Witch Spell review (Dutch version)

Recently, my friends and I discovered this. Being utterly flabbergasted at its existence, we joked around like "Yeah, you should totally review the translated Witch Spell!" and I was like "Naaah, who'd read that? It's a small niche within an already small niche.".

But you know... why the heck not? I'm amused enough to do it.

Consider this review a tribute to all the young and old Dutchies who crave for visual novels in their mother tongue. Come now, I'll guide your fragile maiden's heart into this medium, Dutch word by Dutch word <3~

Dutch-mode activated!

Een visuele roman door Studio Sprinkles. Vertaling door visualnovels.nl - 2012

Genre: Romantiek, komedie, meisjesspelletje.

Synopsis - hiervandaan.

"Akari is blij! Ze heeft de ultieme, supersonische, hypertonische liefdesspreuk gevonden. Maar als je die wil gebruiken om haar grote liefde Jin Mitsuki te veroveren gaat er meer dan eens wat mis. Wordt het een “ze leefden nog lang en gelukkig” voor Akari? Ontdek het in Witch Spell."

~*----------*~

DÉ Harry Potter visuele roman voor meisjes! Nou ja, soort van.

Personages
Akari, de vrouwelijke hoofdpersoon, is een leuk en aardig meisje. Ze is ook een beetje dom... een beetje erg dom. Maar laten we dit haar vergeven omdat ze nog jong is, en vele jonge meisjes zijn nog druk bezig met liefdesvraagstukken en het ontwikkelen van bepaalde hersenvaardigheden zoals denken.

Daarnaast kent Akari twee jongens; Hisato (haar beste vriend) en Jin (iemand die ze stalkt en haar nog nooit heeft gesproken).

Hisato is een aardige jongen, Jin is ook een aardige jongen, daarmee breken zij alle tradities van meisjesspelletjes, waarin jongens het een sport hebben gemaakt de hoofdpersoon uit te foeteren of de grootste aars te spelen. Goed zo! Meer vragen we niet voor een kort liefdesverhaaltje.

Verhaal
Witch Spell gaat over een meisje met liefdesproblemen. Het zet de innerlijke conflicten van 14 jarigen (of jonger, hoe oud is ze eigenlijk?) heel helder neer; je herkent ze aan de neiging erom te willen giechelen, door herhaalde opmerkingen te maken als "Oh, jij mallerd.*wuif*" of door de neiging in het spel te willen springen en het conflict op te lossen met één zin.

Maar laten we dat niet doen, het is véél leuker om de reacties van Akari te lezen en bekijken wanneer ze het zelf moet oplossen en er niet uitkomt:

Een verrassend accurate visuele weergave van haar IQ.

Maar goed, vooruit... het is aan jou de taak om, ondanks haar gebrek aan gezond verstand, dit meisje toch aan een jongen te koppelen! Akari weet niet wat ze moet doen; haar brein kan geen zinnen produceren die communicatie mogelijk maakt met liefdesoptie1 Jin! Gelukkig weet liefdesoptie2 Hisato een magische almachtige spreuk die haar kan helpen...en wellicht wel nog een.

Het verhaaltje dat in Witch Spell wordt verteld is simplistisch, ontwijkt de realiteit en bevat erg veel handige toevalligheden waarmee het verder kan gaan (zoals Jin die de tafel eventjes verlaat zodat Akari haar magische drankje kan gebruiken), maar ik heb een licht vermoeden dat het niet zo om subtiliteit gaat.

De conversaties en schrijfstijl vervelen niet en passen er goed bij. Witch Spell neemt zichzelf niet serieus, overdrijft in veel gevallen een stap verder dan verwacht, en wordt daardoor daadwerkelijk grappig.

Visualisaties
Dit is leuk gedaan, erg leuk gedaan. De uitdrukkingen van de personages in combinatie met hun tekst zorgen voor zeer interessante scenes...

A-Akari?

Wees wel gewaarschuwd, een allergie voor hartjes en glittertjes zullen hierin fataal zijn! Ik vond het erg leuk, maar als meisje ben ik wellicht niet te vertrouwen...

