/jp/ - Otaku Culture

Finished Humanity, or at least I think I did since the game finally unlocked the extra screen and all the CGs seem to be unlocked.

It's definitely mostly a comedy game so if you play it you should dive in expecting that. There's drama and the background sci-fi setting that the game very slowly unravels is pretty nice, but there's not that much noticeably heavier and longer "real deal" part despite the title screen and its solemn BGM making me expect something along those lines. Enjoyment mostly depends on how much you happen to like the characters and humor. I was initially considering to drop the game due to protagonist's best friends being a cliche idiot and turbofaggot, plus many other characters could also be classified into regular archetypes as well but in the end they and the gags managed to somewhat grow on me. Few of Towako route's jokes in particular completely slayed me, specifically the one scene where she finally falls into the hole obliterated my sides.

In terms of plot Towako route and the next chapter were my favorite parts and in my opinion the game peaked there, I even expected Matka with its climax to be the final chapter so the game still continuing caught me by surprise. However, the next one after that felt kind of weak in comparison despite the initial big revelation concerning the setting since I was expecting for the shit to hit the fan in some even grander way, but it was just more humor and personal character drama. Made me wonder why'd the writer decided to put what I considered mostly side characters' personal arcs after the actual heroines, followed by a rather sudden final ending that was also pretty vague and mostly managed to enact a big "what the fuck?", and not really in a good way.

The weirdness that I did kind of like was that the side heroine routes didn't have any romantic development. At all in fact, not even hints or anything and they were more about getting to know the characters / becoming friends with them. Emi's "route" being a direct continuation of Towako's (without any romance in a similar vein to Aya and Dalia / Veronica) in particular felt pretty novel. In general I think the whole humans vs. 亜人 thing was also handled well and didn't fall into a cheap melodramatic "discrimination is wrong" plot with convenient bad guys or dry "character realizes their misconceptions" stuff despite the differences between the two being the main theme and the game taking place in a high school with separated classes.

Art is what it is and took some time to get used to, and certain backgrounds in particular looked horrible. Characters had different designers and it really stood out. Music was pretty good, there's plenty of tracks (5 of them with vocals) and I especially liked Towako's leitmotif. Overall a pretty decent title with the middle parts being best.