Samantha Lienhard's Blog, page 91

Celebrating All Things Romantic: The Grand Ball

The Grand Ball is a visual novel set in 1882. You play the oldest son of a noble family that has fallen on hard times, and you accept an invitation to a Grand Ball in the hopes of finding a wealthy match to restore your family’s fortunes.

And… the plot doesn’t really stray much beyond that premise.

The Grand Ball does a good job with its historical setting. Aside from a few comments that hint at the future, it felt pretty grounded in the time period, with characters behaving accordingly.

It wants to make sure you know certain attitudes are historical accurate, too. The game begins with a large, unskippable disclaimer about how it features a historical setting and the characters’ views don’t necessarily represent those of the diverse developers, and one of the bad endings mentions the historical context before repeating the entire disclaimer.

Did they really think we would forget in the time it takes to reach that ending? The entire game is less than two hours long!

Anyway, that’s only a minor thing. The bigger issue with The Grand Ball is that it just lacks depth. It starts out with an interesting premise, since you’ll need to properly navigate social situations at the ball to make a good impression, but that never becomes as complex as it sounds.

There are basically two types of choices: choices that will increase your favor with a particular romantic interest, and choices that can lead to a bad ending or alternate ending.

At one point it looked like the plot was headed in an interesting direction, but it didn’t really.

Click for The Grand Ball spoilersYou catch a prominent person snooping around the desk of woman hosting the ball. If you confront him about it, he shoots you and you get a bad ending. If you offer to work with him, it plays it straight and gives you that as an ending, with no chance to betray him.

If you turn around and leave instead of confronting him, I expected the option to tell the ball’s host that he was there… but instead the game continues as though you never saw him at all.

Then there’s the romance, which basically amounts to having a few conversations with the love interest of your choice and showing you have things in common. It doesn’t even make good use of the premise that you’re there for financial reasons, since it claims you find true love despite each route being too short to have any real romantic build-up.

I liked the idea of The Grand Ball’s historical setting, but ultimately this one just ends up feeling bland.

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Celebrating All Things Romantic: LoveKami -Divinity Stage-

One of the visual novel bundles I got also included two of the LoveKami games, so I decided to give LoveKami -Divinity Stage- a try.

LoveKami is set in a universe where the goddesses have decided to learn about the human world by sending down fragments of themselves to take on human form.

The start of the visual novel is packed with explanations to set up the premise and explain why a majority of goddesses have become idols (like, in the musical performance sense). One of the most popular Divine Idol groups is holding a contest to choose a new member, and you play a young man who ends up helping two idols in their attempt to win.

It’s largely a kinetic novel, with only a single choice partway through that determines which of the three romance routes you end up on.

Unfortunately, despite the amount of detail it puts into justifying its idol goddesses and how their powers work, the story is pretty bland. Two of the girls want to win the contest and need your help to do so. The third is a member of the group holding the contest, and she has her own struggles to deal with.

The problem is the story just doesn’t do much. One of the three routes features a serious conflict in the character’s life, as well as a handful of scenes from her perspective, but the other two don’t. It has some funny moments, but not enough to carry it. Overall, it was just… boring.

Onto some positives!

Since this game is all about idols, there are a few musical performances, and the songs are catchy. The music is good, and that helps bring it to life. The art is also nice, and it has a high amount of fanservice, which should increase its appeal if you want a game with cute girls in revealing clothing and suggestive poses (no 18+ version in English, though).

But if you aren’t in it for the fanservice, I find it hard to recommend LoveKami -Divinity Stage-.

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Celebrating All Things Romantic: I Love You Colonel Sanders!

When I Love You Colonel Sanders! A Finger Lickin’ Good Dating Simulator was announced, I wasn’t too interested, but for some reason I know people who wanted me to play this.

So I decided to make it my Valentine’s Day review and see what this official KFC dating sim was all about.

You play a blank slate protagonist attending a 3-day cooking class. You’re quickly introduced to your best friend, two bullies/rivals, your dog professor, and a few other classmates (including a robot). Then another student walks in: Colonel Sanders, who immediately captures the attention of everyone due to being the most handsome, charming, majestic student ever to grace the halls of the school.

The main reason I wasn’t impressed when the game was announced is because I feel there’s been a trend of “It’s a visual novel, but you’re dating [insert weird/random/unexpected love interest here]!” games that try to capitalize on having such a wacky premise while missing the genuine heart things like Hatoful Boyfriend have.

