Humble Bundle – Valentine’s Day 2
Dec. 16th, 2015 05:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroI’ll give it to Humble Bundle and the other game sales; they get me to try games and genres I wouldn’t bother with otherwise, because hey, it’s cheap, why not give it a shot? My experience with the Suikogaiden games led me to believe I wasn’t really into visual novels, and I think playing a bunch of them cemented it. They’re neither text-dense enough (or well-written enough) to match proper books, nor are they action-packed enough to justify the visuals. Loren was the only game that really won me, mostly because it was an rpg built in a visual novel engine.
Hatoful Boyfriend - Much of the reason I bought this bundle, I was intrigued by the tales I’d heard of a dating sim where everyone is inexplicably a pigeon. And yes, it’s everything you could want: As the only human girl at a pigeon academy, you can choose which of the pigeon boys (including some of the teachers) you want to romance. I went with Ryouta, the adorable pigeon-next-door with a weak stomach and sick mother. (The story does hint that there’s a reason that a “noble, mammalian hunter-gatherer” is so rare among all of these mysteriously-intelligent and civilized pigeons, but that’s really not important. Boyfriends are important.)
Loren the Amazon Princess - An rpg built out of a visual novel, which works as the latter because of the former. First off, do you like cheesecake shots and large-breasted women in revealing armor? Because it's got plenty of that. (Apparently the Steam version is even “censored”, with addition clothing drawn over the originally-even-more-revealing outfits!) Most of the choices are single one-offs and the story is fairly linear, but there's also an elaborate system of relationship values and in-camp discussions so that you can romance a party member. I'm actually really reminded of the Fighting Fantasy books (and the video game adaptation I recently played), in that the story is effectively on rails and will reconnect after you make a choice. But the combat system and leveling are decent (even if the equipment system is far more complicated than it needs or deserves to be) and while the overarcing plot is kind of lame and derivative, the individual characterization and interaction is detailed and interesting. And there’s actually real strategy beyond many other rpgs in the combats, because there are a number of attacks that can’t be used unless the enemy is already under a status ailment caused by a different attack.
Sakura Spirit - A visual novel about a teenage boy who gets pulled into a world of samurai girls and kitsune, all with excessively large breasts. The writing is clunky and cliché-ridden. There are no choices to make; you’re just watching the story plod along. And boy, is it a stupid and badly-told story. The only reason to play this is if you like suggestive pictures of anime girls with big boobs.
Asphyxia - The romantic poets of the 18th century take on schoolgirl guises (such as Samantha Taylor Coleridge, Lillian Wordsworth, Georgia Byron and Percy Shelley) and attempt to do an assignment on a school trip together. Which means in practice that it’s a collection of private-school girls having middle-school drama and backbiting—and the one that you’re playing is clearly suffering from crippling depression. If you ever felt a particular need to get the inner monologue of depression in the form of a Visual Novel about lesbian poets, this is the one for you. (This is also barely a game, as there are all of eight choices to make over the course of it that unlock four different endings.)
The Royal Trap: Confines of the Crown - Maddie is the second daughter of a minor noble, and she's the maidservant of Prince Oscar and responsible for getting him wed to an important princess. Despite, of course, the fact he loves her and she might just love him back. And that she's out of a job if he succeeds. And that he has very, very bad judgment.
WORLD END ECONOMiCA (Episode 02) – The bundle made the odd choice of including the second episode in this trilogy of visual novels, which was very odd. A cursory glance at reviews of the first installment did not speak kindly of it, as apparently while this centers around a sci-fi premise and a guy trying to get rich via stock trading, it fails to make either of those things exciting. I went through the first chunk of this, but the constant references to the first game made it hard to get into, and I don’t feel the need to fight through a visual novel that doesn’t interest me just because it’s there.
Tyrano Builder - Not a game, but a utility for making your own visual novel games with. Now, visual novels aren’t terribly complicated games, but this is a nicely set up utility that’s simple and straightforward to use. To do anything more complicated than a Choose Your Own Adventure book (or a choice-free book with pictures) you need to also use TyranoBuilder’s sister tool TyranoScript to track character stats or parameters. I doubt the mood will ever strike me, but should I ever decide I’ve got a visual novel I need to write, it looks like I have the tool to do it.
