Rekai Musuka's Blog

Mangwanani!

Unknown — Sat, 19 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

A Computer Science student at Dalhousie University.</p>

You can find my personal projects at https://git.musuka.dev/paoda</a></p>

I'm currently working on a Game Boy Advance Emulator</a> in Zig</a></p>

Corpse Factory Review

Unknown — Fri, 22 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

A couple of weeks ago, I played Corpse Factory</a>, A VN by River Crow Studio</a>.</p>

Art</h2>
Corpse Factory has well-done character designs, sprites and backgrounds. The backgrounds are visually appealing, and the designs are attractive. Everyone you care about has unique designs, and the quality of all this art is consistent throughout the entire visual novel.</p>
Sound</h2>
The soundtrack was also well done. Though it was less recognizable than the art, however, that might just be a "me" problem. The songs fit the scenes well and did a lot to contribute to the atmosphere that Corpse Factory spends a lot of time building up.</p>
User Interface</h2>
The UI feels rudimentary. The rest of the visual novel feels quite professional, so I was surprised by how bare-bones UI was. Corpse Factory sort of</em> adheres to the standards set by its predecessors. It features all that you'd expect, but absent are bells and whistles such as being able to jump to a scene through the Log. I'm also a huge stickler for what I view are "standard" key binds, and so right-click being unmapped is a major annoyance for me. While the UI serves its purpose I feel like more time could have been spent getting it more in line with what you'd expect from the Japanese VNs it draws inspiration from.</p>
Another concern I had was loading times. I want to make clear that this is not a Unity thing, I assume it has to do with all the voice lines and how and when they choose to load them into memory. Either way, the result is that at some transitions you are presented with a loading screen. What is worth commenting on, is that sometimes these transition screens exist long enough for me to start to wonder what exactly the game is doing. I don't think this is proper for a VN, and while I'm in the middle of reading, I shouldn't have to deal with any loading whatsoever.</p>
Voice Acting</h2> A point of contention (perhaps) to the interested party might be that Corpse Factory features only English voice acting. I enjoyed every moment Tomoe was on screen. Her vulgarity and sincerity made for a relatively unique character which I thought Maya Faye did an amazing job with. Noriko and the others were portrayed excellently by what honestly was a star-studded cast featuring actors associated with well-known roles such as Ann Takamaki</a>, Zenitsu Agatsuma</a>, Kanao Tsuyuri</a>, Aqua</a>, and Subaru Natsuki</a>. Overall, the English voice acting was highly unusual but thoroughly enjoyable. I can only hope that such an effort can continue to be made going forward. I can't imagine how prohibitively expensive voice acting must cost.</p>
Story</h2>
Corpse Factory is around 12 hours, which means that it tells a shorter story. I tend to play longer VNs and so while I have to remember to take into account its shorter runtime, I still overall feel whelmed by what I experienced.</p>
The mistake I made (I feel) is that I approached Corpse Factory's story as a mystery to solve. By doing this I found that the story was predictable, and therefore felt like most of the story just existed to set up twists that were so obvious I started to wonder if I was just getting mad over something the story was never trying to be.</p>
While I'm no media analyst it's better to approach Corpse Factory as a character study. Fundamentally the story is about Noriko Kurosawa and what she has been through, is suffering from and what she intends to do. Simultaneously, the story explores other characters and their struggles and how they deal with their traumas and demons.</p>
Corpse Factory, uses its premise (that is, a supernatural hit-man for-hire site) to talk about mental health and in this area, I think Corpse Factory succeeds.</p>
TL;DR</h2>
I think I approached Corpse Factory expecting the wrong thing. Even if I were in the right mindset, Corpse Factory does suffer from its writing at times, which is quite unfortunate especially when it's fundamentally all about the characters. Overall the experience is a nice one. It feels quite high quality and it's self-evident that a lot of time was spent making this VN what it is today.</p>
If the premise sounds interesting to you, I'd say give the VN a shot. I'm interested in seeing what future visual novels River Crow Studio produces.</p>
5 / 10</p>

