought I’d have the most trouble with but since he’s also susceptible to some aggressive gameplay it was smooth sailing for me, easily the best fight in the game bar none, not only because it has responsive gameplay elements that are fun to learn but also because the fight IN context is just.. fucking cool
(+) King Darius is the best use of grappling for a boss and even though I got a little frustrated and annoyed at first, given that I played this on the Yuzu Emulator with a keyboard and mouse, his tells are so easily distinguishable from phase to phase that it makes the fight just as enjoyable as Kiana and Azdaha
(---------------) Final Boss, I HATE. THIS. FIGHT. THIS FIGHT DRAGS BEYOND BELIEF. IF I COULD REMOVE ONE THING FROM THIS GAME IT’S THIS FIGHT. HOLY SHIT THIS FIGHT IS ANNOYING TO LEARN. This fight has 4 phases (where the 4th phase is le MC powertrip), so essentially you have to survive 3 phases, if you die you do all the phases over again and its fucking grating. There are switch-ups in this fight I straight up did not care about as it added to my irritation and for each phase you have to hit this random ball to transition to the next phase like are you serious? This is a fucking waste of time. GARBAGE.
(+) Utility
PoP has this utility for exploration where it can explicitly mark the next objective on the map and this is just SUCH a relief I cannot even imagine playing the game without this, additionally you can add pins on the map and even screenshots for certain points-of-interest.
(+/-) The World Design
The way the abilities are used to flesh out a lot of the platforming segments is fantastic, some are better than others (mostly ones that involved the time mechanic), the areas where I truly hated the trial and error platforming is the desert and the snow area which are just ATROCIOUS.
Metroidvanias, by design, are meant to be annoying, the genre insists on walkbacks and opening shortcuts, which can honestly become insanely formulaic and often tedious. The early game is absolutely brutal in this regard since you’re working with a limited health pool and on Immortal if you’re facing two enemies on screen it can turn into a life and death scenario real quick. One important thing I want to mention is how beautifully interconnected the levels are.
What I can honestly say about exploration in PoP, however, is that… it isn’t that rewarding, I feel like I grew more and more exhausted as the game progressed because of the chorelike nature of the traversal, even with an entourage of enemies with carefully telegraphed movesets at best I just hated fighting them most of the time. It isn’t FUN to do additional platforming challenges in PoP, if what awaits me are Xerxes or gems. The collectibles aren’t interesting enough to warrant extra exploration unless you’re a completionist.
To compare it with HK’s world design, on the design and the interconnectivity of the layout PoP smokes HK, but HK does more with less complexity, and it also utilizes the world to tell the story of the game. HK’s areas are MEMORABLE, even if you’re in the pits of the abyss, each area has a distinct soundtrack, so walking into something like the City of Tears has a lasting impression. A complaint of HK has always been the grid like nature of the map making every single map feel the same, and while I agree with the reskinned map critique, traversal in HK just doesn’t feel as Trial and Error as PoP on Immortal sometimes.
With a challenging difficulty mode, comes challenging traversal, and I for one think that it tanked my enjoyment outside of the bosses.
(+) Gameplay
All the individual mechanics are fantastic… besides clairvoyance which was strangely never used in a boss fight, the teleportation mechanic is the most unique one and each time the game encouraged me to use it I was just thrilled. The game is also very intuitive so often times if a puzzles involves a certain mechanic its very easy to tell which one. Grappling is another one which I really enjoyed in late game despite hating the area where it is used the most (the ice area).
Athra Surges are just….damage bursts, not much to say about these but they do have different customizability options for levels of surge batteries.
Amulets are honestly great despite many of them being complete garbage (as is with other games). The amulet that I never took off was actually the one that healed me for every parry I did successfully, despite not healing a lot it made it easier to not use the heal for the any of the boss fights since that just instantly recovers 3 bars and you feel like you’re over-rejuvenated.
(+) Story
I like the story! I think its super basic but it works really well and it positions the protagonist in the story quite well, I feel like PoP wasn’t interested in pushing the narrative in any complicated direction which is for the better, and by fighting and besting most of the bosses I actually felt a sense of victory and accomplishment as I laid them to rest, more than any direct story-telling could accomplish.
(+/-) OST
I liked some OSTs
(+) Conclusion
Fantastic bosses except mini-bosses, Jahandar and the final CANCER boss, well worth it to play the game. I’m hot and cold on the exploration but the work they’ve put into carefully connecting multiple branching paths is no joke and I can only respect it. This is a game made with a lot of love for the genre, even though I find it funny the devs said they took inspiration from games like DMC5 which is one of the worst games ever made.
Amazing game. Also I think Vahram is hot.
Off the bat this is easily one of the best if not the best metroidvania currently out on the market. I don’t know how Ubisoft of all companies, the company that has an assembly line that pushes out the most smelly dirt chewing Assassin’s Creed titles, managed to make this game or even decided to have a dedicated division work on it with a budget.
As usual I’ll split the game into pros and cons,
(+) Bosses
There are mainline bosses then there are fodder (mini) bosses, and honestly the mini-bosses are just fine. Of all of them Alternate Sargon was the only one I genuinely liked because it really got me to learn how to play more aggressively and utilize launchers (which greatly help in the Menolias fight), others like the Prisoner that swings a pillar and the giant possum (Elrik?) are there to teach how to get behind enemies to maximize your damage.
The funniest one is the crab which is also a boss for a side-quest… why does this boss exist again?
