White Album 2

• Personal Review: The plot structure is well-crafted, and the characters’ psychological activities are described in great detail. It’s the most classic work in its genre.
• Pros: Its greatness needs no words. A pinnacle of anime romance works. Unprecedented and unlikely to be surpassed. The characters’ dialogue and psychological descriptions are superb. One of the few Galgames where I didn’t find the daily life boring.
• Cons:
  • To advance the plot, some of the author’s chosen scenarios are too coincidental (e.g., the male lead’s interaction with Koharu being seen by Mihoko). There’s a lot of back-and-forth between the male and female characters in the story, which gives it a K-drama vibe when these situations occur.
  • Although the Chiaki route is brilliant, many people will find Chiaki’s actions illogical. Would anyone really pretend to be in a relationship for script research?
• Rating: 10*/10

Ace Attorney 1-3

• Personal Review: The progenitor of its genre and extremely polished. This is evident in the music, sound effects, visuals, and writing. The prose is concise, with no unnecessary filler, which is particularly noticeable in the description and use of evidence.
• Pros: Its greatness needs no words.
• Cons:
  • Some cases are too coincidental/difficult to achieve. For example, hanging the cloak in the circus, and swinging across the bridge with a rope in 3-5.
• Rating: 10*/10

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective

• Personal Review: Honestly, I don’t think this game should be here, as it’s a highly playable puzzle game. The game is only a little over 10 hours long, and the text portion might only account for 2 hours. But with just two hours of text, Shu Takumi managed to tell a complete story.
• Pros: TBA
• Cons:
  • TBA
• Rating: 10*/10

Full Metal Daemon Muramasa

• Personal Review: The game’s story content is as sinister as the name “Muramasa.” It’s a flawlessly produced work. The music, art, and presentation are all exquisite. The author’s control over player psychology and plot tension is exceptional. Even the daily life isn’t boring.
• Pros:
  • As a text-based game, its descriptions of combat, psychology, and environment are outstanding.
  • What’s commendable is the game’s stunning art design, especially the various battle animations.
  • The author uses a wealth of details to depict a unique and convincing world.
• Cons:
  • Personally, I feel that the Heroic Arc’s discussion of good and evil is a bit too black and white. However, this is also part of the game’s charm. Every character in this game is an embodiment of their ideology. In this situation, characters represent ideologies, and their humanity is diminished. Therefore, they might act in ways that seem “single-minded” to normal people. The author uses these character actions to explore the themes of the game.
• Rating: 9*/10

Steins;Gate

• Personal Review:
• Pros:
  • As a mystery work, Steins;Gate handles emotional scenes very well. It takes a concise premise and expands it brilliantly to tell a highly engaging story.
• Cons:
  • The pacing is slow in the early stages, but it also lays many groundwork during this slow pace. It’s not entirely filler. However, there are still many insignificant parts that could be streamlined.
  • Some individual routes feel forced. For example, in the Ruka route, after the protagonist struggles mentally, repeatedly weighing Ruka’s gender against Mayuri’s life, he chooses to maintain Ruka’s gender and abandon saving Mayuri’s life. I know this is to give all capturable characters an ending, similar to most Galgames. But the psychological shift here is too rough, leading to a poor experience. More plot should have been added in this situation to explain the reason for Rintaro’s change of mind.
• Rating: 9*/10

13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim

• Personal Review: Similar to 428: Shibuya Scramble in its multi-line narrative approach. However, the two differ significantly in other aspects: TBA.
• Pros:
  • Excellent multi-line narration.
  • Successfully blends ideas from multiple famous sci-fi works.
  • Numerous plot twists. Concise writing with no unnecessary filler.
• Cons:
  • The story requires playing RTS sections to unlock. It’s not that the RTS isn’t fun, but this arrangement severely disrupts the pacing.
• Rating: 9*/10

Umineko When They Cry — Question Arcs

• Personal Review: This is a pure visual novel with no choices. It is framed as a mystery, but its true charm lies in its profound insight and delicate portrayal of human nature and family ethics.
• Pros:
  • Emotion/Ethics: The game tells the story of a large family, and the author meticulously describes the complex relationships within it. In my opinion, the most outstanding aspect of this work is the rich emotion and ethical speculation wrapped in its mystery shell. Through cleverly designed plots, the game deeply portrays the feelings between characters, including but not limited to siblings, parents and children, lovers, and spouses. It can be said that compared to the game’s reasoning and suspense elements, the portrayal of emotions is what I like the most.
  • Characterization: The motivations of the main characters in the game are well explained, and Ep1~4 respectively tell the stories and struggles of different characters in the family. With each chapter played, players will discover aspects of the characters they didn’t know before. The characters are very well-developed.
• Cons:
  • Wordy: It took me 68 hours to finish the English version. But I estimate it would take me more than 40 hours to play the Chinese version. The game has a lot of details and psychological descriptions, which makes the pace slow in some places. It should be emphasized that the game is very wordy, but I don’t think it’s boring to read. Because the author’s writing is good, and the text is substantial. This should be distinguished from games that are just filler (calling out Clannad and Rewrite).
  • Convoluted Debates: The debates and reasoning processes in the game often do not conform to conventional logic and are full of word games and sophistry, feeling like a children’s argument. It can be said that the debates in the game are a competition of who is more stubborn and who is better at making things up. Including some basic logic concepts cited in the game (contrapositive, it is more difficult to prove non-existence than to prove existence, etc.) are also very obvious, but the author insists on explaining them at length with a bunch of examples, which is somewhat trivial.
• Rating: 8.5*/10

