Archive for the Yuri Game Category


Yuri Visual Novel: Starlight Vega Guest Post by Louis P

June 1st, 2016

headerIt’s Guest Review Wednesday and we all know what that means, right? Right! It means Erica needs a break. ^_^ 

I would like to thank Razz,  the maker of Starlight Vega for the review copy of the game. I did play a little bit of this game, but decided that it would be best for everyone if I turned this review over to someone who loved Visual Novels and would be able to give it more attention than I. Therefore, let’s welcome Guest Reviewer Louis and let him tell us what’s what. I’ll add my thoughts at the end. The floor is your, Louis…

Starlight Vega is the story of Aria Reid who has moved with her mother into her grandfather’s old house. Aria, along with her childhood friend Melody (an authority on the occult), find a stone that has the demon Lyria held within it. Lyria and Aria become linked though the stone, forcing them to stay close by or else suffer physical pain. So Aria, Melody and Lyria must decode the magic holding the two together while at the same time uncovering the truth about the demon realm Vega and Aria’s own link to it.

Starlight Vega made a good first impression when I first looked it up. A Yuri visual novel with four routes and the main heroine was a tall, cool looking lady with horns. I was all set to love this novel. Sadly from the incredibly abrupt beginning, a sprite that had a character constantly doing a raptor impression and the shockingly blunt scene transitions I rapidly started to reassess what I should expect from this experience.

Starlight Vega does not use the visual part of visual novels well. I don’t mean that the art is bad (although the sprite art and CG art are both by different artists) but how we are made to view the art is bad. Scenes transition between each other so abruptly it is like we are watching a badly edited You Tube video of a visual novel. The same thing goes for sprites no matter the context for a sprite change it is almost always instantaneous. One of the most powerful things you can do in a visual novel is establish a symbolic link between what happens to the sprites and what is happening in a scene and this novel wastes that. This goes for shifting between scenes too. Shifting between your character going to bed and your character getting ready in the morning should not be a sudden abrupt cut without a good reason.

What is a shame is it’s not as if there is a technical reason for this.  Starlight Vega does have moments when spites do something other than blink in and out of view and sometimes they even move across the screen. But these points are far too rare and it adds to making the whole reading experience a kind of thin slog.

Now you might be thinking that this is all okay if the story itself is good all the extra dressing should not matter that much. Sadly that was not my experience, if Starlight Vega had been a novel or a comic I would have been far more forgiving of its flaws, such as Lyria’s tendency to act aggressive in a way that is way over the creepy line and using her memory altering magic so liberally she would make the MiB blush. This is supposed to be a character that we fall in love with along with Aria but even I, the easiest target for a Lyria type of character, was getting sick of her aggressive shallowness that I could not buy Aria’s eventual attraction to her.

While this is not as bad in the other routes so many of the interactions do nothing but set up how much all the heroines dislike each other. It made all the scenes where we should have been getting to know the characters feel awkward and uncomfortable. So, while I did not dislike any one character on their own I dreaded them being together because then all they would do is bicker while the main character did nothing.

All this makes the times when the game actually gives us something good a bit sad, because, we briefly see what the whole game could have been like. All four main routes give us a solid view of each character, the fourth and final route effectively tying everything together and giving us a very happy ending. The eventually revealed antagonist is both a decent sponge for all the negativity in the story and they are not around long enough to be tiresome. What I was surprised to enjoy were the epilogues, they give us a good look at life after all the conflict and how the central couple of each route eventually lives their lives together in a way that, again, would have been more satisfying if the game had actually earned these endings with a good beginning, but this time the sincerity of the scenes won me over… either that or I was just too tired to be irritated by the time I finished a route.

Taking what I liked into account, Starlight Vega is totally average. It is not horribly bad but it is not good enough ether to rise above its competition today. A real pity because under all the poor decisions and missed opportunities there is real effort to be found. Starlight Vega should really be a Yuri bodice ripper novel that you can enjoy on the train anytime. Not something I need to run on a laptop.

