Welcome to another Guest Review Wednesday here on Okazu! I am pleased as punch to welcome back our good friend, Okazu Superhero and Guest Reviewer Louis P. Take it away, Louis!

Ne no Kami – The Two Princess Knights of Kyoto, a visual novel by Kuro Irodoru Yomiji, starts of promisingly enough. Len Ese is a compelling and interesting protagonist, with the ability to sense the presence of living things. Before you can say ‘ordinary high school student’ she is dropped into a new life and a new home just outside of Kyoto. Reuniting with her childhood friend Shinonome Sarume she is whisked away to a secret village, the headquarters of Kunai a secret organization of sacred sword wielders who have promised to fight Ayakashi that threaten the human world. Len learns that Kunai wants her to help them fight these dangerous Youkai, she even gets a cool magic sword that only she can wield like her friend Shinonome who also works for Kunai. In fact everyone in the small village she used to visit growing up works for this secret monster fighting organisation.

Now if that last paragraph makes you think that Ne no Kami like some kind of fun supernatural version of Thunderbirds, it isn’t. In fact it is quite the trip to watch Ne no Kami systematically make its setting as pleasant to read as dry white toast. The writers were clearly fans of the urban fantasy visual novels that have long periods of exposition mixed with everyday life (Aoi Shiro) but they seem to have missed that what you then need to do is populate that everyday life with interesting characters and make that exposition meaningful to events we have already experienced early on in the story. No, instead Ne no Kami decides to front load its entire mythology right from the get go and when it is not doing that the characters’ daily lives feel truly banal. Quite an achievement when Len is moving into a new home, re-uniting with two childhood friends and learning about a secret youkai war but all these scenes are populated with characters that have such low energy it is hard to stay awake never mind care.

And that is a pity because…

Spoiler warning here but seriously you are not missing much and knowing this is probably the only reason to buy this visual novel. If you really do not want to know, skip to the second set of asterisks.

****

It turns out that the war the Ayakashi have been waging against humanity is not as simple as Kunai have been making out. Indeed it seems that Kunai is pretty much the illuminati and the war is not so much to save humanity but to expand their control over it. In the end Len, Shinonome and their remaining allies must find their own way to survive after being betrayed by the very people who taught them and us about the entire setting. This throws all that we learned in the first third of the story back into uncertainly for both the characters and the reader.

****

It is a nice twist even if the people that will betray Len are pretty obvious from the moment you meet them as well as those Ayakashi that will prove to be not blood thirsty monsters. However this twists power relies on how invested we are in the lie we are fed at the beginning which, as I said, was dull and boring and I did not care about. So while this sudden twist feels inspired it did not put the work in at the start to make us feel invested in the status quo. So I was far more relived to find out about all the deception and that one of the most annoying characters was evil enough to deserve what was coming to them.

‘But what about the Yuri?’ I hear you ask, now that is actually a bit more interesting although you have to pick it out of the gizzards of the poorly told story and the character designs that are ridiculously infantile. What is nice is that both Len and Shinonome have their own love interests. Uzume Sarume and Ruka Himemishi: both of whom are given serious significance in the story but are also lacking in nearly any kind of agency. It doesn’t help as well that Uzume is deliberately made up to be a shut in with a really creepy crush on Len that somehow blooms into romance while Ruka’s story is making you think that she is one kind of fetishised ill girl when she is in fact a fetishised traumatised girl and then one-upping how exploitatively traumatic they can make her back-story every two chapters.

Despite everything it does wrong I could imagine recommending Ne no Kami, five or seven years in the past. It is clearly trying and its heart is in the right place. I mean love between women is what saves people at the end and our heroes are two pairs of girlfriends but in this modern world with Kindred Spirits on the Roof, Butterfly Soup, Highway Blossoms and Ladykiller around there is just better stuff to spend your time and money on. If only this had been released ten years ago it could be something like Sapphism no Gensou. Yeah we read it despite all its glaring flaws but it was because there was so little else to read. Today however I have no such excuse.

Ratings:

Art – 3
Story – 5
Characters – 2 (I had to look up everyone’s name while writing this. That should tell you what you need to know)
Yuri – 8
Service – 8

Overall – 5

Erica here: I would like to thank Denpasoft for the review copy of Ne No Kami. It was much appreciated! And many thanks to Louis for another cogent review.

