Recenzii recente de June

I recommend this but it is an extremely difficult game to get through. It's understandable that it may take players to dark places. If you're looking for a sign to stay alive tonight, this is it. Please stay safe and talk to someone.

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FREE 24/7 suicide hotlines:

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7/10

Backstage Pass is a LGBT-friendly visual novel about Sian (pronounced "Shawn"), a young Asian-American woman who's navigating through her first year of college. She and her best friend (Adam) seem to be the luckiest freshmen, both already having successful careers and a social network few freshmen in college has. You need to maintain certain statistics to better your relationship with your professional entertainer love interest (LI) of choice. Each route spans from the start of Sian's freshman semester until the end of summer. All of them are the same in that you build Sian's stats and everything culminates to a final resolution that may be a confession, heartbreak, or a feel-good scene.

There is no main story arc so I'll just list from best to worst; also minor spoilers ahead (LI's friendship routes included; these are route ratings—not just LI):


There are many quality of life changes that need to be included in the game. Sometimes the audio would glitch out. Characters would repeat lines, say lines different from the text, or they wouldn't talk at all. A scroll wheel up usually fixes the latter. A bigger issue is that, when I have it on Auto-read mode, the cell phone messages appear for a second and disappear. Half the time, you can't scroll back to make it reappear. A rollback feature in general would be nice; the absence of one is the reason I have ~40+hrs. Some of the dialogue felt like the writers were just trying to fill in for things they didn't want to research. For example, there's a scene where John says "television" and Sian corrects him with "T.V." and it becomes this minute-long "culture shock" type of thing. They're interchangeable, c'mon. There are a couple of instances of colorism[www.buzzfeed.com] if you blog so you can avoid blog-related emails if you decide to pursue it. These are just a few things I'd change. Otherwise, the mechanics are great.

Backstage Pass is an entertaining visual novel with a huge variety of endings. The writing, art, voice acting, sound, and music production was very well executed. The opening and ending cutscenes were beautifully animated. Besides the MC, every line is voiced by professional voice actors which I thoroughly enjoyed. Issues were given the modicum of respect they needed, though improvements can be made. If you're looking for something light and easy to pick up, give Backstage Pass a try!

8/10

I got this from a bundle and I have to say I've read longer and better free-to-play otome visual novels than this. I don't mind that the art is lacking but the writing...isn't good. It's not the worst I'd ever read but I expect better from paid content. For example, it makes no sense for these guys to go from 0-100 in love already. They don't know anything about the main character (MC)—the reader barely knows anything about the MC. You could pop the love interests and MC in a saltshaker and I wouldn't be able to tell them apart because that's the same level of depth and personality they were all given.

It's really sad because South Korean culture was watered down to make it more palatable for a non-Korean audience, especially from a westerner's perspective. It throws American stuff in your face wherever possible. In fact, there's a random clubbing montage with real life people that was really out of place. The clubgoers consisted of way more white people than Korean people—there was like 1 Asian guy in the crowd. Then there's another scene where they were having breakfast and they're like, "Yeah, America does breakfast the best!" I don't know if the writers didn't care enough to do research on Korea's breakfast foods—or research on anything—but that's just lazy. The speech style ("Dam [sic] girl you really got moves!"; note that this was exclaimed during sex), the setting, the characters—everything was Americanized.

Nothing about this game was Korean and I expected as much, especially considering the title. If you're looking for a cheap otome title, I suggest looking in the Free section. You'll find more fulfilling content there.

2/10

I was hoping this would be a reunion of a father and daughter but it felt like 2009's Orphan movie gone wrong—filled with csa implications, equating infertile women to trash, improperly dealing with mental illness, and more!

I'm going to summarize the entire thing so spoilers abound. Ambre is a kinetic novel that's extremely slow to get its footing but, once it does, it's one train wreck after the other. It's told from the point of view of Tristan, a 30-year-old man who is chronically depressed. He meets a lost child named Ambre at a park and decides to lure her back to his apartment with an "it's cold and you don't want to get sick so you should stay with me." Without contacting the proper authorities, Tristan essentially kidnaps Ambre. If that part doesn't raise some red flags, the next part will.

Tristan would play "husband and wife" with the child but right after that, he'd tell Ambre to brush her teeth and think of protecting her from monsters under the bed like a parent would. Also this: "The temptation to lick the dab of ice-cream (sic) from the tip of her nose or in the corner of her lips was nearly too much. [...] Ambre was a little girl, only a little girl." Shortly after that, the young baby child girl (in case you forget) proclaims that she wants to become a woman for him. And so begins her consumption of media that would teach her to seduce men and become pretty. Ambre goes out to town by herself to splurge on outfits and luxuries—to be a woman—followed by a bit of a monologue on consumerism and beauty standards. And Tristan lets it all pass; the most he does is give an exasperated "you don't need to do this" as if he had no hand in any of this disgusting business.

