Recent reviews by ShikiX | Horo

Coming here directly after finishing the last boss on master difficulty, I wanna share my opinion of the game as long as everything is fresh up in my head so here I go.

I think, overall, this game is one of the very rare cases where almost everything aligns perfectly and makes an all around package worth buying, playing and recommending.

The animation, artwork and scenery of the game, be it during exploring, mid combat, around Kena or far off in the distance, is overall absolutely superb and really well animated. It gives you a kind of disney touch, but just a tad bit, while everything else has its own handwriting and is a standalone fantastic work of Ember Labs team. The smoothed out animations in combat, be it explosions, arrows, staffs, swords, jumping around, dodging, shielding, whatever it is, did NOT lag whatsoever for me, were always a smooth experience and had perfect transitions into each other. So art and animation wise I would absolutely give it a solid 10/10, even if you dont like its style, you cannot deny how well it is made.

The music aswell, fits absolutely perfect into its made up universe, and supports the atmosphere, characters and plot along the way. I feel like whenever the soundtrack of a game hits this good, I rarely have alot to say about it. Simply because all you really think about it is " Yep, thats it. Thats how its supposed to be. "
Be it the sounds of arrows clanking against shields, staffs and swords into each other, bombs exploding etc, it definitely goes along well and you never catch yourself thinking " eh, not sure it would sound that way. "

The combat aswell, is really smooth and well done. Dodge rolls, shielding, flawless switching between close combat to ranged options, integrating the wildlife and obstacles into fights. Absolutely perfect. The only nitpick I would have is that the master difficulty doesn't really provide any sort of new movepool or mechanics. The only thing it does is replenish the bosses HPs mid battle to almost full again and maybe power up a move here and there. For me personally, thats the equivalent of " ah yeah, lets to the basic difficulty spike and make them Damage Sponges ". And I also feel like, minor spoiler ahead: that once you get the perk where the bomb creates an area where time is halted, you basically just spam that whenever you can and it makes alot of fights, even in master difficulty, extremely trivial. I dont like to use the word but it really is, in a sense, overpowered. Nontheless I found myself challenged in the master difficulty and enjoyed that aswell.

The platforming, which is the biggest part of the game, is also really well done. Its not about making difficult pakours, its about letting everything flow into each other really well. You always have the feeling that you can and SHOULD use your surroudings to reach different places, higher up or going deeper down, check around trees and bushes or maybe that river leads to something. It really uses the potential of its vast world really well in my opinion.

Now, the only DOWNSIDE I personally had and felt with this game, was its voice acting. The " emotion " in the voices, feels absolutely forced. Anyone could tell wether someone sounds sad because he is sad, or someone tries to sound sad on purpose. Im not saying every game should have a top notch cast of highly experienced voice actors, but in a game about atmosphere, story telling and a heavy plot supporting an emotional construct, having people on that sound super forced, just didn't sit right with me. In literally every dialogue I just felt like, yeah, with another voice, that would have been perfect. Scenery, atmosphere, the writing and plot, everything hit the right spot, just not the voices themselves. In an otherwise solid gem of a game, this was sadly the only let down for me.

I can definitely and wholeheartedly recommend this game, I enjoyed plaything through it twice, once on hard and once on master difficulty. And I also enjoyed the challenge which came with the latter. It has a fair price ( which is rare nowadays ) and it lets you dive into and experience a really beautiful world filled with likeable characters, understandable decisions and plot alignment that keeps you hooked to the game!

~ ShikiX

I immediately want to point out that I really cannot agree with nor understand most of the negative reviews about this game. It being uninspired, haphazardly all over the place story telling, plotholes and so on.

Like, I read this piece in one go, as it is rather short and I had, besides one minor thing right at the start of Act 3, absolutely no issue of piecing the story together. I also really like the way how the story is told, in " pieces " that get put together by different point of views from different people. Higurashi is a prime and very popular example of doing exactly that in a really good way. Sure it might become a bit confusing at some points, but as always with this type of narration, if you stick through and keep going, everything clears up in the end.