It’s another Guest Review Wednesday and another welcome Guest Review by our got-VN reviewer, Louise P. (I am so thankful to those of you who review VNs for us here, truly.) Today’s review sounds genuinely exceptional, so get yourself some bar nuts and a drink, and get read to read! Take it away, Louise…

VA-11 HALL-A (pronounced Valhalla) is a cyberpunk bartending game/visual novel focusing on the eponymous bar located in Glitch City, a place that sometimes feels like it is just some big playground for exploitative tech companies. But it is still a place many people have to live in. Our protagonist is Jill, one of the bartenders at the eponymous establishment: VA-11 HALL-A, her job is to mix the right drinks for the right clients and offer a sympathetic ear to people who come in after a long day of publishing, assassinating or, perhaps the most dangerous job, running a corgi toy company.

A good eighty percent of the story of VA-11 HALL-A is told at the bar from Jill’s perspective as through her shift clients arrive, drink, chat and then leave. It does not take long for a cast of regulars to form and for us to get to know them, both their stories and their drink preferences. The main mode of interaction in VA-11 HALL-A is mixing drinks for Jill’s clients. Most of the time you are just supposed give a customer what they ask for or describe but eventually, as you get to know them, the game calls on you to make a judgment on what to serve or even to outright ignore what you are told and pick a drink you think is more to their taste to get the best reaction. Mix the right drinks and Jill generally gets more informative, more intimate dialogue out of her clients and when your clients open up to you more they end up the better for it.

Just listening to a supremely likable cast talk to each other is easily the main draw of VA-11 HALL-A. By the time I had finished the first of the games three chapters I put the rest of my visual novels on hold to finish VA-11 HALL-A as I had fallen in love with the whole cast. It also does a brilliant job of capturing the feeling of living in a dystopian society where stability is uncertain and events way beyond your ability to influence end up interfering with your day to day life. While this starts off with snippets of dialogue hinting at the harshness of a city outside of the bar or Jill’s flat; turn into something else by the end of the first chapter when Jill ends up having to spend one night sleeping in the bar to avoid a dangerous riot and then spends the next day in her flat looking out over the still rioting city watching everything slowly simmer down… and then head straight back to work the day after that.

It should not be surprising to find out that the games developers are from Venezuela where only last year a state of economic emergency was declared, there were close to two hundred prison riots and Colombian border crossings had to be temporarily opened to allow Venezuelans to purchase food and basic household items in Colombia. Communicating the feeling of what a bar such as VA-11 HALL-A means to people, as a means of escape and community, in societies like these was one of the major focuses of the designers.

There are a lot of customers to talk to in VA-11 HALL-A, one of your more hard drinking regulars is Beatrice “Betty” Albert. Betty is an in-house veterinarian for the aforementioned corgi toy company and often turns up with her co-worker and best friend Deal and together they form a fantastic comedy duo. Betty is a lesbian, and while Deal is more than happy to rattle off all of her exes and all the reasons she gives for breaking up with them, she has no romantic arc. In fact the only relationship trouble Betty has is trying to avoid being set up with someone and as the matchmaker knows she is gay she cannot drag Deal into being a beard for her.

While Betty is easily the louder and more rambunctious of the duo she makes with Deal don’t think that she is the constant silly boke to his grim tsukkomi. Deal has plenty of silly moments too for Betty to be cynical about and one of her most deadpan lines in the whole game actually got me to laugh out loud. So while Betty and Deal’s story is light on romance it is heavy in a fantastically platonic chemistry between the two of them. Betty and Deal also become a relieving presence later on as their story lacks the heavy drama that other characters end up dealing with. Seeing these two arrive comes as a great relief more than once.

But it is the main character Jill who stands out in VA-11 HALL-A. Jill makes reference to having past boyfriends and girlfriends throughout the story but Jill has one major crush right when the story begins and that is her boss Dana Zane, the coolest woman in the history of visual novels.

Dana is Jill’s boss at VA-11 HALL-A and we really get the feeling of what a dependable boss she is when it is Dana who looks out for Jill during the riots at the end of chapter one, helping her get back to her flat without incident and staying with her though the day. Not only Jill but Dana also helps Gillian, Jill’s co-worker, stay clear of his dark past and clients such as the assassin Jamie have second hand stories about her past exploits that only get more ridiculous as the game continues. Even more so when it turns out that a good chunk of these ridiculous stories are true. She at the very least is an ex-cop with a cool ex-police detective girlfriend who you can meet if you play your serve the right drinks.

