Unique game. Environment and visuals are gorgeous and art style is somewhat cartoonish and childish. Though mythos it draws inspiration from bears to be approached much more seriously, this one starts goofy, with silly mechanics and characters, while still keeping some horror-ish undertones and visual cues. At first I thought it would be just a light entertainment, a parody of a sort, but along the way, its storytelling evolved into deeper and darker eerie tones, contrasting less mature elements it consists of. It makes quite a nice game, which kept drawing me in more and more, though I didn’t expect it judging by the start. Music is pleasant and appropriate but nothing worth keeping soundtrack of on your music player. Best part of game are its many lovable details, its voice acting and dialogs and the way they tie together the story, both on its childish and deeper levels. This part is superbly done and all in all makes for a really nice storytelling which is not abusing its folklore backdrop. Unfortunately, it’s very ending is not on par with the rest. Whether it was because of project deadlines, financial issues, or authors just intended to wrap it up being excessively vague, ending takes some serious effort to make sense of and feels rushed and unpolished at best. And I love vague! While there is enough story content to analyze and hopefully come to more or less satisfying sense of closure, it is just not on the same level as rest of game, which is a crying shame. E.g, NPC mushrooms you keep meeting during game got a much more neatly wrapped up ending arcs than protagonist and main story. In the end, if you can appreciate unique take on classical European fairytales and whacky gameplay and dialogues, you will love Blacktail. Objectively, it deserves 4 stars, but last one is on me ;)
Sorry for stating the obvious in title, but it is important to keep that in mind at all times. Won't get into holy crusade about morality of porn content here, except to state - if I had to choose between graphic sex and graphic violence my take is: "Make love, not war!" I noticed this game on sale and it had some unusually positive reviews which intrigued me. Didn't expect much, and I am not much into visual novel format, as I saw a few too many who weren't worth a shit, and some which were downright repulsive. With BaD, I was pleasantly surprised. And with writing, no less! Now, remember the title of this review. Story and direction won't win any literary awards, but for being what it is, it is freaking miracle! It is hilarious, witty, warm, sometimes even touching and dramatic and clearly wondrously diverse and pleasant to go through it. Story and characters make sense, and have more depth and soul than seems fair for such a title. Yes, everybody is depicted rather revealing overall, and there are some turns of events which raise an eyebrow, but read the title. I have never seen porn written so well. If I had to compare it to something, it would have to be an "American Pie" movie series which share somewhat similar humor, theme and spirit. Other thing that catches the eye are details. Gosh, every little peace fits perfectly in its place for a reason, from interface (which is great) to little story nuances and graphic details. There are a lot of minigames, which are ever innovative and fun and work well together to break that boring visual novel thing. It is obvious it was a work of talented individuals who put lot of love into this project. Other than that, BaD has decent but not stellar graphic. Character and clothes design is superb and detailed as everything else, if a little plastic. Didn't even care for porn (it's ok)- Music is great but won't be everybody’s cup of tea. It captures the spirit just fine. Give it a try. I'm looking forward to next season!
I like anime. I like good stories. I like visual novels. I don't mind porn. Hell, I'm of opinion that there should be more sex and nudity than violence in games. I like horror, too. But for god's sake, this fails in almost all departments. For starters, I can't believe people who wrote here that storytelling is excelent. It is utter bollocks! Story is dull, completely nonsensical, exctremely predictable, to the point I knew almost everything that is gonna to happen. I kept waiting for some plot twist, but there was none. Characters are bland, idiotic and unmemorable, protagonist is utter shithead and most well fleshed out character is titular Saya, who is an sociopathic alien monster. It is not enough to say that title contains cheapest trash horror tropes, because it's even worse. For crying out loud, we have one scene where character walks right into dark monster den to her certain demise because SHE IS TOO AFRAID TO TURN HER BACK ON IT AND RUN! What kind of crap storytelling is that? Story and visuals doesn't manage to scare, they're just sickening. What little intrigue they have is left unexplained and unresolved. Best part is actually porn which is drawn rather well (minus tentacle stuff), but that certainly isn't enough to draw player in. Is there at least different and diverse endings? Nope, just 3 of them, all predictable and one worse than other. Actually best ending is shortest first „failure“ one. I wish I didn't go for others. Saying all that, there is a tiny bit of charm in relationship between protagonist and Saya, and there was potential for very unique love story, but this failed miserably and character's actions became so disturbing and irredeemable that it's just a pain to read. If you like anime, like good stories, like visual novels, horror and don't mind porn, run away from this title. Or, just click away (no reading if you can help it) until it's finished, and take a look at drawings, because they are all good there is to „Saya no Uta“.
This is game will most likely be adored by those who are seeking something different and is one of few I assigned "ART" tag to it and felt compelled to write an review. Visually it's mostly serene and beautiful. Graphics are simplistic, but surprisingly good, and color palette and light effects are fantastic. Simplicity is for good, because sheer amount of marine life detail (I suggest dialing fish details to "ultra", even at the expense to everything else) would probably make it run sluggish on slower computers. As for game itself, it's minimalistic. Core mechanic of game is reduced to swimming with occasional interaction. For someone who is demanding a lot in this department, this will probably be disappointing. I myself find mechanics conveniently reduced to make space for sheer enjoyment of absorbing game's captivating environment and pondering it's slow paced and vaguely delivered but deep plot. Plot is not something spectacular, and is open to individual interpretation, but in a nutshell it's driving you to reflect upon our natural environment, human impact on it and touches some philosophical questions. Even if you don't care about plot, I find just swimming around and relaxing while looking at spectacularly rendered submersed landscapes enough to recommend this game. Soundtrack is beautiful and adds to overall atmosphere of the game, enhancing serene parts and tension when things get more rough. There is a one problem I noticed, but I hope this will be corrected in some update. GOG version is only one I tried so I'm not sure if this is general bug or some controller map problem. When finding shark "meditation statues" I can't seem to find "view button" that game suggests for me to use to enter meditation mode (it's sort of landscape exploration mode where you can focus on various different fish swimming everywhere around). When I do enter meditation via game menu, there is no way to exit from it without going out of game to main menu and loading story again.
