It starts off as a thrill, as our protagonist "Kou" discovers that he has lost his memory in the middle of combat, and to make it out alive, he needs to quickly figure out how to fight again, and place his trust in his companion, a woman whom he doesn't remember. After he somehow managed to escape with his life, he is treated for his injuries, but is informed that it will take longer for his memories to return. And this is where the trouble begins... => Constant tone shifts The way Kou recovers his memories over the course of the game is through (frequent) random flashbacks, which take him back to his time as a student, where he re-lives everyday slice-of-life interactions with his classmates. While this does gradually reveal who he is and what his motivations are, these flashbacks to a rather carefree time in his life directly contradict the more gritty, melancholic, thrilling tone of the present. As a result of this emotional tussle, it was near impossible for me to connect emotionally with what was going on most of the time. Am I supposed to feel happy about what happened in the past, or sad about the present? => Distant characters Once Kou is able to re-connect with some of his classmates in the present, they tend to be rather cold and distant in how they act, and Kou isn't able to spend much time improving their relationship. Due to this, there is not much reason to care about most of them. => Suggestive just 'cause In spite of the censorship, the game has retained some sexually suggestive scenes and innuendo, about half of which feel out of place, and as if they were only added to appeal to horny dudes. Example: [You're infiltrating an or*y to get information.] [Female accomplice]: "A guard is coming! Quick, let's take our clothes off and make out to blend in with the crowd!" ...as opposed to just talking your way out of it or hiding somewhere. (2 stars since the game has its moments, but pacing is poor as well, so I tapped out after route 1.)
Unfortunately, there's not really any other way to describe this game, so let's get into it... => VTubers Starting with the elephant in the room, the game features 2 kinds of VTubers - fictional ones which are playable and part of the main cast, and real-life (Japanese only) VTubers, which appear in a rather minor supporting role. The fictional ones have VTubing as part of their lore, but this doesn't have any substantial impact for most of the story, since they just fight against the Antis like everyone else. While the real-life VTubers have 2-3 main roles: -Short videos during loading screens, where most of them will just introduce themselves and ask you to subscribe to their channel (in other words, you're watching an ad), though there are a few of them who did something more creative with their time. -VCubes, equipable items which increase your stats, can be obtained by defeating certain Antis, and the lore behind them is that they contain trapped VTubers, which will call out for your help in certain sections of a level, play a short thank you video upon being freed, and afterwards have short clips playing occasionally where they cheer you on in fights. (These latter clips repeat very frequently and soon become annoying.) -If you upgrade the communication building to level 2, you can watch some more short clips by accepting fetch quests for the VTubers. With that being the full extent of it, the developers somehow managed to make VTubers feel like an afterthought in a game that is about them... => Slop I'm approaching the character limit, so I have to keep this brief. Obvious bugs like Noire's hair glitching out, accessories glitching into people, or being floaty, etc were never fixed, audio volume is inconsistent, the story's pacing is all over the place, the antagonist does the most evil things, but is treated as if she was just misunderstood, and the game performing poorly are just some of the criticisms I have... (2 stars for being DRM-free.)
Review is for the all-ages version (no patch). For those uninitiated into this kind of game, it's a visual novel about cute girls, and you get to date one of them. Pick whichever one you like, and enjoy... maybe. As for Amairo Chocolate specifically, in spite of the character profiles on the store page introducing 4 characters, there are only 2 dating routes - Chieri and Mikuri. => Mikuri Having been the first route I picked, this one left a rather bad first impression, as the progression from strangers to lovers was rather choppy and disjointed. Some of this you can clearly tell is owed to how rather awkwardly (and sometimes not fully) the suggestive/explicit scenes were removed from this route without providing an adequate replacement story-wise, though even outside of those cases, the progression was... way off. As a result, Mikuri's route unfortunately fell flat. => Chieri On the other hand, Chieri's route was a lot more standard, and the progression was perfectly reasonable. A story about a shy girl who learns to show her feelings, how nice. She did show interest in the protagonist unusually quickly, but that is understandable given the relatively short playtime, and the need to fit the entire story into it. In the end, Chieri's route was decent, but nothing exceptional by any means. => Verdict With a playtime of ~2 hours for the common route (before choosing a girl), and ~3-4 for each of the routes themselves, you will get ~5 hours of play if you play one route, and ~9 hours if you play both. Even on a 50% sale, you'd still end up paying more € than you get playtime, and considering one of the routes is quite a mess, I cannot recommend it for much above ~5€. => Why don't I go into more detail? Blame GOG's character limit, I get just a few paragraphs to describe a ~10 hour game for some reason, and often need to remove large chunks to meet those requirements.
