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:
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| Oh no, responsibility! Stay away from me! |
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:
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| ಠ_ಠ |
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
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