story of my life!

yaegashi nan designs? fantasy aesthetic with some nifty jrpg mechanics to boot? witty writing and a wonderful alicesoft ost? evenicle has all this and yet so much more. it's been a while since something i've looked forward to not only delivered, but also exceeded my expectations. this is pretty much the one alicesoft game i was really looking forward to because despite the time i spent with the rance series, this one always seemed to appeal to me more. i simply can't stress how much this game delivered for me personally.

for the sake of avoiding spoilers, i'll just say the story is pretty fun! it starts off with your typical jrpg setup but evolves into so much more with the way the arcs and character moments get distributed. if i'd have to make a comparison in terms of arc structures i'd say that one piece probably fits the bill with how each chapter has its arc on a respective country while also taking a few steps to adding onto the overarching narrative! it's a fun setup that allows for a variety of scenarios in each chapter. the story for the most part is a pretty fun fantasy romp with occasionally heavy story moments but evenicle knows when to give you room to breathe and when to slow down pretty well. there's a few tonal shifts here that might feel jarring but once you get into the rhythm of evenicle's world it'll be pretty easy to smooth them out. the script itself while as raunchy and horny as you'd expect with any eroge especially from alicesoft, is also really just a blast to read through. there are a lot of jokes here that honestly landed really well for me and the writing team knows when to play their cards in ways that didn't feel emotionally manipulative to me and most of the arcs have very satisfying conclusions. much like other alicesoft games it balances the plot and gameplay elements pretty well too! exposition is snappy and fights are almost always properly built up to make them all the more rewarding narratively. another small detail i appreciated is that sex within the narrative is actually treated pretty maturely in the sense that most of the h-scenes don't really have that air of awkwardness to them that some of the others do. i'm not sure how much sense this will make to people who haven't played eroges but just trust me that they aren't that cringe! 😎

as for the gameplay, all i can really say beyond it being a simple but competent jrpg is that while the encounter rate does kinda go crazy at times i didn't really mind it much since the game incentivizes grinding pretty well with the opportunity to trigger events with your party members and exploration is very much a large focus within the overall gameplay loop. in fact, the loop was so addictive that i ended up unintentionally doing every single sidequest and completely explored all the maps while fighting every superboss. so yeah i think i'd say as someone that's played a lot of jrpgs while the systems here are pretty simple they way they're implemented are pretty fun as some encounters really require you to mix up the skill setups! i ended up with a total of 78 hours by the time i hit credits so there's plenty to be offered here with a 100% that's honestly really fun!

so at the end of the day, was evenicle life-changing goat peak fiction raw kino? no, not really but it was fun as hell and that's what really matters. i could go on and on about how a lot of my favorites have been life-changing for me but at the end of the day, not everything has to be life-changing or incredibly meditative, sometimes it can just be fun and evenicle understands that best! honestly, 2022 has been a pretty uneventful year for gaming on my end and it doesn't help that life was kicking my ass for a bit in the early parts and even if i didn't come out of evenicle thinking differently i'm sure i'll be able to look back in the future and think fondly of the funny little eroge that helped make these past twelve days all the more tolerable!

i guess i'll have to see for myself in the future how evenicle 2 apparently fucks things up lol !

" i own the physical of this game " /10!

ps. ramius my beloved but all the other girls are great too :)

I’ll just get this out of the way first. You do not need to watch, play, or read any Fate-related thing to play Fate/Samurai Remnant. Anyone who says otherwise is a liar.

The short review is that the game is good enough in most areas to overcome its shortcomings in gameplay.

I’ll talk about the combat system first. It is serviceable; it gets the job done, even though I wish there was more to it. The game does a pretty good job of hiding the combat simplicity with plenty of flare; almost everything you can do as Iori or a Servant looks cool. Iori having multiple styles is cool, but I found that the early ones tend to get outshined by the latter ones.

General gameplay involves navigating large areas linked by an overworld map. The environments themselves are very pretty, and I’m very much a fan of how this game looks graphically. The game does a mostly good job at getting you to explore the areas with bulletin board missions. I say mostly because some have missions that require you to kill X amount of enemies, which usually requires you to load out and back into an area to repopulate the zone with enemies. On the topic of enemies, there are some that are set amounts, like Blue Oni and Izuna, which means you can’t farm them for resources or hunt them for Edo Commissions, a completely baffling decision. While also on this topic, this game is not built for you to do everything in a single run; they want you to do multiple runs. I have no problem with this; the game gives you a lot of incentive to play New Game +, like new scenes, quests, and an exclusive NG+ ending. Also, I like the Spirit Font Conflict; I don’t really have much to say about it, but I definitely see people not liking it.

I won't get too much into the story; I’ll just say I liked it a lot. I think all the endings are good (especially the NG+ exclusive one). The relationship between Iori and Saber is 100% the highlight of the game; everything about it is perfect to me. I think all the Servants are great too, new and old. I like all the Masters, but I do wish a lot of them got more screen time. What was there was good, but I think it could have benefited from more. On the topic of characters, there are a bunch of NPCs that should have gotten proper portraits, like the people in charge of Edo commissions.

I love the art style of this game. Rei Wataru’s art is fantastic and a great fit for Fate, and I hope to see more from them. I don’t even mean only in a TYPE-MOON context; just in general, I really like their art.

Getting into nitpicks: The logbook is incredibly poorly designed. You have no way of knowing if you are missing something, and the game gives you no way of knowing how to get what you are missing. I know it is bad because I got the platinum for Fate/Samurai Remnant, and let me tell you, the trophy that took me an embarrassing amount of time to get was the one you get for completing the logbook. Also, I do think Koei Tecmo cheaped out by not dubbing this game; there is no good reason to not dub this. I wouldn’t usually hammer on this, but this is an action game where people talk in fights.

I hope Fate/Samurai Remnant leads to more TYPE-MOON games like this and that they improve on it. My only worry for the future is that if they make another one, they stick to the Samurai-era Japan setting. There is a lot of potential here for different countries and/or eras.

Incredible game, loved it to death
I was ready to say it was just a fun time until the true ending hit me in the head with a steel pipe, protagonist duos are usually my favorite thing and this game does something incredible with them. Probably one of the best character foils in TM yet, I adore them
The cast in general is great too, I dont think any of them is weak or underutilized at the end of the day, lots of interesting things to offer and see, very happy with them
It was a pleasant surprise for sure and I'm super glad I gave it a shot

LA Noire is a game that I really hoped would be more interesting than it ended up being. It is entertaining enough, it has that typical Rockstar charm (and Rockstar's tendency to burn money on the screen for the most minute things) but it really feels like a missed opportunity.

The game takes place immediately after WW2, which is a great setting, but it feels like the devs were so enamoured with it that they forgot to put any substance in any part of the game.

The gameplay itself is so simplistic and scripted that it may as well not even be there, the investigation segments are really basic and the interrogations are sort of interesting but really badly handled (and it never matters how well you do in any of them). Same can be said for the open world, which was a complete waste of money and time to even have, it looks great but it serves so little purpose that I ended up just skipping the car rides every time.

So all we're really left with is the story, but I felt like it was paced all wrong. The game introduces its characters in the first hour, then everything stops for a solid 10 hours, and at the very last couple hours a story starts to materialize. And even then you're not given much to care for considering that by then the game is scrambling to get some kind of structure back, but it all feels very hollow, especially the very anti-climactic ending.

What I will say about the game though is that the creators really cared for what they were making, and it shows on every aspect of it. Too bad that it didn't really translate to a compelling experience.