Recent reviews by Materia User

Another nice little horror VN, Reminds me of some kind of odd mix of Higurashi with the murder mystery element and Sound of Drop with the "alternate horror reality"

Characters all start and end with different personalities, the killer's identity was difficult to figure out, and one particular moment in this gave me one hell of a creeped out feeling. I can also say one particular story really tore me up emotionally; on one hand I hated this guy, and on the other hand... I couldn't. Hell I still don't know how to feel about it.

If you like horror vn's this will be right up your alley.

If I had to mention cons:
A lot of characters stories are never fleshed out more fully, but considering how many characters there are and how well written the ones we got were, this is a minor complaint imo.
Not epic quality in terms of art, but that never really bothered me much personally.

You sort of get 2 games out of this one - The game within a game and your "real" counterpart who is a tour guide for the moon.

I like that in the end you get to see the different alternatives that could have happened. In both games.

If you love choice of games, this shouldn't be any different unless you really hate the more realistic setting compared to some of their other stuff. I got this mainly because I saw no reviews for it, and I love almost all choice of games things, so I picked it up to review it.

If you are new to this publisher I recommend the Heroes trilogy or choice of robots one for your first games, but this isn't bad.

I hesitated buying this for a while, the graphics didn't appeal but more importantly I didn't think that having a game revolve around the life of a bartender sounded much fun.

But I actually loved this. There is quite a bit of depth here - some interactions are not even recorded anywhere as far as I know. For example I gave someone a spicy drink after she ate something spicy and she wanted to cool down but I thought it would be funnier to see what would happen if I did the opposite instead. Plus I didn't know which drink would do that. There was extra dialogue written for that small interaction and that was pretty cool.

You can customize your house and shop with varying effects which keeps the visuals somewhat fresh.

The characters are where the game shines but I don't think I will talk about them since they are so fun to find out about on your own. Dorothy is definitely my favorite but I love Sai and the boss as well.

Very well done game overall. Nice attention to details.

Although I don't have much time on steam, I grew up on this game with my dad.

One of my favorite moments was when my dad was playing the game and he's always been a much better player than me, but on one of the harder difficulties he was stuck against a civ that spammed priests. He tried chariots which are the unit that should be strongest against priests (4x resistance to being converted) but they still got instantly converted anyway. My dad never cheats in the game, but since he had given up at this point already I suggested he just type in "Big Daddy" (either they changed the words in this version or it was a diff age of empires cuz it's something else now) So we spawned in some cheat units which are super fast so should be fast enough to kill everything with em.

He rushes the base with a couple of cars... and they all get converted.
I laughed. Dad was pissed.

My 2 cents:

I've only played the vampire masquerade half so far (kinda) and it's ok. I have some problems I really hate though.

First is the "pics" sent in the game I can't tell what the heck they are and they are supposed to give me clues. Kinda like looking at abstract art and trying to come up with some sense. Not really my thing. The protagonist and friends don't really act like anyone I know, but maybe I just hang with a different crowd, who knows. It made me feel very little about them, since I couldn't relate very much.

The whole thing takes place on a cell phone, and it's irritating mostly because it doesn't make sense. There is little sense of impending death when apparently you have the time to text it all to your friends. The game kinda even admits to it, when he mentions that you are constantly locked up somewhere with nothing to do but text, because they allowed you to keep your phone. lol.

Right now I'm stuck on this choice tree where I die if I choose the wrong thing, and the entire chapter is like 30 choices long and I'm tired of replaying it all when one of the choices is "F*** you" or "You're disgusting!" Apparently one of those leads to death and the other is safe.

I quit and am writing this out of frustration. Maybe I will have better luck with the mage side of things, if I decide to give this game a chance again.

I much prefer the choice of games publisher for a similar style but better writing imho.

Could be worth it on sale if you really dig this kind of thing though I guess.

Wow. I just heard about this game becoming free, and I started playing it... It is a fun game and the fights are a little unbalanced, partly matchmaking, partly because monsters are a little too strong (though not all of them)

But it's very quality game for being free, and it never feels like you cannot win. Sadly I just heard that the publisher (not the devs) will not work on this game anymore, and It's considered "done"

Because it's free I can recommend it, but the game is dead, I play with 2-4 others and Q times are still about 15-25 minutes long during peak times. Most of the time you will even fight the same people over and over which means the result of those fights tends to be the same as well.

I recommend playing it and showing your support, but do not be surprised it this game drops off the face of the earth soon either.

Got a lot to say about this one, mostly negative but it does have a recommend at the end of it.

Cons:
Grindy - It feels like it was made for a phone or something (and maybe it was, I dunno I don't care enough to look it up) The dungeon is the best example of this, you spam click explore and get small amounts of exp and gold, you level up kind of quickly, but the problem is each level is about 20 extra hp and each floor the enemies seem to jump about 1k in health. So you end up repeating floors a lot if you lose.

Windowed is the only "real" way to play. You can maximize it, but it becomes the ugliest thing when you do and is pretty much unplayable.

Sound effects are... *shudders* In particular if you play with headphones the transportation sound sounds as if it was made to be the worst sound to put on headphones ever. I've never had a game actually make me take off my headphones before.

The plot takes a long time to actually go anywhere most of what you read is something along the lines of "Hi, I'm cute. We need to get this shard from over there to trigger a fight!" and that's exactly what happens until you get all the shards.