Art – 5
Story – 4
Characters – 3
Yuri – 7
Service – 7

Overall – 5

Erica here: I played some of the demo for Starlight Vega, then tried it again when it was officially released. I thought the official release much improved from the demo, so that was good. Disclaimering once more that I am not the intended audience for this medium, my biggest problem was the dialogue. Just once, I’d like to see a character say, “Sit your ass down and tell me the whole story from the beginning.” In every other thing, I agree with your assessment. I lost interest way too early to even get to a route. Essentially Aria wastes our time, by being so vexed for so long without progress.

Louis, you say “One of the most powerful things you can do in a visual novel is establish a symbolic link between what happens to the sprites and what is happening in a scene.” I’m going to be honest…I just haven’t seen that. It all looks blink-no blink to me. 

I’d like to see more good Yuri VNs, of course, but what I need first and foremost from them is a good story with good dialogue. This just wasn’t bad, it just didn’t hold on to my attention.

Thanks Louis for taking a look at this for us!





Yuri Game: Black Closet

April 1st, 2016

logoLulled into a false sense of confidence by the near-lack of interaction required for Kindred Spirits, I have once again attempted a game for you. Black Closet by Hanako Games is, in every way, as far from Kindred Spirits as a Visual Novel can be and still share a one-line description. Black Closet is a visual novel set at an all-girl school. After that, everything is completely different.

While Black Closet is a Visual Novel, it is also a mystery-solving game in which you, the Student Council President must solve mysteries in order to preserve the school’s reputation, sustain the student council’s karma and and generally be a badass President, which will, ultimately, get you a chance for romance and even to create custom characters.

After a spin or two with the storyline/gameplay, I felt completely out of my depth, so I brought in a “designated gamer” to help me out, one of Yuricon’s most dedicated supporters and my dear friend Kelli, who designed Yuricon’s very first “I Love Yuri” logo and contributed a great deal of Yuri and Midori fanart to Yuricon’s gallery over the years. Kelli is an experienced gamer, and loves mystery games so I had confidence in her opinion. And her opinion matched mine – this is a very complicated game.

As the Student Council President, you have several council members, among whom is a traitor. You must use the skills they possess to weed out clues, match them up with students and situations to solve these mysteries, by “persuading” or “questioning” or “guarding” or even “stalking or “assassinating” …but there is a tremendous amount of randomness in the game. You might do all the right things and still not solve the mystery – or solve it and really have no idea why.Click for larger image

After saving a game, I found a file that suddenly had useful notes about that “week”, but I couldn’t access those until after I saved – and you can only save after a week is complete. (You can suspend your progress anytime and return to the game where you left it, but you can only save the case at the weekend, which the game tells you and then you can see the case notes…something that is not explained anywhere. I just had to figure it out.

For instance, I knew which student I had to persuade to tutor an important student in French – and I was able to persuade her to do so, but the important student simply didn’t care and I didn’t succeed in solving the case. In Kelli’s case, she noted that “There was this one case where I was staking out this hallway and I was sure that was the right action… I did it several nights in a row… then the one night I don’t do it, a student tries to burn down the school”

Each case has a finite amount of time to “solve” and you get basically one action/turn a day. As Kelli said, “A couple of times, I was sure I would solve it the next day or two but then it just failed. It would tell me why it failed and at least once, I know I did the assignment that could have prevented it but apparently I didn’t do it on the right day.”

Kelli also noted that “there’s not a lot of back story to the game world and that makes it hard to get into the characters. Every weekend, you get to spend time with one or two and these little episodes can give you insight into them… but not much. I played it for about three hours off and on and I’m still kind of clueless. I’m hoping that a few more “weeks” of cases might bring up more story but if it’s there I haven’t gotten to it yet.”

You’re told that there is history between you and most of the council…but not what that history is. And several of the members seem impossible to please. Both Kelli and I noted that the game appears to want you to be mean and suspicious all the time, which seems like a stupid way to play, but I guess you couple play the game as a jerk to see what happens.

