First, some statistics. Here's the chart of total number of VNs, number of listed VNs in this blog and number of blocked VNs for the years 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994. Number won't change significantly since for the moment these are all the VNs that vndb.org has for the noted periods.
VN per year
Year
Total
Listed
Blocked
1991
75
1992
80
1993
121
1994
155
As you remember, year 1992 was to my liking since, due to harsh censorship, works were more story-oriented. And with almost the same number of total VNs compared to 1991, in 1992 there were much more works that made it in the list and even smaller number of blocked ones.
The total number of works increased further by 28%, but the correlation of quality story oriented works improved slightly in comparison to 1993.
So let's see what year 1994 brought:
Dating SIMs showed up and pushed Raising SIMs back
RPG weren't too numerous but there are surprisingly many very high quality RPGs in 1994
There's the first Otome game Angelique
There's the first Yaoi reference in Uchuu Kaitou Funny Bee
Gao Gao 3 presented a new model of game - party interaction based.
Let's count the masterpiece level games of 1994:
1. AmbivalenZ -Niritsu Haihan- AmbivalenZ
2. Crystal Rinal - Ouma No Meikyuu -
3. DESIRE - Haitoku no Rasen
4. Dragon Knight 4
5. Gao Gao! 3rd ~Wild Force~
6. Fuzoroi no Lemon
7. Mirage 2 - Torry x Neat x Roan no Daibouken
8. Nooch 3 Saigo no Seisen
9. Policenauts
10. Team Innocent: The Point of No Return
11. Tokimeki Memorial
12. Toushin Toshi II
13. Urusei Yatsura: Dear My Friends
14. Wedding Errantry -Gyakutama Ou-
15. Welcome to the Cinemahouse
16. Zatsuon Ryouiki
And five of those 15 are RPGs, pretty insane. I guess there was no competition from the beginning - I'd put DESIRE pretty much above any game put beside. So DESIRE is the game of the year 1994.
Foreword: Silky's company and Slave doll in title inevitably make us think it's a nukige, but actually it's a scenario oriented game. Moreover, that's retelling of a classic cyberpunk story about an android hunter - the story that was already told in visual novels by Imitation wa Aisenai and Snatcher. Did Silky's ruin the classic concept or was it able to produce a masterpiece? You'll find the answer in this review. That's actually infamous Raira on the screen.
Title: Reira Slave Doll
Developer: Silky's
Date: 1994-04-28
VNDB link:https://vndb.org/v9053
Youtube walkthrough:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUzNdzCXyhc&index=1&t=0s&list=PLENAECnNmAq8rNJQkjudialEIFqA335Pu
Synopsis: Early 21st century. The crisis situation created by mass production and mass consumption of the 20th century has aggravated. Extinction of ozone layer caused environmental disasters including acid rains over the cities. Natural resources grew scarce due to explosive population increase. Humanity started space exploration.
The shortage of labor force motivated scientific society to invent and produce bio-androids.
2050. A quarter century has passed since start of practical use of androids. Fierce competition among android producers allowed advanced models to be sold for moderate prices affordable for average households. With that increased the number of runaway androids and crimes done by androids. Government obligated android producers to register all the units and new police units involving android crimes were created. Its police officers were commonly known as "Hunters".
This is a story of hunter Kano Ryo. He is looking for a female slave doll serial killer Reira. Out of two weeks given for the task only three days remain. Since android needs maintenance, the only place suitable for living for such a long time is some android factory. Ryo locates a factory near committed murders and just goes inside to conduct a full-scale investigation at the spot.
Structure: Single route, no parts division.
Length: 7 hours
Game type: Command selection adventure
Difficulty: It was easy for me since I'm used to brute-forcing all the commands.
Character Design rating: 7/10
Protagonist rating: 6/10
Story rating: 7/10
Game quality: 7/10
Overall rating: 7/10
Rating comments: A very high score for a PC-98 game. Girls are the gist of the game and they are surely lovely drawn and depicted. They have different personalities and are memorable. But it's impossible to imbue them with depth in a not-so-long game, so it's high score as it can get. Protagonist is an ok guy - not a maniac, but not without perversion if the situation cries for it. He does not force himself on anyone, but does not decline any invitations to H either. My biggest complaint about him is that we're not given his image - and that's supposed to be the coolest thing a cyberpunk story! Story is with a twist, so I was pleasantly surprised. The quality of the game is very good, but greatly degraded by lack of non-H CG and constant command brute-forcing.
Protagonist: It's actually difficult to say anything else about Ryo. Oh! He has a ray-gun, but he only remembers about that at the end of the game when he desperately needs to open a door. If he remembered about that earlier, I would not have spent 3 hours looking for ways to open previous two doors in the game! Anyway, there are only girls CG in the game and thus poor Ryo looks blank.
Characters: So, yes, it's a game about girls mostly. But there aren't girls roots and the whole interaction with girls is presented by normal communication with them or finding them in different peculiar situations and reacting by the circumstances. So I don't feel the need to speak about them individually, but here are the names and occupations. Glasses wearing blue long hair Eleanor is an office section manager. Red long hair Alicia is responsible for scrap station. Short green hair Anise governs the warehouse. Medical department has two similar looking nurses - Silk and Cotton (I know, I know...). Long blue hair Sofia is the boss of a sorting center. Short curly brown hair Mei is in charge of the furnace. Long blond hair Karin governs the chip processing section. So that's it - just 7 divisions and so many girls. But a nice thing is that few of girls are amicably set towards the detective. But still there is at least one H-event of each of them with the protagonist and there is more without Ryo. Oh and there is factory owner who does not get another name, but Owner. And that is because he owns.
Story: Finally, the story. It's the part that should reinstall the game from a nukige to a decent cyberpunk story if it's still redeemable at all at this point. So Ryo gets a permission from factory owner to explore the factory with the guide Alicia. After the tour Alicia seduces Ryo saying that it's a direct order from the owner that she can't disobey. Because of that attitude a rebellion movement is threading among the staff against the owner. But there are also collaborators who obstruct the investigation and prevent Ryo from entering some areas. Ryo soon finds the traces of illegal android trade, but how is it linked with serial murders and runaway slave doll Reira? You won't know without watching the video walkthrough.
CG: Too few! But at the same time HCG are in abundance.
Sound: BGM tracks are very pleasant, but not memorable.
Themes: As pretty much every game about androids, Reira Slave Doll tries to keep with the flow. The main question is whether androids should have rights if their intellectual level outgrows that of a human.
Overall comments: So it's definitely an ero-centered game. But at the same time it has a serious intriguing plot. So why not have both? The balance here is tilt towards H and the situation is aggravated by command bruteforcing, but the story behind it is satisfying. Recommended for all cyberpunk fans or just for anyone who wants a light cheerful game with beautiful characters and CG in Sci-Fi setting.
Foreword: It would be weird if I reviewed only three games of the serious out of four. So here is the leftover piece - and again a worthy one.
Title: Gao Gao! 2nd ~Pandora no Mori~
Developer: Four-Nine
Date: 1994-04-16
VNDB link:https://vndb.org/v8695
Youtube walkthrough:https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLENAECnNmAq9jc6oE6uhjsWcOoBDaZg2h
Synopsis: A biological experiment that began in 1993 led to a terrible disaster in the beginning of 21st century. A virus that turned living beings into mutants and monsters has been unleashed. Soon the Earth turned into a terrifying place of chaos, as more and more human beings became infected. Unspeakable violence obliterated human civilization. Within a few years, humanity was on the verge of total annihilation. The Era of Darkness began.
But not all hope was lost. Humans began building cities known as "Domes", isolated from the wilderness, protected by glass from all sides, cut from natural resources. It was possible to start building civilization anew.
On one fateful day, the famous scientist couple Mizuhara were killed in what looked like an accident. Their project, which showed new ways of fighting the virus, descended into the grave with them. Their two children were separated and for a long time were unaware of their origins. But the wheels of destiny keep spinning, as the young Mizuhara is about to discover the truth about his parents, and perhaps bring new hope to humanity...
Structure: One route with 8 chapters.
Length: 7 hours
Game type: Command selection adventure
Difficulty: Easy - there were only couple moments to bruteforce - apart of that the pace is good.
Character Design rating: 7/10
Protagonist rating: 4/10
Story rating: 6/10
Game quality: 7/10
Overall rating: 6/10
Rating comments: Huh, the worst rating of all games in the series. The biggest complaint this time is absolutely spineless and useless protagonist. We see his crying face so many times that the desire to hit him arises. Luckily, his female cousin Lucia hits him so many times during the game that even desire to hit him vanishes. Another my complaint is that the game gets very ero-centered by the end of it sacrificing some of the story for the sake of it. I'm glad it was fixed in later installations, but here it left a negative impact for me. And that brings forth my complaint about the story which I'll explain in the story description. Overall game quality stays on the same level as other games of the series which is very high.
Protagonist: Jackie makes the worst protagonist in the series and I'm very glad I did not change his name to mine (there is such menu option). He can't make his own decisions, complains and cries all the time. His female cousin Lucia who accompanies him for the most of the game is a typical tsundere - basically it's a less funny version of Rabby from Gao Gao 3rd. When by the end of the game she's asked why she's that much of a tsundere, she answers that she does not really understand herself often and does not know what she wants... jeez. Jackie can't make his own decisions, so Lucia does them all the time! And she chooses kind of the worst options, so they always get into trouble. And both protagonists are powerless, so they are abused for the whole first part of the game and it does not look funny, to be honest. But to compliment the developers there are nice sub-characters here and amplified humor part.
Characters: As usual, there are lots of sub-characters. The funniest one is Laila who is the genetic parent of Ilia from Gao Gao 3rd which means that they have totally the same personalities, but different memories. Another curious character is glasses wearing Meg who is a friend of protagonist Lucia. The beast girl protagonists encounter first is Lia, but she does not say anything but "Mi" and thus is almost useless for the story. And there's also a half-mermaid girl Nagi. Phew, that finishes the harem of Jackie. As if it's not enough - there also other sub-characters with H-events.
Story: Jackie was separated from his female cousin Lucia 10 years ago after death of their parents. Now Jackie goes from Pluto-city to Aristo-city to meet his cousin. She meets him at the station, but treats him as a dog which role Jackie joyfully accepts. She is foolish enough to fall for a nanpa and Jackie whines so much that he's taken along on a car ride. The nanpa guy Roy brings them to a forbidden area infected by virus and attempts a rape. The cousins flee from the car and get lost in the forest where they eventually meet mutants and the real story begins. But forest part of the game does not really last long and 6 chapters out of 8 take place at Aristo-city upon their return. In order not to spoil much I'll only say that their return does not really happen smoothly and that the laboratory under the city holds all of its secrets (same as in Gao Gao 3rd and 4th, actually - so it's hardly a spoiler). I actually hoped for a better story - not just a walk to the forest and return back with the remaining story happening in the same city. But Gao Gao series is characterized by some facilities investigations in a company and that's presented here in full volume. Moreover, first two chapters were too boring thanks to featuring only two failure protagonists. But as more characters come to stage the flow gets its usual pace and the game becomes a worthy species of the series.
CG: As usual, all the full-screen pictures are reserved for HCG which are rather uneven. But half-screen CG are very nice, yet as usual reserved only for event scenes.
Sound: Great! But I actually think that Gao Gao 3rd inherited too many melodies from this game.
Themes: It's not really a theme, but a complaint over the plot. At some point we get to know that virus is already extinguished and the governing circles just conceal this information as it's convenient to govern the isolated communities under the domes. But in Gao Gao 3rd and 4th we get a different picture as humanity is eliminated save for very small nucleus communities. And whatever the explanations for that are, I still see a contradiction here. Such big cities as Aristo-city can't just vanish over couple hundred years. The only answer to that might be reproduction problems, but Canaan protagonist human boy Kite was born in the vault without problems, so I doubt that's the case.
Overall comments: So it's the weakest game in the series, but does it mean it's bad? I consider Gao Gao series to be the best visual novel series in the whole pre-Windows period. Thus Pandora no Mori surpasses a vast majority of pc-98 era games. And it holds much value for the fan of this series. First of all - most of jokes that keep repeating through following games are originated here (like in example "Information is transferred to the central host" "Oh, host is a man who is dating women!"). Here we finally get to know the origins of the mermaid story that goes through 3rd and 4th games. There are a lot of other symbols that get into following games (like Laila comes to a computer and exclaims that it's strange that it has not broken down after her approaching - and that theme repeats a lot for Ilia).
Foreword: I did not expect much of the first game in the series, but was pleasantly surprised. It's a really long scenario-centered game that stands on the same level as Gao Gao the 3rd, just in less intriguing environment. It's well worth a review!
Title: Gao Gao! 1st ~Radical Sequence~
Developer: Four-Nine
Date: 1994-01-07
VNDB link:https://vndb.org/v8694
Youtube walkthrough:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik-oCR-wj2E&t=0s&list=PLENAECnNmAq8SX_gfftcaJs33UPCvY_Lv&index=1
Synopsis: The protagonist of the game is a college student named Yuuji Shibata. One evening, just after hearing on the news that someone has stolen a tiger, he goes out to a convenience store. On the way back, in a dark alley, he notices a strange creature, a young girl with cat ears and tail. She doesn't seem to remember anything about herself, except her name beginning with the syllable "Mi...", which afterwards earns her the nickname Mi. Yuuji brings her to his house and tries to introduce her to the world of humans. (which, naturally, also involves techniques of human procreation). But will Yuuji be able to keep Mi as his companion (sexual and otherwise), or will he have to face her mysterious past?..
Structure: One route with 8 chapters.
Length: 8 hours
Game type: Command selection adventure
Difficulty: Easy, but triggers aren't clear and bruteforcing required. There were couple very painful moments that took a while to bruteforce.
Character Design rating: 7/10
Protagonist rating: 8/10
Story rating: 7/10
Game quality: 7/10
Overall rating: 7/10 Rating comments: First three games were released almost the same year and they all share the same drawbacks that were partially fixed in 4th Canaan. Those are bruteforcing and obligatory interactive H-scenes. And again hero scores with every female heroine he meets sooner or later - I'm not a fan of such approach. But apart of that I'm really satisfied with the game. I was afraid of abuse of H events with Mi, but there were only two obligatory ones, quite the same as with some other characters. And the scale of the story is much bigger that's presented in the synopsis with a lot of characters to take part. Add here the fact that we're being the witnesses of the very beginnings of virus H1 outrage and I'm sold. I rated protagonist higher than other heroines, because he's truly a great guy - the following section is about him.
Protagonist: Yuuji Shibata is a normal college student... at least we're told that. But he only attends library to prepare for the test in the game. He's funny and brave. There's a lot of charm about him. Gao Gao series protagonists have personalities, faces and none of them are of perverts. That's a great advantage. There are about 10 H-events in the game, but all of them have decent explanations and are results of some events and conditions. That's really fresh since girls don't really force themselves upon the hero and thus don't have their personalities devalued. Yuuji is the only fighting force till very late in the story (catwoman Mi is totally useless in fights) and I was really astonished by the fact that he defeated several ninjas all by himself and was the only one to effectively oppose virus beast - that's your normal college student! There's a lot of charm in the protagonist and Yuuji's the best human protagonist in the series (he can't beat half-wolf Wolfy, of course ^^).
Characters: There are really many characters in this game and even though the game starts normally, it soon becomes a two-man party and eventually even three-man party, so it has the roots of the party heartwarming adventure feature that's the feature of the series. It's useless to speak of heroines, because there are only two main ones - Mi and another college student Hanako. Those girls usually accompany Yuuji and thus are able to contribute to many scenes. Other heroines have episodic part in the story.
