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First, I'll give you links to my observations of the first three chapters of this game. Contains Chapter 3 Chapters 1 and 2 Now for Chapter 4... as I said in my post on Chapter 3, the bottom line for this is that if you liked the first three chapters, you'll like this one. It is humorous, it is bloody, and it contains an odd mix of the grim and abnormal slice-of-life. I laughed out loud - literally - several times while playing this game, and I honestly liked the insights on Chris's character that this gave. This chapter also serves as an excellent 'settling in' chapter for Gumi and Maki, as Chapter 3 was focused too much outside of the normal daily setting to get a picture of how she was dealing with her change in situation. The introduction of yet another (female) character has me feeling a bit exasperated, but since Taiga fits pretty well with the crew, I didn't feel any irritation. The combat scenes in this are pretty much just one-sided 'pow-pow, the enemy dies' one-sided massacres, except for one of them. I'm going to be blunt... in six months, they probably could have done two chapters like this, so I can't help but wonder why they insist on separating this game into such tiny chapters. While I won't say that the first two chapters (released together) were 'satisfying' in that sense, I nonetheless felt like I'd spent good money, rather than throwing it away. Unfortunately, at the price they are offering these chapters, I would much rather pay seven times as much for a full game two years from now than be forced to wait for each chapter.

For various reasons, this is one of the rare occasions when I didn't aggressively look forward to a Light game. The first reason is that the setting/story descriptions in the Getchu and homepages were vague and of no real use. The second was that a crossover was announced between this and Nemurenu (the recent Clock-up title with Kurashiki as the writer) recently. The artist for this game (at least the character design, anyway) is Ueda Metawo, the artist from Gore Screaming Show, Mindead Blood, and Yami no Koe. So, it should come as no surprise to anyone that there is a guro/no guro setting in this game. This is atypical for Light. In general, Light avoids actual guro content, preferring to stick to visual blood effects and shadow slayings (the shadow-figure beheading from Vendetta, as an example). This is actually typical in chuunige in general, with the rare exceptions including mostly Nitroplus games and a few Akatsuki Works games. As such, my first thought was, 'This doesn't feel like a Light game, and I only just started.' That feeling seemed to be betrayed, initially, by how the story begins, with a classic Masada-style protagonist monologue full of pathos and dark emotions. Unfortunately, it was soon apparent that the brief spark of hope I felt was going to be betrayed, as the horribly-paced prologue/first arc began. First, within ten minutes, I was watching a loli gang-rape scene. Second, things flash into vicious combat mode with no real intro to the characters, however limited. All of this is atypical of Light. The pacing of the early game is easily the worst I've encountered from this company, and that particular negative is endemic to the game as a whole. I can't really say I got to like any of the characters before the path split, which is unusual in a Light game, to say the least. Pacing might not seem like a huge issue to people accustomed to the often uneven pacing common in charage, but chuunige are, in many ways, games whose quality is based at least in part on their pacing (story, characters, and setting being the top three). Even Masada, who is terrible at slice-of-life, still manages to use it to give you a sense of what the characters are fighting for. However, with this game, Kurashiki failed even at that most basic of tasks... Nao remains two-dimensional outside of Sachi's path, and you never really get a full impression on any of the heroines. Kamori's path is short, brutal, and fades out with a whimper. I honestly liked the combat scenes, but it felt like this path sort of fizzles at the very end. Oh, there was a truly great guro scene with weird results that would normally have served as the first-class centerpiece for a first-class path... if the whole thing hadn't fizzled at the end. Yachiru's path is much stronger than Kamori's path... but it is also a bit more unpleasant. To be honest, I wasn't surprised that the path written solely by Kurashiki would be significantly better than the one written by by Marimo. However, this path is still atypical of Light in some ways... that I can't get into without spoiling it. However, like Kamori's path, it fizzles at the very end. This is part of the story, and it is understandable in a 'true heroine' chuunige, but it felt like this path began and ended with using Yachiru as a punching bag (and as annoying as she is at times, she didn't really deserve that). I will say that, despite this being stronger than Kamori's path, it is still a marginal path, at best, as chuunige paths go. The battles are awesome, but... Sachi I'm going to be straight with you... the favoritism for Sachi is blatant, even at the beginning of her path, and it is this path that is probably the reason for the guro warnings. I made this a separate section because, compared to everything else in the game, this path is unnaturally higher in quality. Kurashiki obviously was only interested in telling this story from the beginning, and it shows. For those who have played other Light games, the action scenes are pure crack, and the descriptions of the characters' feelings vivid. This path has two endings... a classic 'bad end with story' (it is actually kind of a nice read, though it is bad for humanity, lol) and a final end that feels... a lot like a bad end for Nao. Seriously, this game's final ending feels a lot closer to Nitroplus's style than Light's, which will probably bother some fanboys. Conclusion However, it makes me wonder... just why the hell did he insist on making the other two paths so mundane? Oh, if I were to compare them to a charage path (which would be unfair to both), they can't really be called 'mundane'. However, the sheer carelessness with which the common and other two heroine routes were treated, the poor pacing, the lack of a solid base to judge the characters... it feels inept, compared to this company's other works. As a result, I'm giving this one my lowest rating for a Light game on vndb, and also saying that I wish Sachi's path could be transplanted into another game, where it could really shine, lol.

