Review of Ayakashibito
| Subject | Ayakashibito Ayakashibito -Gen'you Ibunroku- Regular Edition |
| By | Helpfulness: 3 Vote: 7.8kanjieater on 2022-10-16 |
| Review | This is the longest VN I've read to date, with all routes going a little over 1.2 mil characters. So was it worth it? Yes, definitely. It's not a perfect VN by any means, but it's an interesting journey that soars at it's climaxes but can overstay it's welcome on relationship building. First off, the world building is pretty interesting in this. The various factions at play, and how their motives are unrolled as the get through more routes was well done. Each route is practically a different story revealing more of the world and factors that you can't see impacting other routes. Because of this there will be some routes, where whole chunks of motive are misunderstood or where key characters don't even make an appearance, let alone do something useful. Speaking of characters, their designs are interesting as would be expected from Chuo-sensei. Their personalities and voice acting tend to be fitting but are still hit or miss when it comes to likability - the two main offenders that come to mind here are the two main characters, Mr. Cry baby & the tsudere loli. Overall voice acting was very well done, again the main two characters tended to grate on me a bit, and especially Suzu's whiny tone, but then there were stellar performances like the additional character & route, Hounan. Some of the writing was a little cringey to me at times, especially by characters like Sakura. Then there were cool, smooth characters like On the topic of CG's, this also brings up an issue with the presentation, which is the lack of scenery. There are a handful of locations where the story unfolds, and it can seem very limiting at time. For instance, there is just one forest CG even if the events are taking place in other locations. This can be confusing at times, especially considering the importance of some of these locations. As this is a spoiler free review, I'll hold off on saying too much more about the plot, besides that I found it enjoyable. The battles were always fun, though at times a little ridiculous in a "this is a shounen manga so we can do anything" kind of way. I didn't mind that, and in general would say, if you enjoy a good chuunibyou filled story, you'll enjoy this too. Let's talk about the music. It's great. It's one of the most memorable soundtracks to date. There's just one glaring issue. The tracks are way to short for a VN of this length. There are a few solutions to this. First, they could have made the tracks longer with more variations to offset the repetition. Alternatively, the could have added more tracks - I'd certainly welcome this, given how good the existing tracks are. The third option is the responsibility of the reader. I'll illustrate it with a short story: Given how long I was reading this for, eventually my wife learned all the songs on this VN too, as we frequently read in the same room. She asked me, "Do you ever get annoyed by how they just keep playing the same song?" "Yes." "So what do you do about it?" "Learn to read faster." So in short, had I just been reading at about a native Japanese speed, I probably could have gotten through with 3x less repetition, potentially negating my criticism here to an extent. As for the VN's production quality, it's astounding that this was made for PS2. Minus some sort of route tracking chart built in, it does everything else practically perfectly. Text skipping is fast, and generally correct (with a few spots that could be tighter). Controls are simple, and make repeating lines & looking at the backlog snappy. Already read text gets colored. Visual effects are well timed between dialogue, which is also paced well with the text revealing. I have no real issues here. With amount of really good long VN's, it's difficult for me to say, "Yes, choose this over Fate. Over Umineko. Over Tsukihime Remake." But, it certainly comes together in a way that makes me think I'll be looking back fondly on reading this one for many years to come. I'd love to see more of this world fleshed out in other means, novels, manga, etc. I think, especially with one of the Hounan endings, there was potential for a full length sequel. In the meantime, I'll just have to read Bullet Butlers so I can enjoy the crossover with Ayakashibito one day. |
| 3 points |