So gameplay-wise there is a *lot* going on. Maybe, even. a little too much. I think I’d have to play a lot more to bring the characters to the point where they develop a bit, as Kelli noted “if the characters don’t start becoming interesting soon, the gameplay isn’t going to carry me through to the end.” And we agree that “As your characters get more skill ups it would be easier to catch the bad guys, but that means a lot of initial failures,” and it’s hard to tell if the game is giving you any leeway or it’s got a rigid set-up at first.

Personally, I liked the weekends with the council members. I played a few weekend visits over several times, and so far haven’t unlocked anything critical in the choices. No one seems to care if you serve tea and shortbread or sandwiches, I still managed to gain loyalty points. But I never tried them being a jerk and maybe that might change things. So some choices don’t matter, but the actions in the game do.

On the positive side – the game is stylish. Really stylish. Not just good character designs (they range from cute to straight-guy-idea-of-sexy, with probably someone to appeal to everyone) but even the text boxes fit the mood. and setting. No boring box across the bottom here. And presumably, if you keep playing, there’s romance (although the screencap for “romance” feels awfully like I’m suddenly watching Speed Grapher‘s ubiquitous masked secret sex club scenes.

Black Closet costs $19.95 and can be purchased directly from the Hanako Games website or on Steam.

I would recommend it, with slight reservations. IF you really want to be involved in the story, then yes, definitely get it!  There’s  a LOT of content here and it deserves someone figuring it all out. If you prefer a linear narrative and/or just prefer a click-through story, you might find this VN to be more work than you want.

I’ve played five scenarios, one three times and still don’t quite get how the game works, really. ^_^ But I sort of want to be able to break it and make it work for me. OTOH, I have the patience of a four-year old child when it comes to games. So we’ll see if I get anywhere. ^_^

Ratings:

Art – 8
Gameplay – 7 A lot of mechanics to get used to, but once you do, it makes sense. Unless it doesn’t
Story – 6 I barely scratched the surface, playing five scenarios, and three weekends and I wish it had given me a bit more to work with.
Characters – 7 You know that’s what I care about but, like the story, I made Vonne smile once, Althea smile once and fed Rowan cookies and that’s about all I have for you.

Overall – 7, with potential for more. It’s almost like the game is a standoffish person on a date, that you want to get to know better, but it’s not giving you anything to work with!

Once again I asked the game creator about the name and the answer I got as awesome:

I have a great weakness for multi-level puns/references. Out of ‘black’ and ‘closet’ we get:
black room / cabinet noir: which works as a secret location for our detectives to be spying on everyone
black ops: clandestine work for the government which will deny all knowledge of it, again connecting to a lot of the secret work that the council is doing for the school to protect its reputation
black bag jobs: breaking-and-entering into locations to get evidence, which is something the student council does when it wants to search students’ rooms
closet: a general place people keep secrets, secret discussions between a restricted few (like a jury), and the obvious associations with hidden sexuality
Since the game came out I believe some horror TV show has also had a “black closet” which is possibly where the torture equipment is kept? I think I’ve also encountered a black closet in fiction where someone kept her BDSM toys, but I don’t think that one’s too commonly known. :)
I don’t expect anyone but me to think about it in QUITE that much detail, though.
As a person who overthinks her titles quite a bit, I appreciated this answer immensely.
 In closing, I’d like to thank Hanako Games for the review copy. FWIW, I’m motivated to try and get further in to the story.




Yuri Visual Novel: Kindred Spirits (English)

February 25th, 2016

kindred-spiritsWhen Okujou no Yurirei-san was licensed by Mangagamer, I promised that when it came out in English I’d make an effort to get all the way through so I could do a real review of it. Here we are, at the far side of the Yuri visual novel known as Kindred Spirits and I find myself with a lot to say about, almost all of it good. ^_^ This is, however, going to be a really long review.