Akatsuki no Goei Thoughts

Unknown — Mon, 09 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I recently completed Akatsuki no Goei</a>. Admittedly, I'm a proud fan of Ojousamas, and Akatsuki no Goei (aka. AkaGoei) provides Ojous in spades. AkaGoei's highlight is the protagonist, who is comparable to, or who might have even inspired the protagonists from Hello Lady</a> and Grisaia no Kajitsu</a>. Asagiri Kaito is confident, competent, and sharp. He embodies a set of traits which are are common from time to time, but still arguably unique.</p>
AkaGoei is a VN from 2009, and its age shows. The work suffers heavily from what I'll describe as "late 2000s humour". While the game can be hilarious, I found it challenging to read repetitive, overused, gay jokes rooted in homo-hysteria. I worry I suffer from selection bias since I was acutely aware of when those jokes came about. Despite that worry, I still think there's an absurd amount of gay jokes present. AkaGoei crutches on gay jokes for cheap laughs and it feels incredibly cheap.</p>
The routes in AkaGoei are short, and all draw from the same set of story beats. Visual Novel routes that draw from an small if not identical set of plot devices can be fine, especially in character-driven stories where the focus is more on how characters act in situations rather than the situations themselves. The similarity of routes between Muv Luv</a>, Muv Luv Unlimited</a>, and Muv Luv Alternative</a> do this to an extent, and it was "fine". However, there is a limit, and AkaGoei sped past it. With routes that take around three hours to complete, identical conflicts, and inconsequential, incomplete endings, AkaGoei's routes meld together. Very few routes have moments that truly stand out from each other. Understanding that AkaGoei is the first title in a trilogy, I'm willing to be a bit more forgiving on plot elements that were unaddressed and unresolved, but I feel it important to state that AkaGoei should stand by itself as a story. While it does do quite a lot to get you interested in the world and its characters, it ultimately leaves you feeling unfulfilled, as each route abruptly ends.</p>
AkaGoei's story tackles classism. Japan suffers from unheard-of wealth inequality, the poor are treated as subhuman, confined to urban slums and the wealthy hire bodyguards to protect their children 24/7. Our protagonist, Asagiri Kaito and the majority of the cast hold and express strong opinions on an increasing level of societal division that borders on critical, arguments over "cleansing" can be heard over the news. AkaGoei takes place in a world one violent incident away from absolute chaos, yet it is mainly background noise. Some routes spend more time highlighting the disparity between the lives of the rich and poor, but never in service of an overreaching narrative. Again, AkaGoei is completely character-driven. This is not an excuse, however, as that such an interesting and tense premise is left completely one-dimensional in the game meant to serve as an introduction to the world is inexcusable.</p>
AkaGoei is very concerned with highlighting the completely different worlds the rich and poor live in. Unfortunately, the way AkaGoei goes about it is hilarious if not offensively bad. Kinugasa Shougo, the author who would later go on to write Classroom of the Elite</a>, ought to be ashamed for some of the worst writing I've seen in eroge. The slums in AkaGoei are decrepit and violent. When AkaGoei takes a break from its frilly, rich-girl school setting to explore the slums, it tries its best to make sure it's clear just how dangerous this new setting is. Here, AkaGoei suffers from the same writing flaws that have plagued Isekai authors and famously Kawahara Reki</a>. Violence in these worlds can only be conveyed through explicit, implied, or fear of sexual assault. The way Akatsuki no Goei portrays the slums, there is no need to be worried about needles, and wearing expensive clothes and jewelry is fine. No one intends to steal. The long-standing otaku tradition of only being able to convey "evilness" through sexual violence rears its ugly head yet again, yet this is to be expected of a 2009 eroge.</p>
What I have an issue with is the plot twist in one of the routes. Specifically, Tsuki's</a>. While I feel it inappropriate to go into detail, I feel it important to mention that the ending of Tsuki's route, while also suffering from the usual flaws (that being, abrupt, and unsatisfactory) features a plot twist, so unexpected, unnecessary, disturbing and so poorly done I was surprised this section of the game was not written by a 15-year-old. This ending is edgy, for the sake of being edgy, shocking for the sake of being shocking and resolves its disastrous twist within 50 lines of dialogue with absurdly unrealistic character writing and then the story just ends. Credits roll, that was it.</p>
Tsuki's character and her story had no right to be assassinated as it was. It's severely disappointing. I quite liked Tsuki and the banter she had between herself and the protagonist was one of the highlights of the visual novel.</p>
Summary</h2>
Akatsuki no Goei offers an interesting premise, hilarious dialogue and a protagonist who isn't your standard self-insert. Despite this, the premise never gets expanded on, and the comedy has aged poorly with repetitive, tone-deaf gay jokes. What little of the premise we do see is handled with the elegancy of an edgy teenager and the VN features perhaps the worst writing I've seen from a credible author in the otaku sphere. It isn't all bad though, the premise, while undeveloped has two long-visual novels worth of time to develop and the characters were absolutely fun and memorable.</p>
On a personal level, I love games about ojou-samas and if you have a similar interest in these sorts of settings and characters, Akatsuki no Goei will not disappoint.</p>
5 / 10</p>