I really appreciated the art style of this novel. Even after 10+ years of reading novels, it still struck me as unique and I really enjoyed that. It does a good job of avoiding the typical generic anime style and giving itself some special touch, while still remaining a solid entry in anime art. Art wise I would most definitely give it at least a 9/10 in my book. But of course, that is all personal preference in the end.

The music is also really fitting the overall theme and scenes, although I find myself more and more craving for variety in these novels. Even in shorter novels it just becomes painfully clear that they had like 2-3 OSTs for 2-3 scenes, and slapped them into them whenever they seemed to be oh so slightly fitting. This is also really getting negative attention in this specific narration variant, because you already re-read the same story from different perspectives multiple times. Not mixing up these perspectives with more music variety can leave a really sour taste in someones mouth. At least for me it does.

Another thing I wanna point out, ESPECIALLY with horror/mystery novels is, that albeit using SOME soundtracks ( like shattering windows, knocking on doors, creaking floors etc. ) they should always take as much from this pool as possible. I cannot stress enough how well it undermines and supports the situation if you play in these sounds in the correct situations. It can make a situation much more relaxing, much more creepy or mysterious just by playing a soundtrack that wouldnt even have to be longer than a second or two. The novel definitely tried to do this, but in my personal opinion did not do it enough.

So even as a short horror/mystery novel, I definitely did enjoy the read. The problem with it being short, actually stems from the want to read more. To explore it more. And that in my opinion, is the biggest proof that it was a good story. Or else, why would we want more of it?
Music was good, albeit lacking, scenery and art was really well done with its unique touch that also fit the " horro/mystery " theme really well, and the story itself, albeit short, was really enjoyable. The only thing I just didnt get, as I mentioned above, is in act 3, when they reveal how they created this whole situation and summoned Lilika pretty much, why is Lilika looking like a young girl? The maid died and gave her MIND, not her body, and the mother gave her BODY, so if I understood this correct, Lilika should look like her mother, which she doesnt. And that just didnt make sense to me.

But even with that minor confusion, it didnt hinder the story or the climax of it. I definitely recommed the read, as its really cheap and a short good story for some well spent time in between your casual daily routine.

~ ShikiX

It is amazing how there are so many splendid stories and hidden gems in forms of Visual Novels around steam.

Each and every one of these gems has some kind of special magic to them, and A little Lily Princess is no exception to this rule.
I will approach this review from a more emotional and personal angle because in the end, this Novel touched me from exactly these angles. Nontheless I still try to avoid spoilers as much as possible. Everything this review hits upon can also be taken from the small text at the store page so no worries about that.

A little Lily Princess is a story of a girl meeting with misfortune, misery, hardships and just simply full on unfair and relentless situations and treatment, and yet exactly there is where the magic happens. The protagonist always keeps her positive mental attitude. It is honestly astonishing to me how well it was written, given that I really got emotionally invested over the course of this game. And it is not Route dependent, as there are multiple routes for multiple characters in this game. No it is simply the story and the journey of the protagonist, no matter which route you choose, that is working like a spell on me. Also, each route features a girl with unique characteristics and personality so it was very enjoyable to meet them all and did not felt repetitive going through them.

As someone with a lot of problems to stay positive, as probably a lot of you might be able to understand, it’s very easy to not only give into despair and sadness, but even boost it through your own negative mentality. So actually experiencing a story that is so full of positive mentality, even while facing cruel misery and hardships, is really something magically to me. I can feel nothing but fascination, admiration and honestly a little jealousy towards the protagonist and how well written it is in general.

