Great Deceiver(NSFW)
Developer: Empress
Released on June 28th, 2019.
Playable on Windows.
Geminism(NSFW)
Developer: CRAFTWORK
Released on Novembr 24th, 2023.
Playable on Windows.
I read this title in about a day as I wanted to finally read something new. Both in the meaning of a recent title, and a novel I haven't read before and am just revisiting. This title was nothing special to me, but it is a well put together novel with an emphasis on aesthetics. There isn't many sprites, instead opting for cutin images of expressions and faces. It's a bit of a more modern take on something like Sayooshi's system, which is unsuprising given that this is the same company. There's no option to darken the window for text though, so it could get pretty hard to read! Especially at the very end. There WAS however an option to remove blood?
It's incredibly hard to talk about this title at all without spoiling everything. I didn't think that most of the big reveals were hard conclusions to come to, but that's not a bad thing! It does however make things a little hard to explain without totally giving it away though haha. It's not a long title, so if you have interest in this novel you should just pick it up!
I will be talking about spoilers below.
The girls you read the story through, at first Kikyo, and then Shinku. They are twins who must fight to gain parts of their body back. They are fighting over the same body, for something called the "joint happiness." They have fragmented memories, and very different perspectives as a result. It is revealed at the end of the first route that they were actually conjoined twins, and the reason for their broken memories is that only one of them could be awake at any point in time. This leads to very drastic differing views of their life beforehand as they could never communicate with the other. To be blunt as I don't have too much to say about this novel, the two men that are siding with each girl are also conjoined twins that are playing the same game, but they've been doing it for far, far, longer. Hundreds of years. The reason why the girls got dragged into it was merely because the boys got bored of fighting one another personally and started using proxy fights. Kikyo wins, but both of them end up dying and becoming one person...? I think? The ending came very fast and the pacing kind of went off the rails into an overstimulating jumble of words and images and it's not entirely explained what happens to the girls..? So I'm assuming.
It was ok. It wasn't life changing, but it's also not poorly put togther at all! It's not boring, but it also wasn't the most interesting thing in the world to me. I've been fretting over a number score on a scale of 1-10... And I'm landing somewhere like a 7? I don't want to give it a 6, because that feels quite cruel for a novel that was clearly competently put together and thought out, but it just wasn't particularly to my taste I think. It was easy to guess that all of the characters were twins, because the boys argue over who is the younger brother, and the girls argue over who is the older sister. That only leaves 2 other characters, the mother, and the uncle to the girls. It's revealed that the uncle was actually the younger twin of the mother, and assaulted her, and so that's how Shinku and Kikyo were born (and, therefore the explanation for why they are conjoined.) there's a hint of an underlying message about ableism but I don't think it's not really suuuuper the focus...? It's kind of a weird title. The uncle made me really uncomfortable. I like the girls though! I really really wish there was more of them just being able to hang out. Even if it were an extra scenario just like how you get an extra scenario of the boys. The theme song is incredibly good though! I think that's probably all I have to say for now on this title. It's recent, so maybe some of you have read it? I would love to hear your opinions on this title.
Euphoria(NSFW)
Developer: Clockup
Released on May 19th, 2011.
Playable on Windows.
I will be rather blunt here and say that Euphoria was a disappointing title to me. I feel like some of the plotpoints (such as the big main twist) and the pacing of the novel made long stretches of the game feel like a slog. I WANT to love this game. I really, really want to give it a very high rating. I like the girls! I liked the general concept! (more on that later.) But I vividly remember finishing the true end and going "... That was the ending? R. Really...?"