Then there's this horrific platitude by Tristan—the thirty year old man—to a child after she screams about wanting to be with him: "Listen, I will never be able to forget my wife, all right? [...] But that doesn't mean I don't want you, it's the exact opposite actually. [...] I need you. You already have her place." After proclaiming their love for one another, the child says something about not seeing her as a kid and then he kisses the child girl in a sexual way. They get engaged because apparently pedophilia isn't illegal in Träumendes Mädchen's world. After showing a CG of the baby girl in a wedding dress, she suddenly goes wild with a desire to procreate. So she waited for her period to come. Honestly, I should have stopped reading a long time ago. Pedophilia is...y'know, I'm appalled because this sh!t exists. I'm also wondering how this got greenlit for Steam. I thought they had some semblance of standards. But I soldiered on for this review.

By some force of nature, a doctor actually agrees to see this child about her fertility and—lo and behold—she's sterile. This shocks her so much, that she goes into a deep void where she wants to harm herself (but doesn't), descends into severe self-deprecation about how worthless she is, and then there's nothingness. Ambre finds herself in the same place where Tristan initially found her and is paralyzed. Then it cuts to the 30-year-old man and, when he realizes she's gone, Tristan visits the doctor. The doctor then lauds him about his "burden" of taking care of someone with mental illnesses. Tristan and he go back and forth like a gaggle of geese about how easy it'd be to just leave Ambre outside to die. After a while, Tristan goes to the park where he finds a girl who looks like a teenager but it's Ambre. He knows it's her; he knew all along. She's supposed to be a 30-year-old woman but Ambre's body and mentality reverts into a pre-adolescent girl whenever she finds out she can't bake a baby in her abdomen. And he just rolls with it. Doesn't even try to get her help from a more competent doctor or anything; he just accepts that he's married to a child.

This gif[68.media.tumblr.com] sums up how I feel.

The art is all right and the musical scores are nice. As far as mechanics go, I wish the camera wouldn't randomly zoom in and out all over the place. Some of the phrasing felt out of place, there were terrible analogies (stop using slavery to make a point; it's not the same), and it seemed like words were randomly plucked from thesaurus.com because it did not fit the sentence. Lastly, don't mind my time logged in the game—I left my computer on while fixing the pipes in my bathroom. This is a very short kinetic novel so if you're still interested after reading all this, it's free. Based on average reading time, it should take 30 minutes to an hour at most. Good luck.

1/10

I got this from a badge coupon; its trailer piqued my interest. The mechanics are very simple—you press R to swap platforms much like Kirby: Planet Robobot and Spacebar to jump. The level of difficulty may get frustrating and sometimes it feels like the controls don't react immediately but these are easily overlooked.

Now I just have one question: where can I get the soundtrack? The music ranges from synth-dub to Chillstep. I would even go as far to say that some of these tracks are on the same playing field as what Proximity or xKito promotes. If you're a fan of interesting platformers with great music, give this a try. If anything, pick this up just to have the music playing in the back.

8/10

Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel was a highly anticipated game, especially after the massive success of its gargantuan predecessor. Without DLC's, you play one of four in the band of misfits—most of whom show up as antagonists in Borderlands 2. Each person has their own motive for working as a group; some want to be heroes while others just live for the thrill of it. There's better mobility, new weapon types, money is actually useful to get loot, women who love women, Claptrap, and your excessive collection of guns can actually be used in a vending machine called "The Grinder" to rely on RNG to make a better gun. There are some intuitive changes and upgrades to the game. Skill trees have changed, giving you new abilities such as double jump and the skill to be like Kirby and do a butt slam in order to make a quick descent. Everything I loved about Borderlands 2 mechanics were built into the game—from higher tier modes with great loot drops to fun easter eggs.

However, there was a lot wrong too. The writing suffered with the different team, opting for censoring profanity that broke immersion from the coarse world of Borderlands. Some jokes were more cringe-y than funny. The progression is significantly slower because it was padded with boring fetch quests. The new terrain was beautiful but seriously lacking in save points; someone else said it's like the game wanted us to die and restart from the beginning. They hit the nail on the head. Raid bosses were one of the highlights of Borderlands 2—and there was only 1 in TPS that was on a predictable respawn timer. As with any Borderlands game, I also strongly recommend playing this with friends. Otherwise, it will get boring really fast.

So did it live up to the hype? Yes and no. It answered a lot of questions but it also left a lot of questions unanswered. If anything, the game is more worthy as an expansion to Borderlands 2 than a standalone game. I'm recommending it if you love Borderlands 2 lore and have a really strong desire for more Borderlands content. I also recommend playing this first if you want to appreciate Tales From the Borderlands more; many characters show up from this game and Borderlands 2.

