Edit: Who thinks my review is too long? I thought it might be.
I recently started looking for a more interesting form of adult entertainment, and I was recommended onto the ero scene by some users. Ero games are basically interactive novels that focus on character development and depend, if not entirely, on the character's sexualities. It's like playing through the back story of a hentai, then watching the hentai itself. My first experience with this genre is Tsukihime, by virtue of the fact that I could get it for free -- and thank god I didn't spend money on it.
This review is actually copied (with edits, for sense and anonymity) from a PM I sent to the person who recommended the title to me. It's not very well organized, but it is technically a review; since I've never done one before I figured I'd post it for fun
I recently started looking for a more interesting form of adult entertainment, and I was recommended onto the ero scene by some users. Ero games are basically interactive novels that focus on character development and depend, if not entirely, on the character's sexualities. It's like playing through the back story of a hentai, then watching the hentai itself. My first experience with this genre is Tsukihime, by virtue of the fact that I could get it for free -- and thank god I didn't spend money on it.
This review is actually copied (with edits, for sense and anonymity) from a PM I sent to the person who recommended the title to me. It's not very well organized, but it is technically a review; since I've never done one before I figured I'd post it for fun
[HEADING=3]Intro[/HEADING]
Tsukihime follows the exploits of Thono Shiki, a 17 year-old boy who gains special powers after a near death experience in his childhood. Now he sees black lines everywhere that signify the non-existence inherent in all things around him, making him capable of destroying anything at will just by tracing the lines with a thin object. His only refuge from this huge responsibility is a pair of enchanted glasses given to him as a child. Due to the mysterious circumstances around the incident, he was sent away from his large mansion to live with some estranged relatives for 8 years. Upon his Father's death, he is summoned to return by his dictatorial and now unfamiliar sister. Soon, he is embroiled in a large-scale, underground war between vampires and the Catholic church as he is forced to reconcile his power with his humanity and make sacrifices for the sake of those he loves.
If that summary sounds exciting to you, then 1) I should pat myself on the back, and 2)don't get your hopes up. It's not what it seems. Not that I hated everything about this game, but I have had more fun reading high-way billboards. On to the review.
[HEADING=3]Good Stuff[/HEADING]
As far as the plot goes, it's decent. It's complex and interesting, full of twists and turns to keep me excited. Though the powers and origins of the super characters seem to be a little arbitrary and plot-contingent, not to mention confusing. I could hardly grasp a tenuous understanding before all my shit got retconned into something that facilitated the current action better.
The characters are... well, a little one note. I should say two note, actually, but the second one is the one they share. They all have their respective personality quirks (Akiha is strict, Ciel is playful, Arcuid is oblivious), but alternatively they all have this "serious" mode (that the game mentions by name ad nauseum) which they use to relate important plot points or to ineffectively mask their secret desire for Shiki's dick. That aside, they were all neat little caricatures; unique enough to be identifiable, but too unreal and flat for me to sympathize with.
The music, being a remix of the original that I downloaded, was good. I especially like the "scary" theme. It's anxious, repetitive notes really spiced up the more mysterious parts. Unfortunately, there's just too much of it. I occasionally found myself rushing through whole sections just to get to a different sound loop. Of course, I'm the type who had to play Pokemon with the sound off because the music annoyed me, so maybe that's not the game's fault.
[HEADING=3]Not So Good Stuff[/HEADING]
Sadly, the above was the complimentary side of my opinion. Let's get to the heart of the matter now. First, I thought the art was flat out ugly. Oh the character sprites were alright, but the blurry water-color backgrounds just felt like cheating half the time. Especially since they're alone on screen almost as much as the characters super-impose them. More importantly, they miss opportunities left and right. I would've loved to see Arcuid sliced into 17 pieces on her kitchen floor, or Roa turned into a wall-mounted shish-ka-bob. And there's one scene where Shiki is attacked by what is only described as a "spider-crab" three times the size of an elephant -- and that's all I get. No pic, it's not even given more description. The game says "he 'killed' it with his knife" and moves the fuck on! I wish I was exaggerating with my paraphrase, but no. Then there's the sex. Every character has this pained expression or a weird, hungry look on their face in every sex scene. And if it's got to be censored, why do they do it so ineffectively? It just looks like someone sneezed on their privates during production and no one bothered to fix it. Like we don't know what's happening or something.
Then there's the "interactivity." This is supposed to be what makes it a game, but it's really just a touted up choose-your-own-adventure novel. That might be ok if the choices came more than once every hour or more. And it doesn't even matter what choices you make because the choices rarely, if ever, reflect the nature of the consequences. Unless you have the guide you can't be sure you'll get the desired result. Meta-gaming, btw, tends to really fuck up immersion. And sometimes it's made terribly unclear what will kill you. Once I had a choice between staying in the hotel room and going into the hall. The latter, as I expected, led to me getting attacked by some animals, but the former caused to door to explode before I got eaten by a damn shark. I guess it makes sense after you pick the right choice, but at the time I was like "...what the fuck was that?"
