Recent reviews by Twinwolf1

Good morning. It seems you've been invited to Rokenjima once again.

If you've come this far, there is no question that the invitation will be accepted, is there? You have fought the witch for so long, have you come to understand yet? Have you come to love, yet? You have all that you need to strike the final blow. So come now, and put the Golden Witch to rest.

At this point, there is no need to hold back. Spin the chessboard around once more, and play the game from the foe's side. That should offer the last hint or two needed to truly understand the witch's game. The difficulty is deceptive - you must look back to even the hardest of past games - but you can surely triumph.

I originally played this a year ago, got like a couple hours into Episode 1, and then got bored and dropped it. It can be a rough opening if you're not used to visual novels. This year, I got back to it, because of some random conversation with a friend who liked it reminded me, 'oh, I should do this'.

About one hundred hours later - with a few pauses, not for boredom but because sometimes this gets intense to the point of exhaustion for me - and I sit staring into space listening to the seagulls on the title screen at the end of the Answer Arcs, trying to stop crying so I can be a functional person again.

Try going in blind if you can. What good is a mystery if you know the ending? But since that's not exactly much to actually recommend, I'll go into a little more detail.

Despite a lack of choices - this being a sound novel more than a visual novel-, I still consider this a game, and one that actively teaches you how to play. The game is in your mind - it's in how you engage with the text and the mystery, how you come up with theories. It's a game between you and the author. Even if you're unfamiliar with the mystery genre I genuinely encourage you to give solving it a go by the end - you don't need spreadsheets of who's where when (unless you are as insane as me) but you do need to think about what was presented and when.

The music is a core part of the experience, and absolutely great. There was a very specific moment I stopped being bored when I felt like episode 1 was dragging. A girl reading a letter aloud. A strange song unlike anything in the slow and moody soundtrack up to this point starts up. And suddenly I know I'm going for a ride.

I highly recommend finding the 07th Mod or similar porting-the-console-version mods if you can because the voice acting in my opinion offers a lot; they got an absolutely star studded cast.

I got this as a gift from a friend after I liked Medieval 2: Total War a lot, and I've been putting more time than I probably should into both. It's probably an unpopular opinion, but I actually like this game a bit more than it. Regions aren't just the one city or castle, so there's a bit more incentive to not just hold and wait for the siege as the enemy goes a burnin' through your lands. Some settlements are simply better than others, so you need to prioritize what you defend and what you take. There's more tactics than "charge, hope you have better numbers/units" or "Heavy cavalry all day all the time" - positioning matters a lot so there's more to do than giving orders and hitting fast forward. The sea combat is a nice addition beyond auto-resolving, although it can feel a bit confusing or random in my experience.

Of course, it's not all good. In terms of actual gameplay, the sieges aren't nearly as cool as Medieval 2's, and they're all basically the same - Howitzer/Mortar the enemy until they die if you go on the offensive, or dig in and wait for them to come to you and then hide behind your cover as they just break themselves on your guns and cannister-shot cannons. The AI isn't that great either, without mods - it seems they have trouble understanding the concept of a naval invasion. It's a bit too easy to snowball - I was having reasonable strategic difficulty in the grand campaign as England until I took a few territories in India, and then my economy began to snowball and now I have 40k per turn. Mind however I've only played on Hard Battles/Normal Campaign difficulty. I've had a few bad glitches, usually fixed by rolling back a turn, nothing deal breaking.

All in all, a fun addition in my mind and an incentive for me to upgrade my computer to play more recent titles once I have some disposable income.