Recent reviews by Dart

This is a survival horror game very reminiscent of PS1 classics like Parasite Eve and Silent Hill. You play as an android searching through a mining facility for your human companion, but a strange disease has overtaken the android workers of the mining facility, turning them into zombie-like monsters that will attack you on sight. Combat is a little clunky, just like with the survival horror games of old, and sneaking around enemies whenever possible is always advisable. You gain access to more powerful weapons as the game goes on, but ammo is always scarce, so it's important to pick your battles and run from combat if you can. The game has an excellent horror vibe, with lots of dim hallways, bloody smears, and rusted metal cages, but there weren't many parts that were jump out of your seat scary (although it always freaked me out whenever ARAR units would climb out of the floor panels). The puzzles are a good mix of collecting items and solving keypad combinations, and there's a bit of backtracking involved when you find a locked door in one area and find its key later on, and then have to go back to unlock the door. Killed enemies will revive with a small amount of health after a certain amount of time has passed, but it's long enough that you can usually do the necessary backtracking without running into hordes of previously-downed enemies. There were some puzzles that I knew I could obviously brute force the solution, but I figured I missed a note or something that would explain the puzzle, but I could never find anything like that so I would just brute force it and I found out later that those puzzles were meant to be brute forced which I thought was a little lame. Overall, I really enjoyed the Lovecraft-inspired horror theme of this game, and the anime-styled robot girls are just too cute.

Change can both exciting and frightening, and Oracle and Bone skillfully use the changeover in Hong Kong as a backdrop to the changes taking place in Michelle's life, as she struggles to balance the expectations of society with the newfound feelings in her heart and her desire to live true to herself. Michelle is so hidebound by tradition that she's stiff and a little boring, going from home to work and back again without ever leaving her shell. But a broken shoe leads to a chance encounter with Sam, a free-spirited woman who takes an interest in her, and finally gets Michelle to open up, even just a little bit. I understand that Michelle was intended to be a girl who always diligently followed the rules and wants to live up to everyone's expectations of her, but I felt that her wishy-washy tendencies dragged down the story at times. I'm sure that was rather the point, since being afraid of change is one of the core tenets of the story, but there were a few times were I really wanted Michelle to just quit being so afraid of her mother and admit that she's in love with Sam. Sometimes I felt just like Cecelia and wanted to just scream at Michelle to stop doing the crossed-arms pose and get a room already. Of course, this could also be because Sam is such a cool and interesting character that I wanted to see them crack on with it. Sam's gentle but confident flirting with Michelle brought back memories of when I first realized that a girl I was with was checking me out and I was like, "Wow, I think she's into me," and it's that combination of being close without being pushy that made me love Sam's character all the more. After some struggles, Michelle learns to love herself and life true to herself, and it was nice to watch them live together and share memories together. The music was excellent and made me want to check out funk and disco music, it fits the design and mood of the game to a T. Overall, I highly enjoyed this game, and I could tell that the development team had a tremendous amount of love and affection for the world they created.

SeaBed is a story about dealing with loss, and coming out stronger on the other side. The main character, Sachiko, suffers from hallucinations of her former girlfriend, and seeks treatment to return to a more normal life. We follow her journey as she dives deep into her own psyche and ultimately comes to accept her past and move forward. The game is a kinetic novel where the player makes no choices, but simply follows along with the text. The story is engrossing enough that I would often lay in bed at night after playing, running though what I’ve learned in my head, trying to fit the clues into the broader narrative. The writing is superb, and of such quality that small discontinuities between scenes are important clues and not a product of poor writing (for example: there is a table with two chairs. One character sits in one chair and falls asleep. A second character enters the room and sits in the other chair. A third character enters the room and sits an empty chair, despite there only being two chairs in the room. This is an important clue about the true nature of one of the characters). It’s nice to play a game that rewards the reader for paying attention to the little things, as they herald bigger discoveries. My hunches were usually on the mark, yet the game is never heavy-handed with pointing out major revelations. Instead, they flow naturally, and fit like puzzle pieces into the broader narrative. It made me cry at several spots, but I’m easily affected by death, so your mileage may vary. The story is far from being always depressing though, and many scenes show the characters going on fun adventures. While these scenes don’t really propel the story forward, they do allow us to grow closer to the characters and care for them more deeply. The story wraps up very well at the end, tying up all the loose ends seamlessly. It’s so engrossing that I would actually feel a chill when a character would describe how cold she was feeling, even though I played this game in the middle of summer.

The CGs are colorful and well drawn, and the characters are well proportioned, but they have the slightly rough look of a doujin game. This doesn’t hurt the appeal of the characters, and, if anything, adds to the overall charm of the game. Most backgrounds are filtered photographs like in Tsukihime, but others are 3D CG models of high quality. I felt there was a bit of a discontinuity when the game would switch between the photographs and the 3D CG background between scenes, but it never breaks the immersion, and the text is always in agreement with the background (like if a character walks over to a bookshelf with a glass cabinet, there really is a bookshelf with a glass cabinet in the background. I really appreciate that level of attention to detail). The 3D CG backgrounds are so good, that I can’t help but wonder if the photograph backgrounds were placeholders that were just never replaced for whatever reason. At any rate, the art is pleasing and great to look at.

The text is placed over the background instead of in a box at the bottom of the screen. This means that the speaker’s name isn’t displayed during dialogue, but the characters have such distinct ways of speaking that I almost always knew who was speaking, which is a tribute to the quality of the writing and translation. And on the few times that I wasn’t sure who was speaking, the characters would change their expressions often enough that it made it clear who was speaking again, so I never felt lost for long. There are a few typos, but they are minor and don’t effect the story.

The music is catchy and always fits the overall feel of the scene well. Upbeat tracks are used for happy scenes, and slower, more somber songs are used for mysterious or sad portions of the story. The use of certain tracks would kind of foreshadow how a scene was going to play out, but I guess that’s unavoidable with a story of this length (it took me 20 hours using the auto-read function). Sound effects are peppered throughout the story to enhance the text, and they fit so well I could almost smell an egg being fried when the sound effect of sizzling food was played.

Overall, I felt that SeaBed was an incredible journey, with a deeply engaging story and unforgettable characters. While I guess it wouldn’t be unfair to call it a nakige (crying game), it earns its tears through the quality of the writing and my attachment to the characters. It’s definitely worth the purchase for anyone interested in yuri or mystery games.