On one hand, I want to say I Love You Colonel Sanders! is soulless, but on the other hand, it’s so bizarre it does manage to be funny at times simply because there’s no way to predict what might happen next.

It feels like someone took a bunch of romance visual tropes, some anime references, and a dash of random goofiness, and mixed them all up in a pot with Colonel Sanders.

Van Van the Man Man clearly wandered in from a JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure parody.

Half the things that happen in this story make zero sense, and I couldn’t help but feel it was an intentional attempt to parody visual novels where wacky things happen. Colonel Sanders himself is portrayed bizarrely, as the narration is over-the-top in making him out to be nearly superhuman, yet takes a few jabs at him for being narcissistic enough to view himself the same way.

Add in the fact that answering a cooking question wrong can make Colonel Sanders immediately reject you forever, and he isn’t really likable… except that the narration and your protagonist’s thoughts keep claiming he is.

There are choice and multiple endings, as well as several points where you can get a game over. There’s no way to make a manual save (you can open a menu if you find the exact spot on the menu indicator to click, but it doesn’t have a save option), which is frustrating, but there’s an auto-save ahead of each point where you might fail.

I didn’t feel the need to get more than one ending. As a visual novel, I Love You Colonel Sanders! lacks the substance to really be good; as an extended commercial/marketing stunt, it’s amusing enough.

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Celebrating All Things Romantic: A Kiss for the Petals – Remembering How We Met

The next visual novel I decided to read for this month’s celebration is the first yuri visual novel I’ve read, A Kiss for the Petals – Remembering How We Met.

This is actually part of a series (A Kiss for the Petals) and is set as a prequel to the other stories about Risa and Miya, two girls attending the same school.

The story begins in the present with the two of them together as a couple, but the changing of seasons makes Risa think back to the day she first saw Miya, and then the bulk of the story is a flashback about how they first met and got to know each other.

It’s another kinetic novel, so there are no choices, and it took me a little over an hour and a half to read. Most of it is told from Risa’s perspective, with a handful of scenes from Miya’s. The switch to Miya was sometimes so brief that it was a little jarring, but not too bad. Although the two characters are very different from one another, they’re both likable.

What surprised me the most is that for all I’m counting this as part of our romance celebration, it’s… not really a romance.

Risa and Miya are dating in the present, but the flashback itself really is how they met, not how they became a couple. For all intents and purposes, most of the visual novel is a friendship story, showing how they went from having a rather contentious relationship to being friends.

While this was just a short prequel story, the others in the series are supposed to be more fleshed out.

I enjoyed this one enough that I’ll probably look into the next, so consider checking out A Kiss for the Petals – Remembering How We Met if you’re looking for a cute yuri visual novel that’s mainly focused on friendship.

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Celebrating All Things Romantic: KARAKARA

A while ago, I got a visual novel Humble Bundle that came with a bunch of things I’d probably never have picked up otherwise, including KARAKARA.

Since it’s a romance visual novel featuring catgirls, I honestly expected it to be a lot like Nekopara, which I reviewed a couple years ago: silly, cute, not a whole lot of substance if you aren’t interested in the 18+ version.

There are some definite similarities, especially in regards to how its romance and fanservice are handled, but it’s actually quite distinct. Aside from anime catgirl fanservice, the two visual novels don’t really have much overlap, and KARAKARA has a much more defined plot despite taking me less than 2 hours to complete.

KARAKARA is set in a post-apocalyptic world where an unknown Disaster wiped out most of civilization, and humanity’s efforts to survive resulted in hybrids like our catgirl love interests here.

The main character runs a diner in Sagami Francisco (the result of American and Japanese survivors of the Disaster coming together) along with his friend/employee Lucia, and they routinely deliver food to the people who live in town. One day, as they’re driving, they encounter a girl named Aisia sleeping alongside the road. Since she has nowhere to go, they take her in as a new employee, and the story largely deals with how this changes their lives.

It’s a kinetic novel, so you don’t make any choices, and while it’s mainly focused on romance and comedy, parts of the plot were surprisingly interesting.

Click for major KARAKARA spoilersI really did not expect this game to involve vampires.

Even when they talked about the vampire rumors early on, I didn’t think that was actually going to become a part of the plot.

Vampires?!

Catgirl vampires?!

I was baffled when I realized it was actually going in that direction.

In short, KARAKARA is a cute, sweet story that has an interesting enough plot across its few hours that I’ll probably pick up KARAKARA 2 at some point to see how the plot progresses and hopefully learn more about the world.

