Archive for June 2024
Best Visual Novel Releases – June 2024
Now
that the blazing heat of the summer sun is beating down upon us with
the force of its cosmic rays, there is no better time to reach for
the a refreshing visual novel to cool down. This month we have the
release of some highly anticipated titles in the romance and urban
fantasy genres alongside indie games focused around bar sims and
yaoi. Let’s dive in and find out what visual novels you should be
playing.
Official Releases
Tavern Talk
Following
in the footsteps of VA-11 Hall-A and Coffee Talk, Tavern Talk emerges
as the latest in the interesting niche of drinks serving sims. As its
name suggests the game is set in a tavern within a medieval fantasy
style world filled with everything from elves to monsters and each of
them having an interesting story to tell as your serve them their
favourite beverages. There is a playfulness to its engagement with
the tropes of the genre and it often makes humours jabs at them by
pointing out their absurdity, but this is done in a way where it is clear the
game loves these elements of the genre as much as the player. It
takes full advantage of its fantasy setting to give the personal
stories of its characters extra impact through providing a meaningful
connection to the world around them and acting as the player’s
window into it. If you have been hungering to mix up some more drinks
then you cannot go wrong with Tavern Talk.
Kanon
It
came as quite a surprise to find out that this classic Key title was
finally seeing an official release with upgraded visuals and full
voices. Yet here we are and a new generation of players will get to
experience one of the formative games of this renowned developer. We
follow our protagonist, Aizawa Yuuichi, as he moves in with his aunt
who lives in a snow covered town where his hazy childhood memories
still linger. As with most Key visual novels the biggest selling
point it its characters and the dramatic stories they become
involved with that aim to craft an experience where the player will
be left in tears. There is something incredibly interesting about
seeing the ideas and themes which would evolve to define their future
games here in their primordial form where it is easy to see what they
would become. Kannon is a must buy for any fan of Key’s work both
as an excellent title and a historical document of their changes as a
developer. For everyone else this is a strong romance visual novel
with the ability to pull on your heart strings in all the right ways.
All Scars and Starlight
Itch.io(Warning for Adult Content) VNDB Genre
– Yaoi, Romance Play Time – 5 hours
Once
more Ebi-hime has chosen to revisit the Yaoi genre with another tale
set in a middle eastern kingdom. We follow Yuel as he is
overthrown after a rebellion and thrown in the palace prison where he
is left to rot until his older cousin Tavi begins to treat him with
kindness and keeps him hidden from the world. The changes the game
makes to the setup between the two characters completely alters the
power dynamics and allows for the growth of their relationship to
take a new and exciting look at their motivations. Overall this is a
strong title for the Yaoi genre which showcases the masculine angle
on the emotions of interpersonal interaction while demonstrating how they
interact with the world around them. If you have ever been interested
in the genre then All Scars and Starlight is a good demonstration of
what it can offer.
Radiant Tale ~Fanfare!~
Nintendo Eshop VNDB Genre
– Otome, Fantasy, Fandisc Play Time – 20 hours
As
the fandisc to the original colourful and magical circus themed
title, Radiant Tale ~Fanfare!~ has some difficult shoes to fill. Its
chosen method of appealing to fans of the base game is to split
itself into three distinct types of content to give them a little bit
of everything. Firstly there are the expected after stories for the
various heroes about their peaceful lives with the protagonist and each
helps sell the characters' loving relationship in a way that shows the dynamics
which made them so fun to engage with in the first place. Alongside
this is an IF style story in the form of a route following Jinnia and
Liyan which aims to give them an extra bit of depth the main game
could not provide them. To top it all off there are a series of
smaller interludes set during the original game’s common route
designed to capture the essence of what make the title so special,
but in bite sized form. In their entirety they make a must play
fandisc for anyone who enjoyed Radiant Tale and wants to return to
that world with some fresh content to dig their teeth into.
Tsukihime -A piece of blue glass moon-
Nintendo Eshop VNDB Genre
– Urban Fantasy, Action, Suspense, Horror Play Time – 30 hours
At
long last the remake of the first Type Moon visual novel is available
officially for the first time in English. This release is for PS4 and
Switch with a PC version coming at some later date and it opens the
title up to a wide audience who might have some interest in Tsukihime
from their exposure to other Type Moon games. If you want my opinion
of the remake you can look to my review for a detailed overview of
its strengths and weaknesses. In short, it is an adaption of the
first two routes of the original Tsukihime which is not afraid to
make changes to the material to improve upon the weaker elements of
that title. It also boasts a dramatic upgrade in quality across the
board from visual to music in order to sell the tension and action in
a palpable way. The biggest issue with the adaption is the way it
often buckles under the weight of having to spread out half of game’s
worth of content out over a long visual novel. This is still very
much a game which anyone interested in Type Moon should play as if
offers a uniquely compelling urban fantasy story.
