บทวิจารณ์ล่าสุดโดย Daybreak

A noble visual novel that sheds light on the human condition. Kind developers that provided a new English translation when the first one was lacklustre.

Brilliant Shadows is a Visual Novel set in a medievalesque fantasy setting. Spurting an intellectual vacuum for drama to unfold.

The game employs beautiful artwork, both colorfully vibrant and more dark and ominous when the narrative dictates it, moreover this is also skillfully portrayed in the different emotional states the characters go through. The soundscape and voice acting also lends its own share of magic to produce an enthralling narrative. The main cast is well fleshed out and stroke me as adequately multidimensional. There are three different endings to the game depending on what choices you pick throughout the game, they seem to control the protagonists outlook on life, if she'll turn out good or "evil".

There's a free prequel Embers of Magic on steam that gives a short but well presented idea of what to expect of this VN, even if it's tone is more lighthearted.

This VN doesn't have an auto-play function, apparently due to engine limitation, which almost made me put the prequel aside, I am glad I didn't. In the long run it didn't annoy me too much as every character was voiced in both the prequel and in this VN.

+ It's Tekken

- No crossplay

Flowers - Le volume sur printemps- is a beautiful coming of age, yuri Visual Novel, the first part of four part series, with each one covering the span of a season. The target audience is, ideally, teenagers overall, or adults interested in teenagers, though the game occasionally employs epigraphs in the interludes between the chapters to give the occasional average older person an additional layer to reflect upon, the full meaning of which may be lost to the young. The story starts as the protagonist Souh Shirahane begins at her new all girls boarding school: Saint Angraecum Academy, a Christian isolated school located in the middle of a forest.

The fourteen year old protagonist suffers from rather severe social anxiety, in other words she is irrationally shy by the normal standard, as a result of, primarily, her mother dying when she was young. On the other hand she's a beautiful talented young girl--who is fond of reading books and watching movies--even if she has irrationally low self-esteem. She is maimed like Kierkegaard or Nietzsche to some extent. Regardless, new hope looms on the horizon as Souh begins at her new school determined to try and embrace life fully once more and hopefully find new friends and try to live a "normal" life.

The choices are overall well woven into the pacing of the narrative though on some occasions I thought there was insufficient information given to the reader to make the choice meaningful, either resulting in the feeling of being railroaded or that the two choices just was there for sake of having different paths in the game. Nor can I can say I was a fan of the investigation sequences, while it made sense that the protagonist would know the relevant information, the reader most likely won't know what she does, in other words having read what she has etc.. Regardless the lovely music, CGs, voice acting and story had me intrigued enough to have me look forward to the translation of the next installment.

Choice of Robots is an interactive Science Fiction novel by Gold who have a PhD in Computer Science, but is interested in Political Science and ethics too. The novel examines the role robots will have in our near future as a civilization, namely from 2019 and 30ish years ahead. Through the player character who is an American Computer Science graduate in the story where we get to pick his different life choices. For example is it morally right to lend our talent to the military if the wish to support us financially? Etc. Etc.

Verisimilitude is deftly accomplished by focusing on certain aspects that lends itself well towards being, primarily, a reflective medium about an important challenge humanity have to face in the near future.

I've played through one path of the game so far, it took around 2.5 hours.

Torment: Tides of Numenera is a overall neat Science Fantasy RPG, a lackluster spiritual successor to Planescape: Torment in some regards, and a better one in others. Mind you, I find the pseudo-intellectuality, inherently, stronger in the PnP RPG Planescape setting than the Numenera one, even if the creativity is stronger in the former ... Christianity is Platonism for the people...

Thematically I think that they nailed Abandonment--it's beautifully woven into the setting, the narrative and the overall ambience-- and to a lesser degree Mystery where I am a bit mixed, whereas Legacy especially in the form of the ending is lacking and lackluster. Which brings me to philosophy, this speaks of high culture, even if the Planescape setting and Planescape: Torment of course was a mix of pop culture and high culture, and so is obviously Numenera and this game. Regardless I don't know if the developers ran out of time or had unrealistic ambitions, or I had unrealistic expectations...

Do the new companions live up to their heritage? No sadly not though I still find them fairly interesting. For my first play-through I had Callistege, Rhin and Matkina along with me. Also they seemed to be bugged so I had no inter-party banter between them :/. But on a strictly conceptual level I didn't find them as compelling as say Morte, Fall-From-Grace or Dak'kon - some of the more fleshed out companions from Planescape: Torment. The emotional journey I went through with them seemed impactless concerning their predicaments, though it probably would have helped quite a bit with party banter. As their comments on quests and NPCs were interesting and helped developing them. The companions partially had it easier in Planescape: Torment, in virtue of the fact that The Nameless One / The Player-Character had a history with, some of, them before the game began, making the player more emotionally invested in them. I didn't really care about any of the three companions from Numenera when the game was done, though there was some cool things no doubt and potential for greatness! Another minus is the bland and deliberately limited Voice Acting, I'd wish they'd use resources on other parts of the game when it wasn't of better quality.

