Update Three Hundred and Thirty-One: 08 October 2019

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

Ohhh, what a disappointment! I had high hopes for this one, but it never actually resolved into… anything. Absolutely astonishing, beautiful art let down by an indistinct, hard to follow, complex but emotionally shallow story that just completely whiffed by me.

The game, short as it is, follows three characters—Julius, a shadow demon who has lost who he is; Tell, a mortal girl who knew Julius when he was a human; and Kalevel, one of the first (?) demons ever. This is a Deep Distinct Fantasy world with a lot of history and proper nouns and like shit that happened - and it’s delivered in a ‘we’re not going to explain everything, you’ll pick it up naturally eventually’ way that works in other fantasy/sci-fi stories, but not this one.

As the story progresses in four acts, not a ton happens - Julius runs into Tell and corners her and eventually pounces on her to try and eat her (not his fault!) and Kalevel doesn’t… do much compared to how powerful she’s supposed to be. There’s other goddesses and She of the Mind Chain and other… vague… shit that happens that ultimately never seems to matter -

Ugh! Nothing seems to matter! Julius even dies in a bunch of endings and nothing matters! There’s no IMPACT of anything, and I don’t know why! I’ve spoken before about feeling like there was a pane of glass between me and the story - this is like several roaring subway trains made of fog between me and this story. It didn’t land or connect and SURPRISE resulted in a similarly foggy, disjointed, unhelpful review.

The art, though… it’s so good. And there’s TONS of CGs, all sumptuous and painterly. The 5/10 I gave it is EXCLUSIVELY for the art. This has got to be up there with Fata Morgana as some of the best art I’ve ever seen in a VN. I was surprised at how little attention this VN had gotten… but, ouff. I see now.

Next up: Oh my god, ANOTHER VN about demons? Trent, you’re in luck, this one is actually definitely about demonfucking this time.

See you soon!