Save Systems – An Anatomy of Visual Novels
Recording Your Progress
Almost
every game has some form of system by which the player can save their
progress since a developer cannot expect them to complete the title
in one sitting. How this manifests varies wildly from the freedom to
save as many times as the player wants to a
single save slot only available at designated intervals to an autosave system out of
the player’s hands. Yet people do not often consider how this
pervasive element of game design shapes the titles it is a part of
and visual novels are particularly influenced by this factor due to
their longer length and choice based nature. The structure of the
visual novel has to be considered when choosing a type of save system
as the aim here is to prevent the frustration of having the replay
content while still shaping how people engage with the game. It is
this tension which makes this such an important element to consider
within the overall theming and presentation of a visual novel. Let’s
save our progress and examine the ways save systems change the
foundations of a game.
Freely Save
By
far the most common type of save system chosen for visual novels is
the save anywhere and at anytime style with no restrictions. The
reason for its popularity stems from the convenience it offers the
player as it lets them dictate their own play experience around the
time they have available. Player control is at the core of
this type of save system and this philosophy is generally extended to
the rest of the game through a variety of choices for the player to
explore. Due to the prevalence in the medium this save system has
become what player’s expect from visual novels and the majority of
them adhere to this preconception since it has a high degree of
utility for them. As a genre slice of life and romance visual novels
are the prime example of this trend, such as title like Aokana or Riddle Joker.
This is due to their flexible structure stemming from the way each
route acts in a self-contained fashion and few of them use negative
outcomes to their choices, which means they do not care if what order
the player engages with their content.
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| It is hard to feel pressured when I know I can just reload a save |
There are several noticeable
drawbacks to this approach to saving with a prominent one being the
inadvertent endorsing of save scumming. In many games player’s will
reload a previous save if they are not happy with an outcome, be that
a choice or a suboptimal battle, and visual novels suffer from this
more than most due to this ability to save and load from any part of
them game. As such player’s have little incentive to accept the
consequences of their actions and continue down the path to its end
and they will instead reload and pick the optimum option which undermines any
sense of tension and weight the choices might have possessed. Fate
Stay Night acutely suffers for weakness since it has a large amount
of bad ending which help provide tension to the narrative, but they
are weakened by the player’s ability to instantly load the previous
choice the moment they realise they made the wrong one. On top of
this being able to save anywhere makes it difficult to shape the
pacing of the game since a player might decided partway through a
route that they want to experience another route now and leave the
first route behind to return later. This means the developer has no
idea what the player might be doing at any point in time and has to
assume they are following along in a linear fashion which is often
not what they are doing. Enforced route order is one way developers
have to regain some control, but it comes at the cost of the feeling
of player freedom, which is what a lot of games with overarching
plots, like Wonderful Everyday and Ever 17, have chosen as their
solution.
Autosave Only
On
the opposite end of the spectrum there are visual novels which forgo
any form of manual save system and instead take this function out of
the player’s hands entirely through autosaves. This is where the
game will save of its own accord at intervals set by the developer
and the player is forced to wait for them if they want to preserve
their progress. From this system a power dynamic favouring the
developer’s intended pacing and interaction appears in
which the player is funnelled into specific lengths of play section.
A risk exists in this approach that the player might lose interest in
the title or become frustrated in this restrictive autosaving due to
them feeling as if their limited time is not being respected. The
result of this need to balance the desires of the two side has led to
this style of save system being limited to games which are either
forced into it by technical limitations or those possessing a
segmented structure where saves are frequent. As evident from these
two extremes, autosaves are not a popular method in visual novels as
player agency holds a great importance in the mind of developers.