It is not just the positivity in general, as the protagonist knows all too well that positive thoughts can only carry you so far, but a sincere heart. It is the belief in kindness, companionship and being a good person that is displayed in this protagonist. Encountering hardship and cruel unfairness with a smile and the thought that still somewhere, someone has it worse and could use the help, the food or anything more than the protagonist herself and then proceeding to brighten up someone else’s day. Moreover doubting her own behavior, wether she is at fault for the ill behavior of others, and how she could improve and make things better. Absolutely amazing traits a lot of people sadly miss nowadays, as it becomes harder and harder to find something positive in this world.

The music of this novel is honestly nothing to special or fancy, but it really does its job at supporting the different scene and scenarios of the novel. After all a fitting soundtrack in the background can make a sad scene even sadder just as a joyous scene even happier. And I think the soundtrack of this novel does maybe not excel at this job, but definitely covers the necessities.

The artwork is also really good in my opinion. Inma is the character artist of the Sakura Novel Series so I was already introduced to her work long ago, but I can still appreciate her work and think she does a great job.

Overall in terms of pure quality of the soundtrack and the artworks, characters and backgrounds, this novel might be just a decent experience at best and pretty standard, but given the story to back it up and tie everything together, it makes for a really great experience that I can wholeheartedly recommend.

I did not expect a whole lot of this novel, yet I was thoroughly surprised and it left a VERY positive impression and experience that I am grateful for.

~ ShikiX

As I have been playing alot of rather short novels lately, I really came to enjoy an indepth long and really branched out story like Summer Pockets even more. I feel like it was a novel worth the time and dedication, rather than alot of different titles where you can somehow predict everything from the getgo and then you experience a huge letdown because of that.

Of course I will avoid and kinds of spoilers in my reviews so you don't have to worry about that going forward into my review. I wanna mention that this was my first Visual Novel by KEY, as I did not read their other popular titles yet like Clannad, Little Busters, etc. so you could say I went in " blind " in this experience.

I will start of with saying that I really appreciate the wide variety of voice acting in the game. Not only was it really well done and professional, but also the fact that basically every side character, be it animal or human or whatever, was voiced, was something I appreciated alot. It just rounds out the experience alot more. I always feel myself kinda letdown when I read a novel and some generic side character just isnt voiced. Glad that this did not happen here. In addition to that, also sound effects take place, which also not every novel does. Another plus in my books. What I mean with that is for example: splashing water, breaking glass, motorcycle sounds, etc. etc.

The artwork was also really well done. Not even an hour into the game I really thought to myself that I get this " old manga/anime " feeling with this artwork. Which I appreciate alot. Like in comparison to " newer " or more recent works you can clearly see that Summer Pockets goes back to the fundamentals. Back then when you really could tell that this is " really well done old school manga " and not some suuuper over edited, plastic like artwork some other titles nowadays have. The scenery, the CGs aswell as the character sprites were all really well done. On a small note I wanna mention that mutliple character sprites in this novel have different types of clothes. Thats also something you do not find in your everyday novel and another thing I highly appreciated.

The music was also really fitting and supported the atmosphere and scenery quite well. What I found myself really appreciating is the fact that even after 50 hours of reading, I did not feel that the music got repetetive. At least not in an annoying way. Towards the end I was able to tell in what direction a situation might go thanks to the music playing in the background, which you could maybe say was a bit unpleasant but I guess thats to be expected after finishing multiple routes and having 40+ hours into the game by then.

In terms of the story I can say I was really surprised multiple times by how touching it was. Like, everytime I was finishing a character route and thought like: " Alright this route was amazing I actually need to emotionally recover from that but lets see what the next one brings " the next one gave me the same feeling +1 you could say. I didnt expect the game to keep throwing good scenarios at me but it clearly did. Here is a big personal opinion though that might also be quite unpopular. Right from the beginning going through the character introductions, you can clearly tell which girl is supposed to be the " mysterious " one that the game wants you to push towards. And I really disliked that. You could just tell immediately " this will probably be the character most people like " and that was a huge upturn for me. To avoid spoilers I will not name which character it was but I was also pretty annoyed that exactly this character as predicted, branched out the most and was ultimately even more important than the protagonist himself. But as I said, this is just my personal opinion. I was just sad that exactly the character that appealed least to me, was the most important one. Can't do anything about that.

