Well, at least it isn't literal crack.
I've been playing around with the pretty new tablet (it was a gift, and is amazing) and I stumbled into the Visual Novel genre. It's... interesting. So here's some mini reviews, because I felt like talking about them.
Most of my experience with interactive romances is through the side stories of Baldur's Gate and similar adventure games: largely optional, text based, and almost always pure dialogue. Even the original tracks of BG2 had a lot of player choices in what to say, and some of the mods I've played are incredibly complex. But VNs have pictures!
So. Herewith some slightly spoilery reviews.
Enchanted By Moonlight, by Voltage.
The hook for me was the chance to hang out with a trickster fox. Eh, We all have our kinks. It's a Peach Girl plot - a fairly ordinary young woman wakes up one morning with mysterious ineffable spiritual powers which she cannot use on her own behalf in any way. Instead, she smells really good to any spirits and monsters around, who know that if they can eat her, they'll absorb her power. Better yet is if she marries them and (implied) even better if it's True Love. It feels like there's kind of a yin-yang dynamic going on. In any case, if you're a Peach Girl, your value isn't in what you do. It's in what you are. Also, I've never seen one of these plots where, however scary and boundary-crossing it gets, the PG's consent wasn't the ultimate dealmaker for the relationship. It's an odd kind of a power fantasy, I guess, As might be inferred from above, there's an element of coercion applied to much of the sexy-times.
The way Voltage structured the game, which seems fairly common, is to supply a common prologue free, plus teasers for every available character route. It cost me, what, $3-5 per route? Individually, pocket change. But remember what I said about crack in the title - the urge to buy just a little more... (I picked two routes, Miyabi the trickster fox and Shinra the young and brash oni.)
Soo, in this case PG spends the day narrowly escaping multiple hungry demons, then in the evening five handsome young demon clan-heads turn up, clear away the riffraff, and say they'll protect her from all comers, if and only if she agrees to marry one and bear them a super powerful child for the betterment of their clan. What can you do?
Miyabi's route was very peach-girly, and he had a lot of difficulty with relationships that weren't Fight or Fuck. His level of handsiness is something I have to be in a particular type of mood to enjoy, and that mood soon passed. Interestingly, M's story arc got him caught up in PG's vortex of helplessness - she gets poisoned and he's reduced to asking his friends to help by fetching medicine while he sits with her as she gets sicker and sicker and feeds her peaches. It would have been moving, but to be honest I don't enjoy having the character I'm supposed to identify with reduced to an object, even a teaching tool object. And PG's limpness annoyed me. Also, I'm never going to think that constant insults towards someone not able to insult back is romantic.
I did like Shinra a lot. He turned out to be a forgotten childhood friend who several times seemed uncomfortable with the contract. A sweetheart with issues about his big brother and whether he was the leader his clan needed. There is a point where it looks like PG would be happier with another guy and he releases her from the contract. The weariness with which he walked away legitimately moved me. The heroine actually made some meaningful decisions here, including running into a burning building because looking after library patrons was her damn job. (It was a trap, and she needed to be rescued. Of course.)
There wasn't a lot of player agency involved - about two dialogue choices per chapter on such riveting topics as, "you're making your love interest his favourite snack: do you tell him that or claim it's just dinner?" And I checked out the two endings for one character route, there's very little difference, except you get a nicer picture.
There's really not a lot of PG agency involved either. It's just... passive heroines aren't my thing, okay? It's not a question of being an Action Girl - pacifists who take on monsters and armies with nothing but wits and words are Bad Ass. PG was not Bad Ass.
I guess my overall impression of the game was... sparse? The character sprites were nice enough, I vaguely remember the music as pleasant. The prose felt a little bland, though that might have been an artifact of translation. We didn't see much of the other characters on a given route. I know from experience how time consuming truly interactive text can be, but it felt like, well, like they had a strictly limited time budget for each product they produced on their production line and once it was spent that was it. And if they have a customer base happy with that, more power to everyone concerned I say. But the game didn't make my heart sing.
WANTED: Dragon by Visual-Wordplay
Okay so there's this Evil Princess, Chrysandra, who's temporarily embarrassed with banishment. However, she knows there's a magical tower that holds two dragons imprisoned in human form. The terms of their release are True Love or a reasonable facsimile (just go with it). If she can fake a whirlwind romance she could come out with a powerful ally to take over the kingdom, and then the world. Mwa haha.