Een minpuntje is dat er geen verscheidene houdingen zijn voor de personages, maar het spel en de scenes zijn kort genoeg dat het niet echt gaat storen. Daarnaast zijn de achtergronden ook niet echt van hoge kwaliteit, op het niveau dat soms alles van glas of ijs lijkt te zijn gemaakt (zoals het hele schoolgebouw). Dat is niet hoe gebouwen werken, jongens en meisjes.

Muziek
De muziek is niet van bijzondere kwaliteit, maar past bij het verhaal en de scenes. Het gaat niet storen en de geluidseffecten die hier en daar worden toegevoegd vullen het verhaal ook mooi aan.

Vertaling
Verrassend genoeg maakt de Nederlandse vertaling deze visuele roman beter! Het haalt alle emoticons en spelfouten en andere literaire flaters die de Engelse versie bevat weg. Ook is de verwoording over het algemeen goed gekozen en past het bij de sfeer. Goed gedaan!

Conclusie
Ondanks mijn niet geheel serieuze review is Witch Spell een leuke visuele roman. Verwacht niet dat het verhaal serieus gaat worden, poets je tanden, bereid je voor op het oogpunt van een verliefde 14-jarige en het zal een leuke ervaring zijn!

Score: 7

- Meer informatie en de download 

Blister review

A kinetic novel by Clannadman - 2012.

Genre: dystopian

Synopsis - from here.

"Based on Til' A The Seas by H.P. Lovecraft, a short dystopian kinetic novel about the last remnants of mankind living in a world experiencing heat death. A young boy collapses only to be captured by bandits and taken to meet a storyteller - a man with knowledge far exceeding their own. And all the while the Syrene watches over them..."

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A nice short story about various shorter stories. 

Characters

The cast: the main character (boy), the storytelling old man (Ull), and the bandits (Aamil and Aamir).

The main characters don't really have a distinct personality as the story mainly focuses on events which happen to them. However, it works for this story since it's so short and you learn to sympathise with them through what they experience and their understandable reactions to those events (this goes mainly for Ull). 

Strangely, the side characters do have personalities, but they barely play a role in the story. They only serve one purpose. It's a bit sad since you basically have two people with the same purpose for the story, so perhaps using only one would have been better.

Another gripe I have about the characters is that their names (except for Ull) aren't very great. The main character is called 'Boy', which is stupid, but which I can still kind of tolerate since there are so few people in his group. However, the other characters are named Aamil and Aamir. It's really a good thing they have those different personalities, or I really wouldn't have been able to keep them apart and just see them as one person.

Story

I enjoyed the story! It was a bit sad, but that didn't come as much of a surprise and it fit the story well too.

One of the first things you read about is a Syrene, which may seem weird, but I loved the role it played; it raises questions in the beginning and by the end you understand why the story started that way and what this object meant to the characters.

Other than that this tale has a strange but interesting shape. The structure of the story will be easier to understand once you read it yourself, but I'll try to explain it somewhat. It starts with the Syrene, then continues with the main character who is a lost boy and ends up collapsing, then quickly moves on to a story about the history and the future of mankind, then again moves on to a story about the past of Ull and then ends back with the main character and finally the Syrene. I didn't mind this actually, as it was a nice way to explain some things, kept it interesting, and I really liked Ull's story.

Ull or the old man, is a man whom I can only call pitiful. In his incredibly short tale, a pretty cool connection is made between when you meet the old man as the Boy and the middle of Ull's story; it was sad to see nothing much had changed at all, but made the impact of the circumstances in this world much greater. Ull's story in general is very sad; looking and hoping for something he can't find. I pitied him.

The only disappointments were that I'd liked to learn a little more about the other two characters, plus the foreshadowing and writing weren't too great at times. I still had no clue why there seemed to be all this foreshadowing about 'evil people picked you up and now something terrible will happen to you' and then it turned out they (spoiler) just saved you because story time is awesome and should be shared. Perhaps that was intentional though, but the dagger and evil cult sprites didn't help. Also... why are they bandits? What bandit-ish thingy did they do? They saved a kid and keep an old man company... not bad for bandits! 

As for the writing, it was disappointing when now and then the passage of time was indicated by:

......................... *next*

.............*next*

...*next*

That's just annoying and doesn't add much.

Visuals

I didn't care much for the visuals. In general they weren't anything special, though I kind of liked the strange looking backgrounds. The colours are nice, they told you plenty about the environment and they set the mood well. The quality is a bit shitty though, as they're mostly blobs of colours and a bit pixelated.

