So, I recently finished reading Dead End Junction, a short doujin VN which I got as a part of some bundle not so long ago and which was laying untouched on my Steam account since then. Well, for a few moments when I just started it felt as if I found a hidden gem, but as the story progresses quite a lot of major problems became apparent, and they negate almost all good that there was in the story originally.
Well, for instance, the setting in this VN is pretty unique. It is set in a fantasy-escque world based on Wild West. Josette is a tomboyish "cowgirl" who lives in a small isolated town in a desert. The story is focused on Josette and her friends traveling across the world and confronting the Dark Knight, an evil god who transfers to her world from another one and is going to bring great misfortunes with him.
Well, on one hand, this VN has a lot of interesting ideas. The setting and the comic book-like presentation make it stand out. It also has a lot of other little things that could make it a great VN: the characters have likeable base personalities, the art style is fitting and reasonably good, and some ideas about war are quite interesting. In the end, on the other hand, this VN is simply not done well enough to make it all actually work. The plot is full of cliches and overall goes nowhere; the pacing is completely off; the setting, in the end, is left largely unexplored; the characters lack any depth, and their development is very unrealistic (basically, shitty fanfic level of unrealistic). The presentation would work much better if the VN had a lot more visual assets, and since it tries to mostly rely on dialogues rather than exposition, most fight scenes basically consist of a single static CG, a few dialogue lines, and... that's it. And the final problem is that this VN lack any real conclusion. The ending is pretty much a sequel bait, and, since this group never released anything new since 2012, I really doubt that the sequel will ever get released.
In the end though I still liked this VN. It works pretty well if you want to relax your brain and consume something dumb and without any real value (which, I guess, is the main reason why some people read moege). I'd recommend trying this VN if you are looking for something like that, but it's pretty much the only reason why I'd recommend it.
5/10