Throbbyさんのレビュー一覧

There's basically only one minigame you play for 95% of the game, and it's boring as hell. You sit... and watch a little bar slowly creep toward full. For thirty seconds. The action, such as it is, comes at roughly ten-second intervals, where you have a brief moment of interactivity where you try and click the mouse when a pointer is in the sweet spot of a bar. You get one try per action sequence.

It's exactly as fun as it sounds. The girls are okay, but their voices can be annoying, and the animations are exactly the same for each of them. There are certain things that differentiate them, beyond their hair and whatever, but there's just... nothing really gripping. There are a million games out there with just as much - and often more, and higher-quality - H-content, plus good gameplay to boot. I really *want* to have something nicer to say about this, but I can't come up with anything really meaningful. At least the dev put some effort into it, and it's not terribly animated or ugly or anything. Now all it needs is a story, non-grindy gameplay, more interesting minigames, more women...

I'm going to be as charitable as I can, given that the game is eleven-years old. To that end, I'll note that the animations are smooth, there is a LOT of variation in the H-scenes, and the art is pretty decent.

Unfortunately... this game sucks as a *game*. The controls are amazingly unresponsive and horribly implemented; you can't turn around while crouching, but must stand up, face the other way, and then crouch again! They're sluggish, don't include combos or running or blocking, and the enemies' hitboxes are sometimes utterly incomprehensible. Your best bet is to power through the first half of the level, let yourself get killed by the boss, and then try again with full health. You're going to win by using your special attack; there's really no other easy way to do it. Unfortunately, re-doing the boss fights means listening to her entire spiel--and any reply by the enemy leader--every time you retry. It's annoying.

It's a damn shame, because I *want* to like it. The enemies are well implemented, and I really like games that actually make you feel like you're getting overwhelmed from all sides. If only this one were more playable, it would be a huge winner. I'm giving it two stars 'cause the art is good, the heroine doesn't have stupid-huge balloon-tits, and the death-cry the monsters do is goofy as hell. Without those saving graces, this game would be a total pass. :/

And it's that the window size is fixed! For a game that requires you to rapidly click on a tiny part of the playable area--near the edge--the lack of a resize feature is mind-boggling. I can't tell you how many times I wound up clicking on the desktop or trying to move files from one folder to another while frantically trying to spawn enough guys to overwhelm the heroines.

Other than that, it's really pretty good. Definitely a change of pace from their other work; while that's a slow-paced minesweeper-type, this is a click-clickety-clickfest, as you try and throw enough cannon-fodder monsters into battle to finally capture your prey.

Animations are good--and slightly higher-res than in that other game--but I agree that it would have been nice to have "check breeding status" be more than a replay button. Still, the art is pretty dang nice, even if the developer made a few sometimes-confusing choices (why put a jizz-leaking tentacle in front of a captured heroine if it's not going to poke her in the mouth or give her a facial or something?!).

Unfortunately, there's not a *ton* of replay value; I wasn't too horribly upset to find that my gamestate was saved when I accidentally closed the window. For the price, though, I think that's forgivable. I look forward to more works by this creator!

I reeeeeally want to give this four stars. It's fun, and it's got good dialogue, and there are a variety of things to do, and all that should add up to a great game.

Here, though, it just kinda doesn't.

For starters, the pacing is wrong. There are supposed to be multiple ways to solve most cases, but in practice, that's not really possible. F'rinstance, an early mission involves getting two guys to call off their duel. That seems like a fairly time-limited quest, right? Well, two of the three potential solutions require you to have made significant progression through the game before you can access them; the quicker of them still takes something like two in-game weeks. By then, the duel should be done, and somebody bleeding out in the street. Too many of the early quests require you to leave them on the back-burner far too long if you want to try an alternative solution.

Similarly, the police route opens up really fast, and again, the cases are presented as being so time-dependent that there's no excuse for gallivanting off to do side-quests instead of taking care of the immediate problem. When a burglary is announced to be imminent, it stretches credulity to watch the heroine wander around or play at the sex club.