Story: So Yuuji finds Mi at a waste depot and brings her to his room. From then on they just wander around the town for several days trying to help Mi recover her memories. At some point they start to be followed by different suspicious persons who demand to return Mi, but heroes just run away from them each time. With some of the memory threads linked together, Mi finally recognized the house that used to be her home. But getting to that house does not even cover a half of the story with the most exciting part hidden in the mansion's inhabitants. Things get violent soon with some unexpected allies joining in. But you won't get the real answers till you watch the video walkthrough. CG: Somehow I found CG here superior to Gao Gao 3rd. And I did not feel as if I was retrogaming at all. But still rare... only for plot important scenes and thus are packed close to the end of the game.
HCG: Compared to Gao Gao 3rd HCG are finally beautiful with few distorted face features. Sound: Great! I like it how the themes of the sounds transfer to the next games, but transformed so that those would not irritate. Themes: I can see one theme to be lingering throughout the game. There is no good and evil, allies and enemies. There are only persons that can be reasoned with as long as they possess intelligence. So far it's the kindest game in the series with pretty much noone dying apart of very episodic sub-characters. Overall comments: I've already reviewed two other games of the series and thus don't have much to say here. That's a very strong start of the series and characters-wise Radical Sequence does not really fall behind its older brothers. We only get semi-fantasy environment here and semi-party experience, but it's the same stamp of quality that's shared among the games of the series. If you liked Wild Force or Canaan it would not be a waste of time to try Radical Sequence. And no game of the series gives virus origins and development explanation as good as Radical Sequence.
Year 1993 was... strange. Most of praised games of the year were blocked by me due to nukige nature of the games. Those games include Kawarazaki-ke no Ichizoku, Rance 4, Viper series, NOVA, Ayumi-chan Monogatari, Kindan no Ketsuzoku. And a lot of quality representatives that I don't even want to mention here are purest brainless nukige. It really looked to me as if the world got mad after the strict censorship of 1992. The number of VNs that made into my list slightly decreased from 4.08 in 1992 to 3.75 in 1993 due to increased nukige tendency.
The notable features of year 1993 included:
- Hard disks come as an early substitute for FDD, e.g. Rance 4 was released only for hard disks.
- Games featuring 2 or even 3 screen CG scrolling got frequent
- Multiple games heavily introduced animation to look like TV anime
- Several works included percentage of watched CG and it stimulated pursue of CG rather than developing story
- As games increase in volume they start to feel uncomfortable withing Command selection formula. Command selection is generally simplified even further to such extremes as three icons or 2-3 unique variants for each selection, sometimes merging with contemporary ADV system.
Let's try and count what masterpiece level games we ended up with in 1993.
1. Bunretsu Shugoshin Twinkle Star
2. Can Can Bunny Extra
3. Cosmology of Kyoto
4. Demon City
5. HHG Heart Heat Girls
6. Kawarazaki-ke no Ichizoku
7. Nova
8. Marine Philt
9. Ooedo Tantei Kamiya Ukyou Vol. 2
10. Prostudent G
11. Rance IV - Kyoudan no Isan -
12. Words Worth
13. Zoku Youjuu Senki -Suna no Mokushiroku-
So if we talk about which game had the biggest impact on industry - it would be Can Can Bunny Extra. From this work the Swatty goddess became a meme and the game is the closest thing to a contemporary high quality charage. But I just refuse to give this nampa game the credit of being the best VN of 1993.
3x3 Eyes ~Sanjiyan Henjou~ is a nice gore game just to my taste, but it has lots of shortcomings.
Horror games like Marine Philt are one-time games that are only good while playing.
Bunretsu Shugoshin Twinkle Star is mostly fun only for first two chapters.
Cosmology of Kyoto is a gem, but it's too different from anything else to participate in the general race.
Prostudent G is a bakage that I refuse to give credit.
Words Worth is a great game, but it would appeal only to a very small percentage of RPG fans.
H.H.G.: Heart Heat Girls is an amazing story but it's from a relatively unknown developer Cat's Pro and its production values are greatly lacking. Dark palette, average character design and CG quality just can't be the BEST game of 1993.
So why not Demon City? It's quite a borderline game, but so is year 1993. It's from the same Cocktail Soft company that made most acclaimed Can Can Bunny Extra the same year, so it's only fair. Demon City has fantastic production values, very unorthodox setting, cool original protagonist, great shifting story. It's persistent, fun and never boring. It made the biggest impression on me and that's what counts.
Foreword: Game had already couple reviews, but those weren't too specific on the story, so I had to check it out myself in the end.
Title: 3x3 Eyes ~Sanjiyan Henjou~
Developer: Nihon Create
Date: 1993-02-05
VNDB link:https://vndb.org/v4547
Length: 6 hours.
Game type: Command selection ADV
Youtube walkthrough:https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLENAECnNmAq-kxnAJKmFd5cOYSn55q0UZ
Difficulty: That happens to be the main part of review. FM Towns/PCE version is perfect with difficulty level low, full voicing and nice interface. The PC-98 version is gamer's hell, but only this version is hookable, so I proceeded with it. It's the fullest version having extra parts the other versions don't have, but pc-98 version has clunky interface of multiple windows that keep jumping all over and horrible mechanics that demand multiple clicking on the same commands to proceed with the game. That much useless clicking forces to miss on important parts as well. And there was a pitch moment in the second branch that made me waste two more hours on clicking through every room and searching for capture information which did not really help me, so only bruteforce clicking through every possible variant in each room only helped.
Synopsis: 3x3 Eyes ~Sanjiyan Henjou~ is based on the manga and anime series 3x3 Eyes. Pai, a young girl from the immortal tribe of sanzhiyan, three-eyed demons of Chinese origin, wants to become a human again. She meets a Japanese teenager named Yakumo Fujii, whom she accidentally turns into a "wu", an immortal obedient servant of a three-eyed demon. Together, Pai and Yakumo try to regain their lost humanity.
This game can be considered a side-story to the series. The player does not control Yakumo, but an ordinary high-school student named Kenichi Yamamoto. Accidentally, Kenichi comes into contact with the world of demons, and now he needs the help of Pai and Yakumo to be freed.
Structure: None.
Character Design rating: 7/10
Protagonist rating: 6/10
Story rating: 6/10
Game quality: 7/10 PCE (2/10 PC-98)
Overall rating: 6/10
Rating comments: I actually expected more from the story and hoped for more gore. The characters only get interesting in voiced version and in PC-98 not so much. PC-98 version is so horrible that it's a miracle I made it to the end.
Protagonist: Kenichi Yamamoto does not really give a good impression. Pretty normal one for a fantasy story - positive, brave, curious etc.
Characters: Pai is a cheerful girl who happens to have her own secret. She and Yakumo don't really play an important role in the story - they just tag along and support. Sujin is the main heroine and love interest of Kenichi. She's a mysterious blonde with some superpowers and her true aims aren't clear. All the other characters get mixed in the swarm of children who get caught up in the blizzard and they go out of the stage more or less together at one point.
Story: Kenichi Yamamoto just happens to have some bug crawl inside his forehead - there's no story behind it - it just happens. And at the same time strange persons start to find him interesting and some supernatural events start to occur around him. He and a swarm of other children get caught up in the blizzard and find shelter in a wooden house. However, a murder happens and panic rises with part of children leaving to find the way out of the blizzard. And both parties get attacked by the killer. And the battle finally shows who is the enemy and who is the real friend. From then on the main heroes seek the way to get the bug out of Kenichi body and for that seek advice from a specialist researcher and from then on seek for the remedy in different parts of the world.
CG: CG are shown in a small window. That looks awful.
Sound: PC-98 has horrible sound support. No sounds - just BGM. And those BGM aren't always suitable for the event on the screen - it can easily be a merry tune during a sad event.
Overall comments: So the game starts with the longest clicking sessions and slowest progression ever. It would be easy to fall asleep for several times if you did not need to click furiously for 100 clicks per minute. Then there goes the short action part where the things settle - and it's the best part of the game. The second half of the game of searching around the world just does not have much in the story department - it's just defeating several lackeys of a bad guy and finally meeting the bad guy. And to make life more difficult there are two mazes implemented - one for each branching. I've only found the basic branching that actually coincides in the same story in the final part of the game. There should actually be a way to get the second naked body scene and even another ending. So it all comes to a poor conclusion - PCE version can't be read since it's not hookable and PC-98 version lacks the interest to be read attentively due to horrible mechanics. I would call the story eclectic since there is not much explanation for actions - like professor is lost and noone cares since there is little time left till mutation or like the light is blown out and four people can't find each other in a narrow corridor and just go separately without really trying to get together. There are some minor events that I fail to get the meaning of. So the main definition for PC-98 version is torture - both story-wise, mechanic-wise and even sound-wise. Quite a short story that would fit in a 40-minutes OVA is stretched mercilessly to 6+ hours of unsatisfying gameplay.
Foreword: I was quite intrigued by original Gram Cats concept - mutated humans fight with aliens and ordinary schoolgirl gets an ability to transform into cat and thus becomes a great spy. But the eternal maze of corridors prevented me from finishing that game. So I thought I'd have more luck with the second part to get acquainted with this SF setting.
Title: Gram Cats 2
Developer: Dott Kikaku
Date: 1993-01-08
VNDB link:https://vndb.org/v8889
Length: 4 hours.
Game type: Command selection ADV + RPG
Youtube walkthrough:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=655prv-IBI8
Difficulty: It's not difficult, but very repetitive. Till you trigger some flag, the rest of events would repeat over and over again. And the second RPG part has one huge pitch moment - I had to restart that whole RPG part for 4 times to find the solution. So upon entering the 2nd floor if you move forward there's a triggered scene where Sayaka falls down - you get to find Sayaka, but upon returning to 2nd floor there is new cutscene that takes away Marine from the party and you need to get to boss door alone. The problem is that from both sides of the door there are the toughest enemies that can only be taken down with two characters in party. You can turn into cat form and slip through the enemies, but to open the door you need to be human and you can't get to human form unless you attack that tough enemy and thus suffer a retaliation hit. And if you enter the boss room without the full hp - he's impossible to beat. So I've tried a lot of different approaches in cat form and running away in human form, but all of them did not work. So on my 4th try upon entering the second floor I did not step forward but turned left and killed the tough enemies while still having two characters in the party and then triggered the two cut-scenes - that finally made my day. But just imagine - the main feature of the game of heroine turning into cat turned totally useless here.
Synopsis: Marine and Sayaka arrive to the Scherer Island which is known as a luxury resort with a great hotel and famous nudist beach. Their goal is to investigate island secretly for the traces of an alien base.
Structure: None.
Character Design rating: 3/10
Protagonist rating: 3/10
Story rating: 2/10
Game quality: 4/10
Overall rating: 3/10
Rating comments: I'm very pissed with this game for stealing four hours of my life. So I thought I would waste an hour more to write a review. My greatest disappointment is that the synopsis is conveyed during the opening sequence that takes around three minutes. It stops at the moment when the girls dive into the ocean and find some structure underwater. And for the first two hours of adventure mode we actually just getting to this structure from the point of arriving to the island. That's just stupid - why showing it in the opening at all then. Heroines don't have individuality so I did even need to know who of them was Marine (red head) and who was Sayaka (blue head) till the point when they separated. I can't say that game is of low quality - graphics are nice, music is solid and there is animation at time. But combine poor characters, absence of story, repetitivity (and reusing of the same resources), abuse of eroticism, weak RPG part and this stupid pitch moment right at the boss and you get exactly a score "3".
Protagonist: Sayaka and Marine are poor protagonists. Their main difference is that Marine (red hair) is more shy and defensive type and Sayaka (blue hair) is kind of loose and for that she's the main heroine of the most voluntary H events - Marine gets coerced in her events. Sayaka was the heroine of the prequel, so it's natural.
Characters: The only side-characters here are girls that get involved into H events and one local salesman who turns out to be something more than a side-character... Apart of that, there's noone of notice.
Story: I've already mentioned that there's no story besides the synopsis. So let's at least mention the main steps till reaching the underwater base. Each day we need to go to the pool to develop diving skills. After that there's couple days of diving in the real ocean practice. At the same time there seems to be another goal - getting into the nudist beach! Marine does not have the courage, but after a few encounters in the hotel with other girls she gets able to relax a bit. There's also Marine kidnapping happens. That's it! And the rest of two hours adventure mode is visiting the same places over and over again hoping for some new event to trigger.
CG: CG are few or I'd rather say non-HCG are few. And because Sayaka transformation suit kind of is not supposed to cover nipples I can't even show those transformed mode nice CG.
Sound: Well, this time I found two BGM annoying. Had to even turn volume down. So not the best sound support.
Overall comments: I expected at least somewhat interesting SF story with superhero transformation mode. What I actually got was a yuri game with no story at all. The whole "gram cat" feature is only flashed at the very end and does not bear much meaning - that could be a game of any other franchise without any problem. Oh, well, at least there is one obscure game less now.
Year 1992 was much to my liking with few eroge and a great number of elaborate plots.
The notable features of year 1992 included:
- Implemented censorship rules resulted in private parts censored and at some cases companies set self-censorship to a degree when no private parts were ever on a screen or sometimes even to no nudity at all
- Regulations led to bigger emphasis on the story and experiments with the genres
- Horror mysteries with gore pictures started to appear as a genre
- Several sepia color works appeared to underline the warm atmosphere of the past events
- Pure romance works started to appear, but Nanpa games were still larger in number
- In several games individual endings for each heroine were implemented
- As for system, several games had very weird choices for text window and icon/command window
The number of good high quality games increased significantly.
Masterpieces of 1992:
1. Armist
2. Can Can Bunny Premiere
3. De-Ja 2
4. Doukyuusei
5. Dracula Hakushaku
6. Ginga Ojou-sama Densetsu Yuna
7. Joker II
8. Kiss
9. Koroshi no Dress 3
10. Kurutta Kajitsu
11. Martial Age
12. My Eyes!
13. Phobos
14. Shinjuku Monogatari
15. Sotsugyou Shashin / Miki
16. The 4th Unit - Wyatt
And there was a good number of works with good atmosphere and story. At first I was pretty sure that Crazy Fruit (Kurutta Kajitsu) must be the game of the year 1992 since the year born so many horror mystery novels. Then I got really intrigued by Shinjuku Monogatary. Doukyuusei (Classmate) and it struck me as a very bright and novelty game. It was supposed to be another nanpa game or dating seem and turned out to be a collection of stories that you choose yourself. It's a game of events as something keeps happening everywhere and it's up to you whether you stop and try to get to know the people there or keep on exploring. Game has very attractive characters and huge replayability potential. It's not a strategy, not an RPG, but the amount of freedom you're given makes you think it's an entirely new genre. And yet my personal preferences demand a story game for the winner. And I personally liked the story of Phobos the most among the visual novels of 1992.
Foreword: Himeya Soft and C's Ware are basically the same people, so it would really be a shame to miss their first cyberpunk game, father of Xenon ~Mugen no Shitai~ and grandfather of luv wave. How deep is the story? How much torture does it imply on players? Does it already have mind-screw elements? I'll try to answer all those questions.
Title: Phobos
Developer: Himeya Soft
Date: 1992-07-16
VNDB link:https://vndb.org/v9006
Length: 4 hours.
Game type: Command selection ADV.
Youtube walkthrough:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWumb25ixg4&list=PLENAECnNmAq8RWaOExpvkkUSuI3utIyp1
Difficulty: It's not difficult, but rather very repetitive. There's no telling when event is going to be triggered, so I had to make a full round of talks with each npc and return to the base each time. It would be more pleasing with a walkthrough.
