Review of Bradyon Veda
| Subject | Bradyon Veda |
| By | Helpfulness: 10 Vote: 9.5nejnost on 2021-05-22 |
| Review | Holy shit that was an experience. Imagine a rollercoaster that can gain momentum, but cannot lose it. And that thing goes fast right from the start. Little context. I don't really like chuuni games, or rather, have little experience with them. Dies Irae was good, but all these nonstop battles brought down the experience for me. Distinctly remember skipping battle scenes in Tokyo Babel too. Then a month ago I randomly found this VN, looked through the VAs list, thought "daym boi, thats some good VAs, lets give it a go" having no clue what to expect and this happened.... ...I think I like chuuni now. GOOD STUFF 1. Story and setting. Sci-fi goodness. Realistic with explanations and examples tying it to real physics. Story is grand and epic, growing in scale and impact with every route. Forced route order used to give you a larger picture with every route. And the way all the routes are brought together is just great 2. Protagonist. On the surface, a clown with zero sense tension who likes his edgy lines too much. Actually smart and adaptable, can do what needs to be done without any bullshit, but still not devoid of human emotions. A great protagonist 3. I don't know how to call this one. Content density? This thing has NO FILLER. No SOL moments, no deepening friendship, no bullshit. Something is constantly happening and advancing the plot (or you are getting infodumped). And with the way the setting is, it is impossible to predict anything at all. You never know what is going to happen next. Reading this feels like sitting in a rollercoaster, but you can't see ahead. Will it turn left or right? Go up or down? You never know. This makes it an incredibly interesting read that is so hard to put down. It's been many years since something got me so absorbed that I completely lost track of time 4. Author is really talented. - I was 100% sure that with the scale that large, he'll screw up the true end. I was wrong, the path he took was elegant, for the lack of a better word - There is a chapter where 6 organizations are involved in the same military conflict. Naturally, each one with its own motivations. It's utter chaos. And it all makes sense. It is consistent. They all do what makes sense to them, interact with each other how it would benefit them specifically and it is impressive - Last conversation with Komoe in the true route. Last lines aren't voiced or even written, they are only described with text. And it makes it so much more emotional and impressive. I'm repeating here, but it's just elegant what he does with words there - Comradery fell between the Nephelim is insane, even when they are against each other - Little things that pop up all over the place. Occasional lines that impress you and stick in you memory. They can be funny, sad, edgy, whatever, but they are written well. Phrased well. Pleasant to read 5. Music. Ominous "Sacreligion Country", jazzy "At that time". "Disembarking", the track that plays when shit hits the fan, gives me goosebumps with those violins. "Pure love" with slow piano. GOOD 6. Any scene that has Shion in it. What the author did at the end of her route with Claudia was beautiful 7. VAs did a fantastic job. Shion's one especially 8. I liked Shion a lot if you haven't noticed 9. Chuuni battles. Surprisingly enough, I found them interesting. Sure there is all this classic "chant some vows before using a skill" stuff, but the battles themselves go beyond what you expect. There is no "going beyond limits" nine thousand times to overcome opponents, every opponent has some physics trick to his skills and figuring it out is what (usually) leads to victory. This avoids that classic "going beyond limits" shonen borefest and makes every battle tense and interesting without the protagonist ever getting overpowered NOTEWORTHY STUFF 1. Language difficulty. In a word, this thing is hard to read. Took me almost a week to get used to reading this. You will either need a very high level of Japanese, or a lot of patience. You will look up words. And sometimes even physical concepts related to them. A few sample sentences, just to give you a taste: 車は内閣情報調査部専属車。 警視庁警備部警備課所属の特殊攻撃部隊の部員輸送車だった。 威京占領作戦を開始した時の機構軍統合参謀本部は、今作戦の決着を早くて一月以内。 As you might have noticed by the occasional の and that だった, this is indeed Japanese. And here are random sentences from some battle: 反重力装置作動。高圧環境場生成。媒体の超伝導物質化に成功。熱変換素子作動。誘電開始 Organization / technique / physical concept names are straight up meme material: 神性素粒子内包者 細胞周期エンジン活性化水槽 内閣情報調査部特別本部八咫烏 組成式神素化制御 極東統治委員会治安局 日本遺伝子管理機関 三対構造染色体所有種 機構軍極東方面司令官 非相対性事象領域 咒真言 輪身系神術文殊菩薩を発動 枢要国家聯合 機構軍「神術兵特務部隊 金剛界曼荼羅 向上門 降三世三昧耶会を観想 The game shows you short descriptions for such words on mouse over though, so it's not that bad. There is a sequence told from the perspective of, lets say, another race. They have their own names for stuff written in kanji: 瑠璃廟(ruuri) - probably a school 梛羅兵(naara) - some type of soldier 群蟲(gogun) - whatever attacks them, enemy 威徒(ito) - how they call themselves 星師旺(suio) - some kind of king 奉主座(hosuna) - royal palace or smth and so on. Meaning of all these words you will have to pick up from context. While the game shows furigana for all these words, it still throws you off and slows down reading. Those sequences are not that long though 2. Art. Sometimes there are weird proportions and unnatural deformations, but whenever something important is happening, the artist gets his shit together and makes some amazing artwork, so have mercy on occasional oddities 3. Reading this drunk is impossible BAD STUFF 1. Sex / fanservice. For a VN as massive as this one, fortunately there is very little of this. There are 8 of those scenes total 5 of which have Kaede in them, which is neglectable, but the scenes themselves, how should I put it, leave an impression. It's one of those cases, where going without porn would have actually improved the product. Imagine a VN, that has nonstop action. People are talking to one another, plotting something, fighting, showing you flashbacks, different perspectives. Where do you put sex scenes? Yup, in the middle of all that. Short description of some of those scenes in no particular order: - there is a pissing scene in a few minute break between two battles. To quote, "her piss had a very healthy yellow color" - go to pornhub and search something like "mom teaches daughter how to suck boyfriends dick brazzers". That was the funniest shit in the entire VN. My stomach hurt from laughing and my pp was confused - there is a scene where a certain lady pokes MC groin through the pants and he finishes instantly - there are weird bdsm showering scenes, that I don't even know what to think about - there is a group fingering scene so bad, that I wrote two full paragraphs in my notes on how this desire to put porn everywhere hurts VNs as a medium - 「ぢゅッ……。ちゅっ！」 大きめのクリトリスは、幼児のペニスのようだった wat - and then there is the actual Shion's sex scene which is great and I loved it. I'm not biased, you are biased But once again, considering the size of this VN there is very little of this CONCLUSION If you are confident in your Japanese (or if you want to become confident in your Japanese) give this a go. You will be in for an adventure. Just don't give up right away if it feels too difficult to read, give yourself a chance, get used to it, adapt, and you won't regret it. It is doable That was a lot of words P.S. 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| 10 points |