The story still played out absolutely amazingly though and in the end I grew to like the character I liked least alot too. So I would call that well rounded out in the end aswell. One thing I have to mention as a negative though is that with mostly all these long type of novels, if you don't do longer breaks ( which I don't ) it really starts to get annoying that you gotta play through the same stuff just in different perspectives until you actually arrive at a key changing point towards a certain character. But that was thankfully made up with how amazing the character routes are.

Also the casual routes were absolutely amazing. Meaning just the everyday interactions which did not focus on a main herione at all. The friendship between the guys, the island life and the little helping around the village were all really wholesome and enjoyable. Not only do you have a ton of different choices every " ingame day " of this novel, but it really feels like you aren't limited by anything and can dictate your own way. Really well done.

Also lastly I wanna say that this Novel has 2 really fun mini games coming with it. One is to play Table Tennis against a friend which has alot of different modes and difficulties while the other is actually a Pokemon-esque card collector and card battler game with the theme of the story and village. I found myself HUGELY enjoying and grinding that one. After all, I cannot call myself appreciating the game without catching them all now can I? haha

To sum it all up, I really liked this novel alot, found myself crying more often than I wanted to, enjoyed everybit of the casual side of the game and it fun side quests aswell and was absolutely astonished by how well the story was written. Do not get confused at certain parts or discouraged cuz you might not get the link between situations right away, the red line is very easy to follow and connects the whole game in the end fully at least for me, there was really nothing questionable left as I finished.

Definitely a recommendation to any serious Visual Novel enjoyer that is able to put in the time this WHOLE story needs without many huge breaks in between so you don't miss out on all the connections.

PS.: Team Kamome and Tsumugi all the way!

~ ShikiX

At first I was rather disturbed by how much negative reviews this novel had and honestly I was kinda hoping that they would be proven wrong.

And I am really glad they were. It was weird reading further and further into the story with the anticipation that any moment this would turn bad. The story could take a drastic turn and it simply loses it's connection.

That just goes to show that most of these reviews were written from people who either didn't understand the story or simply dropped it along the way and thus gave it a bad review. And it's also a reminder for me that I should stop reading reviews about games and buy something that seems good and promising off of the first impression rather than letting other people decide whats good and whats not.

Memorys dogma is a really great sci fi novel with a really cool idea and ongoing theme. Although just like always in my reviews I will not go into details of the story to avoid spoilers. So without going much more into that let's get to the common review points.

The voice acting was superb. Emotions were displayed perfectly. It felt like skilled people were doing their work and that made the overall experience really comfortable.

Artwork was really good aswell. It mostly worked with background pictures and moving character sprites rather than with alot of full drawn pictures of the characters but that's not a bad thing. It worked out perfectly. The scenery aswell as the character artwork were on point and really nicely done.

The music was also doing its job. Highlighting the scenes. Creating anticipation, excitement, comfyness ( if thats a word lol ) and overall enjoyment of the scenes.

The story might not be for anyone and some minor parts felt like they were similar to steins;gate but it was nontheless really great and differed enough from anything else to be a full blown outstanding new expirience for me. I really enjoyed it.

WARNING tho: This novel suffers from a disease alot of novels do on steam. Which is that the devs/producers backed up a sequel which never saw the light of day. Honestly im sick of having a great story with an ending that definitely leads into more and then having the devs abadon the title. Like this time it was fully backed up, hit the kickstarter goal and went way beyond that, had alot of supporters and was simply dropped and never picked up again. ( 3 years ago and up until summer 19 only empty promises )

So be ready to be disappointed if you actually like the story. I indeed was..

Nontheless it was a great experience an I enjoyed reading it and thus I would definitely recommend checking it out!

