Recent reviews by abarax

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ port

It's fine. Does pretty much exactly what it says on the box.

Can feel a little grindy and tough at first but after a while you start steamrolling and power-scaling hard which often hits the dopamine just right.

Music is fine, gameplay can be a little boring sometimes especially certain builds at higher levels. Has a lot of secrets that you may need help for.

I very rarely write reviews so that I am writing one itself must be an indication that something in this game resonated with me.

I finally sat down and properly finished this game after just under seven years, and I would consider it a hidden gem among VNs, despite what "elitists" may think about the author or the topics it addresses.

I was left with very complicated feelings about the story - upon finishing I felt empty, somewhat disgusted, bitter, uneasy, and overall, quite sobered. - it is hard to describe. I would recommend picking it up for cheap or at the very least reading a summary of the story because while the premise and message may be simple, for whatever reason I found them and the delivery quite effective.

The events of the game are not presented in a strictly linear or reliable fashion. You figure out the "story" from reading logs and letters of events that have already occurred and occasionally discussing them with two semi-unreliable narrator characters.

From a "technical" standpoint the game does not follow standard VN conventions, as mentioned there is the present day and setting, and then unchangeable events that have already occurred. There is a more jarring tense and involved section of gameplay in the middle, perhaps a result of the author's tendency to experiment in how people interact with these games (something which I hear is more prominent in the sequel), which I found somewhat clever. The music is also quite simple but serves to enhance the atmosphere extremely well.

You can finish this completely in about 4 hours.

Overall I would recommend it.

I was honestly surprised that 1/Overdose even got a sequel, and since the first trailer, I was hesitant about this game for a number of reasons and had lowish expectations. However, I was graciously gifted a copy, and was able to try it out. Overall, I feel that it is a general improvement over the first game, but it is not without flaw. If you enjoyed the first game and want more, then I would recommend picking it up.


I was initially concerned about the reduction of the Imaginary Chain from 3 (12) to 1 (4) moves, but it wasn't as bad as I expected. The combat starts off slow but once you get more party members it gets faster and more fun. Once you get X-Jack ("free instant win button") you can just steamroll on any difficulty and ignore boss/enemy gimmicks should you so chose. I was playing on Hard but honestly I would recommend either Hard with no X-Jack, or Extreme, even for a first playthrough, because I ended up killing bosses in a single combo without them being able to even queue up their first move.

Each character is about equally as viable (without level modifications) and you won't be at any real disadvantage by playing with certain characters outside of extreme outlier situations. That said, there is an "Izuru" character in this game and some characters end up just offering more to a team than others. One issue I had by the end is that you are given too much choice - each character has a lot of skills to pick from but you will only ever end up realistically using a handful of them (which is sad because I'm pretty sure that like 25% of the game's budget went into animating 700,000-Millenia-Miracle). I think that sometimes too much choice/freedom can be a bad thing, and despite having so many different characters to choose from, I ended up not swapping them out very often after getting the last party member.

In terms of the more general gameplay loop, it is the same as before and I have no complaints other than that some of the dungeons feel slightly too long/repetitive (but not all of them), and having to return to the X-express to go to another area is a little tedious. However overall, I have no major complaints, although I do wish that X-Jack had some more customisability, for example you being able to pick both the song and the effect independently from each other.

Unlike Overdose, it doesn't seem like you can rebind multiple keys to the same action within the game.

I haven't done the challenge dungeon yet, but I will eventually - I have been told that it is a lot of work for not much reward and that it offers nothing extra to the story. I have done it and talk about this later.


The story is better but questionable. I started out by thinking it was much more well constructed than the first game, and it is - all the characters feel like they contribute more and aren't relegated to a single chapter and then forgotten. The party member characters and their interactions between each other are consistent and more convincing than the first game. As well as this, their designs and behaviours have subtle traits that hint at their traumas and backstories, which is a very nice touch when compared to the first games.

However, and extremely critically - I feel that both the story of the main game, and the story of each Musician does not have a satisfactory ending (for example, the Musicians Machina/#QP, or later Bluffman/Mu-Kun), and in one particular case, I felt that a certain character backstory/justification was just simply pathetic/disrespectful (in particular, the Musician Kudan). I felt that all their arcs were NOT resolved during the story, and the (ending spoilers) ending twist was not consistent with the events of the game, felt out of place, and did not provide proper closure to the character.

You are able to learn more about the Musicians through postgame challenge fights, but despite people assuring me that things would be explained well, I feel like they didn't really provide much - they gave only a surface level overview of a Musician's backstory rather than a proper "deep-dive" into their way of thinking, leaving a lot to be desired.

There are some funny localisation moments but none of it detracts from the story and all of it is in character, so if you are concerned about that, don't be.