Character agency: very high. Chrysandra makes plans, wheels-and-deals, and follows through on her decisions with nerve and bravado.
Player agency: also very high. There are nine possible endings and the two I found were very different, and emotionally satisfying in an evil kind of way. I did feel a bit of a heel deceiving the puppy-love-struck mage, but eh, we got to fly off as dragons and he seemed happy enough at the end. Balrung the sneaky dragon was SO MUCH FUN to spar with.
Art and music were on the basic side but appropriate to each scene, with some cool Ending pictures. This was a free game.
Will play again.
Our Personal Space by Metasepia Games
Your viewpoint character starts by getting married! Then she and her husband head off to a young colony on another planet and you spend the next two years juggling your love life, your work, the needs of your community, and your own health.
Character agency: very high - she can easily become a pillar of the community.
Player agency: I've only played this through once, but I got the impression that it's through the roof. You get a lot of choices every month about what you learn and how you spend your time and they affect how you cope with what happens.
Art was basic but everything had a lot of character. The soundtrack was nice. I really got a feel for the community - the people and their relationships felt very real. Incidentally, it's a very multicultural cast.
I had a ball with this. I'm a little afraid to play again because I got an almost perfect ending first try and I'm worried the only way from here is down. Probably will, though. :-)
I picked through a few of the demos of NTT Solcorp's Shall We Date series. Two of my general observations are a) the story ticket social networking dress up platform some of their games use is freaking annoying, and b) their art is uniformly gorgeous. Fortunately, they have quite a few pay-by-the-character formats. Anyway, I settled on:
Shall We Date: Scarlet Fate
Historical fantasy set in Heian Japan.
...
...
Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn...
It's probably a bug but but I could get no sound. Just as well, because now I can imagine the full orchestra that would make an appropriate soundtrack.
It's definitely a lurid story. There's a hidden shrine that guards a magic sword of evil that could end the world, and every month the head priestess chips away a piece of her soul to keep the seal strong. That's where the story starts. It's also not the worst part of the priestess' job.
I'll note that the sword did not start that way but became so after absorbing the accumulated hatred of the world. It's part of a theme - several characters feel massive guilt for actions they were literally forced into, or the terrible things that happened because someone else wanted what they could do and would commit atrocities for that. Several characters are filled with entirely justified rage, but, if they act on it, they'll do worse than what was done to them. And if they don't act on it, isn't that a betrayal of everyone they fought for and with? And anyway - however can they stop? If the sword were unsealed, it would end the world, and that justifies terrible things done to bind it. Lots of characters are forced into impossible decisions and then have to live with them, is what I'm saying.
There are armies and duels and heroic last stands, true friendships forming under fire and allies turning on each other, corrupt court officials, idealistic court officials who've cracked a few too many eggs for their world peace omelet, historical oppression of ethnic minorities informing the fantasy plot in an integral way, getting lost, injured and desperate, in the snow at night, and a love story (in the route I played) that skips over "I would die for you" as too easy. "I would live for you," now that's where it's tough. All this with big hair and elaborate outfits. Yeah, that's the stuff.
Character agency: high. On the one hand Shiki is explicitly Fate's Bitch, on the other, her varying choices on whether she fights for or against it are much of the plot. She's got power and skill levels that let her keep up with the master swordsmen, black ops exorcists, and gods that make up the rest of the cast. While young, she's inherited some serious responsibilities, and fulfills them as best she can.
Player agency: I was on a railroad, but it wound through the Mountains of Awesome. Decisions were about half which character do you choose to talk to at this point in the plot, and half, how do you react to what was just said in this important conversation. I think the choices influence the ending you get, from happy to whatever. There was a bad ending that could be reached by a fairly clear dialogue choice. My 'Sweet Ending' was pretty damn sweet.
As mentioned above, the soundtrack wouldn't play, and there were a few typos that I could live without. The prose was often very vivid. The art was exquisite. It's a season for pollen where I live, which was why I blinked hard so often while reading it. Allergies, yeah, that's the ticket. Seriously, I had a lot of buy-in to the characters and plot.
Would I play again? Yes, definitely. There were scraps of the other characters' stories that I wanted to know more about. What was Kuso's deal? What was Furutsugu's deal? I wanna know!
