This review contains spoilers
Ok, so how the fuck do I even talk about this? How the fuck do I even rate this?
Apparently there's two versions of this game. Boy am I glad I played the censored one cuz Jesus Fucking Christ, even that version walks a very, very fine line between showing some really needlessly grotesque stuff and it definitely stumbles over that line a few times. And looking, as objectively as one can at a piece of media, this game succeeds in its goals with flying colors. It's viscerally uncomfortable. That's what it was going for, and it did it. But I can't help but feel like some of it could have been handled with a bit more tact? Maybe?
Within this game are depictions of rape (multiple times), pedophilia (it's a pretty persistent theme), sex slavery (right after the extreme disfigurement of said character forced into sex slavery), and that's just the most potent bits that stick out in my mind. I'm not saying heavy topics can't be breached in a piece of media, but the biggest red flag to me is that some of these descriptions include accompanying illustrations! Some of which are decently sexualized! Like, talk about a lack of tact! And this is the censored version!! What the fuck!??!
You really don't need to go to these lengths to make an unsettling piece of media. You've already got voice lines of characters crying out in pain and fear, you've already got the writing, you've already got the heavy industrial music, do you really need to draw the rape scene too? And again, this is the "toned down" version, I fear what kinds of shit is in the uncensored one (probably plenty of stuff that adds you to an FBI database even worse than the one I'm probably already on for playing this)!
Despite all of this, most of the worst stuff takes up only maybe 10-20% of this game's runtime, and the rest is, uh, actually pretty good? The music is great at accentuating plot beats, and the perspective shifts are a great way to ground the narrative in some semblance of "reality", and to contrast the viewpoint you get from Fuminori (whom the story clearly understands to be a terrible person). As the game goes on further, you get less and less scenes from Fuminori's perspective which I can honestly only see as a positive. Once Yoh is... imprisoned? Raped? Disfigured? All of the above? After that, the narrative all but forsakes Fuminori, and Koji becomes more or less the main character, which I think is probably the best move one could do after including what is probably one of the most distasteful scenes in the whole game. But it's still reasonable to ask why that scene needed a CG (and was presumably worse in the original version).
I guess if you wanted to make a story where characters get raped and murdered and disfigured and the MC cannibalizes them with his child girlfriend whom he has sex with (erm actually she isn't a child she's an eldritch abomination with superhuman intelligence i dont care she looks like a child), this is certainly a way to do it... but I can't help but think it would be better if it was a bit more reserved in its execution. It's got multiple high moments, but the low moments sting and really throw into question how much of this was thought out past a vague "dude, wouldn't it be fucked up if X happened?"
I'm compromising on a 7/10 right now but no score I give this feels right. If the game handled its racier scenes with a bit more tact I could honestly rationalize it being an 8 in my mind, but in its current state I can't help but question its goals (is the 'point' of this game just to show you something "fucked up" and nothing else?) which makes me wanna bring it down a lot. I don't know, I'll have to sit on it for a bit, but even with how high I'm rating it I still probably wouldn't recommend it to someone unless you've really steeled your resolve.
Apparently there's two versions of this game. Boy am I glad I played the censored one cuz Jesus Fucking Christ, even that version walks a very, very fine line between showing some really needlessly grotesque stuff and it definitely stumbles over that line a few times. And looking, as objectively as one can at a piece of media, this game succeeds in its goals with flying colors. It's viscerally uncomfortable. That's what it was going for, and it did it. But I can't help but feel like some of it could have been handled with a bit more tact? Maybe?
Within this game are depictions of rape (multiple times), pedophilia (it's a pretty persistent theme), sex slavery (right after the extreme disfigurement of said character forced into sex slavery), and that's just the most potent bits that stick out in my mind. I'm not saying heavy topics can't be breached in a piece of media, but the biggest red flag to me is that some of these descriptions include accompanying illustrations! Some of which are decently sexualized! Like, talk about a lack of tact! And this is the censored version!! What the fuck!??!
You really don't need to go to these lengths to make an unsettling piece of media. You've already got voice lines of characters crying out in pain and fear, you've already got the writing, you've already got the heavy industrial music, do you really need to draw the rape scene too? And again, this is the "toned down" version, I fear what kinds of shit is in the uncensored one (probably plenty of stuff that adds you to an FBI database even worse than the one I'm probably already on for playing this)!
Despite all of this, most of the worst stuff takes up only maybe 10-20% of this game's runtime, and the rest is, uh, actually pretty good? The music is great at accentuating plot beats, and the perspective shifts are a great way to ground the narrative in some semblance of "reality", and to contrast the viewpoint you get from Fuminori (whom the story clearly understands to be a terrible person). As the game goes on further, you get less and less scenes from Fuminori's perspective which I can honestly only see as a positive. Once Yoh is... imprisoned? Raped? Disfigured? All of the above? After that, the narrative all but forsakes Fuminori, and Koji becomes more or less the main character, which I think is probably the best move one could do after including what is probably one of the most distasteful scenes in the whole game. But it's still reasonable to ask why that scene needed a CG (and was presumably worse in the original version).
I guess if you wanted to make a story where characters get raped and murdered and disfigured and the MC cannibalizes them with his child girlfriend whom he has sex with (erm actually she isn't a child she's an eldritch abomination with superhuman intelligence i dont care she looks like a child), this is certainly a way to do it... but I can't help but think it would be better if it was a bit more reserved in its execution. It's got multiple high moments, but the low moments sting and really throw into question how much of this was thought out past a vague "dude, wouldn't it be fucked up if X happened?"
I'm compromising on a 7/10 right now but no score I give this feels right. If the game handled its racier scenes with a bit more tact I could honestly rationalize it being an 8 in my mind, but in its current state I can't help but question its goals (is the 'point' of this game just to show you something "fucked up" and nothing else?) which makes me wanna bring it down a lot. I don't know, I'll have to sit on it for a bit, but even with how high I'm rating it I still probably wouldn't recommend it to someone unless you've really steeled your resolve.