I believe this game is somewhat of a Egosoft's attempt to bring something fresh to a franchise. While it is obviously not a stellar sucess, it makes many steps in right direction, but unfortunately also makes some very bad ones and especially so in regards to its predecessors, which is it's single greatest sin. It is now tweaked and patched and a lot better than it was, but it still remains what I consider an important, milestone, but yet not really sucessful experiment. The bad: buggy, tedious, interface-ally confusing and frustrating, AI is sometimes downright ridiculous (autopilot, NPC navigation). It can be very repetitive on many different levels. Trading is not what it should be in essence, yet there are two paralel trading systems (cargo and personal)?? Many station and NPCs are feeling very generic. Mini games are repetitive and boring. Various aspects of game are not balanced, etc, etc.. The good: feeling of presence in the universe is fantastic. Graphically it's very good. Ship finally have believable cockpit; entering and looking around the ship now looks like you are really there (instruments, copilot, sounds) Stations are gigantic and are teeming with life and traffic. Ships are more detailed than ever. Boarding mechanics feels there is always a prize in carefully planning battles with capital ships. There are rare and hidden missions and items to find. Conclusion: I did very much enjoy Rebirth in the end. If in next X game developer keeps all mentioned good things, but instead of many dubious experimental stuff which was not received well at all put instead more effort in variety and content (more story, plots, missions, situation templates, ships and ways and paths to upgrade them, not mentioning different NPCs, their faces and roles, and interaction with them), than maybe Rebirth could be observed as a birth of something more than a hit and miss experiment it is viewed as now.
I believe this game is somewhat of a Egosoft's attempt to bring something fresh to a franchise. While it is obviously not a stellar sucess, it makes many steps in right direction, but unfortunately also makes some very bad ones and especially so in regards to its predecessors, which is it's single greatest sin. It is now tweaked and patched and a lot better than it was, but it still remains what I consider an important, milestone, but yet not really sucessful experiment. The bad: buggy, tedious, interface-ally confusing and frustrating, AI is sometimes downright ridiculous (autopilot, NPC navigation). It can be very repetitive on many different levels. Trading is not what it should be in essence, yet there are two paralel trading systems (cargo and personal)?? Many station and NPCs are feeling very generic. Mini games are repetitive and boring. Various aspects of game are not balanced, etc, etc.. The good: feeling of presence in the universe is fantastic. Graphically it's very good. Ship finally have believable cockpit; entering and looking around the ship now looks like you are really there (instruments, copilot, sounds) Stations are gigantic and are teeming with life and traffic. Ships are more detailed than ever. Boarding mechanics feels there is always a prize in carefully planning battles with capital ships. There are rare and hidden missions and items to find. Conclusion: I did very much enjoy Rebirth in the end. If in next X game developer keeps all mentioned good things, but instead of many dubious experimental stuff which was not received well at all put instead more effort in variety and content (more story, plots, missions, situation templates, ships and ways and paths to upgrade them, not mentioning different NPCs, their faces and roles, and interaction with them), than maybe Rebirth could be observed as a birth of something more than a hit and miss experiment it is viewed as now.
As far as bare game anatomy goes, I will just say that it is very well executed classic retro style adventure, looking not much unlike some of the legends of golden days of point and click adventure era, even graphic-wise. But, there are enough reviews here already about game details. As an older gamer, I'm more interested in story and it's execution, and this is what I would like to emphasize in this "review". Today it's more common than not that authors try to conform to as big audience as possible, we have many look alike blockbuster hits, professionally made, and delivered by a well known recipe, and very similar in flavour. Not the case here. In Primordia, authors carefully forged a beautiful story, but rather than paint it for us in detail, they chose to treat us as adults and give us just enough to figure out the main, but fill the gaps and nooks for ourselves. Yes, it's a short one and underused (though according to authors' comments in "Fallen" novella they themselves were certainly not of this opinion), but strong and captivating and I much more prefer it than thin, over-exploited plot. It's a story of a troubled robots, abandoned in a troubled world by their creators like a lost children too young to care fully for themselves, and trying to find meaning in the mess around them. They are trying survive in the fading world, and like us-humans in whose image they were created, and which this story mirrors, they bear many scars, both outside and inside. Like us they harbour many delusions and truths and are capable of much evil, but also of wonderful things. It's a story of battling concepts; justifying means to a desired end against making all the "right" choices to whatever end it takes us. Of exploiting against creating. Or, closer to the story setting, plundering and salvaging against repairing and building. But, if there is a layer of this short but thick story that I would have to single out, this is above else a story of sacrifice for perceived ideals and living with consequences. It grasps you and leave you pondering and reflecting upon it (and yourself) for days after completing this short game. I can only thank and congratulate the authors for Primordia. It's a small but adorable gem.