Synopsis: In the future, mankind successfully colonized Mars. However, the colonists eventually wished to be independent from Earth's control, and as a result a war began. Martian colonists used armored combat androids in battles. Eventually an uneasy truce was achieved, but Martian economy was badly damaged by war, and the planet became de facto dependent on Earth to survive.
Half a year later, a young Tokyo-based private investigator named Ryuuichi and his assistant, the android Leyla, are contacted by the colonel of the former colonial army of Mars. It appears that someone has stolen documents containing top military secrets and disappeared with them. Ryuuichi is asked to find that man, whom he knew quite well during the years of war...
Structure: Ryuuichi is given five days till the new rebel war starts, but actually the game takes only four days and on the beginning of the fourth day the most important events to prevent the war take place.
Character Design rating: 6/10
Protagonist rating: 8/10
Story rating: 8/10
Game quality: 6/10
Overall rating: 7/10
Rating comments: I really liked the protagonist and the story behind him. But for heroines... they lack attention and thus depth. Android assistant Leyla is given much attention, but she hardly has any feelings apart of loyalty. The story is really tough and good with sudden twists and treasons. But overall high repetitiveness and somewhat spontaneous H events hurt the impression. It's still a masterpiece for me.
Protagonist: Ryuuichi is the real gem of the game. He participated in the martian war and three years later keeps seeing nightmares about those armdroids he killed. He does act like a perv at times, but that's to add comical effect mostly. His wife Leyla stayed on Mars and he remodeled one of the armdroids to serve as his assistant and named her Leyla as well. Ryuuichi story actually might be more important than the main martian guerrilla one. The game ends in half happy tones and half sad ones and the ring scene is touching and well-done. Describing it would be a spoiler.
Characters: Game has quite many characters. I've counted seven heroines with HCG. There are also some hard-boiled male characters. The peculiarity of the game is that only one heroine is of calm civilian type and the others have a violent character and are skilled in warfare. They're quite the beauties as well.
Story: So, we're only given vague instructions to find captain Konnor who killed one of the soldiers and fled with secret documents regarding martian guerrilla movement. We're not being too successful when we find some mysterious woman spying on us. Following her leads to East district where two suspicious organizations dwell - Sakuragi Heavy Industries and Club Kowloon. Both of them have only women as staff members (males still serve as guards) and for a good while we try to get inside those buildings. Still the most of plot events happen as encounters - our life is in constant danger with so many violent girls around. At the same time one of our hirers major Garrak is rumored to deal with drugs and conspire with martian rebels. Then suddenly everything starts to look not as it seems and friends get to be difficult to tell from foes. So, yes, it has mind-screw elements, even though in initial state. But the story is complex and inspiring, so it's well worth the time.
Title meaning: The title screen of the game says literally : "The "PHOBOS" is a satellite of the mars". And up to the very end the name never shows up. And it actually turns out to be the name of the secret military plan dealing with photon and nucleus. I really like it when the meaning of the title gets explained at some point.
CG: I can't say CG are good here - they're fine - the girls are mostly cute, the males are tough and androids are cool, especially when damaged.
Sound: There is a different BGM for each place and those are pleasant tunes.
Overall comments: Phobos is a serious mature SF story and adult elements suit fine here, same as in Imitation wa Aisenai. HCG are very modest and light since they serve the story and not otherwise. That helps to create a human dimension out of protagonist private life drama instead of being just a sales oriented adventure work like Snatcher. I really like it how Himeya Soft and C's Ware great games turn out to be underrated. In Phobos case I blame horrible and childish-looking box cover. The more the joy to discover these masterpieces.
Foreword: Fairytale is the main experimentation company of the early 1990s. And Shinjuku Monogatari is an attempt to go away from adult games for the sake of games that can keep the interest by the story and atmosphere alone. The history shows us now that it was a failure attempt from the start since adult titles with cute heroines are everything the populus wants. But was Fairytale really wrong in that intention?
Title: Shinjuku Monogatari
Developer: Fairytale
Date: 1992-07-23
VNDB link:https://vndb.org/v9083
Length: 2 hours.
Game type: Command selection ADV.
Youtube walkthrough:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0x1q4yO5Dk
Difficulty: Very few options to choose. Trivial.
Synopsis: Ibuki inherited an antique store, but to survive he takes side jobs as well. One day his frequent client Akemi offers him a job to fake kidnapping of a high school girl Megumi Naruyama, the only heir of Naruyama Real Estate group. Megimi herself is the initiator of the kidnapping. Since the pay is good - a million yen - Ibuki takes his younger partner Shinji and gets to the school gates. But Megumi's uncle Sakai has own plans for Megumi and he sets a yakuza gang on the children trail.
Structure: Game takes three days.
Character Design rating: 7/10
Protagonist rating: 7/10
Story rating: 6/10
Game quality: 7/10
Overall rating: 7/10
Rating comments: This is an experimental Fairytale work. It's a very realistic story about youth rebel state of mind. All the heroes of the game are as if drawn from modern life, just with weird haircuts. I'm probably too old to appreciate the values of youth independence, but overall it could easily be Douglas Coupland novel for those qualities. Overall it's an enjoyable piece of work, just only two hours long and I can't possibly rate a short game any higher.
Protagonist: Ibuki is a peculiar protagonist in that he is an orphan and he takes care of the antique store with his sister. He takes on different kinds on jobs and that's why has quite a net of informants around him.
Characters: Shinji is the younger partner of Ibuki and he's not the smartest kid. He wears an "Elvis" hairstyle and is there for support mostly. Megumi is the main heroine and she's one rich family spoilt brat. Her character is good, but she's sick of adults and she thinks that all the adults in her surrounding are liars and two-faced. She lost her mother long ago and her father took another wife. A month ago the father died at Chicago at very strange circumstances reported as an incident. Megimi's uncle Sakai took care of the company affairs. Megumi hates both her stepmother and her uncle. She orders her kidnapping on a whim - just to get a week vacation from the false adults around her. And the whole story is about her growing up and coming to terms with her past and the adults.
Story: The story is not the most important part of this game since it's a novel about growing up. The dialogues and thoughts are the focus here, so I guess I can tell the most of the story without much fear of spoilering. Ibuki and Shinji successfully kidnap Megumi and she plans the week of her vacations ahead - shopping, amusement park and then going somewhere far away from Tokyo. She's a rich one, so she easily buys a new Jaguar car for boys costing 13 million yen as well as new dresses. But partly she just wants attention, especially from her stepmother who is very distant from her since the company president death. So she instructs the boys to telephone to the company and demand a ransom so that her stepmother delivered it next day evening. But instead the next day noon children are assaulted by her uncle Sakai with his thugs. Boys just need the payment, so they are eager to exchange, but Megumi refuses to return categorically and they manage to run away together on a car. Ibuki is astonished by the turn of events - an easy job turned into a matter of life and death. Sakai thugs turn out to be real killers from Chicago. How will they manage in this perilous situation? Will Megumi accept her past and present? I guess I won't spoiler everything after all and the answers can be found in my video playthrough.
CG: They are quite uneven. At times Megumi is cute, but mostly her face is distorted in some manner. Shinji is the only one who looks ok, mostly because his face is drawn in a comical way all the time. But all CG are stylish in sepia tones and are very multiple, setting a unique atmosphere of the game.
Sound: Some midi BGM.
Overall comments: Shinjuku Monogatari was devised as a series of games and in the end of the first game we get the synopsis and intrigue of the second episode flashed. And for that reason we get to know a lot of side-characters who are a colorful bunch, but don't really get any meaningful role in the game. Would I really want to play another episode about Ibuki and Shinji? Actually, not. But was the game a failure? I don't think so. The game was a part of very strong movement to cleanse the newborn genre of visual novels from constant sex allusions and make it a genre for literary adaptations and talented scenarists debuts. But we got what we got.
Foreword: I did not intend to play Armist to the end, but its game system was indeed player-friendly and the story turned out to be quite a serious thing instead of being a bakage, so it's well worth a review.
Title: Armist
Developer: Basement
Date: 1992-07-03
VNDB link:https://vndb.org/v8564
Length: 2.5 hours.
Game type: Command selection ADV.
Youtube walkthrough:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRhArebnKUk
Difficulty: That's the most important thing in the game. There are few commands to select from and as soon as the topic is depleted the command disappears. This way repetition is eliminated almost completely. There are also some 10 "fights" in the game, but there aren't any stats and player can only choose means of attack for each of three heroes. That choice is mostly meaningless (only the toughest enemies are immune to physical attacks and should be dealt with gunfire).
Synopsis: In the future, advanced genetic studies opened unseen possibilities for mankind. After years of research, it finally became possible to create artificial human beings with animal traits, the so-called deminoids. The player takes the role of the head of a detective agency named Armist; two pretty female deminoids (with bunny and cat ears) are his trustworthy partners. Investigating a murder in a huge deminoid-producing company, the hero will eventually discover the truth about this scientific achievement and all its implications...
Structure: Game consists of moving between four floors and each of those floors demands a different diskette image, but overall it's just one day.
Character Design rating: 6/10
Protagonist rating: 7/10
Story rating: 6/10
Game quality: 7/10
Overall rating: 6/10
Rating comments: The governing attribute of the game is simplicity. Both main heroines Billy and Miria have straightforward characters. The gameplay is mostly about room investigation and the important information is given mostly in the end. There's no drama or treachery and game is short - that all prevents the game from being a major one.
Protagonist Rise is the name of the hero. He's the head of the detective agency. A cool guy who can both melee and support with gunfire. What's especially nice is that he's not a perverted type - but a pure professional.
Characters: Miria the bunny girl is the more sensible of the deminoids. She believes in negotiations and she's a cowardly one. Her weapon is a gun, aimed shot and quick shots. She's also blamed by Billy for wearing fancy dress. On the other hand Billy the catgirl is the close quarters fighter using claws from her fingers. She's the violent type and prefers to to fight, then think.
Story: We just come to the roof of skyscraper and investigate the rooms of the four available floors from 45 to 48 on with on average 5 rooms per each floor. One by one we get to find survivors in different states of mind, but none of them is perfectly sane. Some of them turn to be enemies, some happen to be helpful. Oh and of course we get to know who and why massacred the whole staff of deminoid production company and put an end to the incidents.
CG: CGs are of beautiful retro-style, but are mostly packed at the beginning and close to the end of the game. The only HCG in the game are couple shots of enemies without upper body dress.
Sound: Sound is merry and couple of bgm REALLY reminded me of Gao Gao series music.
Overall comments: So the reason I even decided to write a review on this game is how much it reminds me of Gao Gao series. Same animal ears mutants, same heartwarming party talks while exploring, same numerous rooms and floor investigation (and some rooms looked very familiar to me), same merry atmosphere with occasional drama crumbs, same heads icons on the bottom during dialogue and even bgm at times sounded much alike. I honestly believe that this little bright game inspired Four-Nine for creating a whole world based on the same premise. But here there's little mystery behind deminoids. Four-Nine, on the other hand enveloped the whole mutants appearance in the myst and added the whole new layer of humanity extinction (to a different degree in different works of the series). Game is hooked well and the received text is without garbage, so I'd recommend to have a look on the game for all Gao Gao fans and just all admirers of retro CG and music. My video walkthrough is in a bit too fast tempo since I did not intend to get to the end of it, but it's still watchable, either with pauses or with just reading dialogues as there are always pauses for dialogues.
Year 1991 was the first with monthly issues and for that reason the hardest. Let's first try to determine its prominent features for VNs:
- Number of adult games increased greately to some 100 titles overall
- PC-98 era arrives with mouse support and the older systems finally lose support
- RPG percentage remains high at some 20% while ADV grows significantly to some 50%
- New sub-genres appear - point-and-click, quiz, board game.
- Some games start to use action icons instead of command selection thanks to mouse use.
- It's the last year without any government regulation. After November 1991 shoplifting incident regulations being created.
Masterpieces of 1991: 1. CAL II 2. Cosmic Psycho 3. Cybernetic Hi-School Part 4 ~Ape Hunter J~ 4. ELLE 5. Gidyy 6. Jesus II 7. Nike 8. Nostalgia 1907 9. Psychic Detective Series Vol. 4: Orgel 10. Psychic Detective Series Vol. 5: Nightmare 11. Rance III - Leazas Kanraku -
Those were the games with great stories and a professional touch. And I'm biased here towards ELLE since it's the only one that got renewed version in 2000s. Otherwise it might be a serious competition.
Foreword: Again, C's Ware game and EVE on top of that. I actually played it before EVE Zero as a substitute for EVE:Adam Doublefactor, but decided to to keep it for a later time since it has some imminent spoilers for EVE Zero.
Title: Eve: The Fatal Attraction
Developer: C's Ware
Date: 1999-12-02
VNDB link:https://vndb.org/v6108
Length: 22 hours.
Game type: Point-and-Click ADV.
Youtube walkthrough:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBhsyk1jhDw&list=PLENAECnNmAq_7odFKypHmj08DyKpfQfCN
Difficulty: More severe than the previous three EVE games that I played. At one point I needed to guess and move each of the characters to the location behind the Sun Mansions apartments to progress the story. In last titles the zapping moments were pretty evident since you got stuck at one scene and there were like only couple of actions available. Here you have 10 maps and lots of locations inside them, so you don't really know if you know to brute-force every object and command at all those locations again for both characters or look for a zapping spot for characters to meet. Another time I got stuck since at the old location you needed to click at lots of ambient objects for a new location (park) to open up. That was counterintuite at all and there were zero tips what needed to be done. Hopefully I found a very good japanese walkthrough and I'd strongly recommend to use it.
Synopsis: Detective Kojiroh receives a request to become a bodyguard for trading company director for seven days. But a lot of aspects of this task look fishy: director does not want to explain who or why is going to attack.
At the same time investigator Marina is tracking the serial killer who violently tortures their victims with a knife. How are those incidents linked with each other? What does the criminal strives to know from the victims?
Both plot-lines eventually come together only to reveal the grand scale of political game and conspiracy.
Structure: Game takes place during seven days with Marina part having a small continuation on 8th day.
Character Design rating: 8/10
Protagonist rating: 9/10
Story rating: 10/10
Game quality: 9/10
Overall rating: 9/10
Rating comments: I tried to rate based on the weight of shortcomings noticed. I don't really have questions to character design - I rather don't like the style of the artist. He managed to make even good old characters ugly. Standing sprites for female characters don't bear comparison with the game prequels. Male characters are actually ok. Lots characters on CG are looking weird and sometimes just horrible. The happy face of Queen Prisia on Kojiroh's shoulder made me want to cry. Again, males on CG are mostly cool. Both Marina and Kojiroh lost a bit of their charm due to lack of humor or rather more drama. Kojiroh scenes are especially painful since protagonists only have their thoughts, but not dialogues voiced. So in dialogues his everlively nature gets lost and he becomes the guy who does not know what he wants. But after the event I hear his voiced thoughts and it gets much easier since this is our old humorous Kojiroh who's making sarcastic comments over the passed event. Still those aren't decisive faults to lover the score. What's important is that the ending day is rushed and for both Marina and Kojiroh it's just a series of flashbacks rather than coherent gameplay. There's a lot of new difficult to chew stuff poured on the reader without much explanation and that leaves the feeling of the ending being rushed with some loose ends.
Protagonist Marina and Kojiroh, of course! I've already said that they both lost a bit of their charm. Partly it's because both the protagonists have a new soul trauma. It was unusual for me to see those lively problems-free guys in depressed state at times.