Overall: Visual novels aren’t really my thing, but I think this would have been a mixed bag even if they were. Still, for the price it was nice to try them out.
Hatoful Boyfriend - Much of the reason I bought this bundle, I was intrigued by the tales I’d heard of a dating sim where everyone is inexplicably a pigeon. And yes, it’s everything you could want: As the only human girl at a pigeon academy, you can choose which of the pigeon boys (including some of the teachers) you want to romance. I went with Ryouta, the adorable pigeon-next-door with a weak stomach and sick mother. (The story does hint that there’s a reason that a “noble, mammalian hunter-gatherer” is so rare among all of these mysteriously-intelligent and civilized pigeons, but that’s really not important. Boyfriends are important.)
Loren the Amazon Princess - An rpg built out of a visual novel, which works as the latter because of the former. First off, do you like cheesecake shots and large-breasted women in revealing armor? Because it's got plenty of that. (Apparently the Steam version is even “censored”, with addition clothing drawn over the originally-even-more-revealing outfits!) Most of the choices are single one-offs and the story is fairly linear, but there's also an elaborate system of relationship values and in-camp discussions so that you can romance a party member. I'm actually really reminded of the Fighting Fantasy books (and the video game adaptation I recently played), in that the story is effectively on rails and will reconnect after you make a choice. But the combat system and leveling are decent (even if the equipment system is far more complicated than it needs or deserves to be) and while the overarcing plot is kind of lame and derivative, the individual characterization and interaction is detailed and interesting. And there’s actually real strategy beyond many other rpgs in the combats, because there are a number of attacks that can’t be used unless the enemy is already under a status ailment caused by a different attack.
Sakura Spirit - A visual novel about a teenage boy who gets pulled into a world of samurai girls and kitsune, all with excessively large breasts. The writing is clunky and cliché-ridden. There are no choices to make; you’re just watching the story plod along. And boy, is it a stupid and badly-told story. The only reason to play this is if you like suggestive pictures of anime girls with big boobs.
Asphyxia - The romantic poets of the 18th century take on schoolgirl guises (such as Samantha Taylor Coleridge, Lillian Wordsworth, Georgia Byron and Percy Shelley) and attempt to do an assignment on a school trip together. Which means in practice that it’s a collection of private-school girls having middle-school drama and backbiting—and the one that you’re playing is clearly suffering from crippling depression. If you ever felt a particular need to get the inner monologue of depression in the form of a Visual Novel about lesbian poets, this is the one for you. (This is also barely a game, as there are all of eight choices to make over the course of it that unlock four different endings.)
The Royal Trap: Confines of the Crown - Maddie is the second daughter of a minor noble, and she's the maidservant of Prince Oscar and responsible for getting him wed to an important princess. Despite, of course, the fact he loves her and she might just love him back. And that she's out of a job if he succeeds. And that he has very, very bad judgment.
WORLD END ECONOMiCA (Episode 02) – The bundle made the odd choice of including the second episode in this trilogy of visual novels, which was very odd. A cursory glance at reviews of the first installment did not speak kindly of it, as apparently while this centers around a sci-fi premise and a guy trying to get rich via stock trading, it fails to make either of those things exciting. I went through the first chunk of this, but the constant references to the first game made it hard to get into, and I don’t feel the need to fight through a visual novel that doesn’t interest me just because it’s there.
Tyrano Builder - Not a game, but a utility for making your own visual novel games with. Now, visual novels aren’t terribly complicated games, but this is a nicely set up utility that’s simple and straightforward to use. To do anything more complicated than a Choose Your Own Adventure book (or a choice-free book with pictures) you need to also use TyranoBuilder’s sister tool TyranoScript to track character stats or parameters. I doubt the mood will ever strike me, but should I ever decide I’ve got a visual novel I need to write, it looks like I have the tool to do it.
Overall: Visual novels aren’t really my thing, but I think this would have been a mixed bag even if they were. Still, for the price it was nice to try them out.
