"Oh, we're not in hell yet, sister. Why, this is purgatory. At least get the zip code right." Right! And so I began my journey that would touch my very soul, whether to damn or purify was left to be seen, but I was ready for anything it had to throw at me. Or so I thought, for it had many things to throw. This is one peculiar case of a game where I went in with already big expectations and somehow, impossibly, it managed to steadily, consistently exceed them to the very end. So don't think it's a mere exaggeration when I say Red Embrace: Hollywood is one of the best VNs I have ever played.

It touched me so deeply, spoke to me on many levels, made me suffer and delight in equal measures, challenged me, riled me up, kept me on my toes, made me question myself, discover some things... I'm afraid it's all down hill from here. So, forgive me if I quote the hell out of it, cause the words are stuck in my mind and won't get out.


Uncompromising. That's the word for it. It's unwavering when it comes to sticking to its vision and it all starts and ends with Hollywood. It's not just the setting of 1996 LA; the omnipresent main theme, the point of it all, is seeing behind the dazzling, sexy glamour of Hollywood, the underbelly of a dream, stripping the world of illusions and showing things as they really are, when the movie magic ends. This is executed thoroughly, starting from the main menu where the blinding spotlight awaits you with a lonely sound of the film reel spinning, and ending at the top of Hollywood, among the sea of glittering lights, like you're watching from space. So close to humanity and yet so far away - like stars... and vampires. Vampires are used as a reflection of Hollywood; romanticised and glamorous, they're beautiful on the outside, rotten and grotesque on the inside, walking, talking corpses. Throughout the VN vampires are compared with stars, be it of the human or celestial kind: "beautiful and bitingly cold", "remote, yet tethered, unable to descent or escape", "a cold, isolated existence, but exciting", "a crowd completely removed from everyday world and yet, painfully human."*1

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I absolutely loved this; such a refreshing depiction of vampires. The way this game defies and subverts expectations is a thing of beauty.*2


- asks one billboard. Heh, this VN is dedicated to shattering illusions and calling things their real names. I'm tempted to call RE:H a deconstruction of vampire romance fiction. It's masquerading as one, but peel off the surface level and it's something more. Like Hollywood, it seduces you and then crushes your heart.*3

The game doesn't follow the rules of romance fiction. Characters have their own goals, inner callings and destinies to fulfill. Not everything is about you. Not an otome. But... "That's the only thing I really care about. Be pretty, seduce me... tantalize me." I loved all these almost meta passages. Do you feel called out? Do you think the game is mean for 'guilt-tripping' you? Or perhaps the aim is to challenge you by asking questions, to make you think and see things in a different light. Let's see what Markus, the expert in subtext, says: "I want to weigh down your spirit with questions and doubts, to awaken that potential, not throw a blanket over its head... that comforting blanket of simple good and evil, of happy endings, a blanket made from your own sheared wool." If this isn't a direct commentary on the game.

Not black and white, no heroes and villains, no easy solutions - and that goes for relationships as well as politics.*4


Let's talk about the 3 hot cold vampire mentors you can romance or not. I think the intended order is Randal-Heath-Markus, but I played it the other way around, and I don't regret it.

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The benefits of playing Markus first is that I've already peeked beyond the veil and am reading the rest with clear mindset. Other routes show the surface level Hollywood and then Markus strips that familiar blanket off things. Journey with Markus is above and beyond anything that happens, into the essence of things. His musings literally serve you themes, maybe not on the plate, cause you have to do the work yourself too. But the attentive reader will see things much more clearly after talking with Markus. Now this might sound paradoxical that the most cryptic character serves to clear your mind (and also leave you with more questions than answers, but they are just as important). But that's Markus: a man of many contradictions and one of the best and most interesting characters I've encountered in VNs. I'm afraid my review will turn into a love letter to Markus (keep it down, keep it down... look, theme!). But, I think a love letter to Markus is a love letter to this game as they are, in many ways, one and the same.*5