Shuffle Essence! + is the definitive version of Shuffle, which was originally released in 2004. Shuffle was also the first game where Agobarrier, the now-deceased writer of the Tiny Dungeon series, made a claim to fame. First, I should note that I originally played Shuffle in English and was not in any way satisfied with the results. My primary reasons were the low quality of the localization (though it was better than what MG had done up to that point) and certain differences with the anime involving Kaede. To be blunt, the Kaede portrayed in the anime is a solid yandere, so I was kind of disappointed that she was only mildly yandere in the game, lol. Anyway, now to the obvious differences between the two versions of Shuffle... Well, the biggest one is the doubling of the number of heroines. Kareha, her sister Tsubomi, Mayumi, Sakura, the teacher Nadeshiko, and the new divine race girl, Daisy are the new heroines. In realistic terms, they actually consist four separate arcs... Tsubomi, Kareha, and Nadeshiko are connected loosely, with the remaining three routes standing on their own with extensive amounts of new text. This is in addition, to adding a second ending onto Shia's path and extensively re-writing it in the particulars. All in all, the length of the game is more than doubled, since the three heroine arcs are very long. Anyway, the new routes show off something that was only touched on lightly in the anime and the original version of the game... Agobarrier's obsession with harems. Basically, the result of each of the paths is that the 'main wife' of the harem gets picked, and the girls basically make the decision to create a harem without seriously consulting Rin, since he isn't good at refusing them in the first place. If you hate harem situations, this game is pure poison, but if you like your harems, this is good stuff. Now, to the difference between the English and Japanese versions... it does make a difference, obviously. Actually, there is a glaring difference in style between the new routes and the ones made for the original game. While the original routes were decent and tear-jerking, it seems like the popularity of Shuffle in Japan essentially gave Agobarrier license to do what he wanted with the new routes. More detail is given (including in the original heroine routes) and more loose ends are closed up. Each of the routes has a number of non-ero CGs unthinkable in a modern charage, and they are all of about as good of quality as could be produced ten years ago, lol. Overall, the end result of this is a vastly-improved game with a much more solid cast of characters. The holdovers from the original version (abandoned stylistic issues like random cameo scenes) are sometimes jarring because of the remade aspects, but the game doesn't suffer too much from that. Daisy's route, which comes across as a 'true' route (since all the might-have-been-fatal heroine issues are resolved) seems to have been specifically designed to satisfy fans of the original who didn't like the feeling that you were 'abandoning' certain of the heroines (such as Primula or Shia) to their fates by picking another. Agobarrier loved his happy harems, lol. May he rest in peace.