If you've played the most recent GTA (5 at the time of writing), you will know that it is a game which doesn't take itself all that seriously, instead opting to be more of caricature of the real-life city it is based on, and the people within it. As a result of this, I struggled to take its story seriously, even at those moments when it was trying to strike a more serious tone... while Yakuza is the exact opposite. => Story You are straightway thrown into a mystery-thriller, in which powerful individuals are each trying to use both the protagonists as pawns for their own interests. Interests, which they are only able to gradually uncover as the story progresses. From the start it is clear that the story is not just fun and games, but a serious matter about doing what you need to do, all while walking the fine line of maintaining loyalty to the clan, while protecting your family's standing, and also keeping yourself alive. In a tale of intrigue, betrayal, moral uncertainty, and many twists and turns, our protagonists must rise to the challenge in order to make it through in one piece. => Side quests These tend to be more lighthearted and often times even comical, and serve as a nice change of pace from the main quest whenever you need it. Do you want to teach a dominatrix how to berate people properly? Or how about saving a young woman from a cult by joining it? No matter how goofy the quests get however, they still retain a serious core, thus preventing a situation in which the characters turn into caricatures, as I described at the beginning. The dominatrix who can't berate people, for example? She started doing it as she has always struggled with being assertive, and wanted to better herself. => Mechanics I'm hitting GOG's character limit now, so briefly: A decent beat 'em up, though once you found a combination that works, you can spam it without much thought, except for bosses (the last 4 I found rather tedious to fight, so I'm removing 1 star).
It's been 9 years since this game was initially released... Since then, this series, which was meant to be a trilogy, has been canceled, leaving only this first entry to ever be completed. That said... what is it like? Let me first assure you that the story of this game stands well on its own, and while it leaves some open questions at the end, it can be enjoyed by itself without issue. => Story Starting off as a mystery at the beginning, we follow our protagonist "Hiroki", as he seeks to investigate the mysterious death of a close friend, as well as find answers to the somewhat strange behavior she exhibited shortly prior. As we approach the mid-section of the game, we experience a tone shift into more of a mystery-thriller, when the protagonist's attention is turned towards a strange criminal who appeared in the city, and the reasons behind this person's behavior. Finally, nearing the end, the game turns into a full-on thriller, when Hiroki begins to find out many truths behind what had been happening. Most of the characters were interesting, likable, and behaving generally in a believable fashion. At this point, I would've given 4 stars, but... => Ending (no spoilers) By far the weakest element in the story will have to be the ending, in which the antagonists simply info-dump their motivations onto Hiroki. While not particularly elegant, this itself wouldn't be so bad, but as it turns out their motivations are so contradictory and, in the case of one of them, flat-out out of character, that they appear to have been a complete afterthought for the writers. In addition, there is a detailed, roughly 1-hour-long sequence in which a person is getting tortured, which adds very little to the story and cannot be avoided - something I found to be in rather poor taste, and I was close to abandoning this game during it. (Though it can be fast-forwarded through, and the game continues afterwards). Overall, it's good, but I find the ending to be poorly written.
Conveniently placed in the "system requirements" section, which nobody who buys a 20+ year old game will read, the store page tells you that by "purchasing" this game, you agree to EA's EULA, which explicitly tells you: "This Software is licensed to you, not sold." ...and places many "interesting" restrictions on you, the user, such as: "Your right to use the Software is limited to the license grant above, and you may not otherwise copy, display, seek to disable, distribute, perform, publish, modify, create works from, or use the Software or any component of it (...)" "When you play this game offline, EA and its affiliates may collect and store non-personally identifiable data including your Internet Protocol Address (...)" "By entering into this Agreement, you and EA expressly waive the right to a trial by jury or to participate in a class action." Since I do not agree to such ludicrous terms, I wanted to obtain a refund, but after about half a week, GOG basically told me to get lost, because I bought it more than 30 days ago. So now I (do not) "own" a game which I cannot play as I do not agree with its ridiculous license. Apparently DRM is fine with GOG, as long as its legal DRM (EULA), rather than software-based DRM.