Characters: Well, first of all I'd like to notice that the opening is absolutely cool and I really awaited lots of gunfire, cool scenes and lots of new characters. However, the two characters featured in the opening (the blue-haired one and the yellow-haired one) never appeared in the game and that was really disappointing. The game also has veeeery few action scenes. But we're speaking about characters now. There are fewer cool female characters this time (again, lots of cool men characters). All I can think of is the head of secretary department of trading firm Ami and a very cool receptionist girl at the same company. But Himuro Kyouko character even turned for the worse. She is the source for lots of jealousy and drama in Kojiroh's office (she's Kojiroh assistant in this game) and the only time she's actually useful she features a huge explanations over the most trival pc topics so that I started to guess whether she was good with computers at all or just bluffed about it. But overall there's a great cast of characters, as usual. Nothing to complain, really.
Story: Finally, the story. Well, I actually told too much of it in the synopsis. The structure of the story does not really innovating. Kojiroh becomes a bodyguard and actually Marina becomes a bodyguard of one surviving girl Yuka as well. And this part looked actually very similar to Burst Error. There was Mayako - now here is Yuka. There was 50/50 split of the time with the guarded person and it's roughly remains the same. There is also a scene of alcohol party with Marina+Yayoi+Yuka that looks almost identical to that of Burst Error with Marina+Yayoi+Mayako. It follows absolutely the same pattern and happens in the same apartment. The only difference is in Yuka lively attitude compared to reserved one of Mayako (Yuka has short yellow hair, she is featured on two pictures in this post). And the structure of the plot is not as difficult as in prequels. Basically, both protagonist just guard the target person and wait for attacker to make his move. The do get to know a lot of details about their protected person and their shady dealings. Marina has more screen time in this game and she actually investigates other leads, but in the end what only matters is the aggressor move, not her activity. The game had a very cool action opening. In the very first animated intro of the game Marina and Kojiroh cooperate to prevent Prisia assassination by a sniper. And there was a lot of talk that the town got flooded with illegal weapons. Those three factors made me think there was going to be lots of gunfire and cool scenes. But actually the main weapon of the game is a knife and no the only time something other than a handgun is featured - UZI - it never gets to be used. That sniper episode is not returned to till the very last minutes of the ending when we seen the short resolution of that incident. The only meaning of it seemed to be in that we get to know the face of the sniper, but it was not familiar to me - exactly because I have not played EVE Zero yet at that time. There are quite many references to Eve Zero and only couple really to the events of Lost One. Overall, I don't have complaints over the story apart of the rushed ending. It just looks that they wanted this game to be much bigger initially, but it was growing to a long playtime already so some things were scrapped. It's still our EVE and its story is still intriguing and totally unrivaled by any other companies of that time.
CG: I already complained about the artist in the ratings. So i'll mention only HCG here. There are TWO HCG in the game. Yes, just two HCG of bare chest and that's all. I was relieved to learn that since EVE Lost One and EVE Zero are all-age ones and thus there aren't sudden shifts here.
Sound: Everyone is voiced apart of the current protagonist dialogues (well, there were actually couple places without voicing). Protagonist thought monologues are voiced, actually. No complaints here.
Themes and symbols: Well, game's not thought-provoking, but here are couple themes that I can discern:
1) I will live by my own rules. That thought appeared several time from both Marina and Korijoh. I don't think there's any special meaning apart of that they really break some rules sometimes there are moments of doubt where they turned into bad guys.
2) EVE theme lives on, naturally. By now everyone must know that EVE theme is cloning. In EVE Lost One there were quality developments in that field, but here in EVE:TFA there's rather a quantity development. Clones get numerous and that rises several questions. Some demand equal rights with other humans. Some demand freedom and isolation from the humans. Some just try to hide among humans. But the question remains : what to do with clones if their populations rises? This question does not bear much meaning nowadays though since human cloning experiments are forbidden worldwide.
Humor: I skip this part when there's noting to talk about. And this game is rather a serious one. But I totally adored the receptionist at president Ando (Kojoroh's client) company. That's a very stingy woman with a very formal attitude. Every time Kojiroh visits the company she asks of his name and the purpose of his visit. And every time there's a very amusing word battle among them. Kojiroh refuses to tell his name or purpose and she keeps asking. She looses temper and all her formal attitude in this arguement. Finally she gives up and gives a call to the director without knowing the name and purpose and Kojiroh is let in. That's fun enough, but the next day everything repeats itself. She refuses to acknowledge that Kojiroh visited just recently and keeps asking the same question. The argument vocabulary is different for each new fight and each following time there is more fun.
Overall comments: It's a new EVE game and I totally like it! If it was issued in the same format in 1999 instead of ADAM - that would be the game of the year 1999 right away for me kicking Kanon. And - who knows - maybe it's going to be the game of the year 2001 for me. As every EVE game so far it has entertaining and thrilling scenes, serious development, great characters and lots of interesting to read dialogues. The characters have become most dear by now and they stay true to to their personalities. It's like a new season of your favorite show. There are ups and downs, but that's natural since characters can't stay the same and they constantly develop. Those are your favorite characters and you can't stop loving them.
Not really a post. Just an overview of recent events and their consequences.
I tried to add a certain extension to my wiki which caused a bug (even though it was reversed a minute later) which led to 100% cpu load which led to suspension. I had everything backed up with standard mediawiki .xml export, but my wiki had just too big number of pages (some 23,000) to import properly back which led to loosing trust with semantic mediawiki. It used to be ok, but it's way too unstable, that's why no wiki farm uses it (.wikia allowed using it in 2013 just to shut support later in the same 2013, .referata declined and .shoutwiki no longer installs it). It has big problem with performance, background works and scaling.
I was mesmerized by discovering reddit vn hub lately. It has impressions on some 1,500 different vns gathered over some 10 years - that's a huge base that I'm very excited to use as vn reviews collector. Its policy emphasizes quality of text over personal expression, so it's not really a suitable environment for me to participate though.
I'm really startled by the fact that the most popular pages of my blog are of 1980s years vns. And that's really embarrassing since those are very low quality posts. I've also got some feedback that eroge should not really be put together with the nukige. Additionally Micchi april fool day's blog post actually showed that it tackles some very dubious eroge from time to time.
That all led to the following horrible decision - I'm getting back to the 1980's. This time I'm going to unblock all the eroge (except for nukige, but 1980s-1990s had very few pure nukige), multiple stories and all the under 2 hours works (till 2000s). Moreover, I'm going to try to present synopsis of every blocked work as well - together with all the reviews found for those works. That's going to result in very long cumbersome posts since it's not rare for a single month to have over 100 vns issued in 2000s.
I'm getting to it after I've indexed all the English reviews for untranslated vns and rare translated vns. I'll post all the indexed sources and reviews links probably at this free wiki where I've set just bare carcass. But this time I'm keeping the original in excel file only since it's the fastest way to find and edit a really big set of items.
So I'll get Eve Zero and Eve The Final Attraction reviews set and then start my back to the future quest.
Why am I doing this now when I've finally approached interesting vns? Do I really like old games? Actually, I don't like them much. What I like is the order where every piece is categorized and described. I can't really move on if I'm not satisfied with the result.
Meet those of you who survive this long ride of exhaustion in the future!
1990s are over. And to commemorate that I've made a video playlist of all the openings/demo/endings with singing/energetic instrumental from 1990s here
I'll be making such playlists for each new year starting with 2000 since each year is going to have over 100 such opening/ending/demo themes. Second Windows era year is behind. It failed to bring such a game that I'd announce Vn of the year 1999 right away. Instead, it brought a number of quality galge and some quirky cryptic games that I personally had a good time unwinding.
Let's prolong the chart.
VN per year
Year
Total
Listed
Blocked
1991
75
40 (53%)
35 (47%)
1992
80
49 (61%)
31 (39%)
1993
121
46 (38%)
75 (62%)
1994
155
61 (39%)
94 (61%)
1995
180
58 (32%)
122 (68%)
1996
183
83 (46%)
100 (54%)
1997
202
91 (45%)
111 (55%)
1998
303
133 (44%)
170 (56%)
1999
441
164 (37%)
277 (63%)
Windows years show a rapid increase in number of games, almost 50% total growth overall compared to 1998. In 1999 there's a shift towards blocked games, mostly because of nukige number increase.
Let's look at year 1999 highlights:
It becomes a habit to issue first press edition with some omake inside and then regular edition.
Doujin fan games make an appearance. Notably there is one doujin game for "One" and as many as three doujin games for "Kanon" in 1999. And Comic Party is notable for this movement.
There was a short momentum of console games transition to PC with H scenes added (Kiss yori...), but it did not gain much continuation.
In 1999 child pornography law came into force in Japan and from that time every single heroine in the games suddenly turned 18 years old. But appearance might suggest otherwise - such heroines started to be called loli.
Year 1998 was notable mostly for graphic advances (thus the small number of masterpieces), but it hit the limit and in 1999 there is much more attention to the scenario.
Nakige as class did not exist till 1999. But throughout the year it gained a universal spread and multiple magazines were making the list of the best nakige of 1999.
Command selection ADV is almost extinct this year. Even Adam:The Doublefactor went for point-and-click instead.
To choose the game of the year 1999 let's observe the masterpieces presented:
Captain Love
Comic party
Elemental Arts
Green
Kanon
Kazeoto, Chirin
L no Kisetsu: A piece of memories
Mamatoto ~a record of war~
Memories Off
Refrain Love 2
Silver Jiken
Spark!
Tokimeki Memorial 2
So, thirteen. A very solid selection. I don't really have a personal favorite here. And there is no such work that I'd say - yes - it' perfect. Taking out cryptic, simulation, rpg, bakage and ero-centered works we basically left only with Captain Love, Kanon, L no Kisetsu, Memories Off, Refrain Love 2 - a bunch of pretty normal galge. And among those Kanon quality level is significantly higher and thus Kanon is the Vn of the Year 1999.
It's going to be pretty much my first off-topic post, but I feel the need to inform on the matter why all the links are inaccessible.
My free hosting (http://tigrimigri.com/) died on me on November 6th and I've been waiting for it to show up ever since. I can't do monthly overviews without it since I initially fill in data through the wiki.
I don't really have any backups save for very early crude version so I felt reluctant searching for a new home. But it's finally the time and I've tried some free services only to find out that I need a paid hosting.
First my requirements. I needed Semantic Mediawiki with a bandwith over 5gb. Here is my list of free services with evaluation why they did not work for me.
1) http://www.shoutwiki.com - they provide semantic mediawiki extension only on request, but I sent that request over a week ago and there's still no answer and ticket status directs at 404 error since the very beginning so I guess that's it.
2) http://referata.com/ - it returns error on the very basic create template choice so it looks abandoned for some time
3) https://www.gamepedia.com/ - has Semantic Mediawiki in its extensions but hosts only wikis on one certain game, not other around gaming wikis
4) https://byet.host - is actually the only service that I was able to comfortably test semantic mediawiki after the collapse, but it has quite strict policies and my fresh semantic mediawiki has been banned twice already - for load spikes (I ran shell scripts to upload pages from .csv files faster) and for some 2ch/4ch content (I guess links to vndb.org were considered as that since there is literally nothing else on that wiki). There are tonns of noname other free hosts who actually are byet resellers. They are easily identified by unlimited everything for free, the same signup pattern and nameservers actually looking at byet.
5) https://x10hosting.com/ - can't say much about it, since it says right away at signup that signups from my country are not allowed, unwise to try and violate that.
6) https://www.heliohost.org/ - i tried to register on both available servers and it's it's just unmanagable with very slop operating speed on a fresh installed mediawiki
7) https://viewen.com/ - they look legible, but they demand to like and share them every month on facebook and stay constantly in touch. Upon registration they provide a list of eight (!) segments where you need to give out pretty much all your personal data, vow to worship them as facebook god and some other sections that I did not read up to. Can't stand that much intimacy from a hosting. Their TOS is quite strict as well, so such site as vndb on semantic mediawiki could fall under child porn, scripts abuse and copyright infringement.
8 ) https://aws.amazon.com/ - they refused to accept my card information - guess it's because they are USA-centered.
9) https://www.000webhost.com - they're well known for leaking millions of private data records recently but even without noticing that there are some obvious shortcomings. There's an automated script only for wordpress site, otherwise manual uploading the site and configuring database needed. There's a lot of negative feedback about sudden violating the terms of service notices, so Semantic wiki with its background data update services would be in the vanguard of violation.
10) http://www.host-ed.net/ - company is an old one and there are a lot of issues piled up around it - the most pressing one for me is that PHP version is as low as 5.4 and only quite old mediawiki versions would be able to start here.
11) https://www.freewebhostingarea.com/ - php version is only 5.2.6 and most of pages go into 404 redirects
12) https://www.5gbfree.com/ - site's down for last few days, probably dead. In past I tried it and I remember some severe limitations like inability to have own domain name.
13) https://googiehost.com/ - actually a reliable choice, but I had my first Mediawiki there and once a month mediawiki was just dying with pages loading for 5 minutes/initiating an error. Support ticket improved the situation each time, but after several months of such torture I moved out afrom there.
14) https://www.atspace.com/ - has some real limitations on the MySQL database with just 30mb storage and only 15 tables allowed.
That's actually it. All the others are the resellers or/and offer too little disc space (I need at least 300-400mb) or severe limitations on bandwidth/database.
So far I've set up with one of the the cheapest possible web hosting (and I'll be making .xml exports of all pages periodically) and I really hope I would not ever need to make a 1$/month web hostings review after this free hostings review.
Foreword: It's a C's Ware story game so I'm in. I have not read reviews prior to playing the game. I followed three different walkthroughs though - and still failed to get even a single happy ending. You can read about my torments below.
Title: Vist
Developer: C's Ware
Date: 1999-12-02
VNDB link:https://vndb.org/v6108
Length: 20 hours.
Game type: Map selection ADV.
Difficulty: Pretty insane. Some mazes are ridiculously difficult and twice I failed to find a way within an hour and had to precisely follow walkthrough. Another my huge disappointment is that I failed miserably to get any happy ending. So here how it was. I followed walkthrough accurately for the first time aiming for Rin ending. For some reason I got only a normal one no matter how many times I reloaded the last two battles. Then i dug two more walkthroughs and one said that simultaneous capture was possible so I flagged every heroine twice and saved before the final 3rd flagging... and no matter how many times I followed that choice to the end I still got only same normal ending. So my guess is that
1) simultaneous capturing is impossible and it's needed to strictly not flag any other girl
2) you probably need to make sure you win all the battles (it's very unclear in the game whether you actually got hit or made a successful counter-attack)
3) C's Ware turned into complete sadists after very very torturing Kazeoto, Chirin. There are a lot of choices and hundreds of map and items interaction so even with skipping whole playthrough for the heroines ending scene is going to take at least two hours (more like three). And there are EIGHT heroines! There's just one CG for this final scene so it's a very short one. After a full day of replaying trying to get good ending I just got so sick of the game that I don't the will to keep trying.
Synopsis: Takuto, the protagonist, is a sickly highschool student with a heart disease. His father is a scientist and researcher who is traveling overseas. Even thought he is alone in home, his neighbor and university student Rin come visit him every day, and every night his father call him and they talk by phone.
But one day, his father stops calling and they lost contact. Takuto wonders if something happened to him and contacts the laboratory where his father works. But the staff members dont' know anything.
Takuto is worried, until one day a strange girl called Eryu appears in his house with a letter from his father.
"I'm sorry ------" - Says the last words of his father.
And something who don't look to be human starts to approach the hero, who little by little get caught in the case of the bizarre murders.
Structure: There are 5 chapters each containing on average 8 days.