Neither one of these is a gameplay problem, exactly, but it's just poor storytelling. Which blows, 'cause the stories they do tell are often fairly good ones. There are lots of quests, and the way they play out can vary depending on your lewdness level, your skills, which other quests you've completed... It's a really good effort, hobbled by boneheaded mistakes.

More of a bummer is that the quests are all too easy. They spoon-feed you where to look for clues, where you can use your wire gun, etc. The first-aid skill is pretty powerful, and you can get through an awful lot of the gang route without needing items; there's really no way to lose most fights until you're most of the way through that route. Also, some missions require certain prerequisites, and it can be jarring--I'm thinking about the photos, and how you gotta sell 'em in order to take new ones.

All told, this is somehow LESS than the sum of its parts. It's fun, don't get me wrong... but I feel like it somehow just doesn't quite manage to be really great. Somehow, it manages to feel both too linear and unrealistically open-world at the same time.

Lots to say, and not much space, so I'll be terse.

A case of the good, the bad, and the ugly. Solid enough to finish, and I enjoyed it, but there are near-fatal flaws.

Good: Excellent music; hadn't heard it before. Great job updating dialogue as you progress; NPCs all over the map have new things to say often. Level and skill progression is interesting and effective. Character art is very well done.

Story seems detailed and lovingly made; the themes seem to focus on change and belonging, on making relationships and letting go. The writing would be a strength, but the English is SO spotty. Still, lots of memories to unlock on the map, lots of changes to the world between events, and an interesting level-up system mean it's fun to play, if you like exploring traditional JRPG worlds.

Bad: Equipment has small effect, and cost-to-benefit is haphazard. Poor scaling in this game; leveling up doesn't seem to affect damage taken/given, but does unlock more powerful magic and abilities.

Translation is rough, ranging from crystal-clear, to "need to know a bit of Japanese to figure it out" to "What? WHO IS TALKING?!" Especially after boss fights, the speaker is often frustratingly unclear, which really lessens the impact. Can't revisit memories or convos, either.

Last battles are stupidly hard. Penultimate boss fight is extremely difficult, but doable. Final fight and epilogue are crazy hard; you may need to grind for the first time. Stock up on items!

After epilogue, NPC dialogue updates, but I haven't found an event or memory to wrap things up further.

Ugly: World has good detail in terms of construction, but it's ugly. Backgrounds are a very weird texture, and it can be hard to know where you can walk. 3D movies are okay, but not integrated into the game, and really show off technical limitations of the software. Monster design is okay; on-map sprites are weird, and the battle versions are odd, too. They move in a jerky and distorted way, which is a bit clumsy, but also somewhat effective and unsettling.

Conclusion: This game deserves better translation and polish. There's a good story in there somewhere, and there were times where I was really feeling it. But the grindy feel of combat, the inability to revisit memories, and the unclear dialogue really took away from the game. The parts of the story that you glean are tantalizingly interesting, but ultimately incomplete.

This game does so many things right. It has a nice variety of events, mostly-good pacing, good art (with one exception)... But the most important thing it nails is getting the *feel* right.

I played this one fairly slowly; I'd maybe do a day or two each time I sat down to play. That was usually enough to advance the story a little, and maybe see a scene or two--and it kept me from burning through the game too quickly. It was nice, too, how many non-H events are included; it padded out the gameplay in a good, slice-of-life way. In particular, I really like how the MCs communicate. Lots of talk about consent and comfort levels and taking care of each other. It's super-sweet! And while you reach the "end" fairly early (I hit it on Day 23), I was pleased to find that I was still engaged. With games like this, I usually I start to lose interest after that point, since there's nothing new to do. When I got to the happy ending, though, I'd only seen half of the available scenes--and that's not counting the non-H content.

Unfortunately, while the event scenes are well done, with plenty of dialogue, I wish they'd written a few more "everyday interaction" lines. That's one of my very few complaints; every day, Akira says something to you at breakfast, and your boss talks with you in the afternoon, and it gets repetitive.