7/10

I was excited for this because I was fresh off of playing Hanzo's route (Nightshade) for the umpteenth time and was ready for some more slow burn, healthy love. I watched the trailer and saw beautiful men, terrific voice acting, some nice art—even a character that gave off some Nightshade-Hanzo vibes and another man with ombre black hair and a silky bass tone to match (the work of Kenjiro Tsuda who also plays Hanzo). All of this was shattered when I decided to play the latter character's route first (Soshi) and it turned out he's the MC's older brother. He's not related by blood but the fact that she looks at him as a sibling would, constantly reminds the reader that he's her brother, and still wants to romance him is creepy in and of itself (so yeah, incest warning).

Everything culminated down to me sending this game back for a refund. I haven't played very long so you can take my opinions with a grain of salt. Even reading the spoilers in positive reviews and watching videos of what I "missed out on"—from the way the MC is treated, to the watered down characters, and the lackluster plot—have only reaffirmed my decision. The content they're offering isn't worth full price. I've read free visual novels with no voice acting that featured better storytelling within 5 minutes than half an hour of this. What little trust I had left with Dogenzaka Lab to publish good content has dwindled with every recycled VN that got pushed out by them.

Back to Hanzo for me.

2/10

You play Ueno Enju, a young Japanese woman who is a novice shinobi, caught in the middle of peacetime politics and government espionage. Nightshade is a gripping story set in the Sengoku Era, very loosely based off of the years after Nobunaga Oda's death. You will come across original and fictionalized historical characters and, depending on who you choose, your heart will soar or be crushed—or both! Besides the main character (MC), this visual novel is fully voiced and the art is a stunning interpretation of the period.

(I will mostly be referring to Hanzo's route here) Sometimes I'd look at Enju in awe because of her love for her friends and her ability to adapt. While admirable, she was the typical naive, porcelain skin, 16-y/o girl (yikes) that is seen too often in Japanese VN's. I also wish she weren't so docile and self-deprecating in non-Hanzo routes. Another thing I am grateful to the writers for is that two of the love interests (LI) never blamed her for horrific things that happened.

Sometimes I wanted Kyara to be the protagonist or to have her own route (still do). Kyara is confident, down to earth, funny, vulnerable, non-apologetic, and more age appropriate. There were missed opportunities to open up for more political intrigue and action sequences. In addition to Kyara, the game would've also benefited with a route for Ieyasu, mostly because of what I found during my brief research of the Nobunaga. Ieyasu was a historical figure who, as a child, was a hostage of Nobunaga's clan and eventually grew to be one of his strongest allies. Again, a hell of a missed opportunity for more plot.

The overall story is intriguing and doesn't branch very far from one another. Every route is linear, whether you choose dialogue for the good or bad ending. Besides the finale, the same thing will always happen but the MC's characterization and development may vary. I had issues with the way the routes were handled because it was impossible to know where to go without a guide. Sometimes picking the wrong area to visit will lock you out of the route. I'm not expecting Bioware-level decision making but having to choose places to visit with no indication of which LI benefited made me wanna scream.

The voice acting is phenomenal. I don't mind that Enju doesn't have a voice. It allows the player to easily themselves into her shoes. I also suggest using the MC's name instead of customizing it because the VA's actually say her name. If you customize it, you can hear the microphone cut off suddenly where they can't say your custom name. It killed my immersion, especially during heated moments. Another mechanic that was completely unknown to me until recently is, if you have a mousewheel, you can scroll up to review and rewind back to a dialogue you might have missed. Lastly, some of the audio was recycled which also broke immersion because it'd make me laugh. It's funny hearing the same kissing clip multiple times. Not too bad though!

My recommended order of play (spoiler-free; Bad Endings not considered; route ratings—not just LI):


There were times when the narrative and characters became overused VN tropes but it can be nice for the novelty to others. If you can power through that, I'd say this is a win just for the production quality alone. When the game was buggy on release, the developers were always patching and they were responsive to the community. From the historical revisionism (particularly Hanzo and Goemon), to the visuals, the soundtrack and acting—you'll find yourself in love, in awe, in tears, etc. Despite its shortcomings, you'll be entertained for hours on end and Nightshade may even re-ignite your love of shinobi legends like it did for me.

TL;DR: Hanzo best boi 10/10
6/10

I put quite some time into this outside of Steam. The artwork is stunning and the characters are charming but it's got wonky mechanics that often bug out. Wakfu eventually became a repetitive grind that I didn't want to subject myself to. Lastly, the most recent patch won't complete despite leaving my computer on all day.

6/10

There's not much to this game; the gameplay in the trailer is basically it. Montaro is cute and plays okay but it gets repetitive and boring. It could also do without the weird "dog upskirting high school girls" mechanic. That's sh!t you should keep to yourself.

3/10