Let’s start with the technicals. This is all on me, as I’m just not the audience for this format, so take this with a grain of salt:

My standard disclaimer about having to click after every line or three of text stands. It’s just a really annoying method of reading. Yes, I could put it on automatic, but that’s not a better reading method for me. And, I found myself listening to the spoken dialogue for a little bit, to get the characters’ voices in my head, then turning the sound off again, to read through the scene faster than it was being spoken. Not that I objected to the spoken bits, but they were so randomly placed and so rarely had exceptionally good dialogue, that it wasn’t like I was going to miss much. Bits I would have liked spoken, like Ariu Aki’s final monologue, weren’t, and there was a (pretty low) limit to how many times I was interested in hearing Komano Hina saying “Yuna-nee'” in a row.

The “gameplay” was…well, to be honest, every decision you made was pointless. I played every single decision both (or all three) ways and they all lead right back to the same dialogue within an exchange or two. So nothing you decided made the slightest bit of difference. Made me wonder, in fact, why anyone bothered making this into a VN, when an illustrated novel with drama CD, might have suited it just as well. I guess it’s just another way to organize the same three media – text, voice and image.

When I had to scroll quickly through a previously read conversation, the various poses and facial expressions almost animated the characters, which was more amusing than good. Like flipping through a drawing on various pages of a notebook. ^_^ In fact, I found the accompanying images silly to painful and rarely felt that they gave me anything but the sense that this was a game. Several times a character embraces another character, and the avatars move closer, but of course don’t embrace, just sort of superimpose and I’d think “lost a chance to really capture that.” Even small things like hand holding that totally could have been shown in-game, were just missed opportunities.

The voice actresses were all decent, although the dialogue didn’t really stretch their acting ability. Most of the best, most emotional parts were text-only. Still, they all brought their characters to life well within the confines of the dialogue they had to work with.

The music was sticky. The OP was something I was singing for days, at least in part because the lyrics drove me nuts, with their lack of scan. I kept rewriting the chorus in my head to make it work better.  The background music was another reason to keep the sound off. Too many minutes of the same 20 second riff and I’d be slapping that “mute.” ^_^;

The sheer amount of content was mind-boggling. I’d been reading the thing for a little bit almost every day for well more than a week. Just as I thought I was coming to the end, a bunch of new scenes “unlocked” and I had to go back to the beginning and read all of those. It took me forever to finish this, which means you’re getting a lot of content for your money. In fact, this was the main thing that impressed me. I didn’t actually believe there was a novel’s worth of story in the set up. And maybe not quite a novel’s worth, but definitely a novella’s. There was a lot of story.

***

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***

Which brings me to the story. The premise is simple and a little silly: two ghosts haunt a girls’ school where they have fallen in love, Sachi died 80 years ago, Megumi 30. For purely selfish reasons, they want to encourage other girls in love to become lovers so they can learn what to do. Not only is this silly, but I have a long-established objection to the “I don’t know what to do” plot complication. I am well-aware that it’s a thing people do feel, and I’m not invalidating real experience, it just annoys the daylights out of me as a plot driver.

Loner Yuna can see and speak with the ghosts, so they enlist her help in getting girls who are in love with one another to become couples. Through the course of the VN there are 7 couples whose stories need to be played out. And this is where the game really shines. I’m going to go through the couples briefly, but there may still be spoilers in this section. If you want to avoid spoilers, jump down to after the second asterisks.

***

The thing that stands out most in terms of the relationship scenarios is that in almost every storyline, at some point, I said, “Well that was unexpected.” I’ll talk about why a bit later. None of the characters are what they appear to be.

Starting with the couple I liked the least, we had an almost-inevitable teacher-student relationship between Sonou Tsukuyo and second-year Tsurugimine Kiri. Almost everything about the way their relationship was set up bothered me. Sonou is adult, but looks extremely young. I don’t mind the idea of a youthful teacher, but puh-leaze. Kiri has a “cute” obsession that wasn’t terribly cute. Ultimately the teacher is written well, and ends up making Kiri more responsible – and in another arc, becomes a key element of responsibility for another couple – but meh.