However, when they do appear they allow for some no standard
narrative structures and mechanical elements not normal found in the
medium.
 |
| VR titles offer an interesting angle on the medium |
On the one hand take ALTDEUS: Beyond Chronos, a VR visual
novel, where the nature of its chosen platform demands the inclusion
of an autosave system. Navigating menus in VR is awkward at the best
of times and so asking the player to constantly be moving in and out
of them to save their game would not be conducive to a pleasant
experience. As such the autosave ensures the player's focus can be on
immersing themselves in the events in front of them, which is VR’s
greatest strength, rather than constantly reminding them that they
are standing in the middle of their living room with a pair of TV’s
strapped to their face. On the opposite end we find games like 428:
Shibuya Scramble, where the title is constructed on lots of distinct
smaller sections for easy and frequent autosaving points. These saves
are often enough for the player to be able to have their desired
length of play section without the developer losing control of the
game’s pacing since they determine through the length and content of each
section. It also helps that the game leans into this modular nature in its structure with it expecting the player to jump around
between scenes and perspectives and this makes the autosaving feel
natural due to the convenience it offers by allowing for this
distinctive method of traversing the narrative.
Single Save Slot
In
between the extremes of the free save and the autosave sit save
systems where the player is provided with only one slot to save in
and must choose to override the previous save in order to preserve
their progress. Presenting the player with saves as limited resources
where they have to trade one for another creates a scarcity dynamic
which encourages saves to be seen a valuable. This creates some
interesting behaviours during play with some players saving at every
opportunity presented to them while others may choose to see how far
they can get without saving as a sort of challenge. It is difficult
for a developer to control what kind of reaction they get out of a
player since there is still an important element of control in the
player’s hands. As such this style of save system is not common in
modern visual novels for exactly this reason and is instead a
historical relic present in older titles due to hardware storage
limitations.
 |
| Ah the past, limitations and all |
Take visual novels on the DS as an example, the majority
of these employ a single save slot system since the DS cartridges had
extremely limited space available on them. We can see this in the DS
era Ace Attorney games where the structure of the title gives
specific narrative pauses for the saves to occur in and also it has a
linear progression so the player does not feel as if they might need
an old save to redo a choice. The remasters add a standard multi save
system, but it feels odd when put alongside the game’s structure as
it is clear that this a later addition due to how unnecessary it
feels to use more than one save slot. Linearity and designated save
intervals were common features among DS visual novels and resulted in
them having a somewhat similar overall feel to them.
Conclusion
Saving
progress is a key system for both players and developers and this is
especially true for visual novels due to how influenced they are by
even the smallest change in their structure. The most common type of
save system employed in visual novels is in the save anywhere kind
due to the convenience it offers the player, but at the same time is
can make controlling the pacing and overall experience difficult. An
autosave system on the other hand give the developer the ability to
precisely dictate how the visual novel should be played at the cost
of potentially alienating players who only have limited time. Between
them sits the single save slot system which gives saves a feeling of
scarcity and encourages the player to consider the importance of when
to save. Each type offers something different for a visual novel
developer and they are worth considering as you design your own
titles.
Apocalypse – Genre Deep Dive
Until There Is Nothing Left
As
a species we have a strange obsession with the inevitable demise of
everything we have build in the face of sudden and uncontrollable
disasters. There is a kind of catharsis at seeing this scenario play
out in a fictional setting and witnessing how the characters attempt to
adapt to the end of the world as they know it. This genre of
Apocalypse stories covers everything from the collapse itself to the
survival immediately afterwards to the world rebuilt from the ashes.
Many visual novels like to take this genre as a kind of background element
to a greater narrative while others make it the primary focus, but
both sides still share the ruin which echoes through every aspect of
the game from visuals to character motivations. It is easier for this
medium to lean into the personal tales of the end times than many
more mechanically complex games due to its much more grounded and
direct presentation which interacts in various ways with these tales
of demise. Let’s watch the world burn and find out exactly how
visual novels play with this genre.
At The Heart Of The Maelstrom
From
the angle of dramatic tension, there are few settings more potent
than having the end of the world happening around the cast. Nothing is
quite able to get the pulse pounding like watching the things we hold
affection for be torn apart by the uncaring march of an unstoppable
force. It is the immediacy of the conflict that visual novels can
take advantage of in order create an action or thriller narrative.
