Review of BALDR SKY Dive2 "RECORDARE"
| Subject | BALDR SKY Dive2 "RECORDARE" |
| By | Helpfulness: 2 Vote: 7.5WYSGBT on 2021-05-13 last updated on 2023-08-04 |
| Review | TLDR: Good combat, mediocre story with some parts really exciting and some parts really questionable. It is hard to review BSD1 apart from BSD2 or vice versa, so I will review both in one. My review for this game will be divided into two parts: VN parts and the combat parts. The combat part I will divide it into two sections: the combat design and the level design. 1. The combat design is a bit hardcore for me. It is very combo heavy, and you cannot just spam your keys in higher difficulties, and I feel like there is a bit of grinding to level up the weapon and unlock it, or maybe I did not play it right. But there are lower difficulties for those who do not like this system or are not good at it. The system is not complicated after playing for a while, but I do not feel that the tutorial is helpful enough for the player to fully understand the system. 2. For the level design, some battle scenes were well designed as you will be anxious to kill the enemy when the heroine got caught, which makes those timed battle very gripping, while some were debatable where I do not know why they exist at all. I would give the battle system a 9/10. The VN part I will divide it into three sections: plot, characterization, and narration. 1. The plot for BSD is that the protagonist, Kou Kadokura, is trying to catch the person responsible for the Gray Christmas, but he lost his memory at the beginning of the game. The story branches out as he begins to regain more of his memory and eventually reveals everything behind the "Gray Christmas". The plot is twisting and intriguing, the twist on the sixth route is very unexpected and fun to read. Most of the endings were reasonable and acceptable. For my tasting, some bad endings were very well written, I highly encourage you to try them, but getting to the bad endings may be painful, especially for "Promise Land". But there are some unsatisfying parts for me. First of all, there is the romance plot of this game. Sora, the main heroine of the game, has a very poor romantic plot. The protagonists chased the responsible personnel for Gray Christmas years for her, fought with his life, in the end it is all because of "love at first sight" when he was a kid roaming around in the facility. I have no problem with love at first sight, but it seems a bit underdeveloped for the protagonist and Sora to fight for each other with their lives without hesitation, while ignoring those who are fighting beside them, like Rain, who actually put the protagonist's life before hers, or Kuu, who helped the protagonist countless times. I would love the story if their relationship had developed more and had more bonding other than love at first sight or that incidence created by simulacrum. Also, I detest the parts near the end in the sixth route where they come up with a plan to stop the tranquilizer and everyone dies for that plan. I have no problem with characters dying, but in that battle they died so easily and poorly written that the fact that they were to be revived in the next scene did not surprise me at all. And I do not like how the writer writes the sacrifice of Kuu, I feel that Kuu was not treated as a separate individual, but more like an accessory of Sora at that point. 2. Characterization of this game is good for all the heroines and the protagonist. The game spends a lot of effort in developing them and the results are impressive, I will not go into details of every single character. But I feel that the antagonists have not been portrayed enough. The main antagonists in my understanding are "Neunzehn" and Gilbert, and I feel that they have not been well designed to be attractive antagonists. 3. The story intersperses the high school memory with the present story. At some point in BSD2, you have to replay all the high school memories in chronological order, which makes it much clearer. For me, this narration style is not a bad attempt, the only problem is that it has some redundant repetitions, which is a bit annoying during gameplay. I would give the VN part of this game a 7/10. In total, I believe these two parts together deserve a 7.5/10 in my standards. |
| 2 points |