Fading Hearts
Before Fading Hearts i’ve played TONS of Visual Novels and Dating Sims. I knew nothing about Fading Hearts before I decided to pick it up not knowing what to expect. From the main store page it seemed interesting enough for the $10 I paid for it. I have to say, I was quite dissapointed to be frank.
First I’m going to go over what I liked about the game. The gameplay was really interesting and fun, definitely felt more closer towards a Dating sim. You get stats you can raise by doing various activities throughout the day and the stats (usually) have some effect on the game, such as how much money you get and beating certain monsters in the forest. There is a combat system, though not very in-depth, was entertaining for the first few times. And the game strongly encourages and is ment to be played with multiple playthroughs for all the endings, even including some cute dialouge at the end of each playthrough that provide hints on what to do on your next one.
– Real player with 15.9 hrs in game
Read More: Best Dating Sim JRPG Games.
This is a spoiler-free review.
This is a type of game that seems to have people that either really like it or just straight-up hate it. There’s also a lot of curious people that want to know if the game is worth getting, so rather than just tell you “Oh yeah, I like this!” I’m going to list all of the various things a person may like or dislike about the game.
First of all, this is NOT a visual novel. This is a simulation game mixed with RPG elements. A visual novel is a game in which you only point and click to get story to continue. This is NOT that kind of game. It becomes a simulation game when there are stats to alter and daily choices to be made. It infuriates me that so many people called this a visual novel, when it’s obviously a simulation game. Since you can go into a turn-based battle with HP & MP, level up, use a sword or magic, that’s the part that’s RPG-like. Although, I definitely wouldn’t call this an RPG, since the battling is definitely not the focus of the game. In fact, you don’t have to step foot in a battle if you don’t want to. You can progress the story without participating in battle.
– Real player with 13.3 hrs in game
Otaku Club
I’ve found my new niche game type. Puzzle games. This one isn’t my first. But I find this one definitely takes longer to solve. I have been playing it at EPIC difficulty. The combination of base colour Pink for background and nice artwork makes a relaxing experience.
I would recommend this if you like puzzle games. Buy it you won’t regret it.
– Real player with 1.9 hrs in game
Read More: Best Dating Sim Puzzle Games.
Otaku Club is a “template flip”, that is to say, it’s a “game” that has been produced by copying a game template and changing a few things. In this case it was a game construction kit/template for doing a simple jigsaw puzzle with less than a handful of low res images of Manga art girls. The “developer”, Rosa Special Studio, has done this over a dozen times now:
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Sweet Halloween
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My Sweet Ants
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Mystical Lights
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Cute Girls Love Books
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Otaku Club
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True Spring Love
– Real player with 0.1 hrs in game
Gal*Gun: Double Peace
TL;DR
This game is sort of a retro arcade-style fast-paced on-rail shooter, except instead of using guns to shoot enemy soldiers on a battlefield, you’re using sex pheromones to shoot anime girls in an academy. Overall it’s a great game, and I really enjoy playing it.
Main Pros
- There’s a built-in “panic button” (normally bound to M) that you can press to pause the game and pull up a fake old school RPG game to fool friends or family members if they were to walk in to you being bombarded by lustful anime girls.
– Real player with 30.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Dating Sim Anime Games.
It’s not a great port: xbox gamepad prompts are everywhere (but mouse and keyboard are working, and in story-critical QTEs you’ll get proper mouse prompts) and there are unexplainable game crashes on some setups, but it is still fun and weird Japanese nonsense. You should buy it, if you are into shooting pheromones at school girls and female teachers trying to express their love to you.
You can call this game “a lewd Japanese nonsense”. It’s an on-rails shooter. Your character moves through the school and then SUDDENLY GIRLS! Thousands of them! And every one of them wants to become your girlfriend forever. You have no choice but to defend yourself. You must disarm them - you do it by shooting pheromones at your attackers. In the best traditions of on-rails shooters, girls are zone-sensitive targets, so it matters where you shoot your load. Disarmed girls will scream with ecstasy and fall on the ground in lewd funny possess. Apart from the standard shooting mechanics, you can see through girls’ clothes while zooming-in…and touch girls in doki-doki mode…and…and don’t judge me.
– Real player with 29.5 hrs in game
New England Detective: Breakfast in Boston
This is a nice experience. The story, characters, dialogue, it’s all very smart, more than you could expect at first glance, I really encourage everyone to give this a try. No details are overlooked, when new developments happen in the story they take the time to address them and ponder their significance, A smart game.
– Real player with 3.8 hrs in game
If you don’t pay too much and don’t expect too much it is a close decision. This is a 5 out of 10 so a tie goes to the runner like in baseball. Too many stereotypes and too little plot. The author does create interest at some points but then it sort of is wasted. One reviewer online trashed it for being unrealistic as he knew something about real police work. I also know something about “real” police work and the thing that struck me as wrong was that the police did not treat him as an enemy. I have hired a number of private investigators and the only ones that the police tolerated were retired police (from that department) that took up private investigation work. But this is not a documentary and we should allow some artistic license to the author. There is no romance or love in this just a tiny bit of sex. This is not a real mystery just a read along and see what happens. You get to make a FEW choices like whether or not to eat peanuts at the bar. Seriously!
