An utter waste!
This action-adventure video game is, by far, one of the stupidest experiences that I’ve ever had the displeasure of playing through. It deceptively plays itself off as a mature video game meant for an adult audience but all you’ll find is overly cartoonish depictions of blood spatter as if that makes a game “mature”, pathetic half-assed attempts at humor that are so one-dimensional that you’ll never laugh, and utterly boring, monotonous dialogue that serves no real purpose.
The characters you meet are incredibly stupid and one-dimensional. Most of the dialogue and reasoning for the protagonist killing her sisters are contradicted with shallow depictions of “insanity” to justify the main character’s mass murder. By the end of the main story of the game, you’ll get some vague throwaway line by the main villain about how the main character is trying to “save the world” with no real context as to what is even going on. It’s so vague and poorly thought out that it honestly isn’t even a spoiler.
Most of the “story” of this game is random encounters with monsters, depictions of how “powerful” the main character is, depictions of the abusive relationship she has with a dragon that may as well be her son, and mostly just a bunch of stupid humor that seems out of place, awkward, and poorly formed. The lip syncing in the game isn’t exact to the english voice actors, which may make people believe they were poorly performed. In fact, I had to correct this initial assumption as well. The American voice actors are terrific; the characters, plot, and overarching story are what is total garbage.
Eventually, after the main story is concluded with no understanding of the “mystery” regarding the dragon and the main character, you get the post-game which consists of “alternate universes” in which different events happened. But these too have the same shoddy humor, terrible and meaningless character dialogue, and inconsistent storyline. For example, the ending of Route C contradicts the ending of route A. The Route C plot establishes that a certain character can only be killed by a dragon, but Route A shows us this character dying mercilessly by something other than a dragon. I had hoped for a deeper meaning to this plot beyond the awful humor, but evidently I was duped into believing there was more. The fact the game developers have to rely on multiverse theory just to make the plot look consistent and end-up creating more plot holes confirms that they had no real understanding of what they were doing when making the so-called “story” of this game.
Most glaringly of all, the game relies on artificial attempts at lengthening the game by requiring you to collect all the weapons in the database to even start Route D. This is an obvious and shallow attempt at lengthening the game and the fact they place it upon you in a very last minute fashion with no prior warning shows the depths of laziness in developing this utterly terrible game. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. Most of the bosses are rehashes of the initial 3 monster bosses that you fight but with either more defense, a fire gimmick, a quicker attack gimmick that is poorly implemented so that defending oneself doesn’t even work when pressing buttons quickly enough, or a area gimmick in which random, stupid objects serve to stop you from properly veering away from danger as if such annoying blockades serve as extra “challenge” against the same bosses over and over.
Of the four weapon types, one is utterly worthless. Combat bracers have no value whatsoever. Spears and swords are simply better at damaging opponents and utilizing combos; chakrams are adequate for hitting multiple enemies from distances. But combat bracers are wholly worthless and seem like a tacked on gimmick to make the game “edgy” instead of having any real depth like the other combat weapons. The fact you’re forced to use them to do “request missions” that demand only combat bracers against enemies virtually immune to any real damage from such weapons and against archers who can easily hit you if you use the slow, utterly worthless triangle button combos makes this worthless weapon all the more frustrating. It simply isn’t fun and it doesn’t do anything against enemies. Yet again, it seems as if these missions were put on last minute, especially since random and poorly made areas in these particular missions prevent you from hitting enemies and moving about quickly. It is simply a pain to do and has potential to make people quit the game at how poorly designed these particular levels are.
The DLC shows just how much was cut from the actual game to milk people for a few extra monies. Japanese voice pack is DLC? Really?
Overall a terrible experience, don’t bother getting this game.
Corrections: Having played through Route D and got to the True Final Boss, I will admit that the “plot hole” was in fact clarified to my satisfaction, but Route D’s final boss is the worst piece of garbage to ever be made. It attempts to be “artistic” on what is really just lazy game design and not artistic at all. Overall, this game gets a 1/10. I honestly tried to enjoy this game despite the purposeful deceptive marketing on what is really a comedy of action-adventure games and not a serious story, but the true final boss just clinches it. I don’t recommend this game or this series. It isn’t worth anyone’s time.