A list of short reviews for games that aren’t quite long enough to have established characters, but are nice little short distractions.

[text]

[text] is a short game that depending on the choice is either a slice of life, or a scary story. It’s nice and short and too the point. I only kind of wish the uncle was characterized a little more, but the game is that short. A nice little distraction for when you have some time to kill.

The Noose

The Noose is a game that takes about 3 hours to get through and the middle is filled with such over the top repetitive words and phrases it gets silly, so by the time the real scary stuff happens you are just tied. Also sound effects are used way too much in scenes to the point they just get annoying.

Also the story is confusing as fuck. I don’t know it it’s the translation that’s bad or really you just don’t quite get what’s going on, but by the end that diary entry still makes no sense.

Title screen of Dysfunctional Systems

Dysfunctional systems was a game who’s execution is nice and the opening is awesome and the music is awesome, however it disappoints in a lot of minor ways that add up to a lot of papercuts that bleed and hurt.

The main flaw of this game lies in the characters, which for a visual novel is crucial. You have the two main characters Winter and Cyrus. Winter is 14 and Cyrus is a misogynistic asshole. Cyrus is also Winter’s mentor so she had to jump whenever he says to. This power dynamic is terrible.

When you start off with him he treats her like a pet than a human being. Constantly calls her “girl” and dismisses anything she has to say. There a scene where she is going to punch him and the creators decided that since she’s a girl she has absolutely zero force behind it, where in Cyrus just pats her on her head. They obviously know shit about fourteen year old girls. I though this would just be his character as terrible as writers feel the need to keep using these shitty characters. Later towards the end of the game however I see that other shittiness peek out.
The main thing that first killed me on this is when they get to Sule and Cyrus is forcing Winter to drink. Winter over and over says she doesn’t want to, so Cyrus overrides her bodily autonomy and forcefully coerces her to drink in the bar using both his status as a mentor and his supposed knowledge. You find out his oh so great experience is a pile of beans. This is where I was shaking my head. Here we have a male character forcing a female character to do something against their will, I might add she’s 14 and considered underage to be drinking here in the real world, there on Earthen and even on Sule. So now her morals are compromised too, all so the writer could sneak in her having him do something for her. Whoop de doo. In stead of writing a good character and a good plot in Cyrus, they chose to write a shitty one. I seriously wanted him to be pulled off the mission. Seriously, the time it comes up for you to use that bit, it could be solved different ways.. like oohhh.. him finally being convinced to do things her way. No she basically has to be mentally assaulted to resolve that.

I did my best to try and ignore that glaring garbage, and was about to write a somewhat better review, then I decided to try for the other ending……. That’s when we get into the fat shaming, gender shaming and homophobia. Oh they also make fun of a characters accent too, because that’s always funny. I would say it’s racist, but the character Irie isn’t described in any detail and the accent to me seemed Irish. I should not that Earthen is constantly being described as a “Utopian/Egalitarian Society”
Anyway, here’s a screen of the dialogue, Waverly (Winter’s Roomate) and Irie (Random Person):

Waverly "She's not gaunt."
Her smile vanishes.
Irie "Aye, you're right, V: ‘er thighs..."
Her smile returns.
Irie "What does she do to fill those thighs, V? Hath she let you give ‘em a
squeeze, yet?"
Waverly "'Y-Yet'!?"
Irie "She's a mess of a girl-'ardly e'en looks a girl-but those legs..."
Irie "Who gave ‘er the idea to wear those stockings of 'ers? Goodness!"
Waverly "You sound like a lesbian."
Irie "V, I'm just admiring another beau'iful woman, as a beautiful woman
m'self. Nothin' lezzy about tha'."
Her lips twist a little, and she looks right into my eyes.
Irie "Tell me, who here would think of another girl with lustful eyes? Who's the
man, Waverly?"
Waverly "..."
Irie but I digress! Winnie could stand to be much more beautiful, eh
right?

Mind you that Winter is sleeping and under the covers so they have basically invaded her privacy here.
They start off with the fat shaming, the move on to going “She’s not a girl because I’m a girl and pass judgement on what girls should look like!” then onto “Your a lesbian how terrible!”, “I’m not a lesbian, that’s a terrible thing to be”, finished with “You are a MAN if you look at women like this!” Because… lesbians are bad, if you look on a woman a certain way your sexuality changes JUST LIKE THAT aaaand you must be a dude becausee… heterosexism? Seriously were they trying to say, if she’s a lesbian she must be the ‘man’ in that relationship?
If you are in the kind of society they seem to keep alluding to I doubt people would go “Your a lesbo!” like that and would just accept what the person was saying without judgement and would be like “She likes to pass judgement on women’s bodies…..” which in that kind of society WOULDN’T BE HAPPENING IN THE FIRST PLACE. (Shit Cyrus wouldn’t be happenigin the first place.)
This dialogue is just all kinds of fucked up and made me just finally table flip on this whole visual novel. Cyrus was terrible then with this…

The final “paper cut” (really these are more like knife wounds) is finding out ALL the mentors are older men and the proteges are girls. C R E E P Yand truly sexist.
In one of the ending Waverly’s mentor even rubs her shoulder. DX!!!