Other things that get a thumbs-up are the translation and music, which are both excellent. There are a few typos here and there, but nothing major. There were a couple of sex-comfort pacing bobbles with cosplay content, especially the nurse and maid outfits; they get lewd pretty quickly, even if you haven't gotten too hot-and-heavy otherwise. Nothing game-breaking, but just be aware.

I'll end on a good note, but first I have to say that one thing made it a bit hard for me to get into the game initially: the art style! It's mostly great; she's lovely in the cut-scenes! Most of the standing art is good, too, but her eyes are over-large in some expressions, and there's one face that makes her look a bit like a cross between a Grey and a frog. The too-large-eyes faces seem kind of plain, at first... But I think it's a sign of the game's strength that she seemed cuter and cuter to me, the longer I played.

So all-in-all, it's worth it. By the end of the game, I was kind of smiling every time I'd sit down to play, and even now, months after finishing it, I'm still fond of those two lovebirds.

Okay, so this isn't the most amazing or engrossing game ever, and you'll finish the whole thing in maybe an hour or so. And sometimes the translation's wonky, and sometimes it's not word-wrapped properly, and you lose dialogue that spills off the screen. That being said, the art is pretty good, the game itself is (mostly) fun, and it's a really good price.

This is basically a find-the-differences game, made a little more difficult by having to compare what's showing up on your phone screen with the larger scene; you can't see the differences unless you're hovering over them, so they can actually be hard to pick out sometimes. Erophone does a pretty good job of making each level a bit of a treasure-hunt to find the clues, but there are a couple of times where they're annoyingly difficult; one of the spots on level two is stupid-hard, and you can only see it briefly as the girl shifts position, and there was one thing on the last level that I honestly can't even identify, having found it by clicking adjacent to whatever it was by accident. Also, there's an annoying thing where there's dialogue associated with each clue, and you can't start finding the next one until you've clicked past all the text. Other than that, the only thing I found frustrating was the last photo-taking stage on level five, where you really have barely enough time to take the pictures. The game makes you rotate the phone when photographing (use the arrow keys to rotate; it never explicitly tells you that), and the angle is apparently random, so you might have to rotate a lot between shots.

My final gripe is that the very last stage seems to be the beginning of the (admittedly thin) story. Whatever; it's not that important. What matters more is that the art is nicely drawn, and fairly well animated, and there's a good variety of scenes. Protagonist Man is kind of a dickwagon to some of the girls, particularly the android, but it sets up some nice scenes, at least. Sound is good, art is good, animation is good, and the price is low. I probably won't keep it on my hard drive forever, but it was fun to play, and I'm not mad I bought it!

Yeah, I want to like this a lot more than I do. I'm giving it three stars, more for potential than for execution, because the idea is decent, the graphics are pretty enough, and there are some good positions. What there *aren't*, however, are good controls, clear instructions, and a frustrationless camera. It's also a little short, for the price.

Basically, the customizeability of the girl is decent, and her model is fairly good. You can change her hairstyle, bondage, and accessories; you can also select her outfit and change its color. It's a bit of a bummer that her earrings are anti-gravity, but you can't see them very much most of the time, so that's not a big deal. There are also a number of places and positions to train the girl in, and some of them are creative or particularly well-executed. Sound design is okay, too, without annoying squish/slurp noises, and the girl sounds good.

Unfortunately, the instructions are unclear. They say "go to the mark" to begin training; what it *doesn't* specify is that although you can see all the marks showing where action can happen, there is one SPECIFIC one that you can access at the beginning, with others unlocking as you progress. It's not a huge deal, but little things like that are annoying, especially since you have to figure out how to make the training work. It's hellishly difficult to figure out how to make the orgasm meter go up without dropping the girl's breath gauge to zero, and there's a lot of fiddly nudging the mouse up and down to try and hit the sweet spot. Sometimes the action seems to happen automatically, while other times, I wound up shaking the mouse like a terrier with a rat, wiggling dude's wang in front of the girl's face until he came.

