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Review of ENIGMA:

SubjectENIGMA:
ByHelpfulness: 0
Vote: 4
Ileca on 2020-03-20 last updated on 2020-03-22
ReviewThat was positively boring.

You are following a terminally ill character and one thing I want to compliment the VN for is that they are not force feeding us the drama. It's not one of those annoying nakige that is taking our eyes in hostage. So, no dying protag in Emo Island, thank you, Uzumeya.

Unfortunately, this choice had the adverse effect of making the protagonist not care about the mystery at all. The intro presents us Enigma, the illness, and make a direct parallel with Enigma, the forest, before starting the OP. You would expect the MC to investigate the forest, in this situation. He will not. He will take walks but never reach the epicenter because he will always be stopped by someone or be too out of brea-KHEE KHEEE KEEEEE (the guy reaches Enigma only once during the whole game and it was easy, he just had to want it). He will be interrupted every time he is starting to get to the heart of the matter, if he ever goes beyond his complete unwillingness at pursuing the subject!
Ignis: ask any question, Chester: yeah, I have so many questions, but no, it's ok, Ignis: you are quite the superficial character, you know, Chester: that's who I am, Reader: *facepalm*.
It is very frustrating. However, you will quickly understand that the reason for this is that the mystery is made of very little substance.

You learn really fast, especially if you do the routes in order, starting with Lauro, that the mystery of the Enigma forest doesn't matter. It's not the subject because it happens that this game is a full-blown charage, and what better than a charage can ruin a visual novel, I am asking you?

The guy is dying fast, and because of that, we have tons of endings. You can't deny that it makes sense storywise, but it doesn't if your novel doesn't feature action, suspense, or an investigation, whatever that would actually justify so many abrupt endings. Every time you add an ending to your VN (or you add branching choices, it works the same, or even together, hand in hand, like here), you are shortening the content of the main branch, and if you add tons of ending, the main branch shrivels even more. That's what happens here. To make matters worse, this is a charage with three routes, splitting the main branch further into three densely interconnected sub-trees. At the end, you get something very horizontal. Horizontality works based on your ability to spread the content of your game fairly, or if you chose this design because the reward is to get the ending while avoiding the tons of entertaining bad endings, or collecting the endings is the meat of your game, etc.

However, Enigma is not that kind of game. No, here, the endings have not a glimpse of diversity (he is either killed by Envirio or he runs out of time). In fact, having seemingly bad endings where Chester is dying for the umpteenth time will make you wrongly think he will tackle the mystery at some point, and survive, that we are working a mystery. In a way, it does back up the conclusion (by making us believe that there will be an ending where he survives, it strengthens the fact that he will not), but it's not the point. No, the point is to work toward very lame character endings that are a very very slight variation (but extended) of previous shorten endings. The mystery and Chester don't matter because the point of the VN is to remove the mental block of the characters so they help the next generation of heroes.

Not only those endings have no diversity, making those many leaves (end nodes) useless, but because of the interlinked structure and the fact that the characters are not isolated from each other (which should be a good point), the overlapping is glaring, making the total content of the three sub-trees not much, and the whole game very superficial and repetitive. Always the same paper-thin "revelations" (even when it's "new", it's of no importance or just confirming your suspicions: who cares that Greta is the Bride and the last of the Turikas, we don't even know what's the point of colored Enigma being married to her), the same events and interactions in a different light. The Tai two-stages sequence... every route has its own variation.

And like there is no actual plot and we have to work with characters only, what is left? What charage do best: god damn SoL.

Add to that the fact I am not the target of this work and it becomes more than boring. Despite the debatable claims that this is not BL, Enigma clearly targets fujoshi as it is dripping with homoerotic relationships. If you can't appreciate the fanservice, there is nothing left for you. You have some interactions with female characters but it's completely negligible, and I would say hypocritical. Normally I wouldn't say that because a fujoshi can appreciate an heterosexual romance, but they try to cover the fact that Chester is flirting most of his time with men by saying that he is no homo, as if it mattered. Yeah, right, I believe you, guys, he has a picture of his best friend in a pendant around his neck. Don't get me wrong, I am not saying the guy is homo, I am saying that the staff doesn't deceive anyone with those ridiculous attempts at muddying the water. Yes, you have Envirio but, let's be honest, Envirio being a woman is what comes in third position after asexual/non binary and man. Muddying the water, I said.
In short: if you are a woman, it's for you, but if you came thinking the game could be interesting despite the fanservice, I beg to disagree.
(Of course they made Zezae, the cutest of them all a completely minor character...)

Anyway, even if you like bromance, it is still boring. They are all too flat to justify their own routes even if they were not overlapping. The Lauro route is completely empty. You are babysitting a tsundere-teenager for one third of the game. Ignis is unlikable and Envirio... is unlikable too (dat big fat lying cover).
You could have given your audience enough to be excited without stubbornly sticking to this inefficient charage structure, knowing that the bromances don't imply love and exclusivity (though the characters can be jealous of each other).

Oh, yeah, I really want to say a word about Colette, the only female character of importance here, before I conclude. Colette, how should I say... this girl... this girl... ! I got for first ending her drugging you by proxy before raping you, you die and she is pregnant. That came so much out of nowhere! Even if this kinda makes sense storywise, this over the top yandere behavior was way too ridiculous and comical to fit the tone of the game. Each time Chester was flirting with Greta, Lyona, or Envirio, I was "oh shit, man, if Colette see that, you are all dead. DEAD! WATCH OVER THE SURROUNDINGS!". Of course, she appears and I jump from my chair "uh oh, here comes the wax". They try too much with her to make the VN a little gory.
Genius: I completely busted the guy was a ghost but you wonder what's the point of his existence. Chester will die but having a ghost makes his death less tragic, knowing that there is a life after. He was really too much of a token character, like Zezae.

I didn't dislike the story, the whole thing about "the heroes" and how it ends, the atmosphere of serene end-of-the-world, some lumps in your throat, I just think they could have done that in half the time, 6H, without the ton of useless endings and the need to flirt/hang out with the boyz all the time to do nothing. This way it might have been good.
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