Fault Milestone One is a linear visual novel, meaning there are no choices to make. But what does do is tell an interesting and engaging story. There is a great deal of world building, the characters have depth, and the art is beautiful. The characters grow and develop as the story progresses, and you can't help but keep reading to see what happens next.
Review on both milestone 1 & 2:
This is a visual novel (the second one I've read myself), so no choices to be made, just read the dialogue and click to continue the story. You do have an in-game encyclopedia you can open to reference some of the terminology that comes up during your reading experience, but otherwise it's completely linear.
The pacing is pretty slow for the first 2 parts available on GOG (as of writing this review). This wouldn't be really much of a problem as it does a great job developing the world, characters and story; it's more my concern that there may never be a conclusion to this series that has me suggesting that people keep clear of this novel until there are regular releases on GOG with a promise of an eventual conclusion to this saga.
Perhaps I'm being a bit unfair in my rating, but in my case I felt I had wasted my time reading this series only to be shortchanged at the end of milestone two. Since I don't think you can upgrade scores on reviews, if they ever do release the entire series, I would consider upgrading my review to 4 stars.
In any case the visuals are great in Fault - milestone one, and sprites and background art look crisp at Full HD resolutions. In addition I thought the UI (User Interface) was also very nicely done.
Fault - milestone two however is a step down using lower resolution sprites (especially noticeable when zooming in on characters faces) and I feel a slightly less polished interface. Story is still of a high quality as the first part, just the abrupt ending didn't sit well with me.
is a visual narrative that has relatively few options to choose dialogue or choose consequences. There is also no roll over to next games in the series, so this is essentialy an interactive reading experience.
For this it is still worth it though. The dialogue is well written, and conveys the story in a meaningful way whilst retaining the character's personalities. There are occassions of info dumps, however these are cleverly framed within the context of the story itself as either flashbacks or via a special ability that one character possesses.
The focus of the story itself is not so much on the primary characters though but rather on a set of subsidiary characters, and explores the background of Rune and her brother as well as the society in which the two protagonists actually find themselves.
The pacing is clearly going to be quite slow for the series, especially since the game is prone to some expositions, which is a pity as the game does have an encyclopedia for additional information that it tends to underutilise.
the artwork is quite lovely, however some of the scenes, particularly the animated scenes, seem to have the characters depicted slightly differently which can be a little annoying. The characters each havea range of emotional stances that will flash across the scene and for the most part these are quite believable and well done. Even the "emotionless" stances still manage to have slight quirks to them, to convey difference in character.
The ability to move quickly through the text is achieved through rotating the mouse wheel, and a skip dialogue button is available as well, if you want to jump to a scene quickly.
Despite some of the flaws in the mechanics and visual exposition, the story is an excellent one with some really interesting world building and moves towards exploring some important issues. Although little development has occured with the main characters, there is enough to keep you interested for the 2nd title.