Скорошни рецензии на Auphilo

I love trying out random visual novels to see if I can find a diamond in the rough. Sadly, this one has a lot of issues, most major of which that it doesn't advertise itself as incomplete or early access.Pros:- Great sprites, and even better CG art- Decent setting- Likable characters- Price is greatCons:- Decent setting is established, but nothing is done with it- Characters have zero depth- Ridiculous amount of spelling and grammatical errors (1-2 every other line)- Protagonist hardly does anything himself, just uses his extremely convenient connections seriously the rich, the mafia, an underground resistance type deal, a megacorporation, hackers. Even though he's just portrayed as an average person.- Protagonist gets out of life threatening situations more than once with Death Note tier ridiculousness. Except this visual novel doesn't even pretend he's some kind of genius, again he's supposed to be average. He's an average random nobody yet he convinces the mafia to their face while under threat that he's not involved in a murder even though they have several facts connecting him - Romance is weird. I went in blind and I figured it would either have routes or have a central heroine or not have romance. I assumed most of the way through that the last must be the case since it wasn't really built up to, but suddenly romance was shoved in with one of the characters with no input or foreshadowing.- I assumed this was a complete game as it wasn't listed as early access or advertised anywhere on the store page as incomplete. Imagine my surprise when I reached the end where nothing was solved, a new plot point was introduced, and the protagonist had barely interacted with two major heroines and one major character. Then I get a full screen that says something along the lines of "Thanks for playing up to here! We plan to keep updating the story absolutely free!".- Genre shift spoiler The last few lines of the visual novel shift the genre from urban apocalyptic to some kind of fantasy, maybe sci-fi? It's unexplainedOverall, it's a mediocre chapter one of a multi chapter visual novel, that's advertised as a complete project. As far as I can tell the last actual update was in early 2022 (looking at the steam patch notes), so I'm doubtful as to whether we'll ever see the full release of this.

Best Project Moon game so far. Recommend playing Lobotomy Corporation or at least watching the cutscenes on youtube before playing this game to understand the story, since it directly builds from that.

The story is great, the music is some of the best videogame music I've ever heard, the worldbuilding is one of the best I've ever seen in a game, and the gameplay is addicting.

Hopefully the next game post Limbus Company builds from this, if it does it'll be a day one buy from me.

This game is worth playing if and only if you're a Project Moon fan. Even then it feels like it's going to be the weakest entry in the series. The characters are extremely one dimensional.

It fails from a gameplay perspective in that nearly all current content can be completed fairly easily by just using random abilities. It feels extremely shallow compared to Library of Ruina. The dailies/weeklies don't feel satisfying/useful because you pretty much don't need them currently.

It fails from a gacha perspective for a couple reasons. For one, you start with all characters. Secondly, you roll for different rarities of those characters (called identities) that are essentially skins that give them a different set of stats. However, many of the highest rarity identities are worse than their lowest rarity version. While some may argue these are good things, from a gacha player perspective you want rolling to be exciting and it's not. You're not rolling for different characters which is usually the main draw of rolling. There are some high rarity units that are strong but currently you don't need them at all so there's no real incentive to roll for them. It's a system you can basically ignore.

I only recommend this if you're a hardcore Project Moon fan. Anyone else shouldn't bother.

PS: My hours are primarily from leaving the game open constantly.

Do not currently recommend. Better release than Imperator: Rome, but that's not saying much.

Issues:
- UI wastes lots of space
- UI has too many menus with things not where you'd expect
- Less complex than even HoI4 (Already felt like I have free reign in game to do what I want after 4 hours of play time, which is insane for a grand strategy game)
- Any depth to warfare has been removed, you just hire the general you prefer, mobilize, then send them to the front and watch the ai fight itself
- Core gameplay loop is dull, there isn't really any thinking to be done. You just build a new building that will make you money, create an export trade route (with mana), and if a good gets too expensive create an import trade route. That is essentially 80~90% of what you do in this game, and no thought is required
- Despite being advertised as an economic simulator, goods are created from thin air if there isn't enough supply
- Every nation plays as if it was socialist/communist, no matter what government type/laws you have. There is no free market, you (the dictator) control all trade and building in your nation
- Laws are poorly balanced, I haven't messed with them as much but from what I've seen some laws are objectively better than any other option, some to an insane degree. Multiculturalism being the biggest one, all cultures being accepted. The alternatives are nowhere close to as good, mostly just giving slightly more (mostly useless) mana
- Almost no unique flavor for different nations. I've played Cape Colony, Sweden, and some African nation, and they all played identically with no flavor at all. Only difference was starting techs.

I will say that the new tutorial system is great and I hope they do similar for all future games. The tooltip system is good as well.

Despite all the issues I have with it, I think with updates (hopefully no core mechanics/fixes behind dlc...) and mods, this game could be decent. I don't condone them releasing a barebones game, however

UPDATE:
While there is some fun to be had, there are way too many ways the game is frustrating. My last few games I've had a group of states revolt, and then their revolt has a revolt. When I beat the original revolt, the sub revolt becomes an independent country with no way of easily reclaiming them. This has happened more than once, and just kills any desire to continue playing. Most games the AI doesn't develop resources properly at all, which always results in countries just sucking out my resources. War is way too easy once you understand it, can easily win any war in most situations, though tedious. It is almost impossible to get AI to ally you. Another issue is that every time you gain or regain a state you basically have to reset all your production methods to the correct setting. There is no way to save these settings. Mid to late game you likely have a vast amount of states, and potentially every kind of building, and are potentially constantly at war. This means you are constantly clicking dozens of production methods back to what they should be. This is insanely tedious, when you gain a state it should just get your default settings.

I could keep going, but the point is even if you like the current state of the game, there are way too many quality of life issues that make it way too frustrating to play.

Schizoge. Took me 2 hours to finish the demo, so 6.6 hours total. The whole thing is "novel", for lack of a better word. If you're looking for something different, this is worth a go.

I liked the music and videos. Not a fan of the character art.

Overall I'd give it about 6/10, interesting setting and premise, decent characters, lacks "meat" though.

One minor negative side point, I thought the whole relationship with Hime felt extremely awkward, and sullied the impact of the relationship with Haru.

Best walking simulator I've ever played

Very fun and addictive game. So much depth, I have 20+ hours in game and I only know the basics.

Fun and worth the money, if a bit grindy at times.

Great VN. Excellent translation, amazing art, good music, interesting story, and amusing characters. Absolutely worth the asking price.

Only Reach so far, but as someone who has barely played Halo before, it is quite enjoyable. Runs great on my 1060 laptop. Not sure if it's the game or me doing something wrong, but when I set FPS to uncapped in game it seems to be capping at 120 even though my monitor supports 165. Not really a big deal though.

Glad MCC finally came to PC so I can play through the series.