The official Icari-sama Fan Group

Comrades in arms!

Today I had the pleasure to play the very fist beta version of the new Sunrider, SR4.

For these brave warriors, who cannot fight this new upcoming war now, I will write here full after-battle-report, so that you all can prepare for the war LiS will send us in.

During my lack of time and lot of other projects I have, I will sadly not write this all with the Élan I normally have. So I keep myself as short as possible.

SR4 - Captain's Return - Beta 0.011 - Review

Graphics/Art:
It looks asbolutly great. Everything comes in high-end sharpness and beautiful, strong colouring. It really looks like a state-of-art VN, which can defeat every other big VN currently on the market.
Lot of things (e.g. new uniforms, mechas) looks kind of over-ornated (compared with SR:FA/MoA & SR:LD), but I think this is something you get used to very fast.
And, sadly, the most important point for myself, is a negative one: Our great godess, Icari-sama, even when armed like it has to be, got (on the title screen) such a strange facial expression, that I felt instantly sick. In my own opinion, her expression looks like... idk, a person which has horrible constipation. This is NOT how our beloved Icari-sama should look at! This is unforgivable!

Gameplay:
The point'n'click system is very innovative for a VN and great to discover the lore. I personally hope we will get it many times (please just spare me with p'n'c puzzles).
The new battle system is very tactical (movement!) and cool, the battles looks great. LiS did everything right here!
I missed tooltips from time to time since I just clicked away the tutorial xD. This could be maybe improved.

The R&D part is very cool, you can skill your mechas/ships in extreme lot of different ways which really feels RPG-like - which is great! I really like the minimalistic art style of the R&D part, it feels really like doing research stuff, but I guess some ppl could find it a little boring. I personally be in love with everything that looks a little bit like a excel-sheet :)

The VN part so far... complete lack of any important dialoge option. Which is sad. extremly sad. But I guess - and hope - no, demand - that we will get more choosable dialogs in the future.

Characters/Story (no spoiler):
As far, everything is open, but it sounds very cool. If LiS don't mess it up with forced romance and railroading, SR4 can get absolute amazing!
Of course the absence of any real dialoge option (just "say X first for some more lore") is very frustrating, but as written before, I hope this is just due v.0.011.
I myself enjoyed really Lynn, which got a much more fleshed out character then the boring "I'm evil, muahaha, and thats all" from past SRs. She is like 10 thousend times more likeable as Chigara (for me! Guess lot of ppl will think otherwise) and really got some Waifu-potention (for these who not be glourious enought for Icari-sama!).
Still - as seen with Lynn - LiS is capaple to change the character of a girl from previous parts. Even when it is great with Lynn, I still hope they will not change any other girl of the cast too much, since they where mostly all great as they where. I would not swear it, but somehow I felt like Asaga got much more like Starnovas Nattan, compared to the previous SRs.



So, that was it from my side.

SR4 has the potential to become the greatest SR so far - and one of the most modern, most beautiful VN currently available! But I still watch LiS with distrust after the "Liberation Day Massacre"...
We need more dialog options for sure, and they should not ♥♥♥♥ up Icari-sama! But if they make them/don't ♥♥♥♥ her up, SR4 will be just awesome!

Best wishes,