~ ShikiX

I can remember seeing this game getting advertised on the Paris Bandai Namco Orchestra concert I actually was part of and was super hyped for this game. I completed the story back then a few days after it came out and I really enjoyed it. It was a first time for me to play this kind of game and it really got me to my nerves and make me scared a little in some occasions haha.

Afterwards I moved on to other games and just 2 days ago I came back to the game, replaying it now with the DLC active and once again I absolutely loved and enjoyed every second of it. It was challenging, the puzzles were cool and sometimes it took some minutes to fully understand and execute them well. The music and overall atmosphere was fantastic and in this game category probably under the top ones. I cant really say so much because I don't have alot of expirience with this as I said. The music, the atmosphere, the lore hunting in some minor details and puzzling stuff together was a great expirience and the game is definitely really deep and interesting if you get to understand all the stuff. The character models were amazing and all in all it created a tense, interesting, frightening and amazing atmosphere!

Right now the credits are rolling after my "Hard to the Core" run, which requires you to finish the game under extreme conditions and oh boi it definitely was "Hard to the Core"! xD
Im really glad I replayed the whole thing again to maximize my expirience with this game as I fully enjoyed it and recommend it to everyone interested in the game!

Thanks for reading!

Cheers!

~ ShikiX

Another day, another game, another review!

This time, since the game is short, I will keep the rievew short aswell and ofc spoilerless and just mention the basics and interesting points.

This is my second chinese voiced game and even if it still feels a bit weird compared to japanese voice acted games, it was by far not as weird as it was the first time. I really enjoyed it.

The scenerey is really cute and done well but nothing extra ordinary or super flashy. Just calm and nice.

The music is really fitting for the different situations and moods which is always the most important part. Not much variety but its a 2 hour game so I didn't expect more.

The story though is really well written and I found myself really enjoying it. I didn't expect much but I was proven that even these short novels have a right to be here. It was very emotional and touching but still kept me smiling throughout its course with some tears nearing its end. Heartwarming story with depth to it. It didn't lack anything in my opinion. Short yes but still very solid.

Definitely recommending this game!

Thanks for reading!

~ ShikiX

I am happy that I found this game in a random explore queue and bought it ( BEFORE SALE so full price ) because I enjoyed every second of playing it. And I didn't regret paying the full price at all.

You start out in this game as the Mage Girl Zia who is on her quest to become a full fledged mage to be able to restore what has been broken and to help out people. Nothing further in terms of story will be spoilered in this review.

The world itself is really cute and I love the drawn style of it. It doesnt look animated in the slightest but like.. a weird drawn picture and I appreciate that haha.

Graphic wise and art wise its a really cute and cool game, definitely children based tho. Like even tho adults would appreciate this art aswell it is usually something you see in games for a younger audience. Really awesome I liked it.

The music was also pretty cool. I wouldn't say anything astonishing or out of this world but pretty solid and it made up for a chill relaxing atmosphere playing this game. In terms of sounds I also enjoyed that the people in this game have their own language in terms of sounds and it was super cute and enjoyable.

Gameplay is the strong aspect of this game tho. You have so many different options it is amazing. Playing as a mage who gathers runes to create spells YOURSELF through combining different runes together, the sheer numbers of options are amazing. You can combine so many different aspects of spells and behaviours that it always ends up as a "wow" moment when you use the spell you created for the first time. Alot of puzzles, different enemies and general side missions also require a vast variety of different spells you gotta combine exactly for specific challenges and I gotta be honest, that was not always easy. I broke my head over some of the puzzles and I enjoyed every second of it. I played this game to 100% on the hardest difficulty and it gave me a great and fun little challenge that I enjoyed for the time it lasted.

Really great game, definitely recommending it!

~ ShikiX

Heyo!

Since this Visual Novel was pretty short and I don't wanna spoiler anything as usual, this review will also be kept short but I still wanna put my opinion together.

