Alternate DiMansion Diary feels like it will be a survival horror adventure, like The Crooked Man, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Everything in the house wants to pleasure you, but it wants to scare the heck out of you at the same time. You never know what to expect from certain rooms like the guest house, the giant bar in the hallway looking over a pit, the spa room or the theater – but rest assured, nothing here is interested in harming our character and everything just wants to help her get off and have a good time doing it. Once you understand that, the sense of dread seems to wane as you work your way through the many puzzles strewn throughout the mansion. You’ll be wracking your brain on a couple of them, although others just require a little bit of out of the box thinking. I’ll admit that the colored ball puzzle was a bit like pulling teeth and a mathematic exercise that I wasn’t expecting in a game of this caliber, though the tile puzzles were far more entertaining and a bit less troublesome. As with puzzles, there are objects randomly strewn about the house as well that you will need for your quest. Obviously, locked doors, hidden passageways, keys under the carpet and all the familiar hallmarks of survival horror are here. Also, the look on the face of our main character at times shows that she’s not exactly too happy about all of these things at first. The game keeps up a horror atmosphere for an exceedingly long part of time, which all falls apart as soon as the main climax of the game is reached. As with most of these games, there is an exciting extra feature, which allows for a fun after story mode that I enjoyed quite a bit. As well as some extra h-scenes. Refreshingly, the h-scenes in this game are also performed using only the original sprites, something interesting for the genre. There are no outsourced H-Scenes here. If you want a Sweet Home/Corpse Party survival horror without the gore, give Alternate Dimansion Diary a try!
It is very important for me to explain that the mosaic censorship is not on GOG's or any other storefront's end. The publisher Alicesoft brought this game over with Japanese mosaics, which also appear in Dohna Dohna and A Housewife's Healing Touch. Steam rejected this game, even with mosaic censorship. It does not matter where you buy it, you cannot get this game without mosaics. But if you are playing just for the hentai, you're missing the point. First of all, the game is lighter on content than the first and doesn't feature quite so many dark scenes. What you're getting here is more of a JRPG with adult content, rather than a mere hentai game. Though the story is focused around sex, it still offers a bit of dungeon crawling and turn based battles. You are getting a game here. It's like if Kagura had an actual budget to their titles. Alicesoft put a lot of work into this one and while it may not be as good as the prior title in the series, it's still a fun and interesting game and JRPG fans will want to check it out. Once again, if you are only looking to buy the game for it's sex scenes, look elsewhere because this is just not that kind of game. Be ready for a long JRPG adventure here.
I have been playing this game off and on for a good number of years now. There are games like Darksiders and the Nier series that are better sure, but it has it's charm. Though if the battles weren't enough of a pain, the platforming definitely is. There is a section of the game that is very dark and they added precision platforming that you have to do in order to reach the next area. Then there's a stealth section that drove me nuts. The game wants to be other games, which is a real problem. It becomes a frustrating mess that you either waste the day trying to complete, or you just end up installing it to play something that is far less of a hassle. Also, this is not the Arcane Edition which includes The Nameless Chronicles. Why that isn't up here instead, I don't have the slightest idea.
I bought the game day one, but didn't really keep in mind how much I paid for it. Battle Axe is a modern arcade game and it's basically a fun, co-op slash em up and nothing special in those regards. However, that fun doesn't really translate to $25. I would have rather paid $15 for the game, so wait a few years and get it on sale at a price that I think makes better sense. It's just an arcade game. There might be something to endless mode, but there's no way in heck I'd pay this much for an arcade game even back in the nineties.
This was mostly written in rebuttal to the previous reviewer. He stared that the game was censored. That is the only way you can buy an English version of the game. The only way to get the game Uncensored is to buy the game in Japan and know Japanese. This is Sekai Project's fault. However, a translation team worked months to put a patch that uncensors the game and it's movies. Just search for "Baldr Sky Decensor Patch" and you will find links on the steam forums for the game. The main decensor patch is 100mb, but the patch to decensor the movies is 1.8gb. Make sure you read how to apply them both. Look, Sekai Project is known for this. And that's why we have fan communities to fix these problems. The game is definitely worth buying as it is a scifi VN with psychological mindf**k elements as well as arcade robot battling game, which is very rare for this genre. I'd definitely recommend picking it up, but if you do, please go download the decensor patches first.
I don't know about you, but I could never get this game to work properly. And even when it did, it was so archaic in terms of controller compatibility that it wasn't even fun to play. Now I don't know how far we can go to say that the game was remastered, I mean, these are still PS2 graphics. But that's cool with me, I never had the game on the PS2 and was looking to play the PC port, which is why I bought it originally. I did not realize it would take so long to get a fully optimized version, which is what this iteration of the game does. It works! It actually works, and I could not be more thrilled. Although I love the original game, I think I like this one a bit more so far. It seems to play more like a beat em' up (or slash em' up rather) and isn't overly complicated. Plus, there are ridiculous amounts of blood and gore, so that's always a plus for games like this. So far, so good. It's worth noting that the game now supports higher resolutions and widescreen, plus you no longer need the patches. If you had the game working before, you may not necessarily need this - but if you're like me and could never get it to run properly or work with your controller as it should, then this is a real treat. Because of this, I can now actually play and finish the game. Thanks, Ziggurat. You guys rock!