The sex was a sampler platter of (usually inappropriate) sado-masochistic fetishism that I just could never get on board with. Like I mentioned, every encounter features the girl looking like she got cock slapped into submission a second ago and usually involves one or the other party getting held down while the other violently forces a body part inside them (I got thumb in the dick hole twice, and that's just a mood killer). Not only that, but it tends to be completely out of context/character. The relationship I ended up with (I tried for another but apparently I did it wrong) was Arcuid, and your first official "encounter" with her involves you raping her in an alley-way. And somehow she not only let's it happen (she's supposed to have super powers), but afterward she's just like "oh, don't worry about it." Even when it's consensual later, Shiki still manages to rape her with abandon, leaving her bruised, bloody, and crying on the bedspread (yet supposedly begging for more!). To top it off, the scenes tend to ignore or imagine clothes where it's convenient and the participants end up in impossible or at least uncomfortable positions, like when Shiki holds Arcuid's hands over her head while he bites her clit (this being before he actually takes her pants off). Actually, that scene neatly encapsulates everything I hated about the ero: "Ow! Why!? ...wait, what the fuck?"
And finally, the true festering cancer of this experience, the problem that accentuates or even creates most of the other problems: the writing. The style, diction, and even grammar in some places are just abominable. It's hard to articulate just how bad it is. Characters spout endless torrents of redundant, glib verbiage. The descriptions are almost devoid of imagery, defeating the purpose. The structure is often confusing, which the writers apparently tried to compensate for by repeating the same plot points and characterizations with at least every alternating new development. The story just seems to drag on and on because it never gets to the point, and when it does it stays there for like 6 or 7 pages. I could probably count the combined different adverbs and adjectives used on my fingers and still have enough to type. And then there's that weird, phonetic type describing the equally peculiar sounds that people in Japan apparently all make. "kk... gnu.. mhn, uh! Arc... u.. id?" They compose the brunt of the sex scenes where they are distinctly unnecessary and not sexy. Reading this was like trying to watch a movie at the bottom of a lake. Sure, I could see it, but my eyes stung and I had to go up every few minutes for air. Alight, alright, some of this can be blamed on the translators, but certainly not all of it. Frankly I was surprised when the credits rolled and I found out it was developed by more than 5 people. Then I was shocked that it had been proof-read. But I was flabbergasted to find out it had actually been play tested -- multiple times in both translations. I could even see the other flaws making it through, but this writing could make my 4th grade english teacher faint.
[HEADING=3]Closing[/HEADING]
So that's that. I wish I could've appreciated it more, but in the end playing through it was a big chore. And despite the multiple paragraphs, I can still think of things to complain about, but those mostly have to do with conventions of anime and erotic entertainment, so I won't bother mentioning them. Are all ero games like this?
Oh, and what the capital FUCK happened to that red haired chick from the beginning of the game? How was she an ancillary character?
Tsukihime follows the exploits of Thono Shiki, a 17 year-old boy who gains special powers after a near death experience in his childhood. Now he sees black lines everywhere that signify the non-existence inherent in all things around him, making him capable of destroying anything at will just by tracing the lines with a thin object. His only refuge from this huge responsibility is a pair of enchanted glasses given to him as a child. Due to the mysterious circumstances around the incident, he was sent away from his large mansion to live with some estranged relatives for 8 years. Upon his Father's death, he is summoned to return by his dictatorial and now unfamiliar sister. Soon, he is embroiled in a large-scale, underground war between vampires and the Catholic church as he is forced to reconcile his power with his humanity and make sacrifices for the sake of those he loves.
If that summary sounds exciting to you, then 1) I should pat myself on the back, and 2)don't get your hopes up. It's not what it seems. Not that I hated everything about this game, but I have had more fun reading high-way billboards. On to the review.
[HEADING=3]Good Stuff[/HEADING]
As far as the plot goes, it's decent. It's complex and interesting, full of twists and turns to keep me excited. Though the powers and origins of the super characters seem to be a little arbitrary and plot-contingent, not to mention confusing. I could hardly grasp a tenuous understanding before all my shit got retconned into something that facilitated the current action better.
The characters are... well, a little one note. I should say two note, actually, but the second one is the one they share. They all have their respective personality quirks (Akiha is strict, Ciel is playful, Arcuid is oblivious), but alternatively they all have this "serious" mode (that the game mentions by name ad nauseum) which they use to relate important plot points or to ineffectively mask their secret desire for Shiki's dick. That aside, they were all neat little caricatures; unique enough to be identifiable, but too unreal and flat for me to sympathize with.