Character Design rating: 8/10
Protagonist rating: 8/10
Story rating: 7/10
Game quality: 8/10
Overall rating: 8/10
Rating comments: I'm biased here since watching all the good endings could melt my heart a bit. But overall characters don't look too likable. Out of 8 heroines I liked Reiko the scientist woman the most and she's pretty much a standard office lady. So there aren't really likable characters. Protagonist is too weak at first and in the second half he fails to control himself repeatedly and looses memory of what happened more than once. Can't really say that he's moving the flow of the story. Game looks and feels quite cheap - mostly thanks to character design and only female cast voicing. Don't get me wrong - CG and interactive part are awesome. Game also has a number of very colorful enemies and side-characters... but they are males and thus not voiced. Story was a firm 9 up to the last fifth chapter where it suddenly changed the location and got too cryptic leaving a lot of loose ends behind.
Protagonist The transformation from a weakling into superhuman was quite well done. He's beaten bloody for the first half of the game by other hooligan students and is only occasionally saved by girls who happen to be around. What differs him from other students is his high metabolism and ability to stay close to the infection fog without being infected. What I like about him is how he takes the beatings by the hooligans. He hardly says a word and just tolerates everything with the thoughts "If I do as they want the beatings will only get worse". Apart of that he hardly knows and does not have his own will - it might be for the best since it's easy to associate oneself with him.
Characters: As I've mentioned there are a lot of cool bad guys in this game. Later game is based on fights, but there is only one capable of fighting heroine.Apart of the bad guys there is one very impressive "Scarred man" - he's basically of the same source as yourself and thus he just terminates his enemies. You hardly manage to fight one beast and then just walk and see rivers of blood and guts left behind that person. He showed up at different moments in the game and was a great guy to look up to. But again, last chapter prepared a hasty resolution for him as well and this trump card was poorly played. Since there are 8 heroines it's supposed to be a gal game? Well, absolutely not. Every girl has three flags and flagging is basically done by the end of 4th chapter. There are no girls in 5th chapter (well, almost), but after the final battle the girl suddenly appears and you see her ending with just one CG and some phrases. It can hardly be called a "route" and especially an "ending". It's a story game. What's nice in the heroines is that three of them are grown-up ladies in their 30's and the other half are of the same or close age to Takuto. So there is a childhood friend, a meganekko, a hooligan girlfriend, a mysterious girl who is sent to you from your father, a half-native african girl, scientific researcher, news reporter and some superstrong mysterious woman.
Story: So for the story. The most stunning fact is that first two chapters last for 18 days and literally nothing happens during that time. You just go to school and go to sleep at home, that's it. What's that - a slice of life? Whenever I got slightly bored with it I just rewatched the cool opening and and kept on waiting. Chapter 3 is where girls start to show up and story finally starts to form. By the end of Chapter 4 the story is over and heroine route is finalized. I would actually prefer finishing the story there with maybe one additional fight. But it goes on in some forgotten African country laboratory. But it's actually Chapter 4 that gives us all the answers. Chapter 5 throws genetics, superhuman entity, clones and superficial myths together and only tells us the story of our father (and mother?). There are only couple locations here, development is hasty and there's little meaning in what's going on anymore, then it gets even more confusing and - bam - battles - battles - the end. Battles are done pretty well so you only choose the part of enemy to attack or the defend action for each turn. Enemy may choose to block one of these three parts and counter-attacks if you choose the same body part. Saving helps, but there are also some tricks involving using special items against special enemies. Some enemies attack animations are pictured clearly, but some can't be seen in advance. Some don't have attack animation and they retaliate every round. It's quite ok as it is. So my greatest complaints are to the story and especially this final chapter. Also the first four chapters were quite lively for the most part with frequent mysterious events happening. Chapter 5 has a totally different, decadent atmosphere - grim music, cold pictures and the hero who does not care about his survival, but needs this last chain to break. Ending is the most important part of the game and here it's just wrecked mercilessly which inevitably hurts the evaluation a lot.
CG: Character designs are not too exciting, but CG truly are. Somehow HCG are especially beautiful.
Sound: Only female voicing. BGM is fine, at times slightly irritating.
Themes and symbols: As you might have already guessed, the story does not feel integral. There are a lot of actions and cool scenes, but there is not much talk behind them. And there is no afterthought either. The mind is blank and is helplessly trying to put the pieces together rather than think it over.
Overall comments: It's a good C's Ware game and I'm in no way disappointed. The impression reminded me the one after most of Nitro+ earlier games - WTH was that just now? It's not a bad way, but it does not suit C's Ware. Previous games had a satisfying resolution, but here I got only main answers while the fates of the side-characters and even their true nature remained in the dark. A true route would really fit here well. So I'll try to remember Vist and a colorful breathtaking game with a vast amount of beauty and gore.
Foreword: If you do not know of EVE:Burst Error, you better stop here right now and go watch video playthrough of that gorgeous game. EVE the Lost One is a direct sequel to that game and there will naturally be spoilers on the prequel content. That being settled - I did not pay much attention to the Lost One right away and did not review it properly while observing year 1998. Japanese reviews failed even to give an outline of the plot and were generally not too favorable. Only after playing it myself I found out the perfect answer "why" and that will be covered below.
Title: EVE: The Lost One
Developer: C's Ware
Date: 1998-03-12
VNDB link:https://vndb.org/v2708
Length: 21 hour.
Game type: Command selection ADV.
Difficulty: Easy but command bruteforcing required at times
Synopsis: 3 years after EVE:Burst Error. Prisia is the new queen of Eldia but her rule is challenged by radical nationalists headed by archbishop. Marina retired from investigator duty to become newcomers instructor. Kyoko is the newcomer investigator just after severe course of training and her first task is investigating circumstances of death of a young scientist.. Snake is a mysterious figure who is blackmailed to find "memories" of former Eldia king to bring back to life sleeping EVE/Mayako Mido. Somehow everyone hunts for the "memories" and the truth lies in Eldia.
Structure: Game takes place from June 2nd to June 6th, then from June 9th to June 10th with an epilogue on June 16th.
Character Design rating: 9/10
Protagonist rating: 9/10
Story rating: 10/10
Game quality: 10/10
Overall rating: 10/10
Rating comments: I like it when the game is easy to evaluate. I try to find flaws whenever possible and now just can't find anything. It's not a flaw, but my tiny complaint is that protagonists aren't as fun as Kojiro/Marina pair. Those two were just insanely charismatic. Kyoko compared to Marina is quite a plain investigator young woman and her messy hair really hurt her image. Snake does some very ambiguous action, but overall is not a bad guy - still compared to the endlessly funny Kojiro Snake does not stand a chance. But there is one huge BUT. The japanese reviews are mostly based on the initial Sega Saturn version and game evaluation is average. But Sega Saturn and PC version have one HUGE difference - PC version has Marina route crammed in from June 4th to June 6th. This is a huge 3-hour story that gets all the loose ends together and not only that! Marina investigates together with Kojiro, so we're provided with loads of fun scenes and awesome comments. Marina route flips the table and gets the game from just a good straightforward adventure story category to the perfect sequel and eternal masterpiece one.
Protagonist:Kyoko I already tackled on protagonists in rating comments so will elaborate a bit. Kyoko is ok, she is normal. She is a diligent investigator, but she does not mind quality girl-time going shopping and relaxing idly all day long.with a cup of coffee au lait. Her first case investigating the death of a young scientist gradually reveals that he was connected with the former Eldia mad king "memories" that everyone started searching. She's does not have that much sex appeal, so there are much less funny jokes and commentaries on the way compared to Marina in Eve:Burst Error. To the left of her is Yuji, a quiet student with a part-time work. He only wants a quiet life, but reluctantly helps her couple times and gets involved into a big game facing charges in crimes himself. For a good half of the game he gets to accompany Kyoko, so her side of the story gets a social boost and feels good.
Protagonist:SNAKE This picture is the best view we get of him during the opening and I would not like to spoiler his identity which remains unknown up up to the middle of the game. The first minutes of his route show us how he places a bomb and blows up clothes boutique in a big trade center. How can this monster be protagonist?! But almost right after that we get to know that the instructions to create a hand-made bomb that were sent to him were deliberately diminished the effect with the listed amount. It was supposed to break one chair at maximum. So SNAKE was contacted via pc by some ADONIS who showed him the recording of him setting the bomb in the trade center and blackmailed him into getting "memories" of the Eldia former mad king. It's still very difficult to sympathize with this character since he continues to take some
Characters: This is not a galge and there aren't character routes so there's little point in talking about characters individually. At first sight I thought they were overall less likable than those from Eve:Burst Error - it has very cute Mayako, libririan girl, young Himura, affectionate Yayoi, mysterious prime-minister Lloyd. Here there are less characters, but they are shown in development and gain lots of appeal as story unfolds - bartender student Mina, alcoholic Monica, Rena and her president mother, turned on dolphins Ayano, ever-young Natsumi - they are all a curious bunch. And of course the game shares a good number of common characters like Chief, Himura, Prisia, EVE, crazy ministry supervisor woman. They create a pretty cozy atmosphere.
Story: That may be considered a spoiler, but I'm going to draw a very faint structure of the work since I failed to find it in japanese reviews. Game is roughly divided into two storylines. The first half is about finding "memories" and discovering why everyone needs them (there is more than one reason, actually). The second half is three days after first story is over. It's about the sudden spread of biological infection all over the world and the key points here are also Japan and Eldia. Both stories are closely connected and second story relies heavily on the events of the first half. And in PC version there is also Marina story which takes the last two days of the first "memories" story. Marina and Kojiro get to find the real culprit over the caused crimes and even investigate the studies that laid foundation for the events in second story. Without Marina story it would not be really a coherent narration and I can totally understand Japanese reviews based on Saturn version.
CG: I've checked all the CG again and - surprisingly enough - there's ain't much to show since most of those 150 CG are for story related events or items rather than for characters to show off.
Sound: Everything is voiced except for the acting at the moment protagonist. BGM is very good.
Humor:
Actually, there's not so bad humor in here not even counting Kojiro funny streak. Humor is event-based and this type of humor I find the best. So here are the three occasions that come to mind. Oh and I did not find not a single Bill Clinton joke here! That's an accomplishment in itself! (Those who played EVE:Burst Error will get what I mean).
1) At some point of the story Kyoko has to hide, but she's greatly disappointing by the fact that her friends drew a beard over the wanted posters.
2) There's a small serious meeting discussing the ADD project and how it gets into effect. Yuji who is not strong into genetics adds the bottom drawing and when he's asked what it means, he answers: "anus". It was very unexpected ease of tensions and that's why it was pretty great.
3) Only the dolphin saw the criminal and it's invented how to transform dolphin thought impulses into an image to the fax (PC-98 game My Eyes! nervously smokes in the back). Now the dolphin lies in the bathtub and here's what we get when he ask him to picture the event he recently seen. Just awesome!
Themes and symbols: It's more of a straightforward game that tries to explain everything under the question so that there was no afterthought behind.
- One of the strongest motives of the game is that of the sacrifice. Eldia is full of patriots, that's one thing that does not change.
- There's a very nice developed theme of siblings separated in the early childhood.
Overall comments: It's a surprisingly interesting game series full of vivid characters, animations and it's just a really twisted story with lots of deaths. If command selection gameplay looks troublesome - just watch my video walkthrough of the game. I'm really weak to good game series, so I'm getting to the bottom of it. The next stop is Eve:The Fatal Attraction.
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I don't feel eligible to write a full review since I only listened to the voice parts of the game. And the reason for that is that the game is unhookable by any instruments. No threads are found at all. Still I'm confident enough on the grappled content to write my thoughts of it.
First things first: game has very poor systems.
1) Full-screen only. My try to launch it in window-mode with Dxwnd succeeded, but menu top started to fly separately from the main windows and mouse cursor started being distorted in space so full-screen is the only comfortable way to play.
2) There is no skip function. The closest thing to it is CTRL which draws a full wall of text and you need to press CTRL separately for each such wall of text which amounts to thousands of hits of this key.
3) Sound volume is outrageous. Voice is way too low and sounds and bgm way too loud even when voice maxed up and other sounds minimized. I had to pull sound volume to the limit of speakers to hear voices well, but each time BGM stroke there was a shock feeling. BGM only sounds for one minute and calms down so that minute was the most painful time over and over again. Maybe it was different for win98 but no compatibility helps. By the way, installer only launches with win98 compatibility.
4) CG viewer is one of the worst I ever seen. Out of five heroines it shows CG of two first heroines fairly well and there's the beginning of 3rd heroine and there's no way see the rest with game means.
That being covered you can probably guess my irritation with the game even though the game was not started yet. But there are some positive sides of the game:
1) Full voiced, including protagonist.
2) Beautiful clean graphics.
3) Good structure - 2 girls available from the start, then consecutively three more girls open up and then there's the true route.
4) Longevity - all six routes take about 40 hours of time to read properly.
Let's touch the story a bit.
Matsunaga Yoshihiro is a young man given the task of watching over a group of students from Touyou School on their summer break to a beach. One of the students, Morisawa Nao, has had sadness in her heart from her past - something Yoshihiro can relate to, having his own issues arrising during the trip.
That's the rough synopsis with the only remark that it's for anime made the next year. Morisawa Nao is the main character only in anime. In the game she's just one of five ordinary heroines. She's one of the two started heroines, so I guess she's chosen for the main part in anime since first two days mostly focus on those two starter heroines in game while the path to the next ones is branched off much further. Morisawa Nao is a much better choice over the other starting heroine Iwasaki Chinatsu since the former one is much more attractive and has the most dramatic story among all the non-true heroines.
I don't really feel like covering heroines or even the true route heroine since I like the anime short version much more than those routes.
Conclusions.
New Elf is different. Old Elf works were challenging and playful. This work is stripped of any playfulness and it's a mere imitation of other successful nakige with true route structure. Heroines routes are vastly meaningless and only true route has some meaning. The locked forced structure makes us play the same story for six times with the branching only done by the middle of it without a good skipping feature. This monotonous flow is extended to excessive 40 hours without any satisfying conclusion.
Shizuka is the most bashful heroine, but her route included childhood memories scene of her sitting and covering the head with hands while other children get in a round-play and sing the exact "Kagome" song from Kazeoto, Chirin. I get that it's not C's Ware that invented the song, but it looked just like a shameless plagiarism to me.
So one more faint question remains - why the hell this crap of a game is VN of the Month November 1999?! Well, with all the flaws of this work it's the modern type work with nice characters and true route. When I look at other November 1999 VNs there are even more irritation factors like SIM, bakage, hetare protagonist, H-focus, shortness or lack of info. Refrain Blue is the only one that's not defiled by those factors. And it's not that bad of a story, just overextended one and lacking in excitement. This is actually the 2nd case after Interlude (2003) where I liked anime version much more than the game. Interlude changed the plot to clear the mess of a setting and Refrain Blue just gathered the most interesting heroine path together with true route, cut everything else and set the table with a nice one hour long work. If you want to taste Refrain Blue, just watch the anime version, really.
Since there are so many reviews of it, there's no need in full review, so I'm just explaining my choice for this game to be the game of the month October 1999.
The game is painful with a lot of text, characters, interaction with the scenery, puzzles and seemingly unrelated cases. Up to the middle of it I really struggled through painfully.
Game is about five cases of a heinous crime unit 1. But what's cool about it is that it's not about finding and catching the culprit. Those are just stories that have a beginning and some resolution, mostly sad resolution, actually - pretty much failing the case. Case 1 is about a swat team being massacred by some legendary criminal Kamui and eventually finding this Kamui as a totally emotionless shell of a human. Case 2 suddenly shifts the focus to some homeless children who live in the shelters - one of the boys is lost and we discover the story about his disappearance. Case 3 is about two syndicates rivalry and kidnapping of one syndicate's director. Case 4 is about illegal surveillance and streaming of private moments of life of a pop idol. Case 5 returns us to the mystery behind Kamui and all the cases finally get connected into one satisfying resolution.