They present the apocalypse as a personal story of people swept along
as they try to deal with the calamity any way they can. Often this
involves a large amount of interpersonal conflict or disputes between
groups who cannot see eye to eye even as everything around them
burns. Taking an angle like this is necessary in an apocalypse story
as the actual disaster itself is normally inhuman in nature and so
does not make for an interesting focus for a long form game. Visual
novels lean heavily into this through the importance they place of
the protagonist’s reaction to the events and people they interact
with during this decline and in doing so they can easily keep things
in on a personal level the player can understand. It also gives them
room to comment on the themes and ideas tied up in the nature of
their apocalypse, such as an environmental disaster, through what the
characters witness from their small slice of this much larger event.
 |
| In general Alternative loves to push the bleakness of its setting |
Perhaps the most iconic visual novel featuring an ongoing apocalypse
is Muv-Luv Alternative and its Beta invasion pushing humanity to the
edge. Here the Beta themselves are a constant threat and yet act as a
motivator rather than the central focus due to their monstrous nature
making them incompatible with any form of narrative complexity. This mantle is taken up by the political and personal conflicts with
the alternative universe versions of characters the protagonist
knows. Each one has their own agendas and even in the face of their demise they cannot let go of their desire and differences. This
reveals them to the player at their purest, where the end of the world causes them to drop the masks they wear and be true to
themselves regardless of the consequences for everyone else.
Alternative pushes this as the main angle for its drama and uses it
to put pressure on the protagonist and have something for them to
overcome on the moment to moment level since the Beta exist beyond
the scope of what one individual can hope to challenge. This way the
inevitable threat of the Beta can hang over the events of the game
and provide a tension as they creep ever closer to overwhelming
humanity.
After The End
Another
common kind of apocalypse story is one set in the immediate aftermath of
the destruction and follows those people who remain. For visual novels there
is a common trend to instil a sense of quiet and a calm after the
storm in which the characters pick through the remnants of their old
lives, literally or metaphorically, and try to find some kind of
meaning from the chaos. Leaning into this angle is how they manage to
make this style of narrative distinct from those similar to it since
the emphasis becomes a dual one of personal struggle and a greater
sense of the world around them. Now there are so few human spaces
left it adds an extra layer of importance to those that remain or those
created by the characters afterwards and these places often represent the trauma
of the disaster and the longing for those past days which echoes
through the people. This makes for an engaging feedback loop
where in order to move on from their pain and accept what happened
they must reshape the spaces around them or abandon those that
symbolise their past. From a visual angle this allows for the game to
play with dramatic shifts in colour and tone for those places
alongside scenes of exodus framed with the importance they embody for
the characters.
 |
| The ending of every world is a massive scale calamity |
In Tokyo Babel the remnants of humanity from various
different universes, demon and angles have all lost their homes and
gather together in the last place left to them where they reside in a
school as if attempting to recapture the spirit of what they have
lost. While they do not use the buildings for its intended purpose,
there is an underlying sense of trying to relive a lost youth be that
either one stolen from them by this apocalypse or the memories of one
which provide a comfortable space to retreat into. It is telling then
that the characters must leave behind the school in
order to reach for the promise of a new future. They shed the place
symbolising their past as well as the place of temporary calm to find
the will to overcome their collective trauma and move beyond the
event which has upended their lives. While the seemly safe and warm
locations and memories of the world now gone might seem enticing, it
is ultimately clinging onto a phantom which no longer holds value and
the people within it slowly decay in their pain rather than trying to
build something of their own.
Into Tomorrow
The
final type of apocalypse setting is that of the world rebuilt after the event and yet still fundamentally shaped by it. While on the
surface the people of this new age might seem to have returned to a
state of normality, there is still an undercurrent of instability
present as the scars of disaster live just out of sight and threaten
to return if given the chance. Such worlds often remain mostly
uninhabitable with humanity living in limited, but prosperous safe
zone they have constructed and this makes their existence a tenuous
one surrounded by danger. In the context of visual novels these
elements manifest as an underlying tension where the player and
characters are both made intensely aware of how much of balancing act
the current peace is to maintain. As such when this existence is
threatened there is an immediate sense of danger provided to the
situation to help fuel exciting plot twists as the context of what is
at stake has been established. There are less humans in these
settings adding weight to every life lost as a serious blow to
humanity and this allows for a more personal narrative
since the cast hold a greater significance to each other’s survival
than in a modern day setting.
 |
| What might seem happy always sits on the edge after an apocalypse |
We can look to Blazblue for a post
apocalypse where these traits can be seen through how the game
interacts with the elements of its setting. The world of Blazblue is
defined by how toxic the surface of the planet has become after
humanity defeated a world ending monster and this has force humanity
on only the highest peaks to build their sanctuaries. As such while
the culture and people are bright and lively, there is always an
undertone that this exists as they are right next door to death and decay in a
way the characters can never quite reconcile. When the antagonists
enact plans which threaten to bring about the same calamity which
befell the world, the player has knows the proper context and danger
this threat will bring as they have been living its shadow all game
long so feel the same sense of urgency the cast do to resolve this
tension.