Combat is sadly lackluster while it was a noble ideal to get rid of filler encounters, the mandatory combat /Crisis encounters weren't interesting in my combat-avoiding-Playthrough. It strikes me as a bit peculiar to use this many resources on this aspect of the game without using enough to make combat truly compelling. The occasional bugs in one mandatory fight made it especially tedious to go through several times.

Overall I think the game is a glorious and worthy spiritual successor even if it's a bit bland and lacking in certain aspects, it's shining in others even if it never quite reaches or surpass its predecessor concerning its artistic and narrative vision - though it's most likely stronger in the choice and consequence department for instance.

Hope that InXile Entertainment will be more upfront, transparent and honest with their backers in the future or I'll lose trust in them.

Lacklustre and uninspired exploration game in the vein of Dear Esther or The Old City Leviathan. No sense of mystery nor any David-Lynch-like intrigue.

The art style and graphics are overall interesting.

The Geneforge Saga is a series of Science Fantasy, turn-based(combat), indie Role Playing Games.

One central motif, and the one that is the heart of the series, that this game revolve around are quasi artificial intelligence and full-blown A.I., both biologically grounded--brought into existence through magic--and what role, plus how they should be handled and implemented in a fantasy medievalesque, with some steampunk elements, society structure.

The game begins with the player-character, a Shaper apprentice--Shapers are an organization of powerful wizards that dominate this fictional world through their magical might and especially their knowledge and monopoly on creating new life --waking up in bed as the school he is enrolled in are under attack, located on a group of Islands on the outskirts of the Shaper controlled empire.

The narrative and dialogue structure, on a macro and a micro level, are a bit of a mix between classical (western) RPGs and JRPGs and something else, though the game overall is leaps and bounds more Western. The design is partial due to a specific wish on the one hand and the very barebones graphic engine on the other.

Overall I'd recommend the game on the basis of its setting: On the one hand if you're tired of derivative Tolkienesque fantasy, and on the other in virtue of the fact that it isn't mindless escapism or entertainment, it isn't decadent drama just for the sake of drama, it isn't slapstick humor. It is pulp that isn't pulp. It has a soul and relevance for the real world, and the theme it explores will become more and more relevant for humanity in the near future. Not that the game is particular insightful as such but its core is noble and commendable for an indie game.

North is an atmospheric First-Person, allegorical science fiction exploration game with simple puzzles and gameplay. The main theme it explores is the contemporary refugee crisis--from a western perspective I'd presume-- seen from the viewpoint of a refugee arriving in a foreign culture. The player character we control is a refugee that have just arrived in a stable city where he seeks asylum and citizenship. We follow him in said process as he periodically sends letters back to his sister telling her of his progress. The inhabitants of this dystopian society are represented as alienesque people that speak a language that we as players and the character we control don't understand. At one point we have to pass a test in the police station; it consists of selecting which short movies are appropriate and which are not, and while the whole test and the correct answer are absurd seen from our perspective from the real world. It functions naturally within the narrative to mold the player character into a potential citizen as a most noble cog in the machinery that is this city. Just like the test for Danish citizenship, at least a few years ago, consisted of a questionnaire based on more or less borderline pointless rote learning, in order to mold them into being part of a specific power structure.

In the ending sequence of the game the player character shifted viewpoint in a way that came about as rather jarring to me, as though the developer ran out of time. Regardless the games overall ambience, with its hyperbolically allegorical Science fiction setting wrapped in a dark cityscape and accompanying synthpop soundscape intrigued me for the first part of the game. At least it isn't sordid entertainment even if the game in its finished result is a bit rough and iffy. It breaks noble grounds for a modest indie computer game within the gaming sphere.

The Old City: Leviathan is an exploration game in the vein of Dear Esther, albeit with more intellectual depth and more text within a loosely Continental philosophical framework.

The game takes place in an unidentified broken Western city, where among things the water supply has been contaminated. The surrounding civilisation have collapsed. We play a more or less insane sewer dwelling isolationist and get quite a bit of insight into one other isolationist - Solomon through finding his journal entries. Besides the surrounding environment.

The game invites us to piece together an ambiguous and murky story as the plot unfolds.