(+) Mainline Bosses
(-) Jahandar is extremely mediocre
(+) Kiana just blew my mind, the fight feels like a dance where you’re constantly making decisions by parrying, dodging, jumping and the like. Kiana is one of the best early game fights I have EVER played
(+) Azdaha follows up with a very similar style to Kiana’s gameplay albeit this fight felt way easier and the switch-ups are very fun to learn, the music of this fight is fucking phenomenal as well
(+) Menolias is the first skill-check in the game where you really need to be fast on your feet, the fight requires you to clear the field and keep Menolias on his toes since he really doesn’t like to stick in one spot but he’s susceptible to launchers which puts the fight greatly in your favor
(+) Orod was the hardest fight in the game for me, the switch-ups threw me SO off, and he hits VERY, VERY hard, with large AoEs.
(+) Vahram was the one I thought I’d have the most trouble with but since he’s also susceptible to some aggressive gameplay it was smooth sailing for me, easily the best fight in the game bar none, not only because it has responsive gameplay elements that are fun to learn but also because the fight IN context is just.. fucking cool
(+) King Darius is the best use of grappling for a boss and even though I got a little frustrated and annoyed at first, given that I played this on the Yuzu Emulator with a keyboard and mouse, his tells are so easily distinguishable from phase to phase that it makes the fight just as enjoyable as Kiana and Azdaha
(---------------) Final Boss, I HATE. THIS. FIGHT. THIS FIGHT DRAGS BEYOND BELIEF. IF I COULD REMOVE ONE THING FROM THIS GAME IT’S THIS FIGHT. HOLY SHIT THIS FIGHT IS ANNOYING TO LEARN. This fight has 4 phases (where the 4th phase is le MC powertrip), so essentially you have to survive 3 phases, if you die you do all the phases over again and its fucking grating. There are switch-ups in this fight I straight up did not care about as it added to my irritation and for each phase you have to hit this random ball to transition to the next phase like are you serious? This is a fucking waste of time. GARBAGE.
(+) Utility
PoP has this utility for exploration where it can explicitly mark the next objective on the map and this is just SUCH a relief I cannot even imagine playing the game without this, additionally you can add pins on the map and even screenshots for certain points-of-interest.
(+/-) The World Design
The way the abilities are used to flesh out a lot of the platforming segments is fantastic, some are better than others (mostly ones that involved the time mechanic), the areas where I truly hated the trial and error platforming is the desert and the snow area which are just ATROCIOUS.
Metroidvanias, by design, are meant to be annoying, the genre insists on walkbacks and opening shortcuts, which can honestly become insanely formulaic and often tedious. The early game is absolutely brutal in this regard since you’re working with a limited health pool and on Immortal if you’re facing two enemies on screen it can turn into a life and death scenario real quick. One important thing I want to mention is how beautifully interconnected the levels are.
What I can honestly say about exploration in PoP, however, is that… it isn’t that rewarding, I feel like I grew more and more exhausted as the game progressed because of the chorelike nature of the traversal, even with an entourage of enemies with carefully telegraphed movesets at best I just hated fighting them most of the time. It isn’t FUN to do additional platforming challenges in PoP, if what awaits me are Xerxes or gems. The collectibles aren’t interesting enough to warrant extra exploration unless you’re a completionist.
To compare it with HK’s world design, on the design and the interconnectivity of the layout PoP smokes HK, but HK does more with less complexity, and it also utilizes the world to tell the story of the game. HK’s areas are MEMORABLE, even if you’re in the pits of the abyss, each area has a distinct soundtrack, so walking into something like the City of Tears has a lasting impression. A complaint of HK has always been the grid like nature of the map making every single map feel the same, and while I agree with the reskinned map critique, traversal in HK just doesn’t feel as Trial and Error as PoP on Immortal sometimes.
With a challenging difficulty mode, comes challenging traversal, and I for one think that it tanked my enjoyment outside of the bosses.
(+) Gameplay
All the individual mechanics are fantastic… besides clairvoyance which was strangely never used in a boss fight, the teleportation mechanic is the most unique one and each time the game encouraged me to use it I was just thrilled. The game is also very intuitive so often times if a puzzles involves a certain mechanic its very easy to tell which one. Grappling is another one which I really enjoyed in late game despite hating the area where it is used the most (the ice area).
Athra Surges are just….damage bursts, not much to say about these but they do have different customizability options for levels of surge batteries.
Amulets are honestly great despite many of them being complete garbage (as is with other games). The amulet that I never took off was actually the one that healed me for every parry I did successfully, despite not healing a lot it made it easier to not use the heal for the any of the boss fights since that just instantly recovers 3 bars and you feel like you’re over-rejuvenated.
(+) Story
I like the story! I think its super basic but it works really well and it positions the protagonist in the story quite well, I feel like PoP wasn’t interested in pushing the narrative in any complicated direction which is for the better, and by fighting and besting most of the bosses I actually felt a sense of victory and accomplishment as I laid them to rest, more than any direct story-telling could accomplish.
(+/-) OST
I liked some OSTs
(+) Conclusion
Fantastic bosses except mini-bosses, Jahandar and the final CANCER boss, well worth it to play the game. I’m hot and cold on the exploration but the work they’ve put into carefully connecting multiple branching paths is no joke and I can only respect it. This is a game made with a lot of love for the genre, even though I find it funny the devs said they took inspiration from games like DMC5 which is one of the worst games ever made.
Amazing game. Also I think Vahram is hot.