I like some songs more than others. The remixes are nice, and it is cool that X can sing them too. However depending on your playstyle you might not hear much of the boss remixes. I don't have much more to say than that, despite music being an integral part to the game. The songs are relevant to the character they are paired to, and each is distinct with meaningful lyrics. Outside of the primary songs though, I prefer the music from the first game.


Improvement over the first game but still some odd looking models. Not a major concern, but whenever I saw certain things I would always be consciously reminded of how strange it looked, particularly when characters showed their teeth.


I really don't know whether the call the Causality Link better or worse. In terms of "story/world-building", it is leagues better than 1/Overdose. It feels like a proper affinity chart/network of people - each character and interaction actually feels like you are accomplishing something tangible within the world, instead of just being 500 tedious quests with randoms and grindy repeated tasks that you'll forget instantly (although I still remember you, Nozomi Hara and your double poison).

However, it is still tedious and clunky to complete - the displayed locations for NPCs to hand in quests is often wrong or inaccurate, there is no function like in 1/Overdose to summon them to your location, and despite the minimap texture files having the icon for it, the map does not show you if there is someone near you who you can hand a completed quest into, and despite being able to "master" a skill, you still have to manually equip it for quests.

That said, on a single casual playthrough I talked to 91% of them and cleared 60% of the quests, so it is much less taxing than it used to be, although still inconvenient.


TLDR: Do NOT do the postgame, it is NOT worth your time, the game does NOT respect you or your time, and the postgame content is tedious, frustrating (due to tedium and bugs), and offers no real incentive either story or challenge wise. Highly recommend not doing it: much better for your mental health not to spend 90 minutes on an Extreme +100 fight when the Imaginary Chain decides to break and every enemy is already taking actions before your characters have drawn their weapons. I played Tower of Prometheus on Hard, then Extreme, and then Extreme +100. Like the first game, accuracy tends to become a big issue when underlevelled (level 80~90 party vs. level 200 enemies with exponentially increased HP), and the fights tend to end up being puzzles of Dashing/Emergency Barrier while waiting for short burst windows to deal damage. You can clear it with any party you want, but it just takes so long to do, and you aren't given anything to justify it other than a short-lived sense of pride and accomplishment.

Don't be an idiot. Bring Niko as your fourth (the other 3 you should already know who to use).


I do think that overall, this game is an improvement over the first game, and if you've played that or are looking to get into the series I would give the go-ahead. That said, there are some story elements that may mean a lot more if you had played the first game and done the required reading (カリギュラ　ＥＰＩＳＯＤＥ水口茉莉絵～彼女の見た世界～).

Edits:

Fixed instance of punctuation.
I also want to clarify that while it states that I received a key, I did not: I was graciously gifted this game and the DLC.

good game but not for me.

music/atmosphere is good, but I don't have time for the gameplay loop/difficulty curve and you shouldn't feel bad if you feel the same. not a big fan of the survival aspect.

wanted to like it but just can't.

It's a good game - has nice visuals, music etc. Didn't get very far though before I hit the "play coop or struggle for ages" filter - game is clearly designed for coop and not balanced around the singleplayer mode at all, despite what storepage or other sources may say.

Gameplay grows to be repetitive and often tedious - again partially due to singleplayer being more difficult than coop due to bad AI and having to do everything yourself (mat grinding, building) in a limited time (doing the work of multiple people in the same time).

Would only recommend if you can organise a party.

I thought the first was bad but I'm only an hour into this and it blows my mind just how naive I was.

Utterly worse than the first in every conceivable way and I hated the first to begin with.

I have finished the game unlike most other reviews at this time. I assume you've seen the anime and/or at least know all the characters that appear in this game.

TLDR: General improvement from first game but some subjective weak aspects.

Price

As a KT game with cosmetic DLC, I think even just the base game is very overpriced in my currency.

Characters/Story

I was apprehensive about having characters from the anime in the game, but they gave them enough development and backstory to justify it. That said, I don't feel that all the characters got fair development - stories and traumas from characters like Kokoro, Shiho and Kirara are absolutely forgettable, while other characters have very appealing and emotionally strong backstories, such as Rena and Yuki. I picked Uta for my ending cutscene but was unfortunately let down since her story felt kind of tacked on to the game and I was hoping to get some proper closure on her, which I unfortunately did not. It's a weak way of putting it but I'd say characters overall are 6/10s with some 8s.

There are a handful of translation/spelling issues, and I was wondering whether different teams handled different aspects of the text since different things seemed to share separate consistency at times. Nothing worth complaining about overall though.

Story was fine, it ties in a little with the first game but neither first game nor anime is entirely necessary to see. I think the premise was fine but the execution was kind of lacking, although I'd expect that from a game that's more focused on character building that story. Without going into spoiler territory, I'd just call it solid. The overall plot is often put to the side in lieu of the character stuff anyway.

