Recent reviews by 鮎川タウル

The Best!

I am half way through this game at the time of this writing. That is almost six hours, so if you are considering it, expect to take about 12 hours to play through once.
What drew me to getting this was the idea of a visual novel that is designed as both an instructional tool, as well as a dating sim. In many ways it fills both of those slots, but at the same time, it is not without problems.

First of all, the good:
The story is cute, as are the cast of girls you have to chose from. Like most dating sims, it does not tell you how to win the hearts of your chosen girl and you have to stumble around figuring it out. This I think is good as it will mix up future playthroughs, which will only serve to strengthen the lessons.
Your initial lessons are in Hiragana and Katakana, followed by sound combinations. Understanding there, as in being able to sight-read them without effort is essential to developing good skill in Japanese. This is by far the greatest strength in this game. If a player puts in the effort, they can learn one of the most important foundational skills they need for effective learning. However, this focus on these alphabets comes at a price.

The Bad:
Typos? They exist. Every game of this kind has typos. Move on.
This game focuses on Hiragana, Katakana, and sound combinations. While those are good to know, and can help with Kanji learning via Furigana, the simple fact is, you need to know the Kanji for what you are learning. When dealing with Japanese, be it in games, manga, anime, newspapers, or any other media, you will be confronted with Kanji, and knowing how to read it as it is presented will make it much easier to practice, and keep your skills up.
But, I think my main complaint about this game is the total lack of proper explanation of the use of は as a particle. The game consistently refers to the particle は as Ha instead of Wa in all of the Romanji. This will set a beginner in Japanese with a very bad habit that, while forgivable, can be very embarrassing, as well as hard to change later in learning. Bad habits formed in the beginning can be very hard to overcome later in the cycle.

Overall, I feel it is a good game. It has a fun cast, an enjoyable storyline filled with every trope you can imagine, appropriate music, and will help you recognize some basic building blocks of Japanese. Maybe it will even teach you a few words and a little grammar along the way.

Great game, but Wildlands is better.

50 hours in, and I am still barely playing the storyline. So, I can not comment on it at all. But, the game is fun to just run around doing side-questing all day long.

Do it. You know you want to.

9 Hours into the game, and so far it is enjoyable.

I should warn you, it is very standard for Open World RPG Games. There is a main quest, which involves going from place to place, meeting NPCs, and solving their fetch or kill quests. With as much of it as I have played, it is really average storytelling. Nothing really groundbreaking.
However, it also has a metric ton of side-quests. These really flesh out the world and give you a good sense of the story, and the world in which the story inhabits. This is, at least at only 9 hours into the game, the real reason to play this game.
Gamplay? Oh? That? You swing a big sword. Throw some spells. There is a fair amount of alchemy. Your horse is fun to ride. Kill-loot-sell-buy-upgrade-kill-loot-sell-upgrade-you-know-the-drill. But it is at least as of this time, an enjoyable loop.
Graphics are top notch. Definitely a lot of work went into that. Especially the environmental effects. Some of the storms you can almost feel.
Sound Effects? Do you remember when Blizzard was King of the sound effects with Diablo II? Well, this is better than they ever were. These sounds are part of what makes the environment so believable.
Music? No clue. I always turn that off.

My premature thoughts? This is a good game worth playing, if you are into Open World Fantasy RPGs.
But, if it does a dive near the end like MGS5:PP did, do not blame me, I have not finished it yet.

Game finished, and an excellent game it is. Broken into five parts, I played each part on a separate day. This way each part had time to settle in and any feels could happen. And, there were many feels.

I am really into Visual Novels. In fact, I have been into them since the 80's, and this game really grabs onto that desire, and takes it in a slightly different direction. In many ways it plays like Telltale games, but allows for much more freedom. It also has much better character development, and so far, a fairly complicated backstory.
This is not to say it is for everyone. There is a significant amount of reading, and there is not a lot in the action department. Most of the game so far is exceptionally well paced, but that pace is slow.

That said, there is a reason why this game is popular, and in playing it, I can see why.

This is the first time I have wished Steam had a 1-5 star rating system instead of a yes/no.


First off, I beat this game in 11 hours. Which feels exceptionally short for a game of this acclaim.

It is a moderately interesting game at best. The writing is cliched and lazy, the A.I. is sub-par, and the entire game felt like it was on rails.

I have been a fan of the Shadowrun universe since the initial release of First Edition. I have always loved how vast, varied, and interesting the world, those that live in it, and their mythos are. I expected to find some of that when I played. But, instead, I felt the game to be flat, and two dimensional.

As far as the A.I. is concerned.
It will always attack the player avatar in game, when such a path is available. This means, you can have an NPC character, nearly dead, standing next to the MOB, and your PC, full health, across the room from them, and the A,I. will attack your PC instead of the wounded NPC. If your PC is not available, and your PC is a Rigger with Drones deployed, then they become the preferred target. Only if neither of those options are available, only then, will the A.I. target NPC's.
This makes it exceptionally simple to control the flow of battle, and defeat the enemy quickly and efficiently, with no loss to account for.
Obviously you can tell I played a Rigger. More accurately a Elf Decker/Rigger, with a shotgun. An excessively overpowered option in a game with such a lazy A.I.

As for the good?
The story is very cliche, but it does hold attention.
The music is repetitive, and I grew bored of it quickly, but I did not mute it.
The graphics, overall, are very well done. In that area, it did feel like Shadowrun.
Gameplay is simple, straight forward, and as such highly intuitive.

Overall, I would only suggest this if you get it on sale for $5.00 US or less. It is not really worth full price.

First of all, the community in this game is terrible. After a point.

It has a steep learning curve. And, in the beginning, most people are friendly enough and will help you.
However, once you start into tier three, you will start to encounter the rest of the community. And, they are not nice people.

If you are playing anything other than fighters, such as bombers or torpedo planes, prepare to be harassed. The average player seems to feel the only point of playing is to fly a fighter and all other aircraft are garbage and deserve to be shot down. As a rule the Russian aircraft are overpowered and not historically accurate at all.

If you play ground forces, you will encounter a different type of player. As a group they tend to be more level headed and helpful.
Learn to play realistic mode. It is slow and paced, but it filters out the children better.

truly loving this game.