Fate/Stay Night

• Personal Review: A rich and interesting worldview, and the characterization of the heroines is also very likable. The game is very large, and the quality of each route is not bad.
• Pros:
  • A large amount of content. The three main routes of the game are all exciting. And there is less repetitive content in each route, and the flowchart system greatly facilitates players’ exploration.
  • A complex and interesting worldview. This probably needs no further explanation, the Fate series has been popular for so many years and its wonderful worldview is inseparable from it.
  • Foreshadowing. Although excellent scripts will have foreshadowing. But after playing some流水账Galgame, I think this should be written as an advantage. Each route of the game has foreshadowing, big or small, and the design of foreshadowing for the identity of Red A, the origin of the two pendants, etc. is quite clever. The overall look is not overwhelming, but it can give people a shock.
  • The plot pace is just right. The author’s control over the tension of the plot is very good. Unlike many Galgames that like to write a lot of流水账, FSN’s control of the pace of daily life and battle looks very comfortable. In general, FSN will appropriately intersperse the narration of daily life and battle before the final climax, instead of some Galgames where the first half is boring to death, and then the plot suddenly goes wild in the second half.
  • Excellent overall structure. In addition to corresponding to different heroines, the information disclosed in the three main routes of the game is also progressive. The routes of the game must be played in order, and the later routes can always reveal new information that was not available in the previous route. It feels fresh to play each route.
• Cons:
  • After playing the common route once, you can automatically skip the read text, but many similar contents cannot be skipped automatically after entering the route.
  • The male protagonist’s characterization is OK, but not very likable. In the plot, the male protagonist has difficulty understanding the ideas of other characters, and often tries to understand others with many empty concepts. Such as “ally of justice”, “how can a girl fight” and so on. The male protagonist also often imposes his own values on others, and sometimes does not understand what others are saying, like a human-computer.
  • When the author writes the psychological activities of the characters (mainly the protagonist), he will add a lot of content that seems very “speculative”, but it is actually not. It is said to be speculative, but it is more like trying to say something with vague definitions, words, and inappropriate metaphors. After reading it, it gives people a feeling of being plausible but not, and it cannot stand up to scrutiny.
  • The battles are exciting, but not brilliant. Like Witch on the Holy Night, the battles feel like both sides are just comparing whose cheat is better, and whoever the author says wins, wins. In comparison, I think the battles in this work are more interesting than Witch on the Holy Night. Although there are some deus ex machina, it is not very serious.
• Rating: 8.5/10

You and Me and Her: A Love Story

• Personal Review: Short and sharp story. Influential for many meta-element works that followed.
• Pros:
  • The twists in the second and third playthroughs are sudden and the emotional portrayal is very well done.
• Cons:
  • The setting of Aoi as an amalgamation of Galgame heroines feels like a deus ex machina. I think there should have been more groundwork and explanation for this core setting. Generally, players can accept broad settings without much trouble (e.g., magic, mechs), but very specific settings like this require some explanation.
• Rating: 8*/10

Mahoutsukai no Yoru (Witch on the Holy Night)

• Personal Review: This is a visual novel with no choices throughout. The length is also much shorter than typical Galgames, which means the plot is concise and never boring.
• Pros:
  • The art in this work is exquisite. The CGs have many layers and rich details. For example, the movement of clouds in the sky, and the gradual brightening of the room when a light is turned on. It’s one of the best (if not the best) games I’ve played in terms of flat art.
  • The sound design is also excellent, with rich environmental sounds accompanying the rich scenes. I was particularly impressed when the game’s opening text described “at one moment, even the sound of rain seemed to stop,” and at that very moment, the background rain sound actually stopped playing. It’s fair to say this game is meticulously crafted.
• Cons:
  • The world-building isn’t very rigorous, and the author often introduces new settings abruptly, leading some scenes to feel like a deus ex machina. Considering this isn’t a mystery, this isn’t a severe flaw.
  • I don’t particularly like the author’s writing style. Sometimes the author’s message isn’t profound, but they deliberately use obscure language to tell these not-so-profound things, making you feel like it’s profound without truly understanding it. And some parts are too stream-of-consciousness, leaving you confused. Overall, the language of Mahoutsukai no Yoru is a bit pretentious.
  • Aside from the author’s stream-of-consciousness and flashy language, the story told is actually very simple. The plot and character settings in this work are already boilerplate in anime. However, the characters’ personalities, actions, and psychological activities are not convincingly portrayed, leading to very flat characterizations.
• Rating: 8/10