Gameplay

I thought I wouldn't like it based on the demo because the pause mechanics during battle are different (if you have it set to "manual", you can forget to tell your allies to make their moves). However as expected I got used to it very quickly and I think I prefer the faster pace. Knockdown has more impact here than in the first game, as does the fragment system and the talent system. Overall, battle system is a major improvement - it has been heavily streamlined and is more engaging, with a better Ether system. Even after finishing I'm still on the fence about the one-on-one system, it's nice but sometimes messed up my flow, especially since some enemies can trigger it on their own.

Stealth was the main thing I disliked, there are some very annoying stealth missions (Uta, Yuzu/Lime) that I ended up save-scumming. Enemy detection is wonky (can sometimes see through objects or at strange angles) and their vision indicator is misleading (you can stand in the "weaker red" parts and not get seen). Was just frustrating at times being sent back to the start by what felt like unfair detection.

I also don't particularly like the crafting/building loop, more than a few times I found myself going back to farm more "Warm Sand" to make and upgrade furnishings. There are 50 crafting teams by the end, which is too many, but I mostly ignored items throughout the game anyway. That said, I also feel that you can mostly ignore this stuff since you just need to do enough to trigger dates, no need to go for the extra bonuses from upgrades. The base difficulty (normal) doesn't warrant this, by about midgame you should be streamrolling all content until the end of the game without much investment into furniture.

The final boss fight is very nice however I would still say that Daath is very slightly better overall. It was sort of introduced from nowhere and had little relation to the story other than being there because it needed to be (no explanation for it etc.) There are no game/save breaking bugs like the first game. Unfortunately there are also no real extras for finishing the game other than a quasi-NG+. The ending is purposefully ambiguous so again if you were hoping for particular character story tie-ups you won't get them.

Music

The music is very good, I'd say about on par with the first game for some tracks, while others were unremarkable. I couldn't pick between first or second for area themes, but boss themes from the first are probably slightly better (DNF FW15C III or Sayonara is still the best one imo). Interesting choice to sample the voice recording from here of all places[www.best-speech-topics.com] but strangely I grew to like it. Tie uses music from the first game anyway (bar the boss themes). There was one moment where I was really hoping that they would play You're not a heroine it's me but they played some funny light-hearted track which as Ao might say "killed the vibe". Generally good job by Hayato Asano once more.

Art

Standard Blue Reflection art, it's fine. If you liked it already it's pretty much the same. Personally felt that Uta/Mio/Hiori looked kind of strange in the proper artstyle but let's be honest the anime didn't do them justice either. You know how that went.

=

Overall was okay but as it is a KT game I cannot in good faith recommend buying it.

I won't be deleting the original text, but know that the developer is offering replacement keys. Check the game's discussion forums for more.

Context: 6 years after purchase, dev revokes 25,000 keys that customers paid money for.

Dev response:

Bundlestars never actually paid me a single cent for the 25000 keys I provided them many years ago. So they were the one who scammed me.

But, I will give you the benefit of doubt that you don't know what Bundle stars is doing. So here a new key to replace that: (omitted)

Fanatical (Previously Bundlestars) response:

Sorry you've got problems with this game key. We have received quite a few requests about this key being revoked and I understand we're not the only publisher that is suffering with this problem

[We] are an authorized site and only sell legitimate keys, we are urgently working with our licensors and hope to have more news about this problem very soon.

We will email back soon with more information, please accept our apologies.

Disclaimer: It says I've played 5 minutes but I played the Uncensored/H version through the launcher (purchased through Steam).

After years of silence, I was surprised to hear that Dischan had returned with an anime hack-and-slash. Being a fan of Dysfunctional Systems and Juniper's Knot I was familiar with the quality of story, but was somewhat uncertain about the action-game approach due to past games being VNs, but I feel I wasn't let down in that regard.

The premise is interesting, from just what little I have experienced I am excited to see the rest of the story.

The presentation is amazing. The storyboard/manga story sections are just very cool and the artstyle is good. Menus and UI is very good. The music is very nice.

The gameplay is quite fluid, although it might take a bit of experimentation to figure it all out - no real tutorial yet and some online reviews have completely missed certain mechanics (as did I). Only real complaint is the lack of a tutorial and it seems a little barebones atm (issues could be related).

I've used mouse and keyboard so far, controls feel fine and pretty responsive, there are some of your own attacks you can't dodge cancel out of but its fine.

Of course, it is early access. That means the game isn't finished yet. Would I buy it? I will give a tentative yes. For the current price, it doesn't really offer much. But the main way they can improve is by having people purchase it. Give it a chance. Game isn't bug free but it is very playable and there is nothing gamebreaking (that I am aware of).

Review date: 29th April 2020. May be updated later.