The gist of the story is presented in a fairytale told by one of characters and since it has great importance and great charm I'm giving the direct dialogue: - You know, recently... some people say fantasy is like brainwashing. Giving kids sweet dreams for the purpose of controlling them. - When you put it that way, that sounds right. - Originally they were pretty messed up stories. - Like "messed up" how? - Realistic stories, without all the happy stuff. - Well, that sure sucks. - That's why they got turned into happier stories. - Is that all? - No. Here's where it starts. So anyways, when I was a kid, there was this fairytale I heard. It's an old folktale from my hometown, but... - Hm. - Once upon a time, there was a princess. A beautiful princess. A terrible giant serpent fell in love with her. The serpent ruled the land ... no, he had taken over the land. - He invaded it? - Yeah. The serpent turned the king into stone. The greedy serpent wanted the princess... So he took her away... - Pretty standard shit. Go on, go on. - Then came a band of heroes. To rescue the princess they ventured to the huge castle. - Well of course. I'd do the same thing. - The heroes combined their powers and fought the serpent. And then... - What happened? - They defeated it. - Fuck yeah!!! - Everything was fine and good. - Is that the end? - Well, mostly... - What the fuck? That's just a normal-ass fairytale. That sucked. - You liked it, right? - No, that's no good. There's no twist. - It's not over yet. - What? - Think of the story I just told you. It's been tweaked to make it nice. The realistic parts have been obfuscated. - Well then what the hell happens? - The princess was dead... - What the fuck?! What do you mean? - She was killed by the serpent. - Man, FUCK that serpent! The fuck kind of story is that? - And one more thing... There is no serpent. - No? Why not...? That stuff comes up in stories all the time. - Of course there isn't. There's no such thing as a "giant serpent" - Well. yeah... - It wasn't a serpent, but a human. The heroes were people, too. Humans killed another human, for revenge. - That's just a crime... - Yeah... Fairytales are crimes. The unrealistic fantasy that happens in real life is crime.
Rereading this dialog after finishing the game actually bears a lot of sense, it's the shortened version of the game's theme and meaning. The game does not really tell much directly and there's still the need to think up the rest of it, just like in this dialogue.
Let's get to the bad points. It's long (over 15 hours), slow-paced, low on events. It does not have voicing. It's mostly in sepia tone. Art is of specific and quite shy style. It's quite hard to guess who's talking since you just get the sentences appearing in one window one by one. It has a lot of interactivity. There's one hundred-questions spree with only 10 seconds for each answer and questions are mostly on history-sciences-media topics. Interface and controls are confusing. Dialogues are dodgy and make no sense. Characters treat each other poorly, trade in homophobic and sexist slurs. There are some puzzles. Game can be repetitive - at one case you need to search 80 separate and identical rooms in order to find five items.
Now to the good ones. Game is great because it has cool charismatic characters each with distinguishing personality. Characters-like it reminds me the Unit from Ghost in the Shell the most. The atmosphere is quite like that as well. Heroes smoke, curse like hell and talk in a cryptic way. The dialogues are just awesome with constant verbal abuse towards each other. But as for the story twists and mystery it resembles Metal Gear Solid series the most, as for me.
What makes a masterpiece for me is being memorable, no matter how many suffering it brings in the process - just need to treat them as trials. And there's no need to get tortured - there are a lot of great video let's plays of it without the commentaries. But in the end we get a mature, rich in details story that leaves much for the afterthought and lots of precious memories to cherish.
Foreword: It's a C's Ware game and these guys have not let me down even once. Unlike Re-Leaf which has quite a clear synopsis and multiple endings, this work is much more mysterious. I thought I'd get just another rural slice of life with some side mystery, but what I got was an ancestor of Cross†Channel with a global anomaly and looped story.
Title: Kazeoto, Chirin (I'd translate it as "Sound of bells in the wind")
Developer: C's Ware
Date: 1999-09-10
VNDB link:https://vndb.org/v4332
Length: That's tricky. Some 5 hours for first playthrough, plus some 4 hours more to get other routes to the end. It actually took me more that 15 hours due to a complicated walkthrough and confusion of the true routes.
Game type: Global mystery rural story.
Difficulty: Medium when you get how it's organized. For me it was very high since even choosing locations in wrong order can lead to falling out of heroine route.
Synopsis: Satoshi, the protagonist, and his best friend, are both college students who came back to their old town to spend their summer vacation. But residents suddenly start to disappear without any reason. The most optimistic versions are that people are being spirited away or aliens abduct humans or that an ogre comes down from the mountain or that yakuza sell people into slavery because of debts. Hero does not care till the closest people to him start disappearing as well.
Structure: Game takes place for 8 days from July 31st to August 8th when the Obon festival is held.
Character Design rating: 8/10
Protagonist rating: 7/10
Story rating: 9/10
Game quality: 8/10
Overall rating: 8/10
Rating comments: It's a good game with great atmosphere, main idea and nice events. But heroines aren't charming enough. Out of six heroines I liked only Ageha, because she's a diligent student, hard-working keeper of a boarding house, loving older sister of Kanako and tsundere-ish at the beginning and very reasonable later on. Protagonist is a university student, but he's quite passive and he does not care about disappearings till his friends get missing, so it's a minus for him. Game quality is high, but I had to undergo through a lot of repetitiveness since heroines don't have their own routes and the difference is mainly just in several choices. If you watch my video walkthrough, you won't see that repetitiveness since it's cut there, so I hope you get to like this game even better.
Protagonist: Satoshi-san is your ordinary megane university student. As he admits himself, he just goes with the flow and never really gives attention to studies. When Ageha asks him to help with the university summer homework on maths, Satoshi says he's in humanitarian division and that he "avoided" math entrance exams to the university somehow. And he has amnesia and is trapped in the eternal loop of 8 days, so he has all kinds of memory flashes all the time which does not help to concentrate on something. To the left is Satoshi and to the right is his brother Bozo (such is name when he's called in game) which i ended up calling Boshi and synopsis writer on VNDB called him Takeshi. Bozo is more of a playful type. He's fast to know the news and always eager to help.
Characters: I wanted to talk about heroines in bulk, but there's no good joint CG, so let's run through them separately. First of all, there are no separate character roots. Secondly, there are no romantic feelings at all here - all H events happen on August 6 out of desperation of two last people in the world. Six main heroines routs are paired by two: sisters Ageha+Kanako, sisters Satomi+Shihori, nurse Midori+patient Ayane. It's difficult to call even those branched routes separate ones since the flow is the same aside from several events and the people who get to disappear first.
Ageha is a diligent university student, keeper of a boarding house and a kind sister to Kanako. She's depicted as an angry comic person in the beginning of the story since Satoshi has not payed for the stay for quite a long time, but she gets to be the most attractive character for me - responsible, intelligent, kind.
Kanako is a school student, but she runs the soba dining hall almost by herself. She's cheerful and childlish.
Ayane is the most mysterious person since unless we follow her route we get to see her just once occasionally. She visits the local doctor since she's having pains, but the doctor claims that those are psychological ones after the death of her husband. She's the oldest of characters and she has a complex about here age - she even calls herself obaasan. Well, but she's the most experienced one and she's actually quite a nymphomaniac.
Midori is the nurse in the local hospital. Since she's the most typical character, the writer really tried to pull her out of her role giving her lots of very nice events (in the sunset etc) outside of her working clothes, in casual - at those times she's cheerful and likes to set pranks.
Satomi is Satoshi's cousin. She's always together with Shihori and they have the coolest CG together. Again, the writer tried to give her traits discerning from her sister. So Satomi is cheerful, creative, and workaholic, but she's quite irrational.
Shihori is Satoshi's cousin. The more rational of the two, but she hates cooking and working - more of a city girl. Together with sister they came for several days to rest and see their cousins and their theme is to get out of the town as soon as politeness allows.
Hibiki is the joker of the game. She only appears on sunset before the end of the day to say some cryptic stuff about the time, the universe etc. Her route is the true route that opens up after clearing all the six heroines. A lot of questions are getting answered in it, so any additional information would be a spoiler.
Story: Satoshi and Bozo don't have real plans. They just wander around the town that's very ordinary rural town without any discerning feature. There's an Inn, a Soba shob, a souvenir shop, a marketplace, a river bank, a bridge, a clinic, a shrine, a bus stop, a small square with a bronze statue and that's it. Then their cousin sisters arrive and they get a full-scale investigation of the time once more. Here and there there is information that some people get missing, but it's usually neglected as people might just go to hot springs or somewhere. Then their important person disappears (who - depends on route) and start searching around. Eventually everyone disappears but Satoshi and one girl by the day of the Bon festival and after visiting this spirit festival the world resets. That's the loop that keeps on repeating. Composition-wise Cross†Channel is better since the hero works towards getting out of the loop by trying to remember things or writing them down in the diary. Here Satoshi is the same each time - first he's pulled in some merry adventures and then he's on the brink of despair. Through next five routes it's monotonous gameplay since very few events change and there's a lot of movement on the map, so skipping is not fast. Hibiki route that comes with everyone cleared finally puts some dots and breaks the loop without any active actions from Satoshi side. Thus Cross†Channel wins by all the parameters - the charm of characters, the humor, the protagonist, but it is a perfect 10 by my standards, but it came four very saturated years later and had some predecessors - including this work - to fix its flaws.
CG: Well, I loved its CG. Heroines are gorgeous there. Best to see for yourself.
HCG: What I appreciated was that every heroine got only one H-event (with some exceptions) - in the end of her branch. Those events are short and involve mostly talking in the beginning and in the end so it's the best type.
Sound: Full voicing except for Satoshi protagonist. Just as in Chiruhana the tunes in the first half of the game are absurdly merry, some sound like parade ones. And C's Ware still can't get sound volumes even since both BGM and Voice for different occasions differ a lot.
Themes and Symbols:
1) Unfortunately there's nothing deep in the main theme of the game - that's just remembering the truth about his deceased mother and thus breaking the loop. Well, there is some cool twist in it, but I won't spoiler.
2) What's much cooler is the mystic atmosphere that's created. There are sounds of bells heard all of a sudden in this town - some say it's the air, some invent more fancy explanations like plazma. And at some point it gets clear that each time the bell rings a person disappears and then it gets scary. This goes very well wit the Obon festival theme - the most pagan and spiritual festival celebrated. There a lot of impact in spirits roundelay. And when your heroine gets sucked it in it's horrifying.
3) There is a bridge in the town. When Satoshi asks what's on the other side of it - noone can answer. Well, that's weird, but we get to forget about if till the situation with the disappearings gets critical. There's a great scene when Satoshi and Bozo set off through the bridge... and the bridge ends and beyond it there is nothingness. Just insane. What's happening? Is this world not real? AM I ALIVE? That's just a wonderful mindscrew.
4) But the deepest theme is quite unnoticeable. It's when doctor says that he wants this damned rural town to disappear with all of the inhabitants. This hate grew strengthened in him each day. He wanted to break free of it, but was forced by his parents to return after studying. He even had a girlfriend in Tokyo and they had to divorce because he needed to return to this dump. And this is scary, because it's a social reality. Japanese society in some places remains quite archaic. Oldest son has to inherit the house and even the profession of the father and devote his life to whatever miserable life his father had. Well, in case of this game it was not the Doctor who was the source of the disapperings and notes it himself - at first only outsiders and tourists started to disappear and if it was in his power the whole basis of the town should have rot with its core inhabitants.
Overall comments: This game is very good. It has very nice characters, great global mystery and unique strong atmosphere. It's not an S-class work like Eve:Burst Error, but this little cursed game is definitely a masterpiece for me, something that has an ability create memories.
Foreword: I've been mesmerized by C's Ware games for quite a long time by now and I could not miss this work even though it's not my type of game at all.
Title: Chiruhana ~Kindan no Ketsuzoku~
Developer: C's Ware
Date: 1999-01-29
VNDB link:https://vndb.org/v2662
Length: 3 hours. There might be slightly more if you look for side H-events and look in non-plot rooms all the time.
Game type: Mystery suspense detective story.
Difficulty: Zero. Linear.
Synopsis: Your uncle dies, and you investigate his mysterious manor.
Structure: There are five chapters and each chapter ends with a murder save for fifth chapter that finalizes the game.
Character Design rating: 6/10
Protagonist rating: 5/10
Story rating: 6/10
Game quality: 8/10
Overall rating: 6/10
Rating comments: Don't be led astray by the low scores - game is of high quality and is enjoyable. Mystery is well developed and I failed to guess the culprit. Well, I have not guessed the culprit not even once in my whole life, anyway. Low scores were almost inevitable and they come from the setting and from game length. You can't really extend manor mystery to 30 hours (Nocturnal Illusion managed to do that only thanks to torturing bruteforce gameplay). And you can't develop characters in action-driven mystery story. Game did everything it could - it produced a thrilling fast-paced story and created a nice mystery layer on top of that. It could be much worse if it tried to extend length or try to develop characters.
Protagonist: There are two - mansion owner's nephew Shiraishi Minoru and mansion owner's granddaughter Chisato. Minoru is quite an ordinary young man without distinct traits. Chisato is kind of tsundere and tomboy.
Characters: There are quite many characters - initially - hehe. The two most noticable are mansion owners' daughter and mother of four kids Michiyo-sama as she eventually pairs up with Minoru in investigation. Minoru's senior, investigator Kaneshima-san also comes to the mansion on the following day and he eventually pairs up with Chisato in investigation. Basically, Kaneshima-san is the only one who actually investigates and everyone else only a hindrance to investigation. But the most memorable are probably twins Tomomi and Tomoka. They are totally synced in speech so that one usually starts the phrase and the other one finishes it. Several phrases they speak together in unison. And you always hear their lauch, like a pair of small bells ringing and that laugh at some point drives Minoru to the point of craziness and he can't sleep and see them in every room following him. Another example of brilliantly enhanced atmosphere.
Story: It's not the murder that's terrifying but the way how it's done - mansion owner's neck was cut and he was hanged on a sakura tree upside down. Many old legends show up featuring ghosts and evil revenge spirits that kill only men and the whole game this atmosphere is kept up which is great. Mansion inhabitants are paralyzed with primal fear and police only comes to assert the deaths as suicide. Minoru's senior Kaneshima-san is the only one who is able to think sober and analyze the facts. He finds a hidden room inside the mansion where some kind of laboratory exists and tries to link the deaths with poisoning. Only couple of deaths seem to linked to poisoning and the others are done much more brutally with piercing wounds. So is it an evil spirit ravaging or are there several culprits? We'll find it out eventually.
CG: Cool CG in adequate quantity.
HCG: I liked it that there are only H-events and they mostly are of soft nature and very very short, some 30 lines or so. They bear much artistic value. I especially liked the fact that melon-chest maids aren't having any scene in the main plot. Game's CG shows that they have a scene, but in order to get it it's probably needed to check non-plot highlighted rooms all the time.
Sound: Full voicing. Even for both protagonists. One of BGM was irritating since it had one very high pitch moment deafening me and making voices unrecognizable, but lowering bgm volume helped. Also I'd like to notice that most of BGM are very lively yet old-mannered corresponding to Taisho era, so it's not a depressing game. Just with some atmospheric features.
Themes:
1) It's not a theme, but rather a symbol. Blossoming sakura. It always had the most sweet reminiscences. Chiruhana treats it another way. Pink. Light red. Dark red. Red as carpet. It's the color of beautiful flowers that bring bad omen. Sakura demands blood. This symbol is repeated over and over with words an visuals and creates a specific atmosphere.
