Review of G-senjou no Maou
| Subject | G-senjou no Maou |
| By | Helpfulness: 3 Vote: 7.5Scalex on 2022-05-15 |
| Review | I deemed to play a few eroges before I submit my first review and so here we are! I wouldn't by any means G-senjou call bad but as you start to approach the end, the story gets more and more discombobulated in terms of writing. While being an eroge, it has a decent mysterious, thriller-ish plot with detective aspects, while all the time challenging the reader a bit into lighter mindgames. More on that later. There is some slight comedy included mainly thanks to the role of you best male friend who is a nicely done sleezy playboy under cover. The VN is divided into one true route which in the meantime has 3 pretty visible (there are not that many choices in the VN to make, so that's why it gets somewhat recognizible) branches to deviate if you are more interested into one of the 3 heroines appart from the obvious main one. There is one branch per chapter and it maybe can feel a bit unnatural with such sequencing since the stories are nowhere near the quality and depth of the true route and there is no coming back when you choose to jump on the other siderail. These branches completely drop the main plot (maybe except the first one) and throw you more into a calmer and shorter romantic story with the chosen lady. It is a complete change of pace and atmosphere, since suddenly the thrill is gone and you play more of a Slice of life dating SIM with some shallow characterization, but barely satisfying to my tastes. You have the more or less classic plethora of girls: The diligent, hardworking and honest one, the rowdy and bossy, the supershy kuudere and the lively proactive sent by fate itself. The balance between the girls is far from optimal and it felt to me like only Tsubaki had a decent and sound plot behind her route; also she was the one who mended with our MC in the most natural way, standing by her own philosophy and while being in love, she was not absolutely blinded by it in comparison to the other two who were way too unreasonable. Kanon, even though had a deeper plot to her route, had a very mediocre chemistry with the MC, making me hardly believe in their relationship. And on the last side, Mizuha's line was an absolute bore and bother, basically not getting anywhere and not living through any story while the Mizuha herself had a lot of potential and I generaly digged her. With all that said, I strongly recommend to do these sideroutes of Tsubaki, Kanon and Mizuha before you jump to Haru for better cohesion and overall enjoyment. That's my take. Coming back to the vastly most developed route, the true route/Haru branch, the storywriting based its entertainment on twists and trying to misdirect the reader to a somewhat succesful extent. The slow and mysterious approach by not going into much of a characterization/questionable background of the MC or Haru keeps the audience guessing for about 1/2 of the length. Until then I felt the guidance of the plot has been very solid and I was pretty intrigued where I was being led, feeling like everything is under control. After that half it started to take serious turn for the worse, dragging here, overcomplicating there and making the protagonists do weird uncharacteristic mistakes which they never had never done before. We learn new info a bit too late and in way too large quantity at a time, being a tad too predictable and making the already pretty insuffarable MC even more less acceptable. And while Haru is pretty obviously the most likeable gal because of the time invested in her and the relationship with her is pretty sweet, she as a partner feels quite different than she was when not dating her. All in all G-senjou no Maou is a pretty good read with very solid graphics, weirdly skewed mix of classical and remixed music, average characters, decent H-scenes and ending at a reasonable spot in about 30 hours of play. I would say a far cry from a masterpiece, but it didn't disappoint. |
| 3 points |