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Celebrating All Things Romantic: Moe Era

Moe Era is a free visual novel that just came out recently on Steam, so I decided to take a look at it for our romance celebration.

You start out in a strange room where four girls talk about how your life story is empty and you need to make a change.

Then you wake up from an apparent dream in the real world, where you attend school with those same four girls, three of whom are classmates while the other is your teacher.

For a while, I didn’t know quite what to make of it. It felt like a slice-of-life romance story, albeit with an unusual emphasis on introducing the player to things like classic works of literature and famous composers, but it also had surreal aspects that make me wonder just what was going on.

It was hard not to draw comparisons to a certain other slice-of-life-but-not-really visual novel, except I’d seen the developer explicitly say Moe Era wasn’t horror.

And that is accurate. While it isn’t as simple as it appears on the surface, it is not horror.

Instead, it’s actually quite a motivational story. I won’t go into details, because it’s fairly short and I don’t want to spoil it, but Moe Era left me feeling inspired and motivated.

It has cute moments and funny moments and just a positive message in general. The graphics are good, and it has a surprising number of CGs despite taking less than 3 hours to finish. It also handles its routes in a very player-friendly way, although I’d recommend keeping an extra save to make it easier to see all the content (such as the non-romance route, which is also resolved well in its good ending).

Moe Era is just an all-around nice visual novel, so if you’re looking for something cute and sweet with depth that goes beyond that, Moe Era is available now for the low, low price of free.

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Celebrating All Things Romantic: Creature Romances ~Kokonoe Kokoro~

Once upon a time, I wrote a freelance script about ten of the weirdest romance visual novels available at the time.

One of the visual novels I learned about as a result was Creature Romances ~Kokonoe Kokoro~, a visual novel about a romance with a giant grasshopper.

So of course I vowed to play it if it ever got an English release.

I figured there were two directions a visual novel like this could go. Either it would be disturbing and weird, with the protagonist seeing a world full of monsters around him like in Saya no Uta, or it would be silly and played for laughs like Hatoful Boyfriend.

But there was a third possibility I hadn’t even considered, and that was that the weird premise would be entirely inconsequential.

You play a high school boy who isn’t prepared to think about higher education or his future until his best friend Kokonoe Kokoro asks him to study hard so they can both be accepted into the same university. He is the only human character in the game, which no one ever mentions. Only one or two lines reference the characters being insect people at all. You could swap out the characters for humans and the visual novel would remain unchanged.

In the end, Creature Romances just left me asking why, and not because you’re romancing a giant bug.

It’s just a high school love story, a little cute but mostly bland. The juxtaposition of these normal romantic thoughts with the giant bug girl causes a mild amount of humor at first, but since the story never does anything with it, it loses even that once the novelty wears off.

So if you buy Creature Romances ~Kokonoe Kotoro~, just be aware you aren’t getting much besides the ability to say, “Yes, I played the grasshopper romance game.”

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Our First Ever “Celebrating All Things Romantic” Event

You overwhelmingly asked for it in my poll, and so here it is: our first ever Celebrating All Things Romantic event!

While I might have most of my publications in the horror genre, I do write some romance as well. One of my first fiction publications was a Christmas romance story called “A Special Present” in the anthology Love Under the Mistletoe.

It really became my niche in the indie game writing world, however. Most notably, I wrote the script for Ascendant Hearts, a romantic comedy visual novel available now on both Steam and the Nintendo eShop.

I also wrote the scripts for several of Genius’s mobile romance visual novels, the most recent of which are My Time Traveling Girlfriend, My Ninja Girlfriend, and Gossip School: Romance Otome Game.

As you’ve probably guessed, Celebrating All Things Romantic is going to be a lot like Celebrating All Things Spooky, which we do every October, except focused on romance games instead of horror games. Since this is the first time, it might not run as smoothly (can I play & review as many romance games in a month as I do horror games?), but let’s get down to the details!

2020’s Celebrating All Things Romantic Contest

That’s right, I’m doing a contest as usual, and the available prizes are:

Ascendant Hearts (gift sent through Steam)
Hatoful Boyfriend (gift sent through Steam)
Steins;Gate (gift sent through Steam)
Muv-Luv (gift sent through Steam)
$15 sent through PayPal
You pick a game for me to review!

If you choose the review option, your chosen game must be something I either own or is easily obtainable, which you can discuss with me beforehand. It must be a single game, not a collection (although the chosen game can be part of a collection). I will start playing it in March.