Character sprites weren't very good looking or special, but not too bad either. They were however a little strange when it came to placement and changed... I mean... this is how the characters first look like, 

Now, join our cult of Red Eyes Black cloaked People!

Then this:

I wish I could shape-shift too :(...

Also, I feel like the main character is two meters tall (even though he's a young boy) because these sprites are placed so low.

Music

Now this... this is... uh... the not so good part. I don't want to be mean, but my jaw dropped when the title screen music was basically someone doing his best to say 'aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah' for a very long time with nothing else. The rest of the music was also either strange or so bad and annoying that I had to turn it off to not go insane.

Though on the plus side, there was a pretty cool use of sound when the old man asked the main character to listen to the wind. I turned the music back on when I read this just to hear it too :D.

In conclusion

It was too short to really get into the world or characters much and the music and art could definitely have been better, but the story and the characters were pretty enjoyable.

Score: 6.5 out of 10

- More information and download 

deIz review

A visual novel by Mike Inel (Katawa Shoujo's animator) - 2011.

Genre: slice of life, romance, drama

Synopsis - from here.

"A short visual novel about a high-school boy admiring an indie film director who attends the same school as him. Will he be able to tell her his true feelings? Or just screw up and continue to stalk her like what he always do? Either way, he's not a lady's man to run his love life smoothly."

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This visual novel turned out to be everything I didn't expect in a... mostly disturbing way.

Warning: contains sexual themes (images will be safe in this post).

Characters
Let's start with the good: the characters! The personalities of the most important characters were charming and are easy to understand. These are basically your friends and crush, with Chamoisee being your hyper happy-go-lucky bro, Cerise being somewhat of a tomboy and more serious bro and Iris being the gentle spirited movie director love-interest. Especially the interactions with these characters during the main route consist of silly fun and set their personalities down well.

I was less impressed with Ceil, the main character. His personality is very bland at times, yet at other times he starts fanboying over Iris or being a creepy pervert in general. He's also incorrigibly ignorant. spoiler: he overhears Cerise's sister talking to her about Ceil and Cerise being together, after which he ignores it and doesn't understand why she walks away embarrassed. Even worse; he notices Cerise's 'secret extra assets' (more about this later) and doesn't get why she freaks out. Son, you have a serious case of thick-headedness. What annoyed me even more is that later on this gets 'fixed' by Ceil claiming he knew all along she (spoiler) had a crush on him. I'm not buying it, nope. 

Story
When I start reading, one of the first screens I see... is this:

Oh no, responsibility! Stay away from me!

You are accountable for what you produce and do, including this. This is like telling me you have no faith in the project and are giving feeble excuses to avoid critique. It's most likely one of the worst ways to start a story, just don't do it.

As for the actual plot, it's pretty generic but decent enough during the main route. They do homework, eat lunch and chat about everyday subjects, but like I said; the interactions are pretty amusing. The real what-the-hells come in at the end, or when you unlock additional pervert-scenes from obtaining endings. These endings include, but are not limited to (spoiler): a dominatrix ending with your teacher, Cerise's sister demanding sudden sex in a classroom from you, your friendly neighbourhood stalker breaking the fourth wall while drowning in endless self-pity, Chamoisee gaying you up, watching in over the top shiny-eyed pervert mode as your love-interest gets molested by a girl and more. 

I have nothing against strange or unusual endings like these, but you better foreshadow and make them somewhat logical. Cerise's sister doesn't even show up until you stalk Cerise a few times in various play-throughs, and Ceil doesn't even seem to know her.

In fact, I didn't really mind Cerise's ending that much which revealed her (spoiler) being a hermaphrodite since it was at least better introduced and dealt with, so it could reach a more satisfying conclusion. I also thought Iris' ending was generic but pretty sweet nevertheless, and I liked the Amethyst ending too, among some others.

Another problem of this visual novel is that the choices were absolutely ridiculous. Not so much the content of the choices, as what they determined. Let's take a look at what you need to do to get Cerise's ending, which we can because the author posted this convenient walkthrough:

ಠ_ಠ

Yes, these are from most of the choice events, but look at the last choice. See it? That's the choice you should pick instead of going to the hallway where you've seen her before, and this of course makes perfect sense. I just haven't a clue how yet. 