You play as Takatou Keisuke, a boy who has just woken up in a white facility along with 6 girls. They are all told that they are in a "game" and cannot escape unless they play along. Males assigned the role of UNLOCKER will use the keys inside the boxes on females assigned the role of KEYHOLES. UNLOCKERS must use the key provided following the unlocking conditions. there are 5 doors, and 5 rounds. the class rep refuses to participate and is executed in front of everyone. It's at this point where it's revealed that Keisuke has a rather twisted sadistic streak and fantasizes about violating the women around him. The way that the game is set up allows him to act out on these desires while also having the cover of being a victim of the situation like everyone else. Nemu, a mysterious classmate of his, finds out this information and threatens to tell this secret of his to his childhood friend Kanae if he doesn't listen to her "requests."
This is how the first half of the routes operate. You get onto a route by picking a girl 5 times. (There are also 2 bonus rounds which makes 7 scenes in total.) The more you pick a girl, the more intense and extreme the unlocking conditions become.
To me, and to a lot of people, this seems like an interesting setup to explore the morality of darker fetishes that hurt others, and exploring if having these desires and enjoying the situation you're put in makes you a bad person. I really wanted them to dig deeply into his mind, and I was sorely dissapointed.
I have some issues with Euphoria. Namely the story and it's reliance on the plot-twist to excuse weird narritive choices, the awkward writing of the pornographic scenes, and the choice to throw away interesting concepts leading to half-baked ideas and an extremely unsatisfying ending in my opinion. I will also be talking about things I did enjoy! But these issues have been on my mind ever since revisiting this title and I really want to talk about it. I will also say that this review may need to be updated in the future, as I am currently watching my friend read the game! Perhaps my opinion will change with a fresher memory...
The story, without getting too much into spoilers just yet, feels like it was just filler for the big plot-twist they had planned for the end. Once you are done with the first part of a route, the interesting aspects of the game start to dwindle off, and you're usually left with some strange twist for every girl that makes you think you are building up to something that somehow connects all of these directions together. Technically, to complete the game, you only need to do Nemu, and then Kanae's route which unlocks upon Nemu's completion. The other three girls don't have very meaningful endings in the grand scheme of the story, which I thought was very sad! I enjoy stories where getting the perspective of another character helps flesh out the world around them and understand the plot better. (think of something like AXANAEL!) but the plot-twist kind of threw everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, out of the window.
Everything below this point will have major spoilers for the story of Euphoria. If you plan on playing the game, or are in the process of reading it, please take this as your cue to stop reading this review!
What made the plot-twist fall flat for me? Euphoria is very infamous for being an eroge with "depraved and horrible sexual scenes" but having a wonderfully crafted story if you can stomach the content. I enjoy reading novels with extreme content, and seek them out, in my own fascination of sexuality. A character that struggles with his fetishes and has a setup that forces him to act on them sounds like something that I would love! But it isn't actually the main focus of the novel. Not truly, anyways. Most of the non-main routes have the girls falling in love with Keisuke despite being violated multiple times, and Keisuke is written in a way that's more like an "evil side" vs his "good side." He does struggle with having the desire to hurt and violate the girls around him, but also not wanting them to die in the game. He does care about them, and yet wants to hurt them at the same time. That doesn't get explored very much or even really at all though...
His opinions seem to flip flop quite a bit. He enjoys hurting these girls in the first half of the game, but then suddenly switches around to hating it until they need another H-Scene it feels like. None of this really matters in the end though. The big plot twist of the novel is that None of it was real. it was all a simulation. All of it. ALL. Of it. If you haven't read this novel, please understand that this is revealed like. Maybe an hour or a couple of hours before it's over. That is the reason why none of the other girls routes (Natsuki, Rika, Rinne) matter at all. You could get the entire story without even dedicating time to see their routes at all! That is something that is so deeply frustrating to me. Not only was the reveal underwhelming, but it made it all the more apparent how empty a lot of the girls felt. Reduced to little more than plot devices or in poor Rika's case, completely and utterly irrelevant.
