/jp/ - Otaku Culture

Finished Sorceress Alive. My experience of the game could be briefly summed up as
-Normal part: Wow this game is shit
-Real deal starts: Holy shit, they’re not pulling any punches. This game is fantastic.
-Real deal continues: Fooled you! Oh my god it keeps getting worse by the minute. Please make it stop.

To elaborate:

First 4 heroine routes are pointless padding that do nearly nothing to push the main plot forward and just give each heroine very sudden relationship upgrade developments, where the change of whether a particular heroine herself falls in love with the protagonist or fully supports the heroine of another route hooking up with him instead, or if they forcibly try to butt in and set up a harem along with another heroine flows as naturally from the common route as me ever talking with a member of the opposite sex. The game could’ve easily trashed those routes entirely or condensed them into one, especially since main plot wise the order of tournament battles stay to same. Plus, if you’re going to give us a harem just make it a fucking harem rather than this half-assed shit, I mean even plot wise all heroines openly crave the protagonist’s mana bank dick anyways in most heroine routes as well, and to top it off men being cum banks to multiple wives is not only accepted, but the motherfucking norm in-universe.

Akina’s route was pretty unremarkable though it fleshed out the tournament part the most, Yuzuriha’s route was at least half-decent even if it’s a generic fantasy discrimination / witch hunt plot that’s been done a thousand times already, apart from the silly convenient asspull ending that also conflicts with true route reveals. Mia’s was boring shit where it’s harem except not really lol, and I became very close to dropping the game entirely in Azuria route for the umpteenth generic moege-type arranged marriage drama with an evil fat fuck who uses his connections to be a dickhead. Not to mention it completely clashes against the previously established rules of the game world because every other part of the game is used to constantly point out the setting and political landscape as a fucking matriarchy. Naturally the “I’m gonna leave the team boohoo, no wait I don’t” drama gets recycled in every fucking route as well.

But what about the real deal part? I actually got hyped as hell at the start due to the game throwing a few curve balls at you and shit hitting the fan, basically the game briefly dips into more serious bits but then it completely manages to destroy all semblance of tension by a convenient and sudden time loop reveal that allows the game to resurrect its characters, except it's actually just a dream world so it's even worse. And then I completely lost it when they brought up fate and rebirth. Why? The whole civil war thing could've easily driven the entire main plot on its own and delivered other reveals without dabbling into those type of cheap hijinks. At that moment the game broke for me and I realized we’re definitely gonna get some convenient secret bad guy defeated through the power of friendship and a sappy everyone lives happily ever after ending anyways and stopped giving a fuck, despite game's later flimsy attempts of raising the stakes again by saying the final time is in real world so no repeats, as if it wasn’t obvious by that point that the writer doesn’t have the balls to actually deliver anything dramatic.

Actually, I take back wishing for a harem route. This is the stupidest shit ever, like holy moly this game is so stupid I’m not sure if it ever wanted me to take itself seriously. Main plot twists are all too obvious and many things are revealed only when plot important people suddenly decide to fill the protagonist in, which they didn’t do before for an arbitrary reason. And of course we get convenient long flashbacks explaining everything rather than the game gradually pacing any of this shit. You'd have to be retard not to realize the setting. Main villain reveal was also unsurprising. I mean Yuumi is the only main girl who supposedly doesn’t have an original equivalent, she is inexplicably last boss tier power level and gets a bit too much into fighting, plus by that point the game simply ran out of characters who could act as “surprising evil all along reveal” so it's not hard to guess. And the "I'm bored lol" excuse is used to give the protagonist and co. a fighting chance. But wait, she too is just a victim of the crystal, because fuck you.

I’d really want to say that at least the action was good, but the game spends so much time either with SoL or characters just explaining shit and there’s only a handful of interesting battles with proper stakes. At most I can say that some music was pretty neat and graphically the game manages to deliver, but that's about it.