Conclusion
Nothing
else carries the same power over the human imagination quite like an
apocalypse and visual novels love taking advantage of this trait to
push their stories in interesting directions. By placing the player in
the heart of an ongoing world ending situation they can lean into the
protagonist’s reaction to events and push characters to extremes in
order to reveal their true colours. In a world rebuilt after the
apocalypse visual novels present the scars of the calamity and juxtapose this
new world’s brilliance against its precarious existence to create
an underlying tension. Those using the immediate aftermath tend to
present the calm after the storm and a clinging onto the past of
places now in ruin while showing how the characters need to move on
to truly rebuild. Leveraging such an emotionally resonant genre can
offer a developer a variety of different tones and themes even within
a similar design space and this is something worth keeping in mind as
you create your own titles.
Dating Sims – Uncovering The VN Hybrid
Making Yourself Desirable
Many
outside the visual novel space often make the mistake of referring to
romance visual novels as Dating Sims and at a glance it is easy to
see why given their shared focus on pursuing a chosen heroine or
hero. The two types of game have had a long and connected history
with Dating Sims utilising visual novel elements to sell their story
sections and building up a sense of who the player is romancing. This
leads to some interesting interactions between the two aspects as the
emotive narrative is placed next to the cold stat checking without
either coming across as out of place. Both sides carry themselves
with an understanding of how they fit together to form the final
product where the pursuit of love is quantified but never detached for
the character’s humanity. Let’s plan out our day and discover
what this hybrid brings to the table.
Common Pursuit of Romance
Presenting
a believable build up of love between two people is always a
challenging prospect and this is even more prominent under the
restrictions of Dating Sims. The event centric structure found in
them could lead to the execution of the romance feeling bitty and
uneven if the pacing is not controlled with proper a escalation in
their frequency near the climax. Using visual novel elements for
these events helps alleviate these problems by promoting a focus on
the scene in front of the player with a personal perspective on the
intimate moments of this blossoming love. These scenes also tend to
increase in length over the course of the game to simulate the
growing time the pair are spending together and this allows for a
showcasing of their compatibility from both a mechanical and a
narrative level. From moment to moment, there is an effort made to
shape a unity between the player and player character via an aligning
of the protagonist’s emotions with the intent of player in order to
close the perceived gap between the two. Together the two styles of
gameplay form a concise reward loop for the player that provides them
with the advertised love story without negatively impacting the stat
management side which Dating Sims are well known for.
 |
| So many choices |
We can look to
Amagami in order to see what this looks like in practice. This a game
with a wide selection of heroines and different ending to each of
them and its open structure means it has to rely on the strength of
individual events to contextualise these abstract connections. As
such it leans heavily into extended visual novel sequences for the
build up and pay off to the arcs of each heroine, which gives it the
flexibility it needs to express its roller coaster of feelings
through the common focus on romance both elements share. This creates
a much needed consistency and pacing to the whole experience by
alternating between the two parts in order to ensure the player never
quite knows what they are going to be faced with next. Here the
visual novel aspects allow for the Dating Sim developer to carefully
craft how they want individual events to be perceived with a subtle
shift of the length of each section.
Quantifying Love
Numbers
define how a Dating Sims interacts with its themes of love and
relationships. They are by nature an attempt to systemise the process
of dating and romance which presents a unique blend of opportunities
and consequences due to subjects being highly emotional rather than
detached like many other sim type games. It is difficult to feel the
love between two characters when you are doing the equivalent of your
dating tax returns. As alluded to in the previous section, the
addition of visual novel elements helps to return a human touch to
the game’s tone and progression. These events are not as entirely
detached from the number based nature of the Dating Sim as they might
at first appear. Take Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side as an example,
here the build up stats with player has been working on is often
acknowledged by making the unlocked event be somehow related to it, a
related location or through characters talking about the changes in
the protagonist. While each one does not amount to much more than a
simple nod on their own, in their totality they form a feedback loop
that communicates to the player how the stats they have been working
on have a meaningful impact on the shape of the narrative. This acts
as a powerful motivator to continue to push towards the requirements
for future content as they know it holds some meaning within the
context of the protagonist’s personal story.
