Apologies, a very thorough review.

[vesperoffortune]

((I wanted to put this on the main store page but it was too long))

Where’s the sauce? Where’s the spice? Where’s the beef even?

I may be a little mean in this review, and I apologize. This is more of a review on this particular version of the game. I am finding myself actually curious for the earlier platformer version and may test that out, so I am not entirely turned off from the developers.

This game did more than turn me off. It shut down power for an entire state.

I gave this game two chances, and I couldn’t really vibe with it after a certain point. Like I just stopped in the middle of both playthroughs because I couldn’t deal. Though I’m not sure who was in charge of what after I certain point, because most of my issues is from story delivery.

The story is delivered mostly through dialogue. Which is fine, most stories are convyed in that manner. A hot fresh rpg, delivered to you in 100 hours of gametime, mostly through dialogue,

The dialogue, is the issue though.

I’m not sure what voice direction the VA’s were given, however, it wasn’t a great direction. I feel most of the time, emotions are too subtle, if there were emotions at all. The dialogue comes off as flat because of it. It’s again making me wonder: Where’s the sauce? Where’s the spice? These characters aren’t having emotions. Where is Aunt Xena’s sternness for Cyrus and Mike? Or her care? Knox is probably the only character I would allow to get away with being emotionless, and that even falls flat because he doesn’t really sound as mechanical as he should.

There is just nothing in the delivery of the lines. It’s a bunch of people reading a script, to me at least.

This is combined with horrible splicing and editing. Sometimes characters come off as speaking faster than natural, and a lot of lines nearly crash and wreck into each in a way you know is not natural. I’m not sure if this was done to emulate more natural speaking and thought processes, but, just as a general tip to everyone reading, we as humans have been intaking the written word for centuries, and been watching television and movies and playing videogames for decades. We have an innate suspension of disbelief for dialogue almost in our species coding at this point. Trying to go for interesting ways to deliver the dialogue could be cool, but this isn’t really great for me, and comes of as shoddy editing.

This is further topped off by the fact that none of the characters emote when they speak.

No emotions in their voices, no emotions on their faces. No sauce, no spice. How am I supposed to fall in love with these brilliantly drawn characters when rocks emote more? The Maoi statues have a fandom for a reason guys!

This is an rpg. Your characters and how they feel are one of the most important aspects of the game itself. How am I supposed to play “♥♥♥♥, Marry, Kill” when all the characters bore me to tears?

This includes Cyrus.

Cyrus, suffers from what I already listed above. Bad voice direction, and horrid voice editing. I am not in love with character though. At a first glance, he is rather endearing. But on my second try, I kind of noticed a lot of his inferiority complex came from a single interaction with the first attractive girl he sees.

Like I like the idea of an inferiority complex.

I hate it being tied to “I don’t think my penis (metaphorical or literal) is enough to please her”. I know that’s not the intention, but it’s what it comes off as. Not to mention, it really feels as if it’s the only time it comes up. Trying to rack my brain for other times he seems insecure in himself doesn’t come up.

Also, I just feel like his partial blindness just adds nothing to him or the story? There’s not even any fun to be had with him emoting with his eyes closed BECAUSE HE DOESN’T EMOTE.

Onto more misplaced effort, I feel there are some issues with the beginning scene?

When we are making the first dice rolls in the prologue, we only these CGs. There’s not any reaction to hear, and when we fail or succeed, we’re just in the dreamland?

What was the point of me rolling the dice? At no point did I feel rewarded for that.

The other characters didn’t react to us, and we only had like three interesting pictures in general. I know it’s the prologue, but this is first impressions. And mine were “This is okay, I guess.”

I didn’t say “Oh wow cool, I feel like I’m in DnD.” Because DnD rewards my rolls with reactions. That is the base of DnD. Something happens, you roll a dice as recourse, and you get a reaction from the DM.

Nothing happens in the prologue with my dice. Where’s my reward. WHERE’S THE BEEF?

This brings up a similar problem I feel throughout the story. There’s no transitions. Nothing feels smooth, every new place, every new person feels like a jump cut. My best example is when you’re walking with Mike and that civilian just comes out of nowhere. Just pops out of nowhere, you’re in and out.

I don’t feel comfy with the game. I just realized that while I was writing this. I don’t feel like I get to be comfortable.

But these jump cuts are combined with entirely useless walking down hallways scene. Or walking down roads.

It’s pretty, I get it.

But it’s not serving. It’s not eating. It gives me “Oh look at what we can do” vibes.

However, it’s not very special when it’s all I see.

In all honesty, there are times when the game would be better off with a visual novel approach (and in all due honesty on that front as well, the game would be better as a visual novel) by going with a still image and close ups on characters. What if, instead of that walk in Micropolis, Mike and Cyrus had to sit uncomfily close on a bus and they had their conversation with their faces changing as they warmed up to each other? They could do that while walking to of course, I’ve just seen so much walking in this game I’m already tired of it.

Since I’ve already dabbled in a little bit already, I wanted to talk about the art.

When I got VED through Keymailer, there was a little promo bit that I know think was more of disclaimer. It said:

“VED is a 100% human-made game. No AI-generated assets were used during its development”

Now, I bring this up to say this: The art is gorgeous, but also generic.