The Sekimeiya First Impressions

Unknown — Thu, 11 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I started The Sekimeiya: Spun Glass</a> and am quite happy to be trying out some OELVNs. Embarrassingly, I haven't read many except for the massive success stories: Doki Doki Literature Club and Katawa Shoujo.</p>
I'm rather big on mystery stories, so what drew me to the visual novel was the reviews on VNDB and some of the game features, which I will discuss shortly.</p>
Damn, *this* is ren'py?</h2>
The Sekimeiya gets a gold star (along with titles such as Fatal Twelve) for being a ren'py game that doesn't feel like a ren'py game. I think ren'py suffers from the "Unity" problem where the defaults are excellent, Yet once you know what to look for, anything using the defaults feels incredibly lazy and cookie-cutter. The Sekimeiya boasts an excellent UI that has me forget that I'm running a shit-ton of python code.... until I encounter performance hiccups. Unfortunately, I encounter them often.</p>
Damn. This *is* ren'py</h2>
The game tends to freeze when displaying longer strings of text during that signature letter-by-letter animation you've come to expect from any adventure game. While the issue is nothing more than a minor inconvenience, I can't understand why I would have such an annoying performance issue. I've begun to believe that it's my fault. I am running Linux and while the game does</em> have a native version I don't expect game developers to test those versions, even if I wish they did. I'm sure the game runs flawlessly</em> on Windows. Though, you won't see me running that on my laptop any time soon.</p>
Wait, why isn't *every* Mystery VN doing this?</h2>
"The Sekimeiya"'s notes and backlog screens help to create the atmosphere of a good mystery and encourage excitement and intrigue within the player.</p>
The first feature is the Notes UI. The Notes UI is a page that distills the game events into bullet-point summaries from the protagonist's perspective. Alongside what the game provides you, it dedicates the right half of the screen to a user-editable input field where you're encouraged to jot down notes using a selection of standard editing tools. I love</em> this and have made extensive use of it already in the 4 hours I have played thus far. However, there are some rather unacceptable issues. It's trivially easy to misalign the blinking cursor, making editing already-written text complete guesswork since your cursor's true</strong> position is always a few characters off from where the UI says it is. It's easy to work around (just don't mess up) but like, you shouldn't have to?</p>
The second stand-out feature is the backlog, which is the best backlog I've seen in any game I've played and (if you'll excuse my boldness) maybe even in any adventure game period. This jam-packed backlog is</p>