Dana also gets her head stuck in things… a lot, from hard suit helmets to spicy chicken buckets, keeps a metal bat that somehow has nails in it, is an ex-wrestler with the ring-name of ‘Red Comet’ and keeps finding excuses to add the Jill’s pay check like a doting grandmother. Dana is both a rock of stability in a scary and unstable world and an utter goofball who hires a talking, sunglasses wearing, dog as your co-worker. Someone who has the capacity to keep their life so together while at the same time being so ridiculous (as well as ridiculously cool) would be rationed out in another game but VA-11 HALL-A lets you enjoy Dana’s company nearly every in-game day!

So if the last two paragraphs are not obvious enough I also have a massive crush on Dana and it is a fantastically rare treat to have the point of view character’s romantic desire so perfectly align with my own. This will not be the same for everyone but it was a fantastic gentle reveal as it became more and more obvious over the game that Jill is so obviously interested in Dana you feel bad for not working it out the moment you see Jill’s tablet’s lock screen.

But sadly the only person that does not notice Jill’s feelings for Dana is Dana herself, and even though it is cute, Jill’s infatuation with Dana is not really the focus of Jill’s story however much I wish it was. Jill’s story in VA-11 HALL-A is not about Jill ending up in a relationship with someone but instead about Jill getting over a previous relationship with another woman three years ago. It is a break up that still looms over Jill and is the reason she is working at VA-11 HALL-A in the first place.

I don’t want to spoil any more, but this is what elevated it from very good visual novel to exemplary peace of contemporary art. VA-11 HALL-A inverts the usual devices used by visual novels. Usually following the characters day-by-day is used to highlight the increasing drama of the plot, VA-11 HALL-A instead emphasises the difficulty and drama of the day-to-day. While most visual novels have the main character somehow ‘solving’ other characters problems and developing themselves as a stepping stone to them ‘earning’ a relationship. VA-11 HALL-A has Jill listen to her clients problems only occasionally offering advice if anything and her personal improvement as a person is the goal itself. By the end of the story Jill is a person who perhaps will end up with Dana, but it was Jill becoming that person that was the point of VA-11 HALL-A’s story.

VA-11 HALL-A also never makes a big deal out of how much it subverts the usual procedures of its genre. There’s no point when the story just stops to congratulate itself insufferably on the codes and conventions it breaks, no stopping and winking at us so that we know how clever it is being. Instead it has a quiet confidence in the risks it is taking and what it is trying to achieve with them.

Art – 9 Pixel art at its most gorgeous.
Story – 6
Characters – 10 Best visual novel cast in a long time
Service – 1 The framing makes it difficult after all
Yuri – 7
Overall – 9

Erica here: Well, wow. This sounds almost like the old text-based games of my youth that, when they worked, were amazing, (but they almost never worked. ^_^)  If you ever want to do a Twitch channel and play this for me, Louise, feel free! I’d totally watch you play this. ^_^

It’s Guest Review Wednesday and it is my very sincere pleasure to welcome back Guest Reviewer and Okazu Superhero Louis P for a very exciting review!

You should remember the name Christine Love. She’s an indie game dev who has made a pretty big splash with her games,  Don’t take it personally, babe, it just ain’t your story (which has been reviewed here on Okazu), Digital: A Love Story and Analogue: A Hate Story, at Love Conquers All Games. Today we’re going to get a look at her newest game! You have the floor, Louis!

A game about a suave and cool lady who gets pulled into over the top intrigue on a high class cruise, and it is written by Christine Love! This ticks all of the boxes in this list I just wrote! What is its name?

‘My Twin Brother Made Me Crossdress as Him and Now I Have to Deal with a Geeky Stalker and a Domme Beauty Who Want Me in a Bind!’

Or Ladykiller in a Bind for short.

Our ‘Ladykiller’ in this case is The Beast… or the Hero or really whatever you want. Everyone is referred to by nicknames that you can pick or make up yourself. But to keep things simple here we will use the names on the game’s website.

The Beast, as we shall call her, is a fantastic protagonist, cool, sexy, but still dorky and genre blind enough for it to be understandable when she is caught off guard by things the player will see coming long before she does. It is also hard to get a full grasp of her right away as we really are dumped into events running but, luckily she shares narration duties with her brother who is her equal in backtalk. You learn a lot about both of them from how they jostle to get their views in.