 |
| The complexity of the stat system varies from title to title |
On
the flip side it provides a connection to the player character
through the process of self improvement they undergo with your
management. It can also feel like you are shaping the protagonist to
match the preferences of the heroines and through this demonstrate a
commitment to them. This link with the player character is further
reinforced in the visual novel sections such as in Love Plus where
they utilise the unbroken protagonist perspective to sell the idea
that the heroines are talking to the player and lower the barrier
between the game and reality. Achieving this requires the abandoning of more intricate narrative trappings like complex introspection or scene
descriptions and instead adopting a stream lined approach, much like
the Dating Sim itself. This is done in order to remove as many
distinguishing features possible and give the player a large space to
insert themselves into and by extension bond with their chosen
heroine. A romantic fantasy such as this is at the core of the Dating
Sim’s appeal and other forms of event presentation would lack the
needed intimacy for the desired results.
Stat Checks and Deadline
Love
is not all fun and games when it comes to romance in Dating Sims as
the player will have to pass certain stat tests and milestones to
process or risk losing their chance to impress their chosen heroine.
This is how much of the difficulty is implemented in order to provide
a pressure to the time management element of these games while still
focusing on their stat based nature. In doing so weight is added to
the narrative events by presenting the possibility of failure and
allowing it to hang over the otherwise bright and upbeat atmosphere.
Rather than undermining the visual novel sections it instead helps
support the sense that this romance is genuine through the hardship
and risk that exists on the path to its ending. This form of
mechanical dramatic tension is key for the pacing of Dating Sim and
how it escalates alongside the growing demands for higher stats.
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| I hope you have been balancing your activities |
Sunrider Academy provides a good example of this practice through its
mixing of club and stats management. Here the player is assaulted on
two fronts for stat checks with the club demanding ever growing
members while the personal stats demand upkeeping in order to pass the various
tests the game throws at you and this is all before considering the
pursuit of a heroine. This creates a sense of frantic progress which
peaks around each deadline and sells the intimate moments with the
heroines in the visual novel sections as a breathing room valued by
both the player and the protagonist. Through this lens the
relationship between the pair is contextualised as an important but
fragile thing in the face of the chaos around them and invests the
player in ensuring it blooms into something more concrete.
Conclusion
Given
the close relationship between visual novels and Dating Sims it is no
surprise that the two have developed many interesting interactions to
complement each other. Their common focus on romance allows the event
focused nature of the Dating Sim to avoid
feeling narratively disconnected by constantly presenting a consistent core tone
which meeting the player’s expectations. Deadlines and stat checks
offer tension and a fail state in order to give a sense of
consequence that is reflected in both halves of the game and helps
invest the player in the value of the relationship when it is
threatened. The quantifying of the romance inherent in Dating Sims is
played by the visual novel sections as a manifestation of the
player’s achievements so a connection can be formed between player
and player character. As natural bed fellows there is much for an
aspiring Dating Sim developer to gain through integrating visual
novel elements into their game and maybe you too can achieve the
heights of the titles showcased here.
Death End Request 2 Review – Glitching Our Way Into True Fear
Genre – JRPG, Horror, Mystery Play Time – 16 hours Developer – Compile Heart/Idea Factory Steam VNDB
Hack The World
There
are two ways to make a squeal, either you stick close to what was
established in the first game and provide more of the same or you
take the basic ideas of that original title and reinvent them in a
new form. Death End Request 2 takes the latter path by shifting the
series from being about people trapped in a video game into a tale
small town horror with a vastly smaller scale of narrative. The core
tension and RPG integration remains as the solid foundation around
which its new vision can develop. Not everything it inherits is for
the best with issues about the use of the titular Death Ends being
ineffective and the combat system long having reached its limit, all of which
the game makes no real effort to solve. Does this reinvention breathe
new life into the series or does it undermine what made the first
game good? Let’s get trapped in the countryside and find out.
