Review of Subarashiki Kokka no Kizukikata
| Subject | Subarashiki Kokka no Kizukikata |
| By | Helpfulness: 0 Vote: 3SomeDude on 2022-12-02 last updated on 2022-12-06 |
| Review | This is a game that could have been really good... if they had been more consistent, and hadn't tried to include so many mutually exclusive story and gameplay mechanics. Let me begin by saying that, while I'm aware that this was marketed as a brothel simulator, I also read that it's impossible to play through the game from start to finish as a true love game, without ever once opening the brothel. And so this is what I decided to do... as I have zero interest in whoring out my waifus to random NPCs for pennies. And when you first begin the game, there is an option for people playing a "pure love" game to make all of the female characters virgins. Had they not attempted to include "true love" type routes with a male protagonist, I wouldn't have even tried this, and wouldn't be writing this review. So this review is a result of them attempting to do too many conflicting things with their game. Or is there? And there's the first problem. The story doesn't really suit this mechanic, as several character bonding episodes will mention past rape and sexual experiences even as the lovers' H-scenes themselves describe them as having sex for the first time. One of the characters (Naruka) outright denies being a virgin and breaks the fourth wall in order to insult the player's views of virginity, even after you decide at the beginning of the game that she is one. So here is the first inconsistency, right at the beginning. Who is the protagonist of this story? The most important character from a story aspect is of course Princess Ariadne, but there's also a mute, nameless male protagonist with zero personality, who doesn't even have a battle sprite. While it's better to have a bland protagonist than an awful one, it still feels like this mute apprentice was only added in order to appeal to those who want to self-insert into a pure love game. And you can make a lover, and then a wife, out of every female character. Seem pretty amazing, doesn't it? And if they had gone all in on this aspect, the game would have deserved a much, much higher score from me. They couldn't decide whether to make Ariadne the protagonist or the faceless male, so they tried some weird combination of both, which doesn't work. However, most of the H-scenes are based on the brothel management, rather than the true love aspect. Every girl has two CG sets (four scenes), that are exclusive to the lover and wife relationships. However, every girl has four CG sets that are intended solely for the brothel management, with six(!!) scenes from each set exclusive to the brothel. And the married/lover scenes don't even use the whole CG set... for example, Yushia will never double peace for the protagonist in her anal scene, she only does so for random perverts. The brothel CG sets are copypasta'd into the lover/wife relationships but... this actually is a bad thing, since so many of the brothel scenes are gangbangs. In total, each girl has 12 wife/lover scenes, many of which are copied from the brothel scenes, and 24 brothel H-scenes with random NPCs. There are more than 30 females, so this adds up to a staggering amount of H-content, most of which is based on the brothel minigame. Here are two examples of the conflicting H-scenes, both available at the beginning of the game. Ariadne has a handjob and a missionary sex scene exclusive to lover/wife relationships. She also has an oral, an anal, a cowgirl, and a rimjob that are available in lover/wife mode, but the CG is copied from the brothel scenes, and she's wearing her brothel outfit in all of them. She also has a missionary CG that is only available in brothel scenes. No huge loss, but... then you have Luluka, with her oral and sex scenes exclusive to lover/wife, a handjob and another sex in her brothel outfit and... two gangbang scenes with men who aren't you, the protagonist. That's right... you can ask your wife to bang other guys right in front of you, since the CG set is copied from the brothel scene. And Luluka isn't the only character with this option (though I think she's the only one with two such scenes). It's no exaggeration to say that the H-content of this game prioritized the brothel management over the pure love option. If you play for the pure love aspect, however, you'll find that many of the girls are quite adorable, and easy to fall for. And if you play for the brothel management aspect right from the beginning, you'll quickly find out that the going rate for a princess' virginity is... 50 copper coins. The same lovable princess who is in love with the male protagonist since before the start of the story is willing to sell her treasured first time for only 50 copper if you go that route instead. It makes absolutely zero sense. If you want money early on, pick the merchant option and start the game with 30,000 copper. There's zero reason from a gameplay perspective to ever open the brothel anyway... you can make far more money, far quicker, by investing in trade over sex industry and fighting battles. And every single female character is willing to sell her body in the brothel. It makes zero sense for princesses, queens, and stupidly rich knights who only pay in gold coins (10,000 copper = 1 gold) to whore themselves out for small change like this. It's pure fetish fuel and honestly doesn't suit the plot at all, yet this is the aspect that they chose to market first and foremost. As for the plot... well, it's actually very good. Until it isn't. Thankfully, the brothel is almost never mentioned in the main storyline, and you're free to enjoy and come to love the heroines, so long as you never open the brothel and never whore them out for pennies. However... a big problem happens later on in the story, as you are forced to play through the bad ending and watch all of the cute girls that you've come to love transform into terrible girls that make you regret saving them. Provided you watch the bonding events, of course (and why wouldn't you?). Supposedly you can unlock the good ending after completing the bad ending, but the bad ending is so bad, so long, and so drawn out that you should follow Cordelia's advice. She actually breaks the fourth wall and says "You should stop playing now since you're not going to like what happens next." And she means it. The final straw for me is when one of the girls (Lynn), who throughout every other bonding episode was completely head over heels for the main character, started asking Ariadne to give her more brothel shifts, wearing her brothel outfit and whoring herself out on the streets and hanging out in shady neighborhoods hoping to get raped, despite the fact that I never opened the brothel and never gave her that outfit, and never had her work a single shift as a whore. Talk about complete character destruction. Made me seriously regret saving her life. As for the final problem that I can think of at the moment... it's that most of the girls only seem to care about the faceless protagonist within the very limited confined of the lover/wife relationships. There are a few exceptions, like Ariadne, Luluka, and Lynn, who will openly show love and affection towards the nameless main character in the main story itself, but most every other girl doesn't seem to care about him at all. And this doesn't change once you marry them all. They will only ever refer to you as "husband" in the marriage H-scenes, and never anywhere else. The "pure love" aspect is so far detached from the story itself that it may as well not exist... although the same could be said about the brothel management aspect. So in conclusion this game is a combination of three mutually exclusive aspects: Romance/pure love with a male protagonist, a strong yet ultimately incredibly depressing story that is designed to make you quit halfway through you first playthrough's ending, and a brothel management simulator where the otherwise cute girls bang random NPCs instead of the protagonist. It would have been a masterpiece if they dropped the brothel and went all in with the pure love, tying it in to the story, but they just had to appeal to niche fetishes instead, which ultimately destroyed the potential of this game. Also, it's very, very grindy. |
| 0 points |