Rules and Scoring

No purchase is necessary.
Only comments made between February 3, 2020 at 1:00 PM EST and February 29, 2020 at 11:59 PM EST will be counted.
1 non-spam, non-anonymous comment on any blog post here = 1 point.
1 non-spam, non-anonymous comment on a Celebrating All Things Romantic blog post = 2 points.
You must use an email address or website URL (or include another way of contacting you) in your comment so I can contact you if you win.
You must have at least 10 points at the end of the month to win.
The person with the most points will get their first pick of the prizes. The person with the second most points will pick second, and so on, until all prizes have been given out.
The winner will be contacted by March 2, 2020.

Once again, I’m pretty much following the Celebrating All Things Spooky format. Any questions? Ask in the comments!

Now let’s see if we can make this celebration a thing.

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New Final Fantasy VII Remake Trailer, Kingdom Hearts: Dark Road Announced

A new Final Fantasy VII Remake trailer came out today, and it’s pretty awesome.

The new trailer includes a lot of stuff.

It shows the flashback conversation between Cloud and Tifa, several new scenes of crossdressing Cloud (they must know fans have been anxious about that), another scene with the new character Roche, and a confrontation between Cloud and Sephiroth.

All of these scenes look fantastic. I’m not sure how they’ll work in the new stuff with Sephiroth, but it has the potential to be interesting if they handle it well. I’ve also been concerned about how Roche will fit into the story, but he doesn’t seem bad in the trailer.

The trailer also gives us our first look at Reeve, Scarlet, Palmer, Red XIII, and Hojo.

They all look great, too. Seeing each new character was a delight. I’ve been especially looking forward to seeing what the remake would do with Hojo, and I’m pleased. He looks great!

Great in a Hojo sort of way, that is.

Finally, the trailer features what appears to be a battle against Jenova, confirming that there have been some definite story changes. Some fans have pointed out that Red XIII doesn’t appear in the party window even when he’s seen on-screen in battle scenes in this trailer, so he might not be a full party member in the first Remake game.

For Midgar to become a full-length game, they pretty much had to change some story details, so while it could potentially feel off compared to the original, I’m optimistic that they’ve made good decisions about how to handle these elements.

The entire trailer left me feeling more excited than ever for the Final Fantasy VII Remake, and I only wish it was still coming out in March instead of April 10.

Moving on to Kingdom Hearts, the official name for the Xehanort mobile game has now been revealed as Kingdom Hearts: Dark Road. (I was so close with my “Dark Fall” guess.) I’d hoped we would get more information about the game right away, but we’ll have to wait until mid-February for more details.

I’m still holding out hope that despite being mobile, Kingdom Hearts: Dark Road won’t be a gacha game.

So, how do you feel about the newest Final Fantasy VII Remake trailer? What do you think of Kingdom Hearts: Dark Road? Share all your thoughts in the comments!

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The Latest Resident Evil 8 Rumors

Hot on the heels of the Silent Hill rumors we discussed on Monday, we now have new Resident Evil rumors to take a look at.

These rumors are about Resident Evil 8 specifically and come from the site Biohazard Declassified.

They say they received an email stating that the next game (which will not be called Resident Evil 8 but will have a “clever title”) will be another first-person game with Ethan from 7 as a playable character, and Chris Redfield will be involved. Regular zombies will return, along with new “wolf-like creatures” and a shadowy enemy that follows the player and disappears when shot.

According to the rumor, the setting is a snowy environment and it starts in a village leading to a castle.

Despite a lot of people discussing “werewolves” in regards to this, it doesn’t look like that was specified, just that the enemies are wolf-like. Details such as the shadowy stalker enemy and the castle have also led to fans speculating that they might use elements from the early “Hook Man” build of Resident Evil 4, which was rumored in the past as well.

Now, this rumor comes from a random anonymous email, which doesn’t lend it a lot of credibility. Eurogamer backed up the report that it will be first-person, but not the rest. Meanwhile, AestheticGamer (the leaker we discussed in regards to the Silent Hill rumors) says it’s not the final Resident Evil 8 but a scrapped version.

And in (possibly) unrelated news, Capcom is recruiting Resident Evil Ambassadors for another playtest starting at the end of February and running through March. The email doesn’t specify which title this playtest is for, so it’s possible they’re testing an unannounced Resident Evil game.

So what do you think? Are the Resident Evil 8 rumors true? Is the playtest for an unannounced game? Share your thoughts in the comments… and I’ll do my best to play Resident Evil 7 before 8 comes out!

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