To get back to subverting expectations: No sexy vampires here... or rather, they're sexy on the surface, like plastic dolls, like pictures frozen in time, but in essence, they're cold, dead, numb, even though perfectly preserved, corpses. And that is most potently reflected in sex scenes. Sex scenes are... something else. They're not arousing, not there for your gratification; but they're good scenes, highly emotional, sad, uncomfortable and even disturbing. And once again, it's all about creating an illusion. ("Believe in me and you might just feel something"). They're optional, so make your choice and make peace with it.*6


"None of us have any control at all, and yet we have all the control in the world... decisions, decisions." Ah yes, the infamous endings and the choices that don't matter. Choices are numerous, but only the rep with clans directly determines the endings. This means that politics ultimately has the biggest influence on the outcome. I find this quite realistic actually, that currents you can't completely control have the most impact. Another thing, whether your choices matter or it's all predestined is an age-old question, one that the RE:H itself tackles; one of its many themes.

Most endings, except special ones, are open and shouldn't be seen in simple terms of good and bad; they can even be called non-endings. But there are no familiar Hollywood romance endings. It's like the game's not following the well established structure of grand romantic tales, because that's the comforting blanket it's bent on pulling off your head. And that's why the endings break hearts, because they feel real. It's almost like those dark and dramatic grand tragedies would hurt less? At least you'd be told how to feel, and here, it's on you what to make of them. But let's think positively, "for only a smile can slay the spirit of gravity."*7

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I didn't find the game constantly bleak. I've had so much fun with it, laughed as much as been hurt, "suffered and rejoiced" equally. This is why I play VNs, to feel such emotional intensity, good, bad, doesn't matter. I embrace it all when it's so expertly done with such masterful writing and uncompromising vision. I can only say: Moar, please! This has been a soul-purifying journey I will never forget. Thank you, Markus. For everything. I mean, thank you, Argent Games. After this and Pale Cachexia, I am a BIG fan.

This is a game about trust. Armed not with a pristine blade, but with choices and questions, you decide whether to put it in Her or Him. Word of advice though: don't believe His lies! If you do, it'll be the end of the game. And without these wounds and horrors, you would be as you were before, you would not feel the joy of experiencing this transformative "song written in blood" in all its multitudes, for you wouldn't know its absence. The only way out is through Her. That's how it is in love and war. Right at the start it tells you that it's a love story, and with it, it gives you a lens through which to see it, frames it in a particular way. Make no mistake, that's the only thing you can believe in, but perhaps not in the way you expect. Not in all the ways...

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Whatever you think the game is, it isn't... just that. It shifts and moulds, ebbs and flows, challenges expectations. It's elusive, you can't catch it and put it in neat drawers, shackle with labels, bind it in roles, just like the titular Princess. As soon as you grasp it on one level, get to know one aspect, she transforms into something else. From the parts that don't fit your logical and ordering gaze appears another layer and another, the deeper you descend the circles of hell reality, the more you unwind the world. The best thing is that it works on every one of those levels, they are thoroughly entwined. It loops back, collapsing into itself, and yet staying the same.

Starting as a subverted fairytale, with a generic Hero on a path in the woods, where a cabin awaits and in it... a Witch Princess you're supposed to slay/save. The dichotomy and playing with millennia-ingrained associations are set up right off the bat. And from then, it goes farther and farther into archetypes - from fairytale to creation myth. At the same time, when you glimpse through a prism of another mirror, it positions itself almost like a "battle of the sexes". A man and a woman in the cabin in the woods, playing roles to occupy forever. Mirroring each other, enacting all the mind games and power dynamics taken to their absurd, volatile conclusions. And to whimpering endings to awkward starts of the relationship. A definitive dating sim if I ever saw one. But that's just one facet, one of many masks it wears.

