Recent reviews by kifujin

*presents Grim Reaper with a marriage certificate* Come sign this, babygirl.

This game is the only time I've enjoyed cleaning.

All this for FREE?
Loved the atmosphere and the ways the game tries to mess with the player. Piecing together the story between vague things the characters say and the notes you unlock was fun!

Had some issues with the game crashing but it looks like there's a patch out that might address that. That's basically my biggest gripe.

Love the visual (and musical) style of the game. If you like vaporwave and pastel, 90s clipart aesthetics you're in for a treat. Found the humor and writing pretty dang good, and loved the puzzle-based gameplay. There's a wide arrange of tools you use to navigate the world and overcome challenges (which it leans heavily on, not really a hack and slash actiony game if that's what you're looking for). Also I have never felt so powerful as when I downloaded a car. Why isn't the internet really like this?

I'd recommend this with the caveat that you'll probably only really enjoy it if you already like Homestuck and are excited for the Expanded Homestuck Universe. Provides a better look into troll society, for one, and introduces a bunch of troll characters who I guess are going to do stuff in Hiveswap later.

When Our Journey Ends is a short, touching VN, but one plagued by more issues than I can ignore. The story starts with an introduction to Mariko, a high school student who is soon to graduate. She is also the only person to use a specific train, due to being far out into the country and having no other way to get to school. One day she dozes off in her usual seat on the train, and wakes up in a strange station she's never seen before during her commute. The VN mostly concerns itself with how she gets home, why she was brought to this strange land, and her feelings and thoughts on growing up.

The art is charming. I found the sprites a little stiff but appealing in their own way, and I enjoyed the cute painterly backgrounds and the fact that some were animated (waterfalls with running water, or falling snow, etc). The music was also peaceful and very relaxing. The game is very short and can be finished up within an hour, depending on your reading speed (not necessarily a bad thing, just keep it in mind if you tend to put a certain expectation of play time for x dollars on a game).

The main issues come from some of the writing and decisions made in laying out the game. There's a segment where Mariko is tested, and the player is offered no choices during this part. For the most part I think the whole game should have just been kinetic, since the choices the player is offered don't seem very important.
In the afterstories the voice clips started playing for the wrong lines, which got distracting. Achievements also don't seem to work automatically, although apparently that can be fixed if you feel like poking around in game files (I was too lazy).
For these issues I wouldn't recommend the game unless you're buying it cheaply or getting it bundled.

A fine continuation of the Rusty Lake series, and my favorite that I've played so far. It has an enjoyably weird, moody atmosphere. You move between chapters, that are placed on an actual family tree, and solve puzzles to assist the characters in their goals. Each chapter completed grows the tree, causing offshooting branches and such as the tale of this family is told through many generations. I only got stuck in a few places, so yay me. I'd really suggest playing some of the earlier games, many of which are free, because this game does go into the backstory of some central characters to the series.

I played this right before bed, fml.

Muv-luv is a collection of visual novels, with the series overall regarded as a top-tier entry in the genre. The two games out right now are Extra and Unlimited. The order of the series is Extra -> Unlimited -> Alternative, and it is highly recommended you play them in order. I jumped into these games without knowing much of anything about then because I heard a lot critical acclaim for the series, and I don't regret my decision.

Extra is considered the least intriguing of the group, and I would have to agree. It’s a fairly time SOL game. The kind where the extremely average, nearly faceless lead character somehow amasses a handful of girls who are eager to aim right for his groin with the precious of a heat-seeking missiles. It features a lot of slapstick comedy (most of it based on tried-and-true genre clichés, some of it actually funny). It took me a while to warm up since it wasn’t all that interesting (no overarching plot), but in the end I enjoyed the characters and the various scenarios their personalities brought about.
Unlimited is where the series starts to reveal its true colors. Starting a short while before the conclusion of Extra, Takeru awakes in his bed one morning to find the world outside a devastated wreck. Although he initially believes it to be a dream, he is soon confronted with the fact that he has somehow ended up in a parallel world where humanity has been at war with aliens since the 60s. Seeing the ways in which the world and the characters that had become so familiar during Extra have diverged due to this new history is one of my favorite things about Unlimited.

The game comes with the option to play either entry whenever, although again if you're a newcomer you'll want to go in order. There are a ton of save spots, always nice when a game features a lot of choices, and I like that the game instantly resumes from where ever I felt off when I reopen it. That a pretty neat feature I've never come across before.

The spritework is interesting as well. Characters move into the foreground and background accordingly, providing some depth and additional animation to scenes. There aren’t a ton of CGs, and some see a fair amount of re-use. Some silly scenes see the inclusion of chibi drawings that look like they’re drawn with crayon. I have noticed sometimes the characters seem to lag or freeze when they’re in the middle of changing poses or facial expressions, and while it doesn’t happen often it is noticeable.

The music is alright. To be honest, while I realize music can add a lot of emotional impact I generally don’t ding games much on that area unless a significant portion of the soundtrack is actually bad. For the most part the music is certainly… there, some of it is even a little catchy, and the tracks chosen match up with the flavor of the scenes they play in, but at this point I haven’t heard anything that blew my socks off.

The series does have a large amount of time investment, and while I wasn’t entirely sold during the first few hours with Extra I can now see places where the hinted at the series’ true nature. I grew to really enjoy the characters, and so far Unlimited has me enthralled.
I'll update this review with more thoughts as I finish the games. Maybe.

Sakura Spirit is short, which is probably a blessing because it just wasn't interesting. The premise of the story is that you're sucked into the past right before your big judo tournament and need to help out some nubile chesty girls in order to get back home. There were attempts at character development (more like backstory exploration), but they were so rushed that I couldn't work up enough energy to care. The art is at least decent, and some of the CGs look really nice. The downside is that there's sameface/samebody going on. There's exactly one choice in the game, and it only affects the scene immediately after and provides a few different CGs. I'd say give it a shot if you got it in a bundle or something, but it's not worth ten bucks.