Recent reviews by Harag

When I started to play with this game my first impression was along the lines of:
God These characters are annoying!
The main character Fang acted like a lazy ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ who cares about nothing but food. The main heroine and the face of the game Tiara acted like a giant SOB. The other heroine and the partner of Fang Eryn always seemed to have a few bad words for him.
Though to be fair Eryn did have a reason to act the way she did. Just imagine you wait (for only God knows how much) for a lifetime partner to finally show up. And then when he finally arrives the only thing you get from him is verbal abuse, unwillingness and constant complaining about food. You wouldn’t be happy about it either would you?
And then I kept on playing and the magic happened. When the characters started to really interact with each other and solving the problems life gave to them they turned out to be really well thought out and lovable.
I would say the main strength of the game is it’s brilliant writing. The plot is the average the bad boys wants to resurrect the bad God the good boys wants to resurrect the good God but fortunately it’s written in an entertaining way. The characters are not only good but they keep on developing and they get rid of their initial annoying quirks. The story itself is not ground-breaking but has it’s nice touches and has a plot-twist around the middle I DID NOT SEE COMING!
For the actual gameplay:
If you played Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth 1 or Re;Birth 2 then all I say it’s exactly the same.
You enter dungeons from the main map. Inside them you control your assigned leader in the map picking up treasures and avoiding or hitting enemies. The actual battle system is turn based so when you are hit by one of them a battle sequence is initiated where your party fights against the monsters. When the battle is won you get back to the dungeon.
Interesting take that you can’t change weapons since each character has to fight with the fairy he or she has a contract with. In exchange you have a weapon upgrade system where you can raise your characters stats, teach them new abilities and moves, skills and magic trough Weapon Point earned by battling. However thank to this system your usual equipment are close to useless and the mostly serve as fanservice. In the game you will gather fairies you cannot equip as weapons but they can grant buffs and add dungeon effects using a system called world shaping. With them you can make the game a little bit harder or easier depending on you.
I think the biggest flaw of this battle system is that you became overpowered very very quick. After that battles are a chore instead of a challenge and the game becomes rather boring. The other downside is the quest system which requires extreme levels of grinding.
There are 3 endings available but there is little difference between them. One for Tiara one for Eryn and a normal ending if you chose neither. Tiara’s ending takes priority so avoid scenes with her if you want Eryn’s. You should chose Eryn by the way.^^
The game offers a new game+ too. Many content is unavailable in your first playtrough raising the replay value of the game even harder. If you are interested in missable content then there is two playable characters who cannot be recruited unless certain conditions are met and a bunch of time limited sub-events.
All in all I recommend this game for everyone who loves jrpgs and doesn’t mind grinding.

This was a bit disappointing really.

Now where to begin...
The writing is all over the place. A perspective jumps from person to person sometimes making it hard to know who we are supposed to follow. The situation is especially bad in a part where they supposed to read each others mind but the magic lets them to keep certain thoughts to themselves. Let the chaos begin!

The dialogs are a bit awkward and the character developments are happening suddenly out of the blue. A certain brother is especially guilty in this last regard.
The characters themselves are ok most of the times except they seem to have a habit of acting stupid. (I mostly have issues with a certain father's idea of not letting his son to be lonely. Seriously... wtf?)
I have to give points to the writing in regard of the two flashbacks though. That two flashback really is well written perhaps because they are told from only one perspective instead of several at the same time making them much easier to follow.

The graphics and the sounds are mostly ok. However this game really needs a feature that allows me to color the lines of every character differently. Focusing on the story sometimes I didn't notice that a different character started speaking. Especially visible with a certain company's secondary bosses. I don't even know which sprite supposed to belong to which name!

The game contains only one choice which doesn't absolutely nothing making it totally useless.

However, I would still recommend this visual novel it weren't for it's price. it's 15 euros so yeah it's cheaper than most visual novels but:
1:
I'm not a fast reader and English is not my first language but I managed to read it in seven hours! There are games that not this long but they have gameplay.
2:
Even worse this game ends with a cliffhanger! Excuse me but would it be so hard to get a somewhat satisfying ending by finishing the story ten lines earlier?
3:
This game was funded on kickstarter. Which is good really but it means that translation costs were covered before the release. So how came it's in the same price category as some other not kickstarter founded Visual Novels?

If you really want to play this Visual Novel I won't stop you because in the end it's still entertaining. However, I suggest waiting for a discount because this game no way in hell worth 15 euros.

So I bought this game on the mangagamer website. I played it trough but of course Steam wouldn't know about it hence my lack of playtime on my profile.

For those who aren't into Visual Novels:

I'm just gonna go ahead and say if you are a gamer in the sense that you wanna "play" with games this game is not for you. Visual Novel are about storytelling (or they should be) so most of the time you just advance the test.
This particular Visual Novel is a Kinetic Novel meaning you literally can't do anything during the gameplay. It's like an animated picture book with (japanese) voice acting and background music.

Among Visual Novels this is one of the best I've ever read so if you feel you might be intrested in a good, heartwarming and bittersweetstory then you have my recommendation. This is one of the finest examples of what Visual Novels can be at their best.


For those who already fans of the Visual Novel genre:

This is not a nukige. If you just wanna buy it because "lol it has a lol" then shame on you!
It's a feel-heavy storytelling piece which really deserves it's price. If you will buy just one VN in your entire life then put this game on the candidate list ASAP.
As to which version to buy. I have the PLUS+ MOSAIC from the Mangagamer site and after reading trough the game I cannot in good conscience go to the adult content. Belive me you wouldn't miss anything with the Steam version.

It's important to note that adult content was in fact not censored away from this version but THIS is the original version of the game. The PLUS+ MOSAIC were originally a DLC and it can't be patched into the Steam version but again this game is more than perfectly fine without it. (In fact it would have ruined the mood for me at the end so IMHO it's better this way)