Overall comments: It was very difficult to make something good from such synopsis and game succeeded in that. Mystery remained strong till the very end and numerous details made the atmosphere really thrilling. The end was very satisfactory for me as every murder is explained. It's not my type of the game, but if you have a taste for good quality short atmospheric mystery murder story, it's much advised.
Foreword: I do not believe in AliceSoft. As for me, they can only do that pornographic rapist Rance series over and over. So any work outside of Rance franchise is of interest to me to support or demolish this statement.
Title: Prostudent G
Original Title: ぷろすちゅーでんとG
Developer: AliceSoft
Release Date: 1993-05-15
Summary: By the end of the 20th century, radical educational reforms have transformed the Japanese society. Students were split into opposing groups, and the more aggressive of those eventually formed a dominant organization named Order of Black Phoenix, centered on the cult of a mysterious person known as "The Queen". Outcast students have escaped to a secluded island near Okinawa. A wandering lazy and lecherous manga and anime fan named Gorō Endō teams up with a female teacher and a few students to lead an opposition force against the oppressive governing circles.
VNDB Link:https://vndb.org/v4701
Game Type: Command selection absurd bakage
Story Length: 6 hours
Complete Story Clearing Difficulty: Easy!
Comments of Difficulty: One-way road with several choices affecting the ending
Character Design Rating: 6/10.
Story Rating: 2/10.
Protagonist Rating: 5/10
Game Quality: 4/10
Overall Rating: 4/10
Rating Comments: I had to force myself to finish it. By the mids of the story nothing sane was left and it got really difficult to follow that farce. For that reason I don't have the right to produce a structured review - it would rather be graphical impressions of the story with comments. Another thing is that game is a very crude port from PC-98 to Windows-95 dated by 1995, so it's same PC-98 edition, just with windows text extraction capabilities. No voicing, no remastered CG, no improved systems... nothing. I'm sorry, but there will be spoilers since the chances that anyone else gonna play this game are very close to nil.
Structure: One whole part.
Story:
We start as hooligan Goro (he claims to have sent to hospital many dozens of students) exiled with other outcasts to an island beyond Okinawa. He has really nothing to do and is dying of boredom. So when weird Noriko-sensei suggests he serves as her bodyguard in her trip to Ministry of education to propose two-weekend school plan, he reluctantly agrees.
But ech, she's ugly. Two other students join then on the ferry to mainland
So from left to right they are Noriko-sensei, ever-hungry karate-kid Choko and gun maniac Saori. But at the ferry eternally horny Goro sneaks into Noriko-sensei room and finds her with her usual glasses.
He immediately swears to always love sensei. But when Choko visits him the next minute in his room, he makes a woman of her. Sorry, sensei! Actually, the decisions to comfort plot girl characters is optional and it affects the ending we get.
So we get to the mainland and just go sightseeing. Since this is the part I was still reading attentively, here are some examples of game humor encountered.
We get to book store and while sensei is buying "The treasure of love" we want to buy quickly "How to SEX" and seller pesters us for a long time with questions like whether we want silver or gold edition and then persistently wants to sell us tissues. Goro declines saying that a real man needs no tissues! And seller insists that we'll definitely find use of those tissues, for example during influenza.
Fortune telling is being whipped. First magician points us at each of four directions consecutively and each time we explore that direction and find nothing. Another thing is that for fortune telling to work magician each time needs to perform a ritual like touching the girl's boobs or bondaging a girl. Choko and Saori were the poor participants.
When you die in battle, an angel appears before your eyes and offers to resurrect you. In one plot sequence (not a real battle) this angel appears with a rose in his butt and demands that Goro licked his butthole in order to resurrect. And Goro wanted to live.
After all the sightseeing Goro wants to visit adult store very much, but does not want Noriko-sensei to go there, so he suggests ladies go to a boutique and he visits the X place. And this happens when he returns.
Some elite guy from Black Phoenix captured sensei. And a good third of the game we just trying to get her back... We save some girl on the street from molesters just before that and now girl attacks presumably to let this guy get away with sensei.
So this is just first of many girl enemies ahead. Try to guess what happens when you defeat such an enemy... Right, typical Rance stuff. And I think there slightly less than 10 of such enemies throughout the game.
Anyway, we interrogate some punk from the Black Phoenix on the street and learn that sensei was taken to Osaka.
We find the bridge blown down and need to swim over the river and by the mids of it Goro feels that he's got more difficult to breathe.
And the reason is Sailor - oh, I mean some nameless enemy. Saori helps us in this battle but something worries me...
Saori uses revolver and even SMG agains the pink head enemy. Oh, well, must be some special underwater arms, really. I should not even mention what happens to the enemy the next scene.
And it was still ok till some huge mech attacked our heroes with cannons and blasters.
Since there was nothing to do agains a giant robot, Goro just... summoned himself a new robot from the sky. REALLY?!?! What's wrong with this game, I wonder?!
After we deal with the pilot in an additional scene the kidnapper of sensei shows up and whatever we do we get defeated. At this point resurrection angel only offers us to resurrect as a girl... and at this point I completely lost it.
Next Goro girl was getting lots of harassment, some transsexual also showed up on the scene to support such a cute baby.
First Goro girl had to defeat some karate kid in karate competition with unorthodox methods like boob attack and tickle, then this win somehow got us access to some school where with this transsexual in girl clothes we hunted for the contents of school director safe. And then the company went further to Hokkaido. Somespace ship attacked and I guess Goro just summoned himself another spaceship, no biggie. As spaceship hit volcano, a multi-handed giant Budda appeared and for some reason became a threat!
At least there was no H scene after defeating this monster. Despite original goal was two-weekend school week proposal to the Ministry of Education, noone really bothered about it anymore. Instead, for some reason we storm the fortress of Black Phoenix to confront "The Queen". So on the way to this fortress Goro just dies in his cabin and angel gives no option but to resurrect as sensei kidnapper... Somehow the dude who claimed to be the toughest guy in Japan joins us since Goro claims that Goro is number one and that guy is number two. Anyway, this weird pair does most of the work in the fortress and the dude sacrifices himself to take one of the bodyguards out of action in this gay scene.
But instead of the Queen the ultimate boss is this... I don't have the words.
In our travels we bought or picked up some items that weren't of use not even once. So now is the chance to try all those items to defeat the boss.
The mighty boss is defeated with the banana peel and we get rape the queen scene. Game over. AAAAH! What the hell was that? We get a CG featuring afterstory of most of plot characters and that's it. I was not asking for a good story, but I'd appreciate at least a coherent one. And I can't stand rapist protagonists for their inevitably ugly moral image. That sums it up. My attitude towards Alice Soft has not changed, but i'm looking forward to next AliceSoft non-Rance game to prove me I'm wrong.
Foreword: I don't believe Alice Soft - they can only make eroge and bakage. But this game was highly praised overseas. Who knows, maybe it's the game that can overcome my aversion.
Title: Diabolique
Developer: Alice Soft Date: 1998-05-28 VNDB link:https://vndb.org/v2261
Synopsis: In this world, here are two kinds of intelligent beings. One are humans and the other are Diaboliques. Diaboliques possess power, violence, intelligence, and eternal life. Their life form was categorized into four levels, the lowest division lacking intelligence, reproduction ability and beauty and the fourth being very intelligent and able to change form.
For thousands of years, human race has been suppressed by the danger of diabolique. However, a legend has passed on through generation that there's diabolique that kills its own species. This diabolique was Azulite - one of the only five Lord Diabolique (the ones of highest category). Being known as the "species killer," Azulite has come up to kill diaboliques. At here, he met a girl named Letticia. Her innocence and tragic background has attracted Azulite, and soon Azulite fell in love with her. However, the two lovers were separated after Letticia was killed. They promised to see each other when she was reincarnated. Carrying with the promise, Azulite once again set off on a journey looking for Letticia.
Structure: There are roughly five big parts corresponding to five different time periods. Length: 16 hours Game type: Command selection adventure Difficulty: Easy. Story is one way road and bad ends are possible only if make a bad decision in battle. Even then the game kindly suggests to load from the beginning of the battle rather than finding your earlier savegame. Character Design rating: 8/10
Protagonist rating: 10/10
Story rating: 10/10
Game quality: 9/10
Overall rating: 10/10
Rating comments: Two games in a row with a 10/10... either my standards are that low or the games are that good. I actually stand for the latter. My only complain to game quality is that it's not voiced and music only lasts for couple minutes and fades before the next scene is reached. And I did not particularly like the way the five Lord Diaboliques were presented. We get short scenes with them between the main Azurite story parts and only by the mids of fifth final part we're told their names and their governing elements. So through the game they are just random guys and when we get acquainted to them, there's already a climax part pending. I'd like to get more of Lord Diabolique characters.
Protagonist: Azurite is absolutely fabulous as a protagonist. He lost most of his memory, but he knows that he's the strongest of Lord Diaboliques. He remembers he's searching for something and wanders around killing his kin and getting food and shelter for that. He travels in a human form and he looks like a very tall elf with his long hair, slender body and big sword. But in this cruel world drowned in blood he's the only gentelman. He's very polite, kind, good-mannered and modest. He never drawn his sword against any human no matter how bad he's bullied or hunted (well, not in human state at least he-he). And he's a one-woman man. From the moment he met Leticia in humiliating conditions he felt a deep sympathy towards her. He's never laid an eye on any other woman and when one woman throughout the story tried to force herself on him, his manhood could not react at all. He's very loyal and that makes the story unique. Well, he's quite sensitive too and he can afford to cry when he's with Leticia. He's a great cook and at mornings he always greets Leticia in an apron and with a ladle inviting her to have breakfast.
Characters: Each of the five story parts has its own set of characters. I adore party adventures and story part 2 and 3 were about adventuring in two different parties and that was absolutely cool. I really liked those different party members with fancy characters, but they don't play significant role. Only Leticia follows throughout all the parts (actually, even she's absent in one part) and enemies. There is also Aria girl that has an important role in 4th and 5th story parts, so let's look at those two girls.
Leticia: Well... she's different. Part 1 shows us canonical abused scary girl. Part 2 is an absolutely different, bold and picky personality and a different appearance. Part 3 is again totally different from those two, but I would not like to spoil here. In Part 4 she's absent and in Part 5 she's basically canonical Leticia again, but she remembers all the previous reincarnations as well. Well, she's quite a typical heroine like in many single heroine stories. Sensitive scared crybaby who knows next to nothing about the world and that gives Azurite an opportunity to act protective and teach her basic facts about the world. But as for me, Part 2 and Part 3 Leticia reincarnations are much cooler, totally different personalities and great stories.
Aria: She's a usual native Indian girl, curious and brave. She recovers Azurite body when he falls into a trap and takes care of him while he recovers. But Azurite falls into the same trap for the second time (well, he's not wisest man) and she dies stepping up and getting all the blows that were ment for Azurite. That's an inevitable spoiler because there's not point discussing Aria as human. Azurite makes a misfortune (intelligent creation) of her she stays protecting those ruins and waiting for Azurite. Well, that's the biggest charm about this girl. She's becomes a killing machine, but she regains her memories - she looses humanity, but she has intelligence and senses. She's condemned to wait for Azurite for hundreds years in that dark den and eventually he comes... not alone, but with Leticia. There's a very touching scene of jealousy risen inside Aria towards Leticia and that and her damned fate make her a very memorable character.
Story: Story is superb throughout first four story parts. There's a lot of diabolique fights, lots of death, lots of adventuring. Part 2 and 3 features adventuring inside two different parties and that's just the best moments of the game. Part two is also a perfect slice of life on top of that. So we get to know Leticia in part 1 and eventually lose her. In part 2 after 60 years we discover her soul in a different girl and eventually lose her. At this point I already thought I knew what would happen in leftover parts. But part 3 is totally shocking - there's no Azurite in it, there's no Leticia in it - main three characters are a pub girl, a huge warrior woman and pub girl's brother who wishes to go adventuring and joins that huge warrior woman. For two hours the story lingers and you start to put up with the fact that's it's a totally different story when - BAM - Azurite appears in a totally unexpected way - BAM - Leticia appears and the chapter shortly ends. Ok... now I adjusted my expectations and the leftover stories were bound to be the same Azurite is searching for Leticia, but in other humans forms, easy as that. And fourth chapter gives another shock - there's Azurite in his usual for throughout the whole chapter, but Leticia does not make appearance in this chapter at all - not her soul, pretty much nothing! Just wow. So fifth chapter should finally be about meeting of two heroes, right? NOT. For one and a half hour you watch a slice of life about 7-year old reincarnated Leticia and her 7-year old friends. And I'd like to assure you that watching a slice of life about 7-year old first graders is not fun in any way - that was the most torturing part of the game. But fifth part is the longest one (about 5 hours long), so there is enough time for heroes union and new confrontation setting and final resolution. I'll tackle the fifth chapter in Themes more.
CG: There's a lot of CG, actually. I'm totally satisfied by is quantity and quality. Here are some gore CG for the taste of it. There's a lot of CG, actually. I'm totally satisfied by is quantity and quality. Here are some gore CG for the taste of it.
HCG: Believe it or not, but there are only two and a half hentai scenes in the game. Two scenes for 16 hour long gameplay. I'm sorry, is this really Alice Soft? Well, it is. In order to make up with just two H-scenes there are a lot of half-naked/naked shots. A lot of enemies are drawn the way to amplify eroticism. There are a lot of flashbacks and occasional nudity scenes, so don't worry, it's very much Alice Soft, just adapted to fit the pure love eternal reincarnation story. And the only Azurite and Leticia H event is one of the most memorable in my gaming experience. There's no music and no voice during that. Only the rising and fainting gusts of wind are heard. The scene is maid as manga scrolling strips overlapping each other with up to 4 small screens deployed at one time. Very beautiful and touching.
Sound: Sound is my biggest complain. I'm used to unvoiced games, that's ok. But each bgm fades after some two minutes and during the rest of the scene there's dead silence so I really often had to check whether I forgot to turn on sound or something. Actually, there are also nice sound effects during actions, but everyday life scenes lack them a lot.
Themes: So first four chapters were pretty much brainless merry adventures with some sad resolutions. I loved those the most. But then came final fifth chapter and game suddenly turned into a nakige. The great diabolique/human war broke out and our heroes are hunted from both sides as well as by four Lord Diabolique. Leticia shakes in hysteria crying that's she's tired of running and hiding asking to leave her alone. Azurite is totally depressed as well because he can't give anything besides his feelings to the woman he loves. Those are very depressing scenes that last throughout the whole fifth chapter. But at the same time a lot of serious questions are raised.
1) Time brings change. Leticia was hiding in the forests with Azurite for 11 years and now she's 18 and she's tired, she wants a normal life. Feelings alone aren't a solid basis of relations.
2) What's better - to reincarnate, lose memory and start anew or to keep on living? Surprisingly, I feel like the game says that reincarnating even with memory loss is much better. First four chapters are a vivid example of it. It used to be a great romance story, but once heroes got together and Leticia turned 18 things have changed. She'll soon get old and die of boredom in the forest. Bearing the burden of past lives memory is already difficult. So when fire kings visits her alone in the forest and suggests to wipe her memory she's pretty much ready for both memory wipe and even death and reincarnation since reality has turned into such a heavy burden.