So, the roles of Nemu and Kanae are almost reversed in the TRUE world. Nemu is actually a soft, gentle girl who Keisuke met in an underground tunnel when they were children. Nemu is being raised by a lab to prepare her to be the next "Sleeping Beauty" which consists of subjecting girls to horrible things in order to make them dream beautiful dreams forever creating an "Euphoria." They do this in order to feed off of these dreams, hooking the Sleeping Beauty up to a bunch of old rich men afraid to die. They will then sleep forever until science finds a way to prevent death.
In contrast, Kanae is actually not a childhood friend, and actually despises Keisuke and Nemu. She is cold, sadistic and cunning. I honestly don't even really know what to say about it... I feel like I just wasn't given enough time to process it, and I had already been frustrated with how the game was after you escape the facility in the simulation. It just felt like they had the idea of a crazy simulation plot, and so wrote a ton of stuff in order to reach the twist, if that makes sense? It also makes it harder to criticize the plot, because you could technically say every inconsistancy or the strange flip flopping and tossing out of ideas and themes is just "foreshadowing" that it's a simulation. I feel lke that's a bit of a copout though... I dunno... I just feel like the end was so strange that I don't really understand the claims that euphoria has some kind of masterful storytelling. I'm not the biggest fan of simulation plots but I feel like many many other titles have pulled it off better. I'm also quite sad that Nemu was actually so soft, because I thought her personality in the simulation was incredibly interesting and fun! I don't get why people hated her so much lol. Yes she was mean but it was funny HAHAHA
I didn't want to only talk about my frustration with this novel, as I understand that I have very strong opinions. I don't mean to come off as harsh, and even though I just said I hated a lot of this title, I do enjoy this game in other ways!!! For example, the voice acting was done really well! All of the girls did such a good job, and they sound incredibly cute!
I also ADORE Hamashima Shigeo's work on this title. The artwork and the character design is incredibly well done! I think that the personalities of the characters (In the simulation portion) are well varied, and makes for many interaction opportunities that I wish were more present in the game. I can also enjoy the general idea of the novel. Taking a protagonist who has a harmful fetish and using it to question the morality and character is a really interesting concept. Even I think this was executed poorly and tossed to the side, I can still appreciate the idea and I think it was quite interesting when it was a thing in the story.
I'm sure there's a lot more I can say on this title. I have a lot of thoughts on this title. Even though I said I didn't like most of the second half there were sections that captured my interest and made me want more. I don't think euphoria is a BAD title! I think it was a little too ambitious and hurt itself in the progress, but I can still appreciate it for what it is, and it's far from the worst story I've ever read. I still like the characters, and I've drawn Nemu a few times now! I hope that watching my friend can refresh me on this title, and allow me to change my opinion and maybe like the story a little more... This has been a very tangled messy collection of thoughts that I feel I don't have the energy to properly word. I hope it's still interesting to read regardless. Thank you for your time!
STARLESS(NSFW)
Developer: Empress
Released on May 11th, 2011.
Playable on Windows.
STARLESS is sometimes called the "King of Eroge" or may also be known from the infamous content that's held inside. I however, actually didn't know about this title at all, and stumbled across a screenshot of the game. A girl hanging from a chandelier, being electrocuted, whip marks adorning her body, and needles sticking into her skin. (clicking on that will show you the image.) I was instantly curious. The image was so over the top that it wrapped around to be amusing. I thought this novel would be full of funny over the top sexual content.
I was wrong.
I honestly didn't expect the writing of the title to be very good, I expected a nukige that had little to no story, and was just moving from one pornographic scene to the next which is fine! I can enjoy novels like that. I expected lots of insane scenarios... I got my first real warning when I found out that there was an "unofficial official" content restoration patch. The day I got my hands on the game, I had been made aware of the fact that the game's most famous ending, where a penis gets cut off via a PENIS GUILLOTINE(LOL) was removed from the English release of the game. I NEEDED that patch. the idea of a penis guillotine sounded so funny to me that I would have done anything to see it. after digging around for a bit, I found a patch and while reading found out that the penis guillotine wasn't the only cut content from the game and there was also beastiality...... I felt kinda hesitant, but I was determined to find out the context for the chandelier screenshot, and now wanting to see a penis guillotine, I booted up the game for the first time.