The most obvious relationship that isn’t developed until the very end is Yuna’s own. It was extremely obvious to this reader, even if it wasn’t to Yuna.

Next up were the ghosts themselves, Sachi and Megumi. They appear already having had a 30-year history of being in love, and their own personal stories before that. They are the classic “Yuri” couple – Sachi is the cool Yamato Nadesico type, with old-fashioned school uniform and long black hair, while Megumi is the apparent energetic-girl partner. Megumi is, throughout the game, ill-tempered and rude, which I found both delightful and annoying as it gave Yuna a chance to be snarky but also get to frustrated on our behalf.

Maki Seina, a first-year, and Aihara Miki, a third-year, are the first couple we run into and, honestly, I thought they were going to be dire. But their story quickly changed dynamic as soon as the story picked up and this arc was the first to do a sharp turn into something unpredictable and interesting, as so many of them did.

The broadcasting club has three members, Ichiki Umi, Futano Sasa and Miyama Nena. I thought immediately, “ugh a love triangle.” I could not have been wronger. Not only was it not a love triangle, but it all made perfect sense and gave the characters a chance to gain depth beyond the love story.

One of the couples is together before we begin the story.  Captain and Vice Captain of the track team, Amashima Matsuri and Inamoto Miyu, they are very much a Sei/Youko couple with a plan for the future. Their arc involves actually addressing issues like family and societal approval or rejection and things that folks in school have to consider when planning to live in the actual world. Although they never say they are lesbian, they speak of a long-term relationship and speak about liking girls and loving each other in the context of their and other characters’ arcs.

My favorite couple by far and away was ridiculous. “Rocker” Koba Youka, a girl who had been dead inside until rock and roll gave her life, falls madly, passionately and absurdly in love with the member of the disciplinary committee who marks her late, Ariu Aki. These two characters were so wonderful, I smiled every time we went to their arc. Without question, Aki was my favorite character. If she had a VN all to herself, I’d be thrilled. Aki also does not use the word lesbian, but speaks of always, only, having been attracted to other women.

***

Which brings me to the sex scenes. They were each according to that couple’s measure. I was worried that the VN was structured so that the sex scene was the final scene for each couple, but it really wasn’t. It was a stage of development they go through as a couple, with one exception.

In every single scenario, the characters go through actual development. That was a complete surprise to me. No only do we get tidbits about their pre-VN lives, but when crises pop up and are resolved, the characters change and grow. For this alone, the entire was worth working through. But even more than that, I mentioned that the characters aren’t what they appear to be. This was true for almost all of them. In several cases, their back stories simply changed how you thought of them. But in a few cases, their step away from stereotype is much less subtle. Maki Seina, an apparent typical first-year, for instance, claims to be extremely strong and is in fact proud of the fact. She mentions it to several people. It was small touches like this that really make the characters come alive. Komano Hina, another first-year and a critical part of the ribbon story, also turns out to have depth that is only hinted at. She could easily be seen as the “monotonal character,” but is capable of eloquence when needed. None of the characters is left undeveloped. Yuna, as our protagonist, is fully developed and really quite likable.

Which leads me to final quality of this VN that made it so enjoyable. The characters have society. They speak with one another across storylines and years in school – not only about school things or plot complications, but also personal issues. They tell their stories to us and to each other. Ariu Aki ties several of the arcs together, as does Hina, and Nena, and Yuna’s friend, Ano Fuji, in ways that aren’t forced at all. The story part of this story is really very enjoyable. And every single couple is portrayed as being love – not fake love, or practice love or something else. These are women who love the women they love. That was quite wonderful.

