[Pillagers of Raillore - 7.3/10 - A Discount Sorcery Jokers]

The setting was presented well enough to understand everything without touching the encyclopedia section, I did not have any issues understanding the setting, all the characters, and the important bits of what their powers did based on context and what was shown on screen. I'm not saying this was a particularly great visual novel by any means, but you shouldn't claim a complete lack of something that was there. It's not without narration entirely, but there is less of it. You can see narration just a few minutes into the game in fact - to get this screengrab I just clicked on the second section of Chapter 1 Act 1.

https://imgur.com/a/TQXHjD0

[Aoi Tori - 7/10 - Not Purple's best work, but still good]

13 hours ago, Clephas said:

The biggest hazard with the ladder-style story progression structure is that all the heroines but the 'true' heroine get gypped.  Aoi Tori, at least, has the advantage that all the paths are technically 'true' in an alternate worlds sense, but it still feels like the heroines other than Akari aren't really getting treated equally.  

In the case of Aiyoku no Eustia, the author failed utterly to create internal consistency, as his setting (both the general one and the heroines' settings) made any path other than Tia's path impossible within the greater context of the story.  This is actually a trend with a lot of writers who like to use the ladder-style, where they fail to maintain internal consistency due to a half-assed attitude toward the non-true heroines' stories.  

I agree with you there. Only Akari's route - and Mary's to a lesser extent - really felt like they were written with their own story in mind rather than how it fed into the true route. Which is a shame because Sayo was a pretty great character and foil to the MC. Risa / Mikako were largely just a joke story that existed to foreshadow a few plot points and throw in some extra H-scenes (with 8 of the 25 belonging to them). There's really only a few ladder structure games where I wasn't hit with the same feeling and those were not "true route" type games such as Fruit of Grisaia.

 

Aiyoku no Eustia is on my decision wheel right now - most of the VNs I own but haven't read end up on a wheel I spin to determine my next read when there isn't a new release - so I'll likely hit that myself at some point.

[Rewrite+ - 7.5/10]

11 hours ago, littleshogun said:

If you interested with the behind the scene, you can read the interview that was translated by Ixrec of Amaterasu Translation when he released the full translation patch.

Rewrite Final Patch Released (plus an author interview)

I thought that it may be a good read regardless of your opinion on Rewrite.

Interesting interview, answers a few of the questions in that Lucia was the last character to be created but the first route completed almost in a vaccuum, so that does answer a bit of why it felt like

she wasn't planned for in Moon/Terra

. Overall though that interview makes it sound like they communicated a lot more than I would have expected given the feeling the story really gave. Thanks for the link.

[Hapymaher - 7.8/10 - Entertaining mystery / nakige]

2 hours ago, Clephas said:

Hapymaher's is a nakige, by genre, a game where the entire point of the story is to make you cry.  The mystery elements are secondary.  The most impressive parts of this VN besides the quality of the feels are the quality of the soundtrack and the genius with which it is utilized.  To be blunt, there literally haven't been any VNs since it that have had such an excellent soundtrack that was also used so perfectly.  The character designs are also unique and high-quality, if a bit overly influenced by Alice in Wonderland.

As for routes, Yayoi's, Saki's, and Keiko's routes are interchangeable for order, so there isn't really a recommended order for them, at least in my experience.  It is pretty much required that Alice's path be right before the true end, though.  It is possible not to do the normal or bad end at all if you don't want to.

 

Maybe I'm just made of stone, but Hapymaher didn't really make me emotional almost at all, but I can definitely see how it could make a lot of people emotional, so I'll add a bit to the review to warn people since it does also have the Nakige tag on VNDB at 2.0.

 

I do feel that the normal end at least actually added something to the story. Bad end was pretty ignorable though. But I'm a completionist through and through. I'll clarify that a bit as well as a few other things I caught after rereading my review / thinking on Hapymaher a bit more.

 

Thanks for your comment Clephas!