First, despite the way moege fans fawn over the first two VNs by Madosoft, they are perfect examples of absolute mediocrity in charage. That isn't to say they didn't have good points... the visual aspects of this company's VNs are on the higher end of things in the charage part of the VN industry. However, they were basically slogs through WWI-style trenches full of mud made from ichaicha... and one of my pet peeves is writers who pump in endless ichaicha. I personally see them as kusoge, due to the fact that I dropped Namaiki after one path (didn't vote on it) and Yakimochi was a nightmare of a substance-free ball of cotton candy. I was kind of exasperated that this VN had an anime come out beforehand, and to be honest, I avoided that anime like the plague specifically so it wouldn't color my attitude on this one. Considering how much the sexual aspect colors the relationships with the heroines in their paths, I am mildly curious as to how they handled the latter part of the series, though. One thing all the paths in this VN have in common is that the protagonist falls apart completely at least once in all of them. I'll be perfectly straight with you... if it weren't for the fact that he was so obviously fragile mentally in the first place, I probably would have been a lot more pissed off about this aspect. That tendency toward tunnel vision when stressed is pretty common in charage protags, but it does get tiring at times. The common route in this VN is fairly good... especially since the protagonist actually has a personality and a role other than as the donkan harem protagonist. I did think that it was insane to consider anyone other than Towa (the imouto) a heroine at all after a few hours (I love stories of twisted mutual dependence), but I went straight for Aashe first, simply because I'm too perverse to go for the heroine I most want from the beginning. On the other side, Kaoruko and Mihiro are both heroine types I really and sincerely am bored of... the immensely capable school council president who acts like an airhead (I hate airheads) and the osananajimi (sort-of) heroine. Understand, when I hear the words 'osananajimi heroine', I am almost instantly consumed by hatred and the heroine in question starts from a negative point. Aashe's path was a good experience. While it did feel a bit obvious when it came to the drama (the foreshadowing was overly blatant), that wasn't so bad a stumble that the path didn't manage to recover... at least somewhat. This is a problem that was somewhat endemic to all the paths. I liked the ending, as well as the solution the protagonist settled on. However, I felt that the end didn't move far enough ahead in time (this VN seriously needs a story fandisc to round out the endings), and that was somewhat of a downer. The little sister's path was pretty good in this one. In recent years, little sister paths have mostly been perfunctory, with none of the seriously twisted stuff you tend to see with the dependence that usually creates (consensual) incestuous relationships. I do feel that they should have included the parental issues into the main VN, rather than making them a background setting. However, the drama that comes up in the path is emotional enough to be satisfying. Towa is a great dependent imouto character, and I had to laugh at how easily they transitioned (seriously, it is pretty hilarious). The fact that they actually managed to take it from there to a really emotional piece of drama near the end was a demonstration of surprising skill. Again, the big downside was the fact that they really, seriously didn't focus on the issues the protagonist and his sister had with their parents, except in a ridiculously indirect and matter-of-fact fashion. This is a perfect example of 'failing to milk the setting', and it is a common flaw when it comes to charage-makers (most of them have a tendency to obsessively avoid introducing new or extra characters in heroine paths). Kaoruko is the obvious 'main heroine' of the story, and accordingly, it was given the most love by the writer. The humor and ichaicha are both on a higher level than the other paths (which means it was given more love, given the specialty of charage writers is humor and ichaicha), to the point where I actually broke into real-life lol situations several times midway through. Unfortunately, the drama in this path is surprisingly... dull compared to the others (this is actually common with charage writers, who seem to like giving their main heroines smooth rides). I was made a bit sad by this... but the writer's love was shown fairly clearly again in the ending, which is based a pretty long time after the end of the main story and talks about a lot of the details about how they arrived there. I'm going to be blunt. I don't have the energy to play Mihiro's path now or any time soon. She is a great friend character who is frequently amusing... but by that same tone, she is the type of character who makes a horrible transition to the 'heroine' role. I honestly can't see any non-awkward way in which they would move her into the heroine position, and I honestly don't want her as a heroine, so I'll leave it to someone else to bother with her. Overall, this is by far the best of Madosoft's three VNs released so far... but it is no kamige. It does, however, manage to fulfill the requirements for a VN of the Month candidate, in that it both stimulates the emotions, the intellect, and my sense of humor... even if no two of them is strongly stimulated in any given path, lol. Unfortunately, it just barely puts its fingernails on the edge of candidacy, so anything even reasonably good could blow it out of the water with little trouble, lol.