The game starts off like a standard nukige. The PC named Yukito is job hunting for the summer and stumbles upon a hiring ad from the Mamiya family, who owns a mansion in the mountain. They offer a crazy sum of money, and while vague the ad just seems like a cleaning maid type of job. Accepting the offer and headed to the mansion, he quickly finds out that there's a more perverse nature to his job. They force him to have intercourse, measuring and testing him to make sure that he's good enough for their standards.... This H-Scene takes MORE THAN AN HOUR to get through. I am not a slow reader. This was an extremely long scene, and I vividly remember shutting it off in the middle of it to go to bed. There's about a 5 minute break from that scene, and then we instantly jump into another long H-Scene. I don't remember how long, but I do remember feeling fatigued already. While I do tend to get kinda bored with overly long H-Scenes, the scenes in STARLESS oftentimes felt like I was slogging through repetitive text, not only were the same scenarios repeated over and over, but the actual scenarios for the most part felt boring and generic.
The game revolves around Femdom of course, as Yukito is tugged around by the manipulative mistresses. Marie, the redheaded head of the family, Marika, the green haired eldest daughter of the family who is desperate to find a lover, and Marisa, the blonde youngest daughter who is cold and constantly degrades those below her. The other common scenarios are large amounts of semen, large amounts of semen being consumed, and then scatology. The game tries very hard to shock the reader, and uses scenarios like these often. As I got further into the game, more intense scenarios get sprinkled in as the mistresses grow more cruel with their demands.
Even when I got to some of the crazier scenes that I had sought the game out for, I just couldn't get too interested. It felt like I was dragging my feet wasting my time and energy chasing after the game that couldn't decide if it wanted to be a deep story or not. The story is very simple, almost non-existant. But every once in a while, or in some endings, they try to make hints that there is some deep lore or meaning behind all of this.... Which just isn't the case!!! How am I supposed to take your story seriously when the only time I get to hear about these darker tones of the Mamiya's true nature is during the H-Scene in an ending. The Mamiya family has an underground human farm that is NEVER brought up until a single ending! They state that they breed them constantly, trying to create a child with perfect genes, and they're also known to sell off the children and even other butlers and maids that try to escape. But this isn't touched on at all until you reach an ending, and even then it isn't really talked about too much other than it's what the characters are currently going through! What little hints towards something more the game leaves feels so flat because nothing ever truly gets explored or touched on for more than just a shock value ending.
The worst thing a game like this can be is boring. and STARLESS was incredibly boring. The English translation is of poor quality as well, constantly mixing up characters names when they're very clearly and plainly saying a different girls name. I WILL say that I ADORE Mitarai. She's so incredibly cute, and I do also love how mature all of the characters look. It's always so refreshing to see women that don't look like they're in middle school. I do plan on reading the other entries in this series, perhaps because I am a fool who doesn't know how to stop, but I really hope that the sequels are better written, be it that they're nukige with no story, or realizing the story that they wanted to tell with STARLESS.
GORE SCREAMING SHOW(NSFW)
Developer: Black CYC
Released on January 20th, 2006.
Playable on Windows.
"I hate everything and everyone," the girl sneers. Hatred, despair, envy, bloodlust, pessimism, compassion, persistance and anxiety-- Burdened with all manner of negative emotion, she mutters to herself....
"I want to be happy."
Kyouji returns to his hometown of Kurehito city after his parents go to America for work. He moves in with his mother's cousin, Yamiko, and starts attending the highschool where he is confronted by three girls that he knows from his past. Kazuyagi Akane, Namiki Aoi, and Misono Kiika.
