Recent reviews by fuzz

murder mystery meets cryostasis

the dithered monochromatic style looks unique but only gets in the way of identifying people, and some groups of people are so similar that you are better off guessing the identities than trying to look for hints that are sometimes way too subtle

still entertaining though. finished the whole game in one sitting

get lucky or die trying

Imagine if turn-based strategy was as unbalanced and luck dependent as FTL

The AI gets worse and worse with every new iteration of Civ.

Ayakashigami is a visual novel by doujin circle Kurenai Book. You play as Shinboku, who is entrusted with a mission to investigate the town for ayakashi. Shinboku possesses traits from both sexes, being male on the inside but female (well, mostly) on the outside. Shinboku is also short enough to pass off as a grade school girl despite her large breasts that are featured quite prominently in her gothic lolita getup.

Shinboku encounters various girls under various circumstances, and during the course of the game gets to know them better while the initially vague objective of the investigation leads to otherworldly experiences. The interaction between the characters works pretty well, although some of them end up being quite flexible in regard to their allegiance. In the end I felt that Satsuki had the most fleshed out character, and fortunately the game devotes quite a bit of time, as well as CGs, for her alone.

The game has a few references to Japanese mythology, and while it doesn't delve too into it as a whole, they come into play at relatively crucial moments as far as the story is concerned. You may want to brush up on knowledge of those stories beforehand if you're only passingly familiar with them like I am, otherwise expect to get busy with Wikipedia while playing.

While the art style looks nice to my eye, the game does suffer from the typical doujin soft shortcomings when it comes to overall presentation. The backgrounds are filtered photos displayed on the dreaded 4:3 resolution, the music is sporadic at best, and you definitely move the sound effects slider down a few notches before embarking on the journey.

But as far as the story is concerned, the dialogue is engaging and the world of Ayakashigami kept me interested throughout the game, and for that I give it my recommendation.

A short and simple JRPG that will leave most gamers wanting for more.

Let's get the main technical complaint out of the way first: the game runs in tiny 640x480 resolution.

Your party consists of 3 characters. Cram is the main lead who, together with Cronos, serves as the warrior class of the group. There is Retla, who has a sort of cat-theme going on with her kitty hood, bell, cat tail, and what we in the trade call "Big Fat Cat Tats". She's the typical rogue of the group, with high speed and avoidance. Final member of the group is Estiole or Esty, who fits the mage role with her high magic attack.

The combat system is a mix of building up the combo counter and the standard RPG fare of exploiting enemy weaknesses. Each skill has its own "Over-Arts" version, which makes it more powerful but consumes TP upon use and doesn't restore any upon hitting the enemy. Using the same skill multiple times in a row incurs a repetition penalty. While there is some depth to the system, I found that just toggling between normal and Over-Arts version of one skill a simple and effective strategy.

When a character's TP bar is full, they can enter "Over-Tension" mode which doubles the amount action points available, leading to very high combo and damage potential. Early in the game you might use this as a quick way to finish bosses when their HP is low, but later on the bosses' HP regeneration goes through the roof, forcing your damage dealers to enter Over-Tension as often as possible just to keep up with the regen, while others support them with TP potions and healing.

Battles look great. While enemy monsters only have static sprites, player characters are smoothly animated and their flashy skills, coupled with their battle cries, look like they really pack a punch. Transition from skill to skill also looks seamless most of the time.

The characters are fully voiced during the battle and right after the battle. Unfortunately these are not translated from their original Japanese, which is a shame as the after-battle banter is often quite playful. Voice acting is high quality across the board, but Retla's voice actress in particular strikes me as talented.

Some of the tunes are good, like the main battle theme and the final dungeon theme, but overall the soundtrack is all over the place. I don't mean that they're bad, just that there is quite a bit of variation to the point that they don't feel like they belong on the same soundtrack. After you finish the game, you are teleported into a music room where you can listen to the songs at leisure.

The story is hard to follow at times, thanks to "releasing network seals", "phase-space singularity", and other such etherbabble. Your journey follows the repeating pattern of "open this seal, go to this world, fight this Elite Four miniboss, fight this guardian boss". These worlds have a standard RPG theme, such as "fire world" and "ice world", with matching enemies. There are some puzzles, or at least puzzling map layouts. There are only a few NPCs in the town, as well as the inn, the workshop, and the shop. This is very much a dungeon-focused RPG.

All dungeons have excavations points scattered throughout. You can excavate these points to get restoratives and crafting components. What you get is randomized and each point can only be excavated around 6 or so times, but resting at the inn resets them. You probably won't be revisiting these areas however, as there is rarely need to grind EXP, and the crafting system as a whole is severely lacking. Often times the crafted weapons are worse than what the character would normally wear, e.g. severely cutting attack while slightly increasing agility or defense.

Wait, defensive weapons? That's because there is no real armor in the game. Characters have slots for weapon, armor, and accessory. Only the weapon slot has choices; your armor stays the same, and the accessory slot remains empty until the very last chapter when the one and only type of accessory appears in the shop.

Game length is about 7-11 hours. There are definite shortcomings, but I think the 10 hours I spent were pleasant.

First things first: Sachi a cute. Ignore the haters.