3) What's good and what's evil? Diabolique Lords are almighty cruel creatures that enslave humans, but with the story flow we start to see their characters, their griefs, their losses and they aren't seen as evil anymore. Humans used to be on losing side, but with the invention of firearms the balance shifted and humans started to kill even 24 Diaboliques getting very close to hunting Diabolique Lords. While diaboliques mostly used humans for sex pleasures, humans started to torture diaboliques just for the sake of revenge and those tortures were inhumane. At fifth chapter we're given the ultimate choice - shall we support the Diabolique Lords or shall we keep on hiding and fighting diaboliques. Supporting Diabolique Lords leads us to the first game ending with Azurite regained memories and power of Lord Diabolique of darkness and Leticia happily living with him. This is not a true ending, but I don't see it as a bad ending either. Humans with their lowly desires are hardly better than diabliques. While they were weak, they used to humiliate their own kin. And the story of Leticia in Part 1 is a vivid example of that. Now they got the power and they start to torture and humiliate even diabolique gods. Under diabolique lords dominance the Earth survived for thousands of years and they never really cared much about the humans, never tried to wipe them. And there's big question whether the human dominance going to be better. Azurite understands that and he chooses the third way. No spoilers.
Humor: I don't really need humor to enjoy the story, but it can be a very nice addition to the story. In this game those seldom humor moments present were of Alice Soft bakage heritage. Here's one example of its "humor". Chapter 2 Leticia takes Azurite's clothes and gets to wash it while Azurite sits covered with a blanket. He wants to get breakfast and set coffee, but Leticia notices that it's dangerous and he could get a scorch. Azurite suggests that he wears an apron to prevent that. -But you don't have anything to wear, all your clothes is being washed! -I can wear an apron as I am! -NO! PLEASE! NO WAY!
Overall comments: Atlach-Nacha was the first game of Alice Soft to shake my beliefs in Alice Soft as a sucky company. But it's Diabolique that made me surrender and shake off all the grunts. Diabolique is really an astonishing adventure and pure love story. It's ever surprising, mysterious nature keeps the thrill on all the time and I finished this 16 hour story in just two sittings. It has plenty of touching moments and an ultimately satisfactory ending. It's a waste to bury such story just because the game is old, has command selection gameplay and meciocre sound support. You can always glimpse on the game through my video playthrough as well.
Cross Tantei Monogatari ~Motsureta Nanatsu no Labyrinth~, Double Cast and One ~Kagayaku Kisetsu e~ are the masterpieces of the month, but One ~Kagayaku Kisetsu e~ is the clear winner here.
1. Kimi ni Steady キミにSteady [980605] D.O. 1
Hero is a senior in high school sctudent. He spent summer vacations on part-time job and did not create any memories. Now he intends to definitely find his love by Christmas.
Pure love romance school adventure. Game period is 4 months and you move around the game and trigger events. Game system looks like classmate, but it's made much easier for newer generations. Like triggering events does not advance time and important events are clearly show on the map. But still for newer generation the game remained too difficult. Actually, difficulty varies from very easy to next to impossible. Game relies on minigames a lot since each girl has her own mini-game and there are also games at game center. Still, the characters aren't really cute and the character designs have not gone far from Youjuu Senki. Game was in production for two years and grew old even before release.
2. Tsurushi 吊 [980605] Deep Zone
Ando Reina.. She is my current lover. Cute face and fine body suitable to it. She is also quite popular.
However, recently she has started becoming annoying. If she does not know of my each and every action anyhow, she cannot be satsified. She is a female on the verge of becoming a stalker.
It is troublesome. Actually before Reina, I was going out with Sakakibara Miho. She is pretty unreserved, a good female. She has no desire to monopolize, loves sex and is further my type.
I only wanted to go out with Miho, so I thought...
I consulted with my friend Nakada, to make plans regarding breaking up with Reina. Nakada is an outrageous and inhumane character, even more than I thought. To start off, gets her raped by the homeless guys of the town. He started carrying out various schemes even unthinkable from my standards.
Whoa.. This is awful..
During this opportunity, Reina's friend, a woman named Azumaru Aya got wind of this situation and started giving lots of advice to Reina for the sake of returning to our previous relationship. Because of the fact, I am trying to get Reina's attention and set her up, it is convenient for me.
Once, teacher also joined a number of guys and flooded them with semen. Contrary to Aya's brave co-operation, Reina gradually became miserable.
The covered Aya, looks pretty cute! Eh? Do I like Aya?
Evil Nakada, sex loving Miho, miserable Reina, facing the backfire of her plans Aya and frivolous, I.
The rotten relationships of these 5 people, where will they end up?
Surely...
Single road adventure, but there are immediate bad endings upon wrong choice. And yes, marriage is also a bad ending! Situations are forced to include as much H content as possible.
3. Angel! えーんじぇる！ [980612] Triangle
Hero is an angel apprentice who can not pass the promotion test to angels even though his lover Shirley is already an angel. The chief angel chief decided to impose the final special examination on the hero. Its contents is to go down to the Earth, do good things and earn 100 points in 6 days. If those conditions aren't met the hero will be expelled from the Heavens forever. His powers on Earth are limited to transformation into a strange stuffed animal figure. He appoints two school girls Mikoto and Makoto as his own apprentices and hurries to do the good deeds worth 100 points.
Full voice fun bakage! There are choices during the conversation and depending on those Makoto and Mikoto gain empathy and that directly affects the ending. At important moments Makoto and Mikoto use magic that you pass to them. H-scenes depend directly on the magic you give them. Due to this fact many playthroughs are needed to discover all variations of CG. Slight inconvenience that saving is only possible at the beginning and end of each chapter, but skip function makes it easier. Story is not serious, but moves in a good tempo and contains five chapters stylized to look as anime episodes. It's a big hit among bakage due to high production values and attractive parodies.
4. Misetagari みせたがり [980612] Zero
There is another world where girls who want to show themselves gather. Click on their body parts and let them show to you what they got. Just interactive pickup.
5. Nine Lives ~Hanyafuda Suru Nyan~ ないん☆らいぶす 〜はニャ札するにゃん！〜 [980612] Apricot (old) 1
This is a majong like tile matching game. In the Story mode, our guy found a were-cat that used one of her spare lives to save him. He still has to collect 8 more lives in order not to be turned into a zombie. That and a weird gem makes his life exciting. In the Tournament mode, you can pick one of 8 girls to play with.
There is an English review.
6. Koi no Floating Mine 恋のフローティング・マイン [980618] Active 1
Life is always hard for a student who have to transfer to a new school, especially the fact that you need to start everything over. But there are always exceptions...
Especially if you meet a bunch of pretty girls!
There is an English review for this game. But the review says nothing really relevand apart of the fact that it's short compared to Kakyuusei. I want to defend the game. It's voiced and I found it really amusing. Never got to the girls part though since it's ordinary school setting.
7. Kiwamete! Scandal!? きわめて!スキャンダル!? [980619] Arkham Products
Main hero lives in a luxury condominium and has fun every day.
One time his father got into an accident and his secretary urgently called main hero to take the lead of huge corporation instead of his father for the time of father's hospitalization.
This is how his three scandalous months began ...
SIM. Day is divided into four time zones with lots of activities to do. One of those activities is giving sex instructions to the employees in the education room. There are many parameters to maintain. The main goal of the game is to retain all the female employees and remain corporation's president even after three months' time. It looks horrible at first sight, but in practice it feels more like Rance craziness.
8. Saikai ~Sotsugyou Ryokou '98~ 再会 ～卒業旅行’98～ [980619] Saint
School life is over and classmates go on a graduation trip for four days to Okakura pension house What kind of memories will the hero build over this trip?
First things first - I blocked the prequel for it having a yaoi scenario. Well, here there's also one yaoi scenario, but aestetics is not yaoi-distorted and most of love interests are girls so I'll let it slip. So it's quite a typical romance game. You move around, hit flags for the first days and on the third day you can confess to your love interest with a H-scene following on 4th day. There are 8 heroines to capture (rather 7+1 non-heroine). Each girl has both pure love and eroge sides of scenarios to pick up.
9. Tropical Memories ~Natsuiro no Symphony~ トロピカル・メモリーズ ～夏色シンフォニー～ [980619] h.m.p
Hero is high school 3rd grade student. He can't talk with girls because of shyness and uneasiness feeling. He likes popular girl Erika. It is rumored that she prefers sportsmen. Because of that hero is going to train mind and body during the summer in order to confess to the lady of his heart. He knows that Erika spends the summer at elite Pao Pao resort. It's impossible to get there without prior reservation, so hero applies for a part-time job on the island. And so summer begins.
Yet another 3D SIM by hmp. Did not get far there and there are no reviews to confirm the ending.
10. Cross Tantei Monogatari ~Motsureta Nanatsu no Labyrinth~ クロス探偵物語～もつれた7つのラビリンス～ [980625] WorkJam 1
The player takes the role of a young 18 years old detective (Koruso Ken) aided by his partner, a young girl of 19 years old (Nishiyama Tomoko) that got a detective agency. The game features 7 different cases that take place in different parts of the city and outside the city, with different characters and suspects in each episode.
Since there are a lot of cases to handle the development proceeds in a good tempo with a lot of lively characters around. It's one of the most technologically advanced works of the time, so it manages to astonish all the time. That's a true masterpiece for those who can stand detective stories. I can't.
11. Double Cast ダブルキャスト [980625] SCEI 1 2 3 4 5 6
The game begins with you, the main character, waking up at a fountain to the face of a pretty girl. You are a high school boy, and this girl has helped you out of the garbage where you had passed out in a drunken stupor. (Talk about first impressions!) As it turns out, she cannot remember anything about herself except for her name, Akasaka Mitsuki. Since she has no place to stay, you offer your own, and so begins your unusual relationship with this spirited girl. When your film club finds itself in need of a female lead, Mitsuki joins in, and from there the main story begins to unfold.
There is enough English info, but it's very dry, so let's spice it up. Full voice full animation interactive movie. Game starts as a heartwarming story, but since the middle turns into a suspense horror. Game is all about discovering endings - there are 27 of them plus one special if you discover all 27. Few options and endings are available at first but more and more options are added with discovered endings. Skipping and choosing episode to start with help, but still a guide is almost a necessity to find some of them. Surprisingly interesting game with high production values, but only for PS1 and PSP.
12. High School Terra Story ハイスクールテラストーリー [980625] Uran 1 2 3
Basically, you have about three and an half months to finish the game with one girl. Each day, you start out at school and you have a parameter with three sections: Studies, Athletics, and Art. Depending on how you build up this parameter and how you inter- act with the characters, the story will change. You also receive love points if you answers questions by the girls you interact with correctly. You do not freely move in this game, it directs you by your parameter and how you answer questions with the girls. You can choose which girl you want to finish the game with by using that method. You also earn money and you have a meter that tells you how tired you are.
There are two good English reviews on the game.
13. Mormotte [980625] Outgrid
Serizawa Koichi lost all previous memories after brain surgery. On awakening he learns that he agreed to participate in experiment for 31 day. During that time he's placed in a certain location together with other people. What kind of future will he choose?
Basically Koichi travels around the place and rises likability of girls he likes. The development is aggressive in H department and makes up for half-baked feeling.
14. Ace of Spades 2 [980626] Love Gun
There is a special casino that only accepts customers who bring women partners along. The bet there is not money, but women as the losing side has to pass woman to the winner.
There's no real story, just tabletop games. There is even a mode without H events on winning. The number of HCG is big.
15. Forest In The Dark - Kuraki Mori ni Tsudou Yume フォレスト・イン・ザ・ダーク 暗き森に集う夢 [980626] Speed
The elder of the clan dies and leaves mysterious instructions to determine his heir - to find memory card game and play it to the end till next full moon. There are only several days left till the next full moon and thus hero arrives to the forest mansion to try his luck.
Game takes only four days with first day being arrival, second and third being heroine routes and fourth the ending. Each route is focused on the past of the hero and selected heroine. There's not enough time neither for relationship nor for memories regain, so overall development is hasty.
16. Kyou*shi ~Nerawareta Seifuku~ 狂＊師 ～ねらわれた制服～ [980626] Crowd 1
The story behind the game is about you being hired as a teacher at an all girls school. And because of the pervert you are, you somehow take advantage of the girl students around you. There are three different linear story-lines depending on chosen specialization: P.E teacher, Arts teacher, or a Chem teacher.
There is an English review.
17. Mayaku 魔薬 [980626] Flady 1
Hero is a high school chemistry teacher. Accidentally he produces a powerful aphrodisiac. He indents to test the new medicine on different female students.
There's no real story as we just pick one of the girls pictures and move right to the H mode. Oh, and there's an English review.
18. One ~Kagayaku Kisetsu e~ ONE ～輝く季節へ～ [980626] Tactics 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
One's story revolves around Kouhei Orihara, the main protagonist, who suspects that at some point his current life will change while living a peaceful daily routine. Due to this, he begins to seclude himself in the Eternal World, a world within his mind. The game's main recurring motif is a focus on the Eternal World, a mystical alternate space which is never clearly explained, and the details of which are unknown.
Game is localized and has many English reviews.
19. Ryoujoku ~Suki Desu ka?~ 凌辱～好きですか?～ [980626] Ail
Hero has a debt unable to be repaid. One day he finds a suspicious medicine while working and uses it on girls out of curiosity. Girls become lustful as a result. Hero gets used to such life ... is it suffering or blissful life that awaits him?
Insulting game and insult scenes are voiced which was still very rare.
20. The Grand Hotel ザ・グランドホテル [980626] Janis
Meg and Alice graduated this spring and they are best friends.
They are trying to find job at the Luxury Hotel "Grand Hotel". The final exam is to pick up the debts from long-standing patrons.
However, all the patrons are weirdo. Will they be able to adapt?
Game is ADV with some SIM elements like money. So you wander around the rooms and ... practically anything can be inside. It's a parody game on the verge of sanity. One of the endings even says that hotel was a training ground for space mission and they both go to space. So it's probably an eroge, but a merry one.
21. Update あっぷでーと [980626] Pinpai
Main character registers on the meeting web site by friend's advice. Will he be able to find his love and meet her in real world?
Well you write a letter and choose a topic for beginning, middle and end. And if you mail suits girl's character, she responds. You can keep sending replies of fair, good or best quality. Then if everything is ok there's a meeting of net friends in a real life and then a possible date. There are two H-events for each character. The most fascinating route is of protagonist's ex-girlfriend as the story unfolds her dark net past.
22. Viper-M1 [980627] Sogna 1 2 3 4 5
Sogna combined the best of both worlds in VIPER-M1: a modern, Windows-based interface and a set of three smaller games, reminiscent of the earlier V series titles. Super-heroine story My Mothers features cover girl Mika in her attempt to rescue a prospective boyfriend. Coming of age tale Green Boy follows Natane and her two older sisters as they welcome a strange young man into their home. The May Works focuses on a schoolgirl, Maki, as she flees from an alien invasion of her hometown.
There are English reviews.
23. My Dear Arenaga Oji-san My Dear アレながおじさん [980628] Blue Gale
Five girls have been receiving allowance by a mysterious uncle. Now as they have grown up they are summoned to the mysterious uncle's mansion to help him recover from an old snake bite.
I adore the game's opening. The contents is surprisingly light. There are dozens of endings and in most of them the uncle gets killed. Can't say there's much humor in here, but what happens on the screen is usually very funny. The number of H events is moderate - four for each of five girls. And HCG are too crude as if it's a doujin game.
24. Lady Lady God-damn Night [980630] Hyperspace
Amami Hitoyo is a daughter of huge corporation chief, but she mostly does private detective investigations as a hobby. Akashi Michi is a high school cheerful and attentive student girl who joins Amami as assistant detective. Together they investigate a kidnapping case with clues hidden all over Europe and Africa.
Game is special for being a serious involving experience with number of H events not that big. The difficulty is very high and unforgiving - one mistake or failure investigate all the spots at certain location leads to a bad end. Even though the graphic quality is lacking the charm of the heroines and the curious cases in different cities make up for it.