But on his way to school, he hears the voice of a little girl named Yuka, who welcomes him home and asks him to not forget her name. Whenever Yuka is around, there's a monster that follows her everywhere... His name is GORE SCREAMING SHOW. When the two of them start to bring the town to madness and hunt down the girls, Kyouji must take action to protect his peaceful days, and the city.
GORE SCREAMING SHOW is one of my favorite Visual Novels EVER. Sure, there's flaws, and it's age can show in some aespects, but this story has so much soul poured into it, It's impossible for me to critisize it too hard. GORE SCREAMING SHOW is by no means a lighthearted story, but the message and everpresent desire to hold out hope and compassion is something that resonated very deeply within me. The characters have struggles and motives that were too realistic, and made me feel deeply uncomfortable. I can relate to all of the heroines, even Yuka. I don't understand how people could hate her so deeply even after the true ending...
I do feel the need to say that if you're looking to get into this game because you want to see a spectecular amount of gore, or expect this story to be scary though, you are looking at the incorrect title. Yes, there is gore, and the long descriptive scenes with the imagry can be very intense, but this is NOT the focus of the novel, and there ARE filtering options that are available if you find yourself unable to deal with the scenes. The text gets less descriptive, and the images get this admittedly SUPER scary blackout that's... Kind of more scary than the gore LMAO
My favorite girls in this title were Kiika (Blonde hair) and Yuka (Purple hair) as I really enjoyed them both the most through the entire story. GORE is a very fun character so he's also a favorite... (lol) I will be talking about Kiika and Yuka in depth in this review, but since those contain major spoilers I will first list off some credits for the people who have yet to read this story and would like to not be spoiled~!
The artwork is done by the legendary Ueda Metawo. He did a LOT of other jobs for this title as well. The OP and ED for this novel are made by the amazing band Denkare, whom I love and adore very much (Please listen to their music.) Of course, Black CYC has their own website... and of course, both Kusaka Matsuri and Ban'ya (Twitter) worked on this title~!
Under this I will begin talking about spoilers and my intepretation of the themes.
Time Never Stops Moving...
Misono Kiika, my favorite main girl!
All of the characters in GSS are chained to their past aside from the main character Kyouji, who actively chooses to leave the past in the past, moving forward with his life and seemingly supressing many memories of his that deals with the heroines. In the routes of the girls, Kyouji helps them learn to grow their trauma, unchaining them from the shackes of the past. I want to talk about Misono Kiika specifically here, as this was my favorite route of the three girls.
Misono Kiika is a girl raised by a strict and abusive mother. She accidently discovers her sexuality earlier in her life when playing on an iron bar in the playground and it hitting an erogenous zone. Her mother shaming and berating her in that moment made Kiika feel ashamed of herself and filthy despite being too young to understand why she was being punished. This memory haunts her. She refuses to play on the iron bars even as a highschooler now, and feels ashamed of herself and her hypersexuality... Believing that it makes her unlovable, that it makes her a disgusting person. With the help of Kyouji she learns to accept and love herself for who she is, and Kyouji an show her that he loves her and respects her despite her hypersexuality, and it's not something she should be ashamed or self-hating over. Many people have expressed this before, but I want to echo that sentiment that I really adore how this is one of the only times I've seen a message like this be shown in a "horror" title. It's very important to me, and I wish I had the time to talk about Akane and Aoi here, as I think their messages are also quite touching. Perhaps in the future... But for now, I will talk about my top favorite character, Yuka.
Can you break the cycle?
Yuka, the main antagonist.
Yuka is an extremely interesting character to me. She appears like a young girl and has the kind of immaturity of a child and yet she's NOT a child. She is the result of her childhood trauma shaping her, unable to grow from her past and marinating in the murky feelings that now define her. She has big feelings that she doesn't know how to properly communicate nor properly deal with, resorting to extreme violence and manipulation of the people that have harmed her while also vying for Kyouji's affection and attention, lashing out at anyone who tries to get close to him.