And hey, if you've played any of these and have an opinion, to agree or disagree, come drop me a line...
Most of my experience with interactive romances is through the side stories of Baldur's Gate and similar adventure games: largely optional, text based, and almost always pure dialogue. Even the original tracks of BG2 had a lot of player choices in what to say, and some of the mods I've played are incredibly complex. But VNs have pictures!
So. Herewith some slightly spoilery reviews.
Enchanted By Moonlight, by Voltage.
The hook for me was the chance to hang out with a trickster fox. Eh, We all have our kinks. It's a Peach Girl plot - a fairly ordinary young woman wakes up one morning with mysterious ineffable spiritual powers which she cannot use on her own behalf in any way. Instead, she smells really good to any spirits and monsters around, who know that if they can eat her, they'll absorb her power. Better yet is if she marries them and (implied) even better if it's True Love. It feels like there's kind of a yin-yang dynamic going on. In any case, if you're a Peach Girl, your value isn't in what you do. It's in what you are. Also, I've never seen one of these plots where, however scary and boundary-crossing it gets, the PG's consent wasn't the ultimate dealmaker for the relationship. It's an odd kind of a power fantasy, I guess, As might be inferred from above, there's an element of coercion applied to much of the sexy-times.
The way Voltage structured the game, which seems fairly common, is to supply a common prologue free, plus teasers for every available character route. It cost me, what, $3-5 per route? Individually, pocket change. But remember what I said about crack in the title - the urge to buy just a little more... (I picked two routes, Miyabi the trickster fox and Shinra the young and brash oni.)
Soo, in this case PG spends the day narrowly escaping multiple hungry demons, then in the evening five handsome young demon clan-heads turn up, clear away the riffraff, and say they'll protect her from all comers, if and only if she agrees to marry one and bear them a super powerful child for the betterment of their clan. What can you do?
Miyabi's route was very peach-girly, and he had a lot of difficulty with relationships that weren't Fight or Fuck. His level of handsiness is something I have to be in a particular type of mood to enjoy, and that mood soon passed. Interestingly, M's story arc got him caught up in PG's vortex of helplessness - she gets poisoned and he's reduced to asking his friends to help by fetching medicine while he sits with her as she gets sicker and sicker and feeds her peaches. It would have been moving, but to be honest I don't enjoy having the character I'm supposed to identify with reduced to an object, even a teaching tool object. And PG's limpness annoyed me. Also, I'm never going to think that constant insults towards someone not able to insult back is romantic.
I did like Shinra a lot. He turned out to be a forgotten childhood friend who several times seemed uncomfortable with the contract. A sweetheart with issues about his big brother and whether he was the leader his clan needed. There is a point where it looks like PG would be happier with another guy and he releases her from the contract. The weariness with which he walked away legitimately moved me. The heroine actually made some meaningful decisions here, including running into a burning building because looking after library patrons was her damn job. (It was a trap, and she needed to be rescued. Of course.)
There wasn't a lot of player agency involved - about two dialogue choices per chapter on such riveting topics as, "you're making your love interest his favourite snack: do you tell him that or claim it's just dinner?" And I checked out the two endings for one character route, there's very little difference, except you get a nicer picture.
There's really not a lot of PG agency involved either. It's just... passive heroines aren't my thing, okay? It's not a question of being an Action Girl - pacifists who take on monsters and armies with nothing but wits and words are Bad Ass. PG was not Bad Ass.
I guess my overall impression of the game was... sparse? The character sprites were nice enough, I vaguely remember the music as pleasant. The prose felt a little bland, though that might have been an artifact of translation. We didn't see much of the other characters on a given route. I know from experience how time consuming truly interactive text can be, but it felt like, well, like they had a strictly limited time budget for each product they produced on their production line and once it was spent that was it. And if they have a customer base happy with that, more power to everyone concerned I say. But the game didn't make my heart sing.
WANTED: Dragon by Visual-Wordplay
Okay so there's this Evil Princess, Chrysandra, who's temporarily embarrassed with banishment. However, she knows there's a magical tower that holds two dragons imprisoned in human form. The terms of their release are True Love or a reasonable facsimile (just go with it). If she can fake a whirlwind romance she could come out with a powerful ally to take over the kingdom, and then the world. Mwa haha.
