Recent reviews by shibe

Express trip to unlove yourself in less than 2 hours, won't recommend unless you like psychological abuse
2024 edition: nothing changed

I can't believe I gotta deal with the fact that Aiba isn't real and will never estabilish permanently in my eye socket. Life is so unfair sometimes

Synergia Steam page mentions several features within the game that I absolutely didn't encounter whatsoever.
"Nearly 100 unique backgrounds and CGs" I don't know where that 100 came from but there are not even 15 CGs total to be generous.
"Choices that deeply affect the protagonist journey", choices are only three and just the last one matters in terms of different ending purposes.
"20+ characters with interesting backgrounds and personalities", there are five relevant characters for the first 5 hours of gameplay and the other 15 gets introduced into the story in a rush, altering the event's flow in a confusing and overwhelming way.
There is no dub, only background music.
Text's font is way too shrinky with no zoom options.
Lots and lots of big words are thrown all over the place to describe what the hell is happening within the plot, forcing me to annoyingly backtrack to get a glimpse about the ♥♥♥♥ is going on.
There is a truly poor "mental visualization" of the events, sooo many detailed descriptions which are making everything so hard to "imagine" in my head. Show more, tell less.
Kinda bumped down from this VN, the only things worth saving from the ♥♥♥♥ show are the two main characters. It started with the right vibe, but already by the half of it, it was already turning into a mind-bending mess.
Get it on sale for some angsty lesbian intercourse which is never a bad thing, but don't expect too much from everything else. 4.5/10

This game was truly an amazing narrative experience! It reminded me a lot of VA-11 Hall-A which is another great piece of a videogame, the vibe, the message, the background, two wonderful immersive trip into the cyberpunk universe and its mighty nemesis; distopic corporations. I've binge-played The Red Strings Club in just one day on a 8h playthrough because I honestly couldn't stop myself, it's undoubtedly an hidden gem, I wish it was known a little bit more just like its VA-11 Hall-A cousin. It deserves it. 9/10

Not a lover of flash visual novels with just a couple hours worth of gameplay, not much you can do with such a short time span but I gotta say the host and the art made up for it, for the most part. It was cute, I enjoyed it while it lasted.

I'll keep it short and say, this game has everything. I usually expect a work of fiction to be either character driven or plot driven, you can imagine my absolute disbelief when I realized my hands laid on something which achieved both, definitely not something I see that often. Both characters and plot got this firm grip on me that I cannot stop playing until everything is unwrapped, I wanna know more, I wanna learn all the characters back story and see what happens to each of them, I wanna witness the very end of this game regardless of how many runs I need to overcome in order to get there. The gameplay itself its also pretty forgiving and enjoyable, providing both an "easiest" mode to prevent the player to get stuck between stages and an "harder" system to let you custom your experience if looking for something more challenging. A truly fine piece of art, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ I love this game. 9.5/10

This really isn't how you wanna portrait DID to an audience, highly misleading and insensitive on the matter, I understand this is fiction and it isn't required to be close to reality but at the same time I expect it to be at least reliable regarding the likes of mental illnesses.
English translation is understandable overall, but primordial and packed with mistakes.
The puzzle game, is awfully hard and got me look into a guide multiple times to get through.
On the bright side, the art is appreciable and doesn't lack creativity, even though it misses on originality.
For sale it goes down to 0,79€ which is a pretty good deal, not worth its full price. 3,5/10

lifesucker

First things first: it is unbelievably glitchy. Screen and pictures will lag and flash everytime there's a change of scenery, a cut scene, or a loading. Not the best nor the worst, gotta say the actual gameplay is fine enough. Now, 17,99€ for a few glitchy hours of point-clicker gameplay are a true scam even if the storyline is well written. Get it on sale under 10€ and it'll be worth all the money, my 2 cents.
Overall story is cool, nothing extraordinary but quite catchy, the MC knows her sh*t and there are a decent amount of endings, side characters are also interesting enough to make it bore-proof.
Also, it was clearly written by a cat lover and I support that. Good job. 7.5/10

I'll be short on this one: Hakuoki as a whole? Yes! Hakuoki: Kyoto Winds without Edo Blossom? Big no.
The story needs both games to properly work out, a prequel and a sequel, the beginning and the end, the 1 to the 10, it makes sense that the complete experience would be given out just by playing them both, but... it doesn't make much sense to me that the first chapter, Kyoto Winds, is lacking romance so much. There's some "ground testing" to make a stretch, certainly not romance.

So yeah, if you manage to put your hands on both games that's it, that's the big deal, an engaging experience and a super detailed story along with tons and tons of cleverly written characters. Playing just Kyoto Winds really doesn't have any meaning, don't even think about it.