So the overall: Music was good, art/style execution was good, overall plot was good, story and characters were all sorts of bigoted garbage that I’m tired of seeing in gaming.

Rei is a short Visual Novel made by Sonnet009 in three days for the Pulse Pounding Heart Stopping Dating Sim Jam 2013.  It’s about Aya, who is forced to go ghost hunting with her friend and finds Rei, a ghost that can’t move on thanks to his fuzzy memory. Of course you get to help him and in that you can find romance.

There are I supposed technically two guys you can romance, however they are the same person, just past and present. I’ve only gotten two out of four endings so I don’t know how all of them end up.

The Story:

Overall the story is unique, it’s got a few moments in it that are sexist, like when you say you don’t believe in love you get told “How can you even call yourself a girl” and your going to be an old cat lady, but overall the experience was nice. The story is solid and short and didn’t leave a lot of loose ends to tie up. For a game made in three days, that’s saying a lot that it has a beginning, middle, end and no dangling story.

I can see the story being expanded to include more ghost histories and trying to save them all or only a special one, and a possible harem ending. :D

Characters:

There are only three major character and one minor character.
Risa, Aya and Rei and the minor Taka.
Risa is mostly there as a catalyst to drag you to school and act as a check when your character completes some routes.
Rei is of course the main target in the game. Both the present and past Rei. He’s the jerk type, but if you pick the right options he’s not that much of one. Not like the typical verbal abusing assholes of other otome games.
Taka, well, his character is more of a spoiler than anything, but he’s involved with Rei somehow.
Aya is a nice character and not a doormat. So that is awesome, and most of her choices are given to you so you can basically guide her character how you want. Which is another nice thing.

Art:

This is going to be short because all the art of the game comes from 3rd parties.
Tokudaya and +cube+ specifically. Which means it super nice art, but you might recognize some of the characters or backgrounds.

Music/Sound:

This is where I felt it needed major improvement. There is only ONE sound, and that’s the school bell. Either some more spooky ambient sounds to set the mood or some music or something would have been nice. Maybe have added those at the end and again from a free materials source.

Overall:

Overall Rei is a nice quick game to kill some time and offers 4 routes to play for some replay value. The story can certainly branch out into a fuller game if the author wanted and it could use some more sounds.

Title Screen for DUAEL

I came across DUÆL while trawling the VNDB for otome games and saw the screen shot popup,  the story was interesting and I had been wanting to explore something similar so I thought ‘why not’.

It should be noted that I played with the adult content OFF, as that was the default and I didn’t know it had any in it…. (I’m not sure how much adult content there was. Play at your own comfort.)

I also THINK I got the good ending so I haven’t seen, or know how to get the bad ending. This review is based on that information.

The Story:
The story deals with two worlds one about Cadfael and his quest to stop the world from being eat by this “Nothing” (think Neverending Story) and Walter a teenage gamer who enjoys playing as Cadfael in the game. Only that people in Cadfael’s world are linking up to the people in Walter’s world.

This is where the story breaks down a bit for me, as we never see another “Linked One”, we only hear that there was a massive group of them that passed through the town.  Thus we never really get to see how they are treated by people that aren’t linked, or how other Linked Ones are dealing with their situation. It was a missed opportunity. Another way the story breaks down is at the end, where everything is being explained. The story never really goes into WHY the things that are happening are happening that way, it’s just.. “Yeah that’s what happened… Don’t know more details… Yup.”

I also didn’t like one part where they are trying to keep some villagers away and the narrative was saying that Lucille was casting weak spells…. I had leveled her up where she could devastate the battlefield, which she did after  you get into that fight, but everyone was powered up.
Also, if Cadfael is the main character of the games, why did he just then bond with Walter. Is the story going with the “Chosen, one out of a million” kind of thing? Still it’s something the story could explore more.

Characters:
There are four main characters in the game, Walter, Cadfael, Lucille, and Kuruk. Honestly I felt that Lucille got the most characterization, even more than Cadfael as we saw more of her emotions. While I felt that Cadfael was going through the motions and had a lot of telling that showing moments. Kuruk by far was the weakest character. You learn nothing about him.