Digital Horror – Narrative and Themes
In
choosing to embrace small town horror as a core part of its tone and
content, Death End Request 2 invokes the genre tropes associated with
it. The game does not simple play them straight instead choosing to
play into them from interesting angles or using them in unexpected
ways all in service of creating tension. Take the almost cult like
religion which dominates the town, its followers range from normal
believers to insane fanatics, but it is often unclear who falls into
which camp or what involvement they actually have in the mysterious
monster appearing at night. On one level the player is expecting the
religion to be the source of what is going on so will be jumping any
time something related to it appears on screen. Meanwhile the seemly
innocent believers muddy this gut reaction lending a sense of
paranoia as the game places enough doubt for questions to form about
if they are genuinely uninvolved or so far gone that they cannot see
how wrong their actions have become. In a small town everyone knows
each other and the player is rapidly introduced to the majority of
the important cast and thus unknowingly to all the enemies and allies
they will be involved with over the course of the story. Due to their
close proximity the characters’ lives and emotions become well
known and they come across as reasonable people with their own issues
and dreams. As such when the curtain is pulled back and their true
nature is revealed it furthers the established feeling of paranoia as
the characters whom the player thought they knew turned out be hiding
their true face which causes them to reevaluate the rest.
 |
| The small nature of the town and orphanage means you will be very faimilar with its residents |
Gone
is the stark divide between the visual novel and RPG halves present in the first game
and in its place is an emphasis on the personal nature of the game’s
mysteries. The cast members remain constant through both sections as
does the location they take place which lends a sense of continuity
between the two sections and avoids the disjoined feelings prevalent
in the original title. When night falls the familiar scenery of the
town is warped and twisted into monstrous forms and seemly safe
spaces take on a sinister shape adding to the already unsettling
nature of the daytime. As the night is the RPG half of the game it is
home to the monsters which form the backbone of the supernatural
elements of the mystery surrounding the town. Events that occur
within the night effect the town as a whole even during the day
creating a sense of interconnectivity from the consequences of what
happens during the night. Having the main cast remain the same
between the two halves allows all of the threats faced on both sides
to take on a personal angle through which they are pulled backwards and
forwards by the challenges each presents. Without the grand
conspiracies of the first game, this intimacy is necessary to
maintain the player’s interest and leads to a highly character
centric narrative where placing them in danger contributes to plot
progress and a slow escalation of stakes.
 |
| Blending the two halves of the game was the best move they could have made |
As
a series Death End Request has always had a problem with how it
handles its signature feature, the Death Ends, and this continues in
the second title. The game seems actively ashamed of them and fearful
that a player might accidentality stumble into one so it signposts
them aggressively. Manifestations of this can be seen in how the
choices have a very clear bad option leading to the Death End or have
the characters more or less spell out which option is the correct one
to progress the story. This removes any impact the surprise of
choosing one by accident might have had since the game removes any
element of uncertainty and by extension any threat. Death Ends
themselves lack any interesting contents to justify going out of your
way to experience them. The majority are simple violent deaths for
the characters with no substance to them and there is only so many
times you can see people die horribly before it becomes familiar and
boring. A good bad ending reveals a small hint about the plot or
some interesting character morsel for the player to chew on and keep
them coming back for more. There is no such draw to most Death Ends
and so they ring hollow as a narrative device.
New Found Family – Characters
A
tight focus defines the core cast with it only consisting of three
characters whom the game follows consistently throughout its entire
duration and it rarely leaves their perspective. Couple this with
each one of the trio having distinctive personalities which
compliment and contrast with each other and what forms is an entertaining group
dynamic. Due to this small main cast each of them get a sizeable
amount of screen time in order to humanise them and in doing so
provides room for them to bounce off the other characters to
reveal more about themselves. Take the protagonist Touyama Mai, she
suffers from trauma and self loathing from having murdered her
abusive father, but rarely does she openly and directly express this
and instead it is communicated through her social awkwardness, frank
answers to people’s questions and her general rejection of those
who treat her kindly. Yet there is a kind side to her that she cannot
suppress especially when it comes to children and these two halves
balance themselves out in a subtle manner resulting in a well rounded
character. The rest of the cast are similarly layered and react to
the ongoing horrors around them in an organic way which helps the
player form a bond with them as they share a similar emotional state
and knowledge. Everything about them is a carefully harmonious
mixture of contrasting pieces that works to keep the characters
feeling fresh.
