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Review of An Octave Higher

SubjectAn Octave Higher
ByHelpfulness: 3
Vote: 6
swordfish96 on 2021-06-16
ReviewIt did some pretty interesting things; the worldbuilding is very good with an interesting magic system that doesn’t just exist but is studied as a science. It also portrays the way this impacts an industrial revolution era society both from a technological point of view, with magic being a part of various parts of technology such as a primitive computer, as well as a societal sense, with a burgeoning class conflict around access to magic. In addition, the viewpoint rotating between the three protagonists gave the story some variety and perspective. The second half is also an interesting reversal of fortunes and perspectives.

There’s some pretty irritating things about the system; each time the protagonists swaps , it plays a little animation of their sprite moving across the screen which feels very basic and this gets extremely silly during scenes where the viewpoint is switching every few lines. In addition whenever a spell is cast and it shows the spell formula on screen (or when a sound effect is played), you can’t click past it for a second which makes the battle scenes in particular extremely irritating if you’re a quick reader. While the magic system is used to make the combat scenes interesting, I feel it eventually just ends up describing people throwing elemental attacks at each other like it’s narrating a RPG battle.

I’m not sure what was the point of having routes as for the ones that don’t lead to the true ending, it just ends halfway through leaving the story blatantly incomplete. The true route itself feels pretty rushed having a sudden timeskip with a short summary of the inbetween years for Franz and Elise and only covering a few days of a revolution years in the making along with having what feels like several plot elements that are cut short such as Frederic’s entire arc It could have been good if it had more time to portray events in more detail but as it is it just feels lacking

In summary, it has some genuinely good and novel ideas but like several EVNs I’ve read, it’s brought down by a lack of polish and length.

Originaly posted on Reddit WAYR
3 points