In my quest to complete and review some holiday-themed games of mine this month, I stumbled upon Christmas Tale.

Visually, it's got some nice-looking backgrounds, and two manga-style characters at certain slots.

Story has the main character contemplating the meaning of Christmas and deciding to help (or not) various people. Seems simple and nice enough?

Unfortunately, the main character (who is never shown) is a hateful little prick with a depressing attitude about everything, even (or rather especially) when helping people. I disliked him at virtually every sequence.

The translation seems off. It is English alright but it's often written in a peculiar way. There are sudden curse words in many places.


When I first started the game, it begins in the end right away (something I discovered after my first playthrough), displaying a score of some kind.

Then, after the playthrough the very last scene hangs and the game ceases progressing. Therefore, it was not possible for me to see the different ending scenes. Maybe this was because I somehow gained more than 10 points (which was claimed as the maximum)?

Over the playthrough, choices have no effect at all. They only affect the ending score (and I suppose ending if it managed to trigger properly).


Not sure if this is because of the chosen engine but usually in visual novels you can also rewind text. Well, in this one you cannot rewind and saving only works for the first 4 slots - the 5th one doesn't seem to apply, and it would not let me save over the previous saves.

There is a skip text option but it is rather slow because for whatever reason it takes relatively long for each text sequence to appear.

So, it was a slow and not very pleasant string of replays looking for the achievements.

There's fullscreen option but no in-game muting of sounds/music (just use the volume mixer if you wish to: alt+tabbing works fine).


This was not a particularly pleasant read-through, that lasted about 30 minutes, and it would have been faster if the text were not so slow to appear.

The ending's broken, translation's not great, and the story is (without ending anyway) uninspired. There's a guide for achievements but even finally following that I was only able to gain 5 out of 7, since two failed to unlock for me.

In its current state, I think it's not worth to play even if it was free.

~Twistorian Curator~

[h1]Flawed, almost pointless visual novel.[/h1] In my quest to complete and review some holiday-themed games of mine this month, I stumbled upon [i]Christmas Tale[/i]. Visually, it's got some nice-looking backgrounds, and two manga-style characters at certain slots. Story has the main character contemplating the meaning of Christmas and deciding to help (or not) various people. Seems simple and nice enough? Unfortunately, the main character (who is never shown) is a hateful little prick with a depressing attitude about everything, even (or rather especially) when helping people. I disliked him at virtually every sequence. The translation seems off. It is English alright but it's often written in a peculiar way. There are sudden curse words in many places. [h1]Broken ending?[/h1] When I first started the game, it begins in the end right away (something I discovered after my first playthrough), displaying a score of some kind. Then, [i]after the playthrough[/i] the very last scene hangs and the game ceases progressing. Therefore, it was not possible for me to see the different ending scenes. Maybe this was because I somehow gained more than 10 points (which was claimed as the maximum)? Over the playthrough, choices have no effect at all. They only affect the ending score (and I suppose ending if it managed to trigger properly). [h1]Technically incompetent[/h1] Not sure if this is because of the chosen engine but usually in visual novels you can also rewind text. Well, in this one you cannot rewind and saving only works for the first 4 slots - the 5th one doesn't seem to apply, and it would not let me save over the previous saves. There is a skip text option but it is rather slow because for whatever reason it takes relatively long for each text sequence to appear. So, it was a slow and not very pleasant string of replays looking for the achievements. There's fullscreen option but no in-game muting of sounds/music (just use the volume mixer if you wish to: alt+tabbing works fine). [h1]Not worth it[/h1] This was not a particularly pleasant read-through, that lasted about 30 minutes, and it would have been faster if the text were not so slow to appear. The ending's broken, translation's not great, and the story is (without ending anyway) uninspired. There's a guide for achievements but even finally following that I was only able to gain 5 out of 7, since two failed to unlock for me. In its current state, I think it's not worth to play even if it was free. [url=http://store.steampowered.com/curator/9997062/]~Twistorian Curator~[/url]