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The heteronormativity is inevitable by design, owing to feminine-masculine paradigm carved deeply into our lizard brains by eons upon eons... therefore perfect for reimagining. It entirely reflects the binary play, dance of the opposites, yin-yang of the central theme. Permeated with dichotomies from top to bottom, the game deals in polarities, dualities that are inexplicably, perplexingly caught in eternal entanglement, not knowing where one ends and the other begins. "It's in our nature to be trapped", but also complementing and completing each other like two halves of the same whole. "We aren't stuck. We're one." It's like it flirts with some grand Romance... if only we trusted each other.


Where to even start? StP touched on every aspect of toxic codependency it could fit within this mutually tethered infinite dance bathed in blood. Love turned to hate turned to seething.

Trust issues, betrayal, resentment, power play, backstabbing, cruelty, wrestling for control, trauma bond, co/interdependence, enmeshment, gaslighting (tbh, the Narrator was the one who gaslighted me the most), shared illusion. Boundaries? What are boundaries when you're you're caught in twisting vines of the Wild force of Nature, contorting you, intertwining you? Boundaries are a reminder of the pain of separation and fear of falling apart. A limit of your world. "We're one... We're a path in the woods" with no beginning and no end, and on that path is a point where toxic codependency becomes sacred ontological symbiosis.

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Have I just romanticised malignant dynamic? Has the game? Relax! If anything, it plays with romanticisation in a cosmically cheeky way rather than being one. It works because it's thoroughly metaphorical and allegorical, keeping the needed distance while making it fun and poignant in equal measure. Smart and witty, its healthy self-aware humour saves it from the paralysing horror. (Chanting "Heart. Lungs. Liver. Nerves." also helps.) Every line is full of valuable insight, firing your synapses in multiple directions. But underneath it all, it's deeply heartfelt, emitting a "warm soothing glow", as if saying "I'm sorry if it hurt" with its open, bleeding heart laid bare outside of its ribcage, after ripping yours out.


When you pass by another mirror, just squeezing through a crack between the cage and the abyss, a whole new perspective opens up, a vast and quiet plane that will make you see this dynamic more fully and profoundly. Is it the ontological symbiosis of abstract concepts dressed as an interdependent relationship, or is that kind of personification of the universal used to explore human connections? It works both ways. It works in many mysterious ways: human, mythological, grand metaphysical and metanarrative. This is a place where, in playing with metanarrative tools, metafictional and metaphysical become one and the same. Yes, that's a lot of meta. Or rather, the metaphysical underbelly of reality becomes fictional, the game, whereas the fictional world in need of saving shifts into metafictional.

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>>Uncut FULL Review<<

I composed this write-up as if I'm going down the circles of reality, passing many levels on which this game can be enjoyed. Reflections on myth, existence, meta... Love. But for that you need to read the pristine version of this review as some of it would be considered "spoiler", so perhaps check it out only after getting one ending. A tickle: think of many contrasting concepts that we like to gender and how the game subverts it. It masquerades as dualism, but is perspectivist in essence. Who's Acting and who's Reacting, who has Roles to play and who has Choices isn't so clear-cut when all the paths are circles.

When you abstract the world down to the solipsistic level, an island locked within a cage of cold isolation floating over the abyss... all of it is You. Well, except that one thing, outside of you. The Other. To cross the limit of your world towards that other, to make a bridge, to free yourself from the prison of inward-facing mirrors - that's love. To see yourself as a reflection in their eyes, like you can never do on your own. That's why the line from the title is so powerful, even if poetically ironic after such violence. It's unpredictable, it could start a raging fire; it's absolutely terrifying, sharing a heart with another. "But the most terrifying thing of all is to leave one's heart unshared." To project yourself over the vast nothingness of the abyss, you need to make a leap of faith. It was always about trust.

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Never mind that... All these heady themes aside, the game is simply unapologetically FUN. It revels in it. The best way to fight oblivion. I was savouring it, not wanting to put a dot on it, because I couldn't ever play it again for the First time, even though I played it numerous first times. But She, in her infinite wisdom, "unfurling an endless cascade of smiles", told me to not mourn her... for she will make for an unforgettable heart.<3