The battle system is flawed in that the enemies are plain stupid. This means you can sometimes win against a person with 4 times more health, and 4 times stronger cards than you because they spent all their time debuffing your units instead of attacking you. Literally had an enemy where he could attack me and end it, but debuffed me instead giving me the win. I read about this in another review, but I didn't realize that it was pretty much every single fight.

Pros
Grindy can be a pro for some people - I still haven't collected all the cards or even close to it, and I'm 12 hours in. This keeps the card part kind of fresh for now, which considering this is a cheap game is not a bad deal.

Hilarious animation. I doubt anyone will fap to it, but every single female has her boobs bounce for literally no reason and is completely unrealistic. It's funny though. If you find a rare guy or creature card they get like flying stars or something in their cards. Once in a while you find a girl with smaller boobs that can't really bounce and for me this is the hardest challenge and my favorite cards to find. The one type I found has her clothes get more see through as she upgrades because she is a ghost type
So far I have only found 1 nude card, and she is a goblin so she's not exactly pretty to look at, but it's there and worth mentioning I suppose.

pretty card art in general though or maybe it just contrasts from the rest of the ugly game.

Other than that not much pros...

So if you like to grind... say you enjoy the clicker games or things like adventure capitalist, it's not terrible for that purpose. It actually has a game under it, unlike those. If you just want a time waster, this can be your next major sink - to that end I could recommend it at full price.

If you want a game with some solid hours and funny animation, this does the job, but all the negatives will probably bog you down, in which case I recommend it for maybe 2-3 bucks.

Which are you? You decide! Next time on Fappable Anime Games of HISTORYYYYYYYYY!!

Sorry just had the random urge.

Worst aquarium ever!!

If you have played 9 hours 9 persons 9 doors, this is a lot like that. A lot of bad endings even when your trying to not get them. A game you will beat on your first try, this is not.

On the technical side of things I look for a couple of key things that most visual novels have, but annoy me when they don't:

A log of what was previously said, even better if it serves as a psuedo rewind complete with recurring cgs if there are any, but not allowing you to change a choice you made.
This game has a log, but it's a simple text one. Acceptable for me. You will undoubtedly save scum for this, and the game even knows this, by having an autosave option during any choice.

A way to hide the text box. Sometimes I want to see the pretty characters, or background or simply appreciate a good moment. It has this, I'm happy with it.

A way to customize the textbox. Sadly other than your basic speed of text options it does not contain any recolors or font options.

There are no voiceovers. Sometimes these are terrible so I don't really mind. My imagination is usually better anyway.


To the game itself: Very pretty opening and it takes place in an aquarium so it's fitting that there are some pretty scenes. It also makes the disturbing scenes that much more disturbing.

Although the plot is unrealistic, it's not ridiculous. About the same level of realism as Corpse Party (not quite that dark though)

This game isn't for everyone. Without spoiling all I can say is that it has some dark elements to it.
If you can handle things like Sickness and Higurashi you will almost undoubtedly like this.

As far as quality goes this is pretty high up there... and it's free for some reason. I've played 100's of VN's maybe close to 1000 now and as far as quality vs price this is at the top of the list. Though they don't actually move like say... Nekopara, the detail in showing who is speaking and how they are feeling during things like a phone call or a video game simulation really shine. The way the entire thing is written is very well done as well. I tried to predict what was going to happen and most of the time I was wrong, which is hard to do for me now.

As far as negatives go I can say that the choices in the game are usually obvious, and that the end result feels about the same as well.

But honestly? I'm being petty mentioning these things for a game that is not only free but has quality like this does. Both of those issues can be addresed in the next installment of this game as well.

If they start charging money for this game I would gladly pay it.

Also of note compared to other VN's is that the protagonist is not completely unaware of others feelings for him which can get annoying when you have read as much as me and it's painfully obvious.

I'm terrible at RTS games. Like TERRIBLE. I have a hard time memorizing macros and I even sit and think about stategies for long periods of time and they fall flat on their face as if I somehow managed to find the absolute worst stategy for the situation.
Nonetheless I find myself drawn to them because I love dreaming up these strategies and watching them... even when they fail. I used to play age of empires, and when the game was about to win type in big daddy and watch a freaking car get my revenge.

This game was no different. Maybe I missed something but until yesterday I didn't even know you could double click to charge your units... so my units would just WALK at them. Hilarious in retrospect. I would never have known if not for my friend telling me (He's a huge warhammer and rts/horde game fan) and thanks to him I managed to conquer my first province today.

If your as bad as me (not possible) then find or get a good friend to let you learn the ropes a bit. The game was fun even without his help but I gave up actually trying to win fights loss after loss and I dropped the game for a long time.

I've never played any of the other total war games, they looked complicated and difficult so I can't compare to them. As far as DLC goes - the game is fun without them. Honestly compare it to prob the king of dlc sims 3 and try to add all that dlc to cart. This isn't so bad in comparison is it?

Appreciate any tips by the way on what to do now for my vampires who succefully captured the province. I hear choas wars are in the north and they are a major threat - should I move north and try to deal with it early or head west into bretonnian, empire territory and also where my allied friend is as the beastmen? He has choas corruption and I have vampiric so I'm wondering if I should actually stay away from him too. I don't think east where the dwarves and orcs are is an option, dwarves are big and scary, and orcs are on the other side of the mountain I think.