Another year, another crop. I put this off for a while because I was hoping to be able to rejigger a few games that had trouble playing on my computer, but no such luck. You’ll have to wait for reviews of Fez, Mages of Mystralia, and The Talos Principle when (if) I upgrade my hardware.
Inside: Hexcells, Her Story, Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight, Gravitas, Disoriented, OVIVO.
N through P. I got distracted splitting my time with my Christmas games, so this is shorter than the previous posts. Some interesting RPGs in this one.
It’s that time several months past that time of the year again!
Inside: Ittle Dew, Mini Ghost, Papers Please, Pyre, Out There Somewhere, Toki Tori 2, Antichamber.
Sorry it’s been a while! I’ve been distracted by all the other games that have come out recently. Only three games on review this time, but I had a lot to say about each.
Digimon Survive is a visual novel/tactical RPG with horror elements. Despite being largely unimpressed with Digimon’s catalogue, I decided that sounded interesting enough to give it a shot.
Let me tell you, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen a game whose mechanics were so at odds with its narrative. This thing is a train wreck.
I don’t often return games, but I gladly made an exception for this one. It was such a staggering disappointment on every level.
The premise: You are an ambassador to a parallel dimension where dragons are the dominant species instead of humans, but also there are murders and dark secrets to uncover; basically the dragon version of Hatoful Boyfriend. How could that possibly go wrong?
The writing is so, so bad, and the art is worse. The backgrounds are clearly stock art that makes no sense with a nonhuman environment — the indoor environments make no sense with the skills we’re told the dragons have (low dexterity to fire breath) or their size (they shouldn’t even be able to fit through the doors), and the outdoor environments make no sense when we’re told we don’t know whether this is an alien planet or an alternate universe but there’s regular trees, grass, and bacon. Repeatedly, the characters look up in the sky and never think to realize you can use stars to find out where you are. The character art is terribly inconsistent — one dragon wears clothes while all others are nudists and no one comments on this, they have furgonomic hats but no furgonomics anywhere else, and of course they include all the dragon subspecies with no acknowledgement of how little evolutionary sense this makes or how their society can possibly function with both bipeds and quadrupeds (including wyverns with no hands). They even specifically bring up in dialogue how badly paper letters work for them when they’re constantly shredding them by accident, but we’re apparently not supposed to question how little sense this makes.
All this despite the fact the protagonist is supposedly a biologist, but they never think to question any of this because they are the stupidest, most incompetent, and most incurious VN protagonist I’ve had the displeasure of piloting in a very long time. “There’s just been a murder and my only other human contact is the prime suspect! I should spend the rest of the day reading a book inexplicably sized perfectly for my hands. Oh, but not that one, it looks like actual history, I should read trashy novels instead. No, not that trashy novel, it looks like it’s referencing something relevant.” They just stand there gormlessly listening to dragons explain how utterly nonsensical their society is and then say, “Sure, that makes sense.”
At least they don’t have lizardboobs.
Inside: Rebel Transmute demo, Cosmos Bit, The Last Monster Master, Citizen Sleeper.
Detective Penguin sent me down a detective game rabbit hole.
(The intro to this got long, but oh well.)
Inside: The Darkside Detective, A Case of Distrust, The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog, Nut City Blues, Shivah
Inside: Brok the Investigator, Song of Farca, Chicken Police: Paint It Red
CW for alcoholism and depression/suicide in the Chicken Police review — I talk a bit about how Chandler died, largely because I don’t like how the game treats drinking as a character quirk.
Split this from the group detective posts because I ended up having way more to say about it than I thought I would!
CW: Tons of mental health stuff in the game, including PTSD, sexual coercion, and suicide attempts. FWIW it’s not explicit and I think it’s handled pretty well, but it might be worth having someone screen it for you if those are normally triggers.
Paradise Killer was amazing, go experience it.
Recs: Paradise Killer, Neo Cab
Meh: Star Apprentice: Magical Murder Mystery
Pans: Black Closet, Soulslayer
I was surprised to see we never reviewed this. That was probably because I was still sorting through my feelings on it back when it first came out and then forgot about it, but it attracted my attention again after I started reading The Fury of a Shattered Mirror and I watched the new content added in The Pristine Cut.
If you’re not familiar, Slay the Princess is a visual novel where you interact with various iterations of a trapped princess. The narrator is a distinct character with an agenda: He insists that the Princess will end the world if she is freed, so to save the world you must slay her. No matter what you do in your first meeting, you end up dying horribly, wherupon the scenario resets, but with the Princess altered to reflect your actions and opinions towards her in your first meeting. The narration also uses a similar schtick to Disco Elysium, with each scenario granting you additional voices alongside the Narrator with their own personalities and suggestions.
My overall opinion is that this game isn’t nearly as clever as it thinks it is.