NOT empty when you load a save (why some VNs do this I will never know),</li>
Searchable</strong>, and</li>
Filterable</strong>.</li> </ul>
These features make a lot</em> of sense to me in the context of a mystery visual novel. I think it contributes to the game atmosphere by suggesting that the exact phrasing and word choice characters use (and who says them) will be vital. It invites you to be hyper-vigilant when reading dialogue and makes the otherwise rather tedious process of double-checking wording dead-easy.</p>
There's also a map. I don't have much to say other than "yeah, it's cool you can see where you're coming from as well". Maybe they'll use it for something interesting? Currently, it's just a map which to be fair, does help considerably with my understanding.</p>
The Sekimeiya deserves praise for the Notes and Backlog. They're both game-play elements that contribute massively to my enjoyment when playing the game. I love writing down everything I find peculiar and I've already run into a situation where I was done in by not noticing the exact wording a character used</span></p>
I mean, it's Anime I guess</h2>
The Sekimeiya has pretty "anime" art, which is nice. A rather picky loser like me who thought twice about playing Raging Loop due to it's art-style had no problem with "The Sekimeiya". I don't think I've encountered anything too spectacular yet though that could very well change.</p>
A Fitting Soundtrack</h2>
The soundtrack is fine I guess? It works well given what type of game it is, but few tracks stand out to me (though I don't expect there to be anything spectacular given I haven't played that much yet). I wonder if the game does anything interesting with sound effects like footsteps. I'm too scared to play the game with headphones, however, so I don't think I'll ever be able to give a proper perspective on this specific part of the game.</p>
The Storytelling and Mystery thus far</h2>
The Sekimeiya is dense. Many reviews mention this, though I probably haven't reached anything the game would truly consider dense. The Sekimeiya effortlessly invites me into an inquisitive mood. As a result, I find myself analyzing a lot of what is said. I can feel the info-dumps that I will experience shortly and I hope that they are handled well, though they tend not to be.</p>
The authors of "The Sekimeiya" are familiar with the genre. Thus, I feel the need to spend time analyzing over what is said. While there are common mystery tropes, it is clear that the authors are acutely aware of that. There is always new information to analyze because the pace of the game is decently fast. From what I've played, there is little downtime. The quietest moments have been the protagonist's internal monologue. In this internal monologue, the protagonist expertly analyzes the situation around him and theory-crafts. Other characters do the same, though we only hear the thoughts they choose to voice.</p>
The mystery the characters are theorizing about is interesting. So far it has several layers, all of which I think are all interesting in their own right. Many of the reviews on VNDB claim that there are no plot holes which if true, would be an impressive feat, though I'm not quite sure to what degree of pedantry the game is subject. I eagerly await the opportunity to form my own opinion on the mystery the game presents.</p>
In summary, I'm content with how the story is progressing thus far. From what I have seen thus far, I am content and have very few complaints. I'm hopeful that the quality is consistent or better throughout the rest of the story.</p>
A Decent Cast</h2>
From what I've played, the cast is pretty good. Unfortunately, I'm too early in the game to say anything concrete about the cast. It is worth mentioning that a character who feels similar to some popular characters from other mystery VNs exists, but it's clear he serves a purpose. I think it's much more important what they do from here on out with everyone in the cast.</p>
The cast is "subdued". "Subdued" is a word that accurately describes a couple of aspects of "The Sekimeiya". I find it easy to label the art, soundtrack and characters as "subdued", though such a label should not imply boredom or a lack of inspiration. It's important to remember that "The Sekimeiya" features the "Mind Screw" tag on VNDB. This is no typical mystery.</p>
The cast is refreshingly competent. At times they're certainly better at keeping track of what's going on than me, and I have a Map, a transcript of all dialogue, and extensive notes. It's not "unrealistic" either. I think what's clear is that characters have agency, and think for themselves. It's been quite nice since during discussions a lot of progress is made.</p>
TL;DR</h2>
I began to play The Sekimeiya: Spun Glass</a>, which is a mystery OELVN from earlier this year. While I had some performance issues, the game surprised me with its backlog and note-taking systems. The soundtrack and art style, while pleasant, wasn't anything to write home about but the story and the mystery it explores have been fun. The characters, while subdued show a surprising amount of agency and cunning, which makes the conversations incredibly fun and I feel as if I'm always being challenged (which isn't that surprising since I'm not that good at mysteries anyways).</p>
I've been enjoying The Sekimeiya from what I've played. I'm a scaredy-cat so It'll probably take me a while to get through I'm deathly afraid of the protagonist being accused so the two times I've seen him use the Sekimeiya thus far have involved me saving and quitting playing for the day lol</span>, but if it keeps it up It'll absolutely be a game I think will be worth recommending en-masse. I'm very interested in the names of good OELVNs getting out there.</p>

Rekai Musuka's Blog

Mangwanani!

Corpse Factory Review

Sound</h2> The soundtrack was also well done. Though it was less recognizable than the art, however, that might just be a "me" problem. The songs fit the scenes well and did a lot to contribute to the atmosphere that Corpse Factory spends a lot of time building up.</p>

Akatsuki no Goei Thoughts

The Sekimeiya First Impressions

Sound</h2>
The soundtrack was also well done. Though it was less recognizable than the art, however, that might just be a "me" problem. The songs fit the scenes well and did a lot to contribute to the atmosphere that Corpse Factory spends a lot of time building up.</p>