Recent reviews by ⊿Draelyn

Does it stick the landing? Yeah it does, but I wouldn't say it does it with particular grace.

It might well be the weakest of this (amazing) series sadly, as it gets a bit wishy washy towards the end. However, at this point in time our investment into our favourite characters is at an all time high, and in all seriousness what is more important here is that we get to see more of them.

An enjoyable experience throughout, but all good things come to an end eventually; we will all miss these characters greatly.

CRYMACHINA is one of those games which seems to have dropped off the radar. In a nutshell, you're paying for a very well written, story driven game that focuses heavily on it's character interactions and deeper themes within a sci-fi setting. It has fun combat with linear and succinct level design that does a good job invoking atmosphere and imagination but with little substance. It has spectacular art and sound design with a fantastic soundtrack which I went out and bought immediately after finishing. It relies heavily on visual-novel style storytelling but also presents itself with cinematic cutscenes on occasion. Fundamentally this is a compact story driven game, mostly because it doesn't deviate at all from it's core story into endless side quests like most games of today. Expect to finish the core game in 18 hours, although there is still plenty to do in the post-game.

A lot of people compare this to Nier;Automata. The combat has some similarities, it's also a game about androids in a post-human world. However CRYMACHINA has a greater focus on character interactions/relationships with one another, tells a completely different type of story with a completely different range of themes, and has a much smaller budget. It can be just as heavy though, and has just as much potential; I was a huge fan of both games and I desperately want a sequel to this one.

As an added bonus, Yuri fans rejoice because this one has plenty to offer here.

A surprisingly amazing visual novel. On a surface level, you're looking at a detective/mystery story with Yuri elements and very well written characters. It turns out this Visual Novel hides surprising depth.

On a gameplay level, it's pretty well polished, I really enjoyed making all the choices and going back to see the alternatives using the system the game gives you, and the game contains a lot of nice extra features like speech bubbles that appear to one side to denote background conversations happening.

It took me 11 hours to see everything the game had to offer.

It's got a fresh new EN translation which reads very well, this only happened relatively recently so older reviews may not reflect this.

This desperately needs a worthy follow-up. Come in expecting to want more once you're finished.

So the previous entry was probably the best in the series, but this one comes runner-up. It's a shame to move on from (best girl) Erika's POV, but you're in good hands here. One particular thing of note here is that the music for this one was particularly great, but then again, it always has been!

Soulslikes are everywhere nowerdays, but this is definitely the best anime soulslike that exists currently. Compared with the souls series, what you're getting is an actual story, genuine character interactions with a great cast, companions, switchable classes/stats and a better magic casting system that can cast multiple different abilities easily on the fly.

Aside from that, you've got pretty good character customisation, super solid core gameplay with some great music, art and voice work, a somewhat tie-in into the god-eater series and some surprisingly good modding support.

Biggest detractor to this game is the occasionally inconsistent difficulty (it can be too difficult without a companion if you really don't want to use them, and too easy with them depending on who you take and where). The difficulty problems are completely nonexistant in NG+ oddly, the balance is far more solid there. The other biggest negative is that the dungeon design in one particular area is terrible, but largely its relatively inoffensive.

This is one of those games that desperately needs a sequel.

Congratulations, you've made it to the best game in the series. This might honestly be the best Yuri Visual Novel ever. Honestly, feel free to pick this one up as a standalone, it's just that good.

I won't say much here except that this series is quite possibly the epitome of the Yuri genre of Visual Novels. Admittedly this first entry left me with mixed feelings by the end of it, but immediately following this you'll come to the realisation that you've experienced a masterclass in visual novel storytelling.

Give this series a chance and you won't regret it, but if you've found yourself here in the first place, you should already know if this game is for you or not.