Colton, Colton, Colton...

The Specter's Desire, the latest visual novel from indie dev Themisian, follows protagonist Colton Hall through the celebrity tournament known as the Desire Hierarchy. Colton is an aspiring film director—currently Viewscope (YouTube) video editor—who moved to the Hollywood-esque city of Aurea to pursue his dreams. After he learns that his friend Carolyn signed him up to be a Rising Star—a non-celebrity participant—in the Desire Hierarchy, he quickly discovers that the mysterious entity Spectra has kidnapped his parents and will not release them unless he wins the entire Desire Hierarchy and uses his wish—the winner's prize—to obtain the art piece known as the Specter's Desire.

From there, the game kicks off, alternating between 1.) Ace Attorny-like investigation segments in which Colton in Aurea and his best friend Skinner in his hometown of Juncfork look into who kidnapped his parents and 2.) the five distinct stages of the Desire Hierarchy tournament in which Colton must repeatedly claw victory back from the hands of seemingly inevitable defeat.

The primary praise I can give The Specter's Desire is that, if nothing else, it is supremely fun. Of course, there is a full story here, so it's not like Colton can actually ever lose, but I an incredibly easy time engaging my suspension of disbelief during the Desire Hierarchy games. I felt anxious along with Colton when it seemed like he was sure to lose, and I felt triumphant along with him, too, when he figured out some edge case or creative interpretation of the rules that allowed for a chance at victory.

The characters are a highlight of this VN as well. The main cast of characters who received sprites are ostensibly somewhat cliched—Elliot is the goofy sidekick, Granville is the kooky old guy trying to be "hip," Willa is the eccentric artist—but almost all of them reveal some aspect of their personalities that define their characters just as much as their archetypes and add real depth that is reflected in the way the play in the Desire Hierarchy. Above all, the cast is best when they are interacting with each other, differing personalities clashing with each other in humorous ways that contribute a nice sprinkle of comedy to the otherwise tense situations Colton finds himself in throughout the story. Despite comedy not being a focus of The Specter's Desire, it may be most I've ever audibly laughed at a VN (although that is also a function of its runtime, to a certain extent).

The Specter's Desire has a quite eclectic mix of different gameplay segments, too. Each game within the Desire Hierarchy is represented by an "Encounter," each with an optional bonus objective, that contains some gameplay that represents the games Colton is playing (but some longer games are split into multiple encounters), to varying levels of abstraction. These include various puzzles, card battles, escape rooms, reaction tests, Ace Attorney-style present-the-correct-evidence-on-the-correct-statement sections, and any combination of the above. The variety of gameplay in this VN is both a strength and a fault. Given the wide variety of gameplay, there were some segments that I really clicked with and honestly engaged with (anything to do with math, numbers, logic, and so on did well with me), and others that I gave only a few tries at before save-scumming and/or brute-forcing.

I also found a bit of flaw in the final act of the game. Leading up to that final act, I also found the investigation segments to be more of a nice break rather than the true selling point of the story, which was instead the Desire Hierarchy segments. However, the final act blended the two sides of the game in a way that was somewhat unsatisfying, with the Desire Hierarchy taking a backseat to Colton giving his final detective speech about the true nature of Spectra and her motivation for enlisting his help and kidnapping his parents. Additionally, I found the final encounter that more or less just mashed every type of gameplay into one escape puzzle to be a bit messy and clunky. I actually enjoyed the aftermath of Colton's confrontation with Spectra's mastermind to be more interesting, despite the latter being the climax of the story.

Overall though, despite some issues with the ending and mixed-quality gameplay, I really cannot recommend The Specter's Desire enough, especially given how relatively unknown it is. I find it important to reiterate that, above all else, if I could say only one thing about this visual novel, it would be that "it is supremely fun."

8/10

What an atrociously bad visual novel. At least, at the beginning, I felt lukewarm about the story—it could possibly go somewhere interesting, but moment-to-moment, I wasn't engaged. However, Nie no Hakoniwa only got worse with each hour I invested into it. For nearly the whole runtime, I was wondering when it would finally become interesting, only for it to never do that. Even worse, it ended up going down one of the most nonsensical routes it could have taken from its setup.

The novel ostensibly tries to present a story in which all the characters are morally grey. "Sure, the protagonist isn't the best person, but his enemies are bad, too, so I want to root for him," the scenario director seems to want you to think. However, what Nie no Hakoniwa actually does is fail at telling a morally grey story. Rather, it's closer to morally black: every character is such a horrible person that I don't care to root for either the protagonist or the antagonists. In fact, I ended up not really caring what happened at all. The ending seems to present the protagonist and main heroine in a sympathetic light—the tone of the writing wants you to feel bad for what happens to them—but they were so irredeemably disgusting for the majority of the story that this presentation seems completely unjustified.

Additionally, the protagonist is supposed to be this ripped, badass assassin who can kill anyone without making a sound, but in reality he comes across as weak-willed because he simply goes along with whatever the main heroine wants. And it's a miracle he falls in love with her (although he himself is not even sure that he is because, again, he's supposed to be an emotionless badass), because from the first second she shows up, she comes off as incredibly irritating, incessantly begging the protagonist to get her pregnant.

At the very least, Nie no Hakoniwa does have some themes about how, under a patriarchy, the only value women are thought to have is as childrearers, but those themes are so infrequently explored and so painfully unrealized that it in no way is worth trudging through the slop that is the remaining 99.9% of the story to get to them. Nie no Hakoniwa is, at this point in time, the worst visual novel I have ever read.

2/10