Visuals
The visuals were definitely the best aspect of deIz. Not only are the backgrounds well-looking 3D models (what? Blasphemy!), the character designs are really well done too. Though the sprites look fairly simplistic, it's a matter of style and fits the feel of the game and backgrounds. Colours are well-chosen and designs look unique and very cute!

Furthermore, the title screen gains more characters as you progress, and there are a lot of fun and pretty CGs. There are 50 CGs in the gallery and that doesn't even include the 25 images in the Extra gallery. That is awesome. Hats off to you, Mike!

Music
This area was quite lacking, as... there was no music.

In conclusion
deIz starts decently, but soon becomes a collection of fetishes, combined with a few generic other stories and nice art. If you use a walkthrough and don't mind the lack of music, pervertedness or strange/what the hell endings, then the main characters and graphic presentation are nice enough to give it a try.

Score: 5.5 out of 10

- More information and download 

- Walkthrough

The Lies of Locke Lamora review

First book in the Gentleman Bastard Sequence - 2006.

Genre: Fantasy

Synopsis - from the back of the paperback edition (publish. is Spectra Books)

"An orphan's life is harsh - and often short - in the mysterious island city of Camorr. But young Locke Lamora dodges death and slavery, becoming a thief under the tutelage of a gifted con artist. As leader of the band of light-fingered brothers known as the Gentleman Bastards, Locke is soon infamous, fooling even the underworld's most feared ruler. But in the shadows lurks someone still more ambitious and deadly. 

Faced with a bloody coup that threatens to destroy everyone and everything that holds meaning in his mercenary life, Locke vows to beat the enemy at his own brutal game - or die trying..."

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This is not a recently released book, but I'll gladly write this review to convince even one more fantasy reader to pick this up.

As you can see from the synopsis, the book starts off with yet another orphan living a miserable life. Though it's a well paced book, I feared for a boring sob story before the plot would start. How wrong I was :D!

Characters
Locke is a really fun main character, even as a child. He does the most ridiculous and amusing things when trapped in a corner and is far too witty for his own good - which doesn't change for the better when he's older, actually.

Not just Locke, but the other characters had a nice depth to them as well. You will probably grow to like the Gentleman Bastards, since each member has a nice personality and cool involvement in the story, though some maybe a little later than others (I'm looking at you Jean). Even the minor characters were interesting in their own ways.

On the other hand, the main villain's motives and behaviour weren't that surprising or amazing, but they're interesting enough. At least he's more than just a cackling idiot and shows more than two kinds of emotions.

Story
During the entire book, the plot keeps its nice pace up and keeps getting more absurd, more dangerous and more awesome. The many ways in which conflicts and problems get solved (or get worse) are great to read and contain a lot of twists along the way, which will either make you grin or scream in agony. Especially when shit hits the fan... multiple times in a row :'). From that point on, I'm sure anyone will have a hard time putting the book down, as it becomes very engaging. Though, the author also has a nice sense of humour, which shines through here and there and lightens the mood.

World
As for the world and its laws, I liked seeing Locke and his friends having to adjust to different cultures in their profession and how the world itself and events that took place in it were neatly intertwined. That is, the places introduced were interesting, but also well used. You were also told various things about the world when it mattered and when you cared. Not only world building was done like this; there were some awesomely timed interludes as well, which wouldn't have worked quite that good anywhere else in the book.


Finally, the only reason why I'm not recommending this book to everyone I meet, is because some pretty awful and sometimes gross things happen to the characters. Not to say it makes the book worse, just something to keep in mind when you consider personal preferences and age. If that doesn't bother you, for the love of all twists and thieves, read this! 

In conclusion
I highly recommend this book if you like fantasy and witty rogues digging their own graves. If you're OK with the occasional cruel deeds to the characters, you will enjoy and appreciate this book and its 700 pages.

Score: 9.5 out of 10

- More info 

- Buy at the bookdepository or on amazon

Introduction

This is not just written because I hate staring at Blogger's "no posts." default message.

Welcome!

Since I love to read both visual novels (VNs) and books, I thought I might as well review some of them along the way. I hope my posts will be informative!

For easy reference, please look to the right to find which books or VNs are currently being read (and will be reviewed soon) and to find the labels (in the future), for if you're only interested in one medium.

~Anna