The music, being a remix of the original that I downloaded, was good. I especially like the "scary" theme. It's anxious, repetitive notes really spiced up the more mysterious parts. Unfortunately, there's just too much of it. I occasionally found myself rushing through whole sections just to get to a different sound loop. Of course, I'm the type who had to play Pokemon with the sound off because the music annoyed me, so maybe that's not the game's fault.
[HEADING=3]Not So Good Stuff[/HEADING]
Sadly, the above was the complimentary side of my opinion. Let's get to the heart of the matter now. First, I thought the art was flat out ugly. Oh the character sprites were alright, but the blurry water-color backgrounds just felt like cheating half the time. Especially since they're alone on screen almost as much as the characters super-impose them. More importantly, they miss opportunities left and right. I would've loved to see Arcuid sliced into 17 pieces on her kitchen floor, or Roa turned into a wall-mounted shish-ka-bob. And there's one scene where Shiki is attacked by what is only described as a "spider-crab" three times the size of an elephant -- and that's all I get. No pic, it's not even given more description. The game says "he 'killed' it with his knife" and moves the fuck on! I wish I was exaggerating with my paraphrase, but no. Then there's the sex. Every character has this pained expression or a weird, hungry look on their face in every sex scene. And if it's got to be censored, why do they do it so ineffectively? It just looks like someone sneezed on their privates during production and no one bothered to fix it. Like we don't know what's happening or something.
Then there's the "interactivity." This is supposed to be what makes it a game, but it's really just a touted up choose-your-own-adventure novel. That might be ok if the choices came more than once every hour or more. And it doesn't even matter what choices you make because the choices rarely, if ever, reflect the nature of the consequences. Unless you have the guide you can't be sure you'll get the desired result. Meta-gaming, btw, tends to really fuck up immersion. And sometimes it's made terribly unclear what will kill you. Once I had a choice between staying in the hotel room and going into the hall. The latter, as I expected, led to me getting attacked by some animals, but the former caused to door to explode before I got eaten by a damn shark. I guess it makes sense after you pick the right choice, but at the time I was like "...what the fuck was that?"
The sex was a sampler platter of (usually inappropriate) sado-masochistic fetishism that I just could never get on board with. Like I mentioned, every encounter features the girl looking like she got cock slapped into submission a second ago and usually involves one or the other party getting held down while the other violently forces a body part inside them (I got thumb in the dick hole twice, and that's just a mood killer). Not only that, but it tends to be completely out of context/character. The relationship I ended up with (I tried for another but apparently I did it wrong) was Arcuid, and your first official "encounter" with her involves you raping her in an alley-way. And somehow she not only let's it happen (she's supposed to have super powers), but afterward she's just like "oh, don't worry about it." Even when it's consensual later, Shiki still manages to rape her with abandon, leaving her bruised, bloody, and crying on the bedspread (yet supposedly begging for more!). To top it off, the scenes tend to ignore or imagine clothes where it's convenient and the participants end up in impossible or at least uncomfortable positions, like when Shiki holds Arcuid's hands over her head while he bites her clit (this being before he actually takes her pants off). Actually, that scene neatly encapsulates everything I hated about the ero: "Ow! Why!? ...wait, what the fuck?"
And finally, the true festering cancer of this experience, the problem that accentuates or even creates most of the other problems: the writing. The style, diction, and even grammar in some places are just abominable. It's hard to articulate just how bad it is. Characters spout endless torrents of redundant, glib verbiage. The descriptions are almost devoid of imagery, defeating the purpose. The structure is often confusing, which the writers apparently tried to compensate for by repeating the same plot points and characterizations with at least every alternating new development. The story just seems to drag on and on because it never gets to the point, and when it does it stays there for like 6 or 7 pages. I could probably count the combined different adverbs and adjectives used on my fingers and still have enough to type. And then there's that weird, phonetic type describing the equally peculiar sounds that people in Japan apparently all make. "kk... gnu.. mhn, uh! Arc... u.. id?" They compose the brunt of the sex scenes where they are distinctly unnecessary and not sexy. Reading this was like trying to watch a movie at the bottom of a lake. Sure, I could see it, but my eyes stung and I had to go up every few minutes for air. Alight, alright, some of this can be blamed on the translators, but certainly not all of it. Frankly I was surprised when the credits rolled and I found out it was developed by more than 5 people. Then I was shocked that it had been proof-read. But I was flabbergasted to find out it had actually been play tested -- multiple times in both translations. I could even see the other flaws making it through, but this writing could make my 4th grade english teacher faint.
[HEADING=3]Closing[/HEADING]
So that's that. I wish I could've appreciated it more, but in the end playing through it was a big chore. And despite the multiple paragraphs, I can still think of things to complain about, but those mostly have to do with conventions of anime and erotic entertainment, so I won't bother mentioning them. Are all ero games like this?
Oh, and what the capital FUCK happened to that red haired chick from the beginning of the game? How was she an ancillary character?