The Beast has volunteered to take the place of her twin brother, known as The Prince, at his graduation celebration. In return, The Prince will take The Beast’s place at summer school and pass her failed classes for her. Because of the cruel actions of their farther, The Prince goes to a different school, one that holds its graduation celebration over a week on a giant cruise ship. Not only that, but, a mysterious third party announces a simple and way too easily accepted social game where the students trade votes between each other. The student with the most votes at the end of the cruse gets five million dollars. However as everyone only has one vote it very quickly becomes a contest amongst the most popular movers and shakers in the school. Who just so happen to be The Prince’s classmates.

Said classmates are what you get when you blend equal parts ‘Dallas’ with ‘Gintama’. Over-wealthy, sharp-tongued socialites who are also an endearing, goofy and fun to learn about.  The Beast talks to them and slowly gains and understanding of what is going on, as The Prince did not care to tell her much, The Beast must be careful to not arouse suspicion that she is, in fact, not her brother. If The Beast breaks character too many times, the game just ends, perhaps too abruptly, and you must load a save. The trouble is that The Prince has a public persona of being selfish and blunt so almost always if you want to do nearly anything benevolent or exciting it will draw suspicion.

Cue the first of the games two ‘heroines’; The Beauty (get it?). The Beauty is the only person amongst the students who knows The Beast’s true identity. At night The Beast can visit The Beauty who will offer to use her standing to explain away all of The Beast’s suspicious actions. In return The Beast will help The Beauty act out her fantasies of tying up and dominating a handsome woman like The Beast. The Beast herself, after pretending to be someone else and lying to people for an entire day, finds incredible catharsis in allowing The Beauty to take complete control for the time they are together.

While the narration does to a fantastic job of showing The Beast’s headspace in these scenes, very useful if you are a neophyte to this kind of play, I was even more impressed with what we learn about The Beauty in these scenes. There are moments such as when she stops and consults her phone to make sure she has tied a knot correctly or when she makes sure The Beast takes an anti-inflammatory after their session that show the care and planning she has taken to enact her fantasy bleeding through for us to notice. This might be all very new to The Beast but this is a rare and important time for The Beauty too.

The Stalker (just a nickname!), however, has a completely different dynamic with The Beast. While The Beauty knows what she likes and has a list, mood music and a timer, The Stalker is really only sure that she likes The Beast. The Beast then ends up being a partner who can guide her though exploring what she likes – making sure she never feels overwhelmed, until she wants to feel overwhelmed. But it is not just incredibly adorable sex, there is also incredibly adorable dossing around and talking about frivolous things like The Stalker’s bad taste in music or her absolutely huge family. The Stalker and The Beast have some of the best chemistry I have seen in two leads for a long time.

But, if you want to see all of The Stalker’s events you had better be good at pretending to be The Prince during the day as you will need to keep your suspicion low the whole week and this can force you to make some tough choices. Conversely, sticking to The Beauty’s events means you can rack up the amount of suspicion you would need to save over the week in a day and everything will be fine tomorrow provided you crawl back to the Beauty.

This is what makes Ladykiller in a Bind more interesting than your usual erotic visual novel.  The main game element of visual novels, that is making dialogue and event choices, becomes tied to the romantic and erotic encounters with the two main heroines.

Don’t go thinking this is a binary choice, either. Choose your events right and there is even a third route involving The Beauty, The Beast and The Stalker all together in easily the best multi partner route I have ever read. This genuinely caught me off guard, as events change way ahead of time to account for these actions. Never, in my experience, has a game changed the ending to a scene so that one character can compliment another on that cool love bite she gave another. It is great to have a main character in a visual novel whose endless flirty charm is a strength that adds positivity to the story, rather than something used for a cheap bad ending.

Normally after I have read all the endings to a visual novel I shelve it, but with Ladykiller in a Bind I find myself eager to go back and read scene variations the moment I have finished with this review something that has not happened in a long time.

Ratings:

Art – 9 (Everyone gets a different outfit every day)
Story – 7
Characters – 10
Yuri – 10
Service – 10

Overall – 9

I highly recommend also checking out Christine Love giving a talk about narrative design techniques she and her team learned during the process of developing Ladykiller in a Bind.

Erica here: Thank you Louis! When I saw the announcement of Ladykiller, I have to admit, I was really glad to see an adult game for mature adults, as opposed to most of the adult games which seem to favor a immature and inexperienced audience.

Ladykiller is also available on Steam, as well as from Humblebundle.

So thank you for this review. If I enjoyed games at all, I would definitely give this one a try!