/jp/ - Otaku Culture

finished OtoZ recently.
not entirely sure this goes here but it's on vndb along with the rest of TS's games so what the hell, thread's not long for the world anyway. it's basically a vn with battles.

i liked it more than i expected to, especially coming off of erumani. dev got over the crutch of goofy joke story and did a serious plot and it came out quite well. i continue to enjoy his characters and their banter, shit's really fun and feels like the guy has had a lot of experience with big friend groups. not everyone gets along but they still bounce off each other in amusing ways. also, it rarely shows up in regular eroge for obvious reasons but i do occasionally miss the interactions that come from a large bunch of both guys and girls, with couples forming or falling apart or failed seduction attempts or sad bitter jealousy. there was a fair bit here, so that was fun.

interesting choice to have the real main characters be the antagonists for the better part of half the story, 虎天 and his gang were just plain cooler, better, more interesting, more plot-driving, got all the flashbacks, and when they joined your army they outclassed every one of your units by a country mile, even the previously broken secret erumani units. really felt like they just waltzed in and hijacked the story, while your gang of retards (plus one non-retarded schemer) bumbled around from one battlefield to the next, accomplishing nothing whatsoever except furthering his plans. dude even had a harem plus imouto, he was simply built different. i did like chako a fair bit though, despite her utter incompetence as a person and a unit.

but yeah. surprisingly solid tale with interesting characters. kinda light on the lore but it had all it needed. last couple battles were a tremendous pain but at this point i'm considering it par for the course. units reviving/reinforcements showing up and then acting on the same turn should be a cardinal fucking sin in FE-like games.

either way, it's cool seeing the evolution of the art over time but christ i was sick of SRPG studio '95 about one and a half games ago and it looks like i still have two more to go. even thinking about jumping into knights of subaru right now is making me nauseous.