Hitomebore is a love story visual novel that, from my understanding, was made mostly by one person. Originally released last year at COMITIA 107, the Steam version comes with improved CGs and an English translation by Sekai Project. Hitomebore runs on Renpy, which is fairly uncommon for a Japanese production despite its status as the go-to visual novel framework in the West, so that's quite interesting.

The game's strongest point (by a considerable margin) is its creepy look. There is a short animated clip whenever the chapter changes. Unfortunately, like so many other visual novels, the game runs natively in a low, 4:3 resolution.

Music is MIDI-tier at times, but not unpleasant to listen to. I kind of like the main theme in fact, but it's not something I'd listen to outside of the game.

Story is where it all falls apart, both in terms of length and writing quality. Without spoiling anything, let's just say that the game never takes full advantage of its fairly unique theme of having a girl with one eye. You could replace it with a different condition without having to rewrite much of the story, which by the way is high school drama that we all have seen a thousand times before. Highlights are the scene where the MC feeds Sachi, and the scenes where he touches her scars. You will be getting about 2-3 hours of story, which for its price tag is quite short.

For 10 bucks I can't recommend it due to its length and writing, but since Sachi is such a likeable character and the game is an indie product, I can't regret spending 10 bucks on it either.

In short: It's much like the first game, but with more tanks, more modules, and more levels.

I would say the two biggest changes to gameplay are the inclusion of control tanks and tanks with perfect accuracy. Control tanks are tanks that, at the very start of the battle, disable the opponent tanks' add-on (blue) modules. This means that you can no longer rely on overpowered modules to get you through every battle. Perfect accuracy ignores evasion entirely, which means you are no longer completely at the mercy of RNG gods when attacking units with evasion. Unfortunately, units that ignore evasion are mostly snipers with limited attack area. You will still get to see your enemies dodging artillery fire, just like in the bad old days.

The structure of the main story is a lot simpler than in the previous game. Instead of branching into multiple routes leading to different endings, here you will only get a few alternative missions. The final level also changes somewhat depending on your performance as far as gameplay is concerned, but the ending is the same no matter which final level you choose to play.

The main cast is mostly new. The player takes the role of Alter, who - unlike Daihonei Shoutarou - has her own sprite that appears in the ADV scenes along with the other characters. Ruru will be taking Heshiko's place as the wacky Human Tank companion, while Elle inherits Heshiko's cuteness and Choko's tinkering skillz. Finally we have Megumi, whom you may remember from the first game. Overall it has the same light-hearted approach to war as the first game, with some gloomier moments here and there. The story felt bit more personal this time around, while biggest flaw I found was the lack of interesting antagonists.

But while the main story is weaker than in the first game, the bulk of the game actually takes place outside of the main story, within the caverns of Mt Fuji. These caverns are massive at over 90 levels in total, and feature new characters, new tanks to fight and unlock, and story regarding these new characters as well as the nature of Human Tanks. The caverns will take around 20-30 hours to complete.

In short: It's a semi-competent SRPG with some odd design choices, grindy and tedious progression, and charming but weak characters and story.

Rather than giving a comprehensive review and nitpicking about the lack of available resolutions, or how there are typos and broken tags in the game text, or how the character art was seemingly drawn by little Billy, age 6, using the GIMP's default brush and burn tool, I will focus on my biggest gripes with the game.

The UI could benefit from mouseover popups that tell you in detail what everything does. None of the attributes have any kind of description, you have to open the manual for that. You can't easily hover over (de)buff icons to see their effects, you have to either check the manual again or open the caster's status menu and scroll through the skill list for the description. But how long does the buff last? The game won't tell you.

Whenever a unit dies, it leaves behind a body that occupies the tile. The reason being that there is a resurrection spell in the game, even though you won't actually see it until the last few stages of the game. Since many of the levels contain small cliffs and narrow passageways, it makes moving your troops forward a pain, and in some cases impossible due to their slow movement and jump values. This makes the already weak melee units even weaker.

Difficulty is good for the most part - until the very last level. The final boss fight requires either very high levels, or very specific tactics to counter magic nukes.

The AI is poor. Often it only ever attacks the unit closest to it, even if there are vulnerable targets available. Occasionally the AI backs away to cast buffs even if it makes little sense given the situation. AOE casters pay no heed to their allies and will mercilessly harm their allies and possibly even themselves if it means scratching the player's full HP tank a tiny bit. The AI seems to ignore the player's reaction skills entirely, a very useful weakness to exploit during the final battle where a single AOE nuke can wipe out the entire party.

Your units' starting positions depend on what party slot they occupy. This is usually not a big deal, but there are some maps where your party is split and placed on the different sides of the map. This can lead to a quick defeat if your fighters and supporters are not evenly distributed.

Most importantly, the game is tedious. The story isn't very interesting, you only get bits of the story during the first and last levels of the current floor. Dead bodies quickly clutter up the battlefield and limit possible moves, forcing you to clean up the remaining enemies by moving your ranged units up while everyone else attacks thin air or buffs a rock just to level up their skill proficiencies, and this takes forever. I would highly recommend setting battle speed to its max value from the options menu.

thanks for the sex homie