 |
| The main trio are endlessly loveable |
When
it comes to characters the group which stand out like a sore thumb
are those who are returning from the first game. The vastly different
subject matter of that title makes its cast come across as out of
place in a small town horror narrative. Their personalities are
larger and more flamboyant than the new cast which is due to them
being from a game with a much larger main cast meaning they had to be
immediately recognisable so the player could remember them. This was
fine in the first game, but here it feels like the game is shouting
at you whenever they are on screen compared to the new characters
which are almost like quiet whispers. While their involvement in the
narrative is relatively minor overall, they appear just often enough
to distract from the game’s tone and drag the player out of the
experience. They also represent a missed opportunity to add some
additional depth and humanity to these characters, especially Shiina
who has by far the most screen time and yet remains static
throughout. Instead they just do a greatest hits version of their
personality before exiting the stage to be forgotten about the
narrative and the player.
 |
| Shiina is such a missed opportunity here |
Corrupted Normality – Visual, Audio and Technical
The
visual and audio style of Death End Request 2 inherits much of the
glitchy and data corruption styling of the original title, but here
recontextualised as a perversion of the real world rather than of a
game. As such it has toned down the more fantasy themed elements from
that first game in order to keep the parts of the town the cast visit
at night still looking recognisably like their day time equivalents.
It plays off this combination of two familiar and yet vastly
different aspects to create a sense of unease since these mundane
places are similar to those the player likely sees every day and yet
they all wrong. During the day time sections when only the normal
town is shown it adopts a brighter visual and audio style to show the
warmth of the orphanage and the girls which the cast interacts with.
However, even this takes on a darker undertone as the truth behind
the town is revealed without the need for any dramatic changes and
this does work with the subtle build up the game is based around. The
resulting mixture lead to a feeling of texture to the world beyond
the direct narrative being presented to the player and it works on
them in a subconscious level to push them into experiencing the
desired emotions.
 |
| The RPG system need some major updates to main interest |
Compile
Heart has had a RPG combat system that they have been using since
Hyperdimension Neptunia MK2 and the Death End Request series uses a
variant of it focusing around knocking enemies into one another.
While it is never not satisfying to hit enemies around liking
bowling pins, it was always a limited gimmick pasted over an ageing
battle system which has long ago reached its limit. The symptoms of
this stagnation are clear from its lack of meaningful mechanical
escalation to enemies who do not encourage the player to engage with
the unique selling point of the gameplay. Alongside this is the
recurring problem in Compile Heart’s games in their inability to
balance difficulty properly. At about the half way mark there is a
dramatic escalation in the health pools of enemies with little to no
other changes resulting the fights taking longer to complete without
actually becoming more challenging. This makes the latter sections of
the game feel like a slog to complete which really hurts the player’s
ability to enjoy the other elements of the game. To top it all off
the final boss is such a massive jump in difficulty due to its
insanely damaging attacks compared to anything else beforehand that
it would perfectly reasonable for the player to rage quit in
response.
Conclusion
Death
End Request 2 is a game defined by when it inherited from its
predecessor and by how it shapes this into something uniquely its
own. It takes the glitch and data corruption visual, audio and narrative
elements and reshapes them into the context of a small town horror
story in order to provide an unsettling atmosphere. The more personal
focus and smaller cast also contribute to the claustrophobic and
paranoid atmosphere where the player becomes intimately familiar with
both the main cast but also the people who will reveal themselves to
antagonists. Not everything it inherits is of such a high quality, it
continues the first game’s inability to properly utilise the
titular Death Ends and old cast members feel out of place in this new
tone and setting. On top of this the RPG systems have long ago
reached their limits and can bore or infuriate the player over the
course of the game. However, none of these issues are enough to
undermine what is one of the strongest examples of RPG horror.
Verdict –
A sequel which is not afraid to take the series in a new small
town horror direction to create something distinct to great effect.
It is only held back by being shackled to an ageing RPG system.
Pros -
+
Excellent utilising of the small town horror genre to create a tense
and compelling experience.
+
The smaller focus and scale contribute to make the game feel intimate
while promoting paranoia in the player’s mind.
+
A small main cast allows each of the characters to be properly
fleshed out and given the subtle and humanity they need to make them
likeable and interesting to watch.
+
Glitches and data corruption pervert the mundane world of the town
creating a distinctive and unsettling visual and auditory identity.
Cons -
-
Death End continue to be poorly utilised, overly signposted and
uninteresting to engage with.
-
The returning cast members feel out of place in the new setting and
tone while not receiving any development of their own.
-
Compile Heart’s ageing RPG combat system is unable to produce
interesting encounters consistently over the course of the game and
is balanced poorly.