I feel like I could see this art anywhere. I don’t feel like I have too boot up VED just to get a hit. I know rather well, I could hit up any fantasy section of the bookstore, any TTRPG handbook, open up any western based fantasy card game, look at any tarot deck, for this art style.

It may have been more individual back in the day before DnD became the next big thing however, it does feel I’ve seen this before.

It’s not a hit on the artists or anything. I just feel there’s nothing really individual here. There are some designs I really enjoy, particularly Knox and the fairy. Again, everything does feel very fantasy generic in a way that I can open any like fantasy bestiary and see similar things.

For what it’s worth, I do feel a lot of the character designs, especially when they got weirder, are not bad, but they need a little love. Outfits and faces are a bit to plain. I feel, again the NPC from when you’re walking with Mike is an example, would fit well in horror, and a lot of the scratched up looking characters just would fit well in different environs.

There is just something missing and it’s a splash of personality. It’s a splash of something that would make me go “This is so-and-so from Karaclan!” Just like when anyone sees a bunch of belts they go “Hey that’s Tetsuya Nomura!”

Now that I am done with story delivery and art, let’s get to the next issue.

The battle system.

It sits somewhere between Darkest Dungeon and Radiant Historia inspiration, but doesn’t really do as well as either of them. Your only character to control (as far as I’m aware) is Cyrus. And because if that, you only have one character between you and restarting.

I will applaud the game for not punishing me for death, as, if your rng is bad, you will die a lot.

If you choose a ritual to make the battle tougher (which is available from… I think the second enemy you face as Cyrus onward? Maybe the first even) the fight really does feel like you’re hoping rng graces you. When you skip a harder ritual, or even make the fighter easier, it becomes too easy and it’s mostly Cyrus just smacking away at enemies. There’s not an exact “Oh wow this feels good.” point for me. It switches between too easy and too hard.

And because this system is connected to your town building system (how you get abilities) it thusly doesn’t make that system feel great either.

The battle system doesn’t feel intuitive.

It feels luck based.

One other issue that I actually had with battles is that the FOREGROUND will block my view. Again the art is pretty, but if it makes me suck in battle, that is a point against it. I do not enjoy my vision being blocked if it’s not on purpose. And this doesn’t come off as “we purposely placed these flowers here to make the battle harder”, it comes off as “oh hey we thought this would look cool because it’s the foreground! Foreground stuff is cool right?”

Again, same vibes as the walk cycle. It’s not impressive, and there are better ways of doing it that do not impede my vision of something absolutely necessary for proper gameplay.

But yeah, battle system doesn’t feel good to me. Not gonna be nice about it.

I do wish to leave on a good note, so I will say the music is nice, and the producer did an amazing job fitting the tracks to the general mood and vibes of the settings and conversations.

I don’t mean to be cruel with this review. At best, the game is middling for me, at worst, it’s a bad game. Certainly not the worst, but I found my vibe going down in my first attempt, and the second attempt to play felt like a slog.

The game feels unfinished even. The vocal editing and the fact that none of the characters emote are just such major turn offs.

My fav parts of the entire game was when the world turned blue and you fumbled around with choices. Like when Cyrus wakes up, or when he saves Mike from the fire, or when he teleports into Impulse. I felt the game was at its best and most interesting then.

A hybrid of visual novel and point and click adventure may have been a better choice for this version of VED than what we got. I will be keeping an eye out on anything else by Karaclan. Because there’s still a lot of love here. I will not speculate on what happened, and I apologize for the long and bad review, but I prefer to be truthful about my experiences.

[🍀༺𓆩Felicity𓆪༻🎲]

Thank you for writing such a thorough review. You've mentioned issues with characters speaking faster than normal and lines 'clashing' into each other. This could be an FPS issue, and it can be cured by either setting a limit of 30/59 FPS and using V- or F-Sync or setting the audio output to 24-bit 48 KHz. A quick way to check and change that setting is by pressing Win+R - mmsys.cpl, double-clicking on the speaker or SPDIF-out, where you can set a standard format. This could not only fix possible playback issues but also lead to a more natural-sounding voice output, which you also complained about.

Anyway, your review has helped me make a more informed purchasing decision, and for this, I wish to thank you.

[vesperoffortune]

Originally posted by 🍀༺𓆩Felicity𓆪༻🎲:

Thank you for writing such a thorough review. You've mentioned issues with characters speaking faster than normal and lines 'clashing' into each other. This could be an FPS issue, and it can be cured by either setting a limit of 30/59 FPS and using V- or F-Sync or setting the audio output to 24-bit 48 KHz. A quick way to check and change that setting is by pressing Win+R - mmsys.cpl, double-clicking on the speaker or SPDIF-out, where you can set a standard format. This could not only fix possible playback issues but also lead to a more natural-sounding voice output, which you also complained about.

Anyway, your review has helped me make a more informed purchasing decision, and for this, I wish to thank you.

You're welcome and I'm glad I could help!

As for the audio issues, I will think about it, if I wish to give the game a third try. This is the only game I have experienced this with, so I don't want to fudge around with things just for it.