spoilers included: I want you to understand that I like games with adult themes. I just finished The Dead End and liked it pretty well. With that context, here's why this game is crap: I thought this was going to be a magical girl manager with rpg elements, due to the misleading video. it's just a linear VN. Normally a story has upbeats and downbeats, which proceed at a thematically appropriate pace. This just goes for max shock value; Fallout 4 power armour anyone? This game's designers opted to try to excuse a bunch of very stupid world building decisions which are so bad they wrote into station commanders dialogue an attempt to hand wave away some of these failures. The first horrible story beat is when the girls who are recruited to be military warriors are drugged and then launched into space, in cheap space suits, plummeting towards the enemy world to be raped and or killed upon arrival. This is where the first very stupid story point is put forward and the writers of the game claim it HAS to be this way. They HAVE to lose 3/4 of their recruits by doing this; there is NO other way. Anyone with even basic knowledge of scientific process knows that you isolate your experiments, especially hostile or dangerous ones. The girls could've been implanted by the aliens in a controlled environment in the station and still had the same horror factor, without the MASSIVE losses they take each time they gain recruits. The male characters are also written to be the worst, with one in particular being racist, hateful, stupid and just outright cruel. A character should not be a vile piece of crap just because you want them to be... 'real' characters have good reasons for what they do and who they have become! None of this was needed to make the premise work. Spacebar is NOT the default advance text key and no rebindable keys screen! The good points are: Art and voice/sound are quite nice. Sex scenes are very descriptive.
I like a game where I can explore, get more powerful, collect some powerful goodies, do a bit of combat and listen to some nice music. This game fulfills all that. The only real criticism I have of this game is that it's main theme of saving the girls is based on a timer. That's right, the lazy way of trying to create a sense of urgency has been used in this game. I was pretty pissed off when I discovered this... then I found out you are supposed to fail the game the first time and play it through again. I finished on normal mode and got the meh ending, then replayed it on new game plus on the easiest mode just so I could see the good ending. Is it worth playing? Yes. Maybe get it on sale, if you don't appreciate the whole timer thing.
I mean the story is pretty good up until the end, when it just sort of falls flat. You don't even get told what happens to the characters... I felt very letdown by the ending. Before that point it was a fun game... not perfect, but fun. It promotes typing and you can either let the automated manager determine your words per minute or set them at the main menu before you go in. I recommend setting it manually... otherwise you'll have the difficulty all over the place, assuming you are competent typer. Is it worth playing? Yes. Is it worth playing a second time? No. I played it mostly for the story and as I said above, the ending is unsatisfying.
You go around collecting your little friends, who help you collect other things and move to more interesting places, both up and down. The entire thing is lighthearted and fun... great for kids or adults who just want something mellow!
The only think I can criticize this for is having mostly negative endings for your choices, before you find the 'right' one to get the good ending. A choose your own adventure is supposed to have multiple paths to the good ending, as well as multiple paths to bad endings. Other then that, it is a wonderful storytelling game, with vivid characters and many interesting things to see. The story is surprising and fun! The artwork brings back memories of comic book style computer games. It fits with the storys warm, mostly wholesome environment. It's narration is quite good and the music enhances the story. Definitely worth playing!
Main thing that stopped me playing this is the horribly clunky combat! You have a setting here with guns, but you can only fire them once every five seconds. You can shoot lightning out of your hands, but it does nothing more then slapping someone would in real life! You have three combat modes for melee, but they don't really help. One is staff combat... hit multiple opponents per special swing, but you can only dodge, not block, so you are guarnteed to die if you fight with this. Two is one hand melee and a gun... but again the gun does minimal damage and overheats witha few shots! The last and most useful is one handed and a shield... which you will want the majority of the time so you can counter enemies attacks. I think it's trying to be dark souls, but it's just bad! It's kind of ironic the combat is so bad, because everything else is very good! The music, the people, the stories that happen in-world are all very immersive and pleasing. I want to see what happens in the story, but I never will because of the horrible combat.