When Yuka was a child, she was bullied and abused, one day getting tricked and trapped inside a well by her sister and friends. While she was in that well, she experienced her very first period, petrified and all alone. She lived in that same fear and hatred, those ugly feelings keeping her trapped as a child forever, unable to bear with the trauma and find a way to grow, she stagnated and bore those spiteful emotions until she started to take it out on others, making a deal with the demon that she controlls through her plushie, GORE SCREAMING SHOW. But it's important I think to mention that she doesn't want to be alone. She clings to Kyouji, as he was the first person to extend kindness to her at a festival when he was a child. She obsessed over him, craving a connection but lacking the emotional maturity to go about it the proper way after so long. She's terrified of being forgotten by him, throwing a tantrum when other people try to steal his attention away from her.
In the true ending of GSS, she starts to mature and learn to grow past her trauma and fear with the help of Kyouji setting down boundaries and not letting her do as she pleases. She starts to become less clingy, more rational, and in the final scene, we can see her, clearly looking older than normal, symbolizing that she may be starting to grow past that fear and hatred that she's been stuck in for so long, growing the courage to move forward.
GORE SCREAMING SHOW is a story about hope, growing into adulthood, and learning to cope with your trauma. It's an incredibly heartfelt story that understands what it wants to do, and executes it well in my opinion. I know some people may consider it to be slow in the start, so if you're feeling unsure on to continue this title or not, I would urge you to stick around a little longer. Thank you so much for reading this "review" of mine, as I hold this title very close to my heart. My love for this title is extremely personal.
SaDistic BlooD(NSFW)
Developer: Black CYC
Released on December 20th, 2019.
Playable on Windows.
I am a huge Black CYC fan. With some of my favorite Visual Novels being their titles, and my everlasting adoration for Ban'ya and Metawo, I thought that this novel would have been something I ADORED. It was reccomended to me by many people who claimed that this story was about lesbian vampires, and peddled it like a gorey yuri eroge. I had seen some CGs of the game before, specifically of the dark haired girl Yuna, in a scenario so over the top bloody that it almost wrapped around to being funny. A very dear friend of mine handed me a copy of this game, and another title I will write a review on soon.
The runtime of the game is extremely short, shockingly so. I reached an ending within less than half an hour, and on my second run, got what I assume is supposed to be a big emotional ending. I ended up 100%ing the entire game within 4 hours, maybe less? I don't mean to say this game is BAD, but I found the game to be very flat and unremarkable (which makes sense when you consider the very short dev time.)
If you're just looking for shocking content without much plot or characters, then you'll probably enjoy this! It was just dissapointing to me, so I think I would give it a 6/10.
Escalation Kyouai no Fugue (NSFW)
Developer: Rolling Star
Released on August 31st 2007.
I recently picked this game up, along with it's sister game Yuukuri Panic Escalation (that one wouldn't boot up though...) as I was curious by the cover of the novel! As you'll come to see, I quite like to pick up any novel that looks interesting, or seems like it will explore sexuality or aspects of it. I'll save that rant for later though.
This game takes place in a Catholic school for girls where our PC Rie has just moved into. She picks one of the two love interests to become her roommate. This game takes NO time to set up anything lol they drop crazy plotpoints and feelings like it's nothing with no warning which does make sense given it's short playtime but holy moly I was not expecting them to make love and declare eachother as lovers on their first night of being together!
The story was kind of poorly written, but I feel as though again it's probably the fault of the less than one hour playtime per route. That's not to say it wasn't a fun read though! I think the girls are very cute, the artwork is very cute in general, and I think there's something charming about the clunky nature of the story. Though I will say I was completely shocked at the (SPOILERS) double incest plottwist of the true ending I couldn't stop laughing in bewilderment they just. dropped that there and ran with it in the last 5 minutes of the route I was completely gobsmacked. Other than that though I would say it was fun enough to read, but not worth the price!