Character agency: very high. Chrysandra makes plans, wheels-and-deals, and follows through on her decisions with nerve and bravado.
Player agency: also very high. There are nine possible endings and the two I found were very different, and emotionally satisfying in an evil kind of way. I did feel a bit of a heel deceiving the puppy-love-struck mage, but eh, we got to fly off as dragons and he seemed happy enough at the end. Balrung the sneaky dragon was SO MUCH FUN to spar with.
Art and music were on the basic side but appropriate to each scene, with some cool Ending pictures. This was a free game.
Will play again.
Our Personal Space by Metasepia Games
Your viewpoint character starts by getting married! Then she and her husband head off to a young colony on another planet and you spend the next two years juggling your love life, your work, the needs of your community, and your own health.
Character agency: very high - she can easily become a pillar of the community.
Player agency: I've only played this through once, but I got the impression that it's through the roof. You get a lot of choices every month about what you learn and how you spend your time and they affect how you cope with what happens.
Art was basic but everything had a lot of character. The soundtrack was nice. I really got a feel for the community - the people and their relationships felt very real. Incidentally, it's a very multicultural cast.
I had a ball with this. I'm a little afraid to play again because I got an almost perfect ending first try and I'm worried the only way from here is down. Probably will, though. :-)
I picked through a few of the demos of NTT Solcorp's Shall We Date series. Two of my general observations are a) the story ticket social networking dress up platform some of their games use is freaking annoying, and b) their art is uniformly gorgeous. Fortunately, they have quite a few pay-by-the-character formats. Anyway, I settled on:
Shall We Date: Scarlet Fate
Historical fantasy set in Heian Japan.
...
...
Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn...
It's probably a bug but but I could get no sound. Just as well, because now I can imagine the full orchestra that would make an appropriate soundtrack.
It's definitely a lurid story. There's a hidden shrine that guards a magic sword of evil that could end the world, and every month the head priestess chips away a piece of her soul to keep the seal strong. That's where the story starts. It's also not the worst part of the priestess' job.
I'll note that the sword did not start that way but became so after absorbing the accumulated hatred of the world. It's part of a theme - several characters feel massive guilt for actions they were literally forced into, or the terrible things that happened because someone else wanted what they could do and would commit atrocities for that. Several characters are filled with entirely justified rage, but, if they act on it, they'll do worse than what was done to them. And if they don't act on it, isn't that a betrayal of everyone they fought for and with? And anyway - however can they stop? If the sword were unsealed, it would end the world, and that justifies terrible things done to bind it. Lots of characters are forced into impossible decisions and then have to live with them, is what I'm saying.
There are armies and duels and heroic last stands, true friendships forming under fire and allies turning on each other, corrupt court officials, idealistic court officials who've cracked a few too many eggs for their world peace omelet, historical oppression of ethnic minorities informing the fantasy plot in an integral way, getting lost, injured and desperate, in the snow at night, and a love story (in the route I played) that skips over "I would die for you" as too easy. "I would live for you," now that's where it's tough. All this with big hair and elaborate outfits. Yeah, that's the stuff.
Character agency: high. On the one hand Shiki is explicitly Fate's Bitch, on the other, her varying choices on whether she fights for or against it are much of the plot. She's got power and skill levels that let her keep up with the master swordsmen, black ops exorcists, and gods that make up the rest of the cast. While young, she's inherited some serious responsibilities, and fulfills them as best she can.
Player agency: I was on a railroad, but it wound through the Mountains of Awesome. Decisions were about half which character do you choose to talk to at this point in the plot, and half, how do you react to what was just said in this important conversation. I think the choices influence the ending you get, from happy to whatever. There was a bad ending that could be reached by a fairly clear dialogue choice. My 'Sweet Ending' was pretty damn sweet.
As mentioned above, the soundtrack wouldn't play, and there were a few typos that I could live without. The prose was often very vivid. The art was exquisite. It's a season for pollen where I live, which was why I blinked hard so often while reading it. Allergies, yeah, that's the ticket. Seriously, I had a lot of buy-in to the characters and plot.
Would I play again? Yes, definitely. There were scraps of the other characters' stories that I wanted to know more about. What was Kuso's deal? What was Furutsugu's deal? I wanna know!
And hey, if you've played any of these and have an opinion, to agree or disagree, come drop me a line...