I really didn’t like that the only woman in the party was also the mage/healer as is cliche of the fantasy/RPG world. However she is also the most powerful character in the game. She really breaks the game if you get her Fire 1-3 and level her up in the gym. Kuruk and Cadfael can’t even compare. So at the end boss was basically a cake walk. Walter, since he does not fight, is mostly there for the Earthside aspect of the story. His character is one of the lonely gamer type who finds a connection to the characters he plays. I honestly thought he was done well.
I thought Lucille would also get on my nerves and typically be annoying, however she wasn’t at all and I found I liked her the best. (Her ability to almost one shot a screen of enemies probably helped too, Cadfael looked weak and helpless compared XD)

Gameplay:

Gameplay… was… not so good. While I did enjoy the RPG aspects of the game, grinding at the gym was NOT FUN. You probably don’t need to grind all that much at the gym, but not knowing what comes next I decided to do it. At one point you pretty much have to when you get Kuruk as the enemies are tough enough to kill you.
Lucille is the easiest to level up, Kuruk is the hardest. Also Kuruk is broken, At the end I want to level him up and got him to level 49 and he just would not level up any more. I checked his screen and it constanly said “~8000 point till level 44” Level 44? However he’s not important at the end anyways… especially if Lucille is leveled up to 50. So it was nothing game breaking.
There were also end game items I could not by for whatever reason, maybe on a second play through? In the end I didn’t like the grinding as it took away majorly from the story.

Art:

What is up with that face?

The art is proficient enough, not really to my tastes, but the characters feel constant… save Lucille. She has this one face that just does not look good at all. I cringed every time I saw it. If your looking for the kind of anime look that professional Japanese VNs have, this doesn’t have it, but it isn’t so far away from that style like some other Original English Visual Novels (OEVN, OELVN). So Lucille’s face is my major nitpick, past that it might could use a revision later in the artists career to polish things up a bit more.

It also does have a nice shot of Cadfael in there if you so desire it ;3

There’s a character gallery and a CG gallery and a concept art/notes gallery as well. So a bit of stuff to unlock.

Overall:

Over all the story was enjoyable, while there was some cliche going on, none of the characters felt too much like a stereotype save for Kuruk the noble knight bear. Lucille most notably felt more human, and while she was jealous of Walter, she showed it more in distrust than the typical clingyness that some authors write. She also has a right to be a bit distrustful of Walter as a whole. Some random floating projection coming out of nowhere and acting familiar with someone you’ve known. Walter was refreshing to see as well, you’d think he’d be a typical power gamer but really he’s a sad loner that gets his human interaction from the games he plays. I feel that there’s a connection to be made there. Cadfael I felt was a bit too stale however, I did like his manner of speaking and his overall personality, but it felt like he was going through the motions and the whole Link between them could be explored a bit more. Kuruk honestly felt jammed in there as a third wheel, but became someone that Lucille could go to after she realized how close Walter and Cadfael had grown together.

I especially liked the ending just after the battle, it was a real smart way to end that kind of story.

DUÆL

is a steaming pile of gender essentialist misogynistic bullshit!

That’s just the summary.

The anime starts off rather good, with Amata at the theater watching an old movie which seems to be an exaggerated one based on the original Sousei no Aquarion. Then we see Mikono. I wouldn’t say she started to ruin the anime here, but it was a wait and see what happens. I kind of expected her to be the reincarnation of Silvia (maybe she is, or maybe she’s Apollo har har) and when the whole fight breaks out, she and Amata become pilots of Aquarion together, and plot ensues.

NOPE! She’s.. completely…useless. She’s only there to inspire Amata to show his wings and save the day. Most of that time she’s spent crying. The only thing she has is this “cat” creature that will probably be some super awesome key thing that unlocks the whole riddle of who, what, why. Kind of how Makona was from Magic Knight Rayearth.

What happens next is that we see the women singing and the men doing men things. One of the women is dressed scantily for the male viewing pleasure and one of the men is whining how he can’t have his way with the women on the other side of the wall and generally objectifying them as usual.

Then Kagura appears, which is one of the.. Shadow Angels? New evil bad people that trashed their own home and probably want ours? OH HEY they might even be humans and Amata and crew are the Shadow Angels or something :D. Anyways, he has a thing for Mikono and calling her a “kuso onna” which roughly translates to “shit/ty woman”, the fansubber went with “filthy bitch”. Because gendered slurs YAY. (Really Japanese doesn’t have ways of saying ‘bitch’, it’s usually ‘adjective’-woman which DOES NOT translate to bitch as it is a gendered word by default.)

Now this is where it gets silly. The men are getting their asses kicked so we send in the F-BOT! *TABOO* And we get to hear how everything is OK because… *drumroll* THERE IS A CHASTITY GEM ON THE FEMALE ROBOT THAT PREVENTS FUSION (complete with locks and chains). I’ll let that sink in.

Of course Amata and Mikono get inside a Vector aaaand, Mikono whines and cries about not wanting to fight and Amata says some essentialist bullshit like girls need to be protected. Also all the women have large breasts and we are going to take our time showing them naked and having their breasts wobble in the fusion scenes. We only get one shot of the guy and he’s not posing and making gesticulations like the women are. Yay, this just turned into an ecchi anime.

Really this show looks like propaganda from some Japanese MRAs that don’t like the state of women in Japan. Really. They are to be chaste and not chaste, they are “shitty women” who do nothing but whine and cry if they aren’t piloting a giant pink robot with a chastity belt on.

A successor to Sousei no Aquarion? No this isn’t it at all. Sousei had it’s share of problems, but overall it was a decent watchable anime. This just takes horrible and turns it to 11!