Conveniently placed in the "system requirements" section, which nobody who buys a 20+ year old game will read, the store page tells you that by "purchasing" this game, you agree to EA's EULA, which explicitly tells you: "This Software is licensed to you, not sold." ...and places many "interesting" restrictions on you, the user, such as: "Your right to use the Software is limited to the license grant above, and you may not otherwise copy, display, seek to disable, distribute, perform, publish, modify, create works from, or use the Software or any component of it (...)" "When you play this game offline, EA and its affiliates may collect and store non-personally identifiable data including your Internet Protocol Address (...)" "By entering into this Agreement, you and EA expressly waive the right to a trial by jury or to participate in a class action." Since I do not agree to such ludicrous terms, I wanted to obtain a refund, but after about half a week, GOG basically told me to get lost, because I bought it more than 30 days ago. So now I (do not) "own" a game which I cannot play as I do not agree with its ridiculous license. Apparently DRM is fine with GOG, as long as its legal DRM (EULA), rather than software-based DRM.
When you start the game, it essentially tells you that playing it makes you subject to its EULA, which of course contains the frequently found statement: "The Software is licensed and not sold to you and its use is subject to this EULA." The typical "you own it, but you don't own it" nonsense. My approach to this sort of thing is very simple - if _I_ don't own it, then _you_ don't get any money - so I refunded it. Since DRM is limiting the customer's ability to use a product through means of software, and a EULA is limiting the customer's ability to use a product through means of law, I consider both of these to be fundamentally customer-hostile and thus reject the use of either on principle. And while DRM is hard to avoid these days, EULAs are a lot easier, as most games (at least of the ones I come across) do not have any. To address a common criticism that people may have regarding this review: Yes, this EULA is probably unenforcable since... a) I couldn't find any mention of it on the Store page (prior to purchase). b) The developer assumes that the user accepted it by playing the game, without the user ever actually stating acceptance of anything. c) Depending on circumstances, it may be difficult for the company to find out if the user has violated the EULA. But my criticism is based on principle, not on legal enforcability. If a company is hostile to its customers, and tries to dictate and control what said customers do with the software these customers own, I avoid said company. I originally wanted to finish off my review by adding the particular sections of the EULA which I find most intrusive (and quite frankly ridiculous), but GOG imposes a character limit, which I would go beyond in doing so. So unfortunately you will need to read it for yourself if you want to know...
When you start the game, it essentially tells you that playing it makes you subject to its EULA, which of course contains the frequently found statement: "The Software is licensed and not sold to you and its use is subject to this EULA." The typical "you own it, but you don't own it" nonsense. My approach to this sort of thing is very simple - if _I_ don't own it, then _you_ don't get any money - so I refunded it. Since DRM is limiting the customer's ability to use a product through means of software, and a EULA is limiting the customer's ability to use a product through means of law, I consider both of these to be fundamentally customer-hostile and thus reject the use of either on principle. And while DRM is hard to avoid these days, EULAs are a lot easier, as most games (at least of the ones I come across) do not have any. To address a common criticism that people may have regarding this review: Yes, this EULA is probably unenforcable since... a) I couldn't find any mention of it on the Store page (prior to purchase). b) The developer assumes that the user accepted it by playing the game, without the user ever actually stating acceptance of anything. c) Depending on circumstances, it may be difficult for the company to find out if the user has violated the EULA. But my criticism is based on principle, not on legal enforcability. If a company is hostile to its customers, and tries to dictate and control what said customers do with the software these customers own, I avoid said company. I originally wanted to finish off my review by adding the particular sections of the EULA which I find most intrusive (and quite frankly ridiculous), but GOG imposes a character limit, which I would go beyond in doing so. So unfortunately you will need to read it for yourself if you want to know...