First of all a major point I found somehow weird but got used to quickly is the fact that this novel only supports chinese as voice acting. I'm not saying that chinese is a bad language but if you read alot of Novels or/and play alot of anime or JRPG games you are 100% used to japanese audio. Which I just now expirienced first hand is really different from chinese audio, hence I had to get used to it. Even tho it was a first time chinese novel for me I really enjoyed the voice acting after overcoming the "first time weirdness" since the voice actors really put alot of emotion in the important parts of the dialogue. So it was enjoyable nontheless.

The music is also really good. For my own taste it felt as there were to less individual OSTs but since the novel is short that was also bearable. Don't get me wrong the music really fit in perfectly and added alot of emotion to it but with not alot of variety of different songs they kind of get repetitive. But as I said it wasn't bad in any way since it was overall enjoyable.

CG's, character art and background art both were on point and great. While the models of the characters weren't anything special the drawn pictures surely were and had their own magical touch and feeling to them. Really good. It was also a great variety between bland cold hospital rooms all the way to dreamland colorful awesomness.

The story was also really great even tho I gotta admit it felt just a little bit confusing. I could imagine the english translation is a little bit to blame, even tho it was good it had some minor spelling errors here and there but really nothing to much. Like a total of 5 words maybe? Still it's hard to tell a story without giving alot of info, then repeating the story from a different perspective with more info that wasn't given before but also only really works because of the different perspective and then add a third story to it that even had the DISCLAIMER that it hasn't anything to do with the first two stories but is more or less exactly like them or going hand in hand with alot of details. It just gets confusing.

What I wanna say is that the story was great. REALLY GREAT. It just could have been a little more fleshed out or more precise at some points. The overall theme to the story and the message to it is plain amazing tho. Big thumbs up for that! As I said I won't spoiler anything so I didn't say anything besides that it's great haha but more is left to find out on your own.

Thanks for reading and let me say that I definitely recommend this game!

PS.: Apparently the review wasn't as short as I thought xD Sorry

~ ShikiX

Vilseriol ( Hello ) people!

If you just stumbled upon this game and went down to the reviews wether to see if its worth a shot or not I can already ensure you that no matter if there is currently a sale going on or not, you will miss out big if you don't hit that "add to cart" button!

Mhakna Gramura and Fairy Bell is a really short but heart warming little story about two orphans who learn how to deal with their emotions and how to grow in order to overcome their fears and hardships. Besides these 2 main protagonists some other characters are met within the game that all have their little story to it. What I also like about the story is that even if it definitely is adressed to a more mature community who can understand the underlying theme of the whole story this could also perfectly work as a "good night story" you could read to children. And that fact really gives it a super warm feeling.

I don't wanna go in depth on reviewing single parts of this story because I don't want to spoiler it in any way so I will just adress the things that are overall clear on the shop screen already.

Just a lil heads up though since I mentioned it above the children learning to overcome their hardships this also includes some rather creepy scenes aswell.

For example the artwork and overall scenery is amazing. Like.. I often say that about really good Visual Novels but this one right here has a feeling to it that I never had before. As I mentioned above it feels like you are reading a story from a fairytale book. And the scenery is also pointing towards that feeling. It overall feels like you are reading a book while continuing to the next page where you find a lil picture of what's going on etc. It's amazingly done. I really think it's hard to deliver such a feeling but Mhakna Gramura and Fairy Bell just hit the spot!

The music is also really calming and cute. Nothing to fancy or extra ordinary but well selected to support the overall feeling of the story. I really enjoyed it!

The story itself works well and is enjoyable but it gets this extra kick of thoughtfulness and delivery when you think about what's actually going on and if you understand the underlying theme to it.

Without further ado I can sum up this review with a big thumbs up! I recommend this little story to anyone who likes the more "serious" or rather emotional side of the novelverse in steam.

Thanks for reading! And if you buy it, I really hope you enjoy the story as much as I did!

Edit: Gotta say tho for a 2 hour reading game I enjoyed its hella annoying to leave it running for another 5 hours plus just to drop the trading cards. Really idiotic in my opinion.

Cheers!

~ShikiX