Worse, the camera DRIFTS while you're training. A couple times, I managed to get it to stay still, but it was rarely where I actually wanted the POV to be; mostly, it just kind of slowly orbited the couple while I futzed around trying to get the gauges to do what I wanted.

If the girl's model were slightly better, this would get a solid three-star rating. If the camera worked right, it might even be a four, especially on sale. As it is, though, it's definitely not worth full price, and might not be worth your time.

The story is top-notch, and the translation is very good. Madness is THE theme; even after finishing the game, I'm not entirely sure what was going on--in a good way!--and it keeps you guessing all the way through. Most importantly, it's got genuine emotion in it, if you let yourself feel it, and it's written with such solid characters. The dialogue is good (aside from a few weird translations, like "Wandering around like a fly in ointment"), and I like that the MC has a face. There are great bits where he loses his shit, and even in the moment, he's thinking "Why am I being such a tool!?" The way the Infinite Loop wears him down is spot-on. He's trapped in a nightmare from the start, and his fuzzy-headedness and reactions make sense in context.

Furthermore, the sex and horror are perfectly Cthulhu-esque. You could use all kinds of tags; there's incest, for instance, but it's used for horror effect rather than titillation, mostly. You'll still get off if you're into that, but it's not the driver of the game. The scenes are hot, and do a great job describing how the MC is conflicted, confused, turned-on, and scared, all at once. The mood is incredible, and I really got drawn in, wondering what was going on--and fearing what the answers would be!

The art is great, too. Not perfect: Almost every sex frame is animated, even if it doesn't need it, which can be distracting; sometimes Erisa's boobs seem to change size, and at one point, her face is too small for her head. More consistency would have been good, and maybe smaller boobs, but it's great overall, and the scenes themselves have good variety and are very well-written. The sound design is good too, without the egregious squishing noises of some games, and the voice-acting was spot-on.

Just enough time for one more thumbs-up. Bought the game, and the story path I was on just... soft-locked. I managed to contact the makers, and just when I was about to give up... they got back to me! It took almost a month for them to respond, but once we were corresponding, they squashed the bug in less than a week, and directly sent me the updated file to boot. Really solid customer service, there! (The game has since been updated too!)

I took it slow, really enjoyed it, and give it five stars.

This game hits the sweet spot in a lot of ways: It's difficult - even after beating it several times, I still lose occasionally - without being frustrating; the enemies are varied, and (mostly) present different challenges and abilities; and the gallery is well implemented. In particular, I like that you can play it aiming for the virgin or slut routes; you get enough XP to beat the game without sex, but fucking monsters gives you bonus points to help buff up your army.

There are a couple of quibbles, one minor and one more significant. A small problem is spacing; the game is laid out in a perspective view, but it's a little off. You seem to be able to place your fairies closer together toward the bottom edge of the battlefield, which can make successful layout a little difficult at times. Mainly, that's a bummer 'cause if you've spaced them wrong, you'll have to remove and replace the entire row to be sure of getting enough room to get the full line in.

The other problem, which can actually negatively impact gameplay, has to do with the damage display. Simply put, the developer made the numbers too big. Once you've got a whole slew of baddies on the screen, it can be impossible to see what's actually going on, and that can make the difference between winning and losing a round. If you can't SEE the fairies, it's almost impossible to successfully click on them to use their burst powers.

Still, it's a fun game, and the gallery mechanic is clever enough to make up for some of the flaws. Essentially, when you lose the game, our poor heroine Eiren is beset by a conga-line of horny monsters, who queue up to take turns with her defenseless body. That's a nice touch in itself, but as an added bonus, you keep getting XP as long as you're watching the gallery--which you can then use for your next attempt at victory. While it's true that enemies only have one animation each, there is an ample variety of poses, and all are well drawn.

All in all, it's a fine game, both as a tower-defense title and in terms of H-content. For the price, you could do a lot worse!