There is a final thing that surprised the heck out of me, but as it’s a huge spoiler, I’ll skip it. Let’s just say that I was surprised again by the end – not what it did, but what it didn’t. Ask me in 6 months when everyone’s had a chance to get through this. ^_^

Ratings:

Art – 6, but not the point really, just sort of a bonus
Story – 9
Characters – 9
Yuri – 10
Service – 7 Nudity and sexual situations

Overall – 9

I have just two thoughts left. I want more Aki and I think, quite honestly, Kindred Spirits on the Roof  (also available to play on Steam) was very good. I recommend it highly for Yuri fans. ^_^

Many, many thanks to Mangagamer for providing a review copy if this VN! I’ll be the first to admit, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. If you’ve played it through and want to submit a review, contact me and we’ll talk!





Yuri Visual Novel Kindred Spirits on the Roof on Steam and Available for Download

February 12th, 2016

kindred-spirits According to the Mangagamers’ Twitter account Yuri Visual Novel (and huge hit in Japan when it launched there) Kindred Spirits on the Roof is available for download on the Mangagamers site and to play on Steam.

I’m going to do something I’ve never done before – this is such a significant Yuri event, after I review the thing, I will accept other reviews, either in comments or as separate posts. That is how significant I think this license is.

In the meantime, grab your copy of this mega-hit, then let us know what you think of it!





Preliminary Thoughts on Yuri Visual Novel Kindred Spirits on the Roof

February 7th, 2016

kindred-spiritsI give.

Yes, really. I know you all know how vehemently I dislike the reading mechanism associated with Visual Novels, so I won’t belabor that here. I will say this – the thing I like most in any media is good characters, and in that Kindred Spirits on the Roof succeeds.

It took me a surprisingly long time to get through the demo (which is downloadable now on the Mangagamer site.) There are 6 scenarios total – the ribbon story with Yuna and the spirits and 5 couples (and an obvious sixth couple, as well.) I expected one, maybe two scenario set-ups as a taste of the story, but the demo gave me a tremendous amount of content. It took me quite a while to plow through the approximately three to five chapters from every scenario.

I’m not going to get into the scenarios themselves – that we’ll save for another time, although I will say that only one scenario was a complete ick for me and one was “meh”. The others ranged from good to excellent. And the final two actually piqued my interest.

But the reason I say “I give” is that by and large, the characters are surprisingly fleshed out. In fact, several times while going through the demo I had a slightly snarky thought and immediately one of the characters – usually Yuna – said the very thing I was thinking. ^_^

I really like the Day Planner as the basis for moving through the stories, but I’ll get into that more in a full review later.

I have two more thoughts just now: Here’s what Mangagamer had to say about the title: “In regards to the title, the “Yurirei” in the Japanese title is a pun which joins the words yuurei (ghost/spirit) and yuri together, so we wanted to come up with a title which preserved this naming sense as much as possible. After much internal discussion between the translator and other staff, “Kindred Spirits” was chosen since it retains the nod to their relationship, as well as keeps the “spirit” pun from the original title.”

I understand their manifesto on this, but “kindred” still strikes me as an strange word choice. “Kindred” means blood relations, something that doesn’t at all express anything like “Yuri.” But then again, gay people still call one another “family.” I’m well aware of the phrase “kindred spirits” so please no more definitions in the comments. It’s just not all that awesome a pun. In fact, it’s pretty meh.  I know people who do describe their lovers as “soulmates” although thankfully no one has ever forced me to not roll my eyes at them by telling me their spouse is their “kindred spirit.”  And  I guess they didn’t want to go with the word Yuri for the slangy quality. and how offputting it might be to non-otaku fans. Every fannish translation has pretty much failed to capture both sense and spirit, as well – such “Gay Ghosts on the Roof”? Seriously? That’s just ugly. This kind of stuff is hard and I recognize that.

Secondly, Sachi says she’d never heard of ‘S’, but tells us she died 80 years ago…that would put it in the 1930s, smack dab in the center of ‘S’ popularity. I wonder why Liar-Soft had her say she hadn’t heard of it?

In any case. Kindred Spirits on the Roof becomes available on February 12 from Mangagamer and on Steam and I am throwing my hat into the “this one is worth getting” ring.

Ratings withheld until I complete the thing.