– Real player with 3.3 hrs in game
Gal*Gun Returns
The very first time I played this game, I still had a girlfriend. We were in a great spot back then. This is probably the only semi-lewd game I showed her. She thought it was funny and cute. Truth be told, I have fond memories of the opening song, as one of the very first times I made love to a real woman was during a non-so-well-thought-out playthrough. Those were carefree days of lazyness and lack of responsibility. Lovable moments of total void, filled with the simple joys of life. Time went by slowly, youth was in full bloom. What a great time to be alive and experience this little gem.
– Real player with 94.7 hrs in game
TL;DR Summary: 100% hard recommend. Fun, cute/sexy, and appropriately challenging. However, if you’re new to the Gal*Gun series, I recommend trying out Gal*Gun: Double Peace as your first game. If you already enjoyed Double Peace, I definitely recommend this prequel.
I’m going to write this review from my personal perspective of a GalGun addict who has 100% completed not only this game, but all of the others available here on Steam (Double Peace, 2, and VR), and pre-ordered the special edition without even thinking about it. Specifically, I will be comparing to Double Peace, for two reasons - first, both this game and Double Peace are true rail shooters, with very similar forced camera movement gameplay, whereas 2 and VR are stationary wave shooters where you have some control over the camera and when you proceed down the track. Perhaps more importantly though, the other reason is that I think Double Peace, as a sequel to the original console release of GalGun (which came out 10 years ago, and of which this game is a remaster), is a more interesting and robust game. So if you haven’t already played Double Peace, I suggest you start with it. Don’t get me wrong, Gal*Gun Returns is a great game on its own, and I definitely recommend it even to a new player, but Double Peace has more features and is currently cheaper, or essentially the same price for the Deluxe Edition add-on for all the costumes (which is totally worth the extra cost, BTW). So I’m going to assume you’ve played Double Peace, and base the rest of the review on how Returns differs.
– Real player with 89.0 hrs in game
FOCUS on YOU
Love this experience.
I have had this on PS for around 18 months and usually spend a couple of hours a week enjoying it.
Often spending time just staring into her eyes, or trying to get a better look at the exquisite detail of her mouth.
Saw it on special on Steam and grabbed it.
Seems the PC version hasn’t gotten all the updates the PS version has had.
Realise they probably can’t optimise it as well for PC as they can for PS but there were some changes to the clothing meshes that make them seem far less cartoon-ish as well as being able to approach her much more closely and I don’t believe there is any reason they couldn’t be coming to PC?
– Real player with 9.7 hrs in game
I played through this in 1 Hour 17 minutes and whilst it was fun and there are some other bits to mess around with post completion, I don’t believe this is worth the asking price £30 unless the developer adds more content. There are no mini-games as such and it’s all rather scripted. It falls under “experience” rather than game. You cannot interact with Han Yua, although she does move away slightly if you try to get too-close to her. She will also look at you depending on your position.
– Real player with 6.9 hrs in game
Gal*Gun 2
Short review:
Gal*Gun 2 is an arcade-style shooter where you shoot anime girls to deliver them ecstasy, instead of death. You can have characters cosplay and pose for you lol. Great port, I didn’t run into any major issue. Compared to Double Peace, GG2 takes one step forward two steps back, but it’s still stupidly fun. Get DP first if you haven’t, it has a higher fun per unit currency ratio.
A tad bit more info:
Comparing to its predecessor, Double Peace, the gameplay has changed from on-rails shooter to a static 360º VR-ish shooter, but without the actual VR (at least officially supported, check guides for playing in VR). So, instead of the character automatically moving around after an event ends, you now have to choose where to get teleported to next, which kinda breaks the flow (you’ll also see enemies getting teleported into places where there were none before). But at least the cursor doesn’t move by itself when the character is moving, so it might be a huge improvement.
– Real player with 65.2 hrs in game
I was a pretty big fan of Gal*Gun:Double Peace…it was a lot of fun and there was a frenetic pace so it felt like you rarely could see it all the first time through. Plus there were multiple routes through some levels in addition to the various choices to win over certain girls and that added some replay value to it. Just about the only thing better would be Double Peace in VR.
Well, this is as close as you can get until INTI CREATES CO decides to actually remake Double Peace in VR (I’d probably buy it BTW). This game is missing a few things but it also added a few things as well. Does the trade off work? Is it worth it? Well I’d say mostly yes, but I kinda wish they kept some of the old system.
– Real player with 57.0 hrs in game
Ultimate Arena FPS
Game has improved during it’s years. It has become competitive and balanced, very fun to play with.
– Real player with 26.4 hrs in game
Nice arena game, we haven’t seen a good FPS arena game for a long time, and this game brings many promises, and one of them is to completely use the old-style system (like Serious Sam), but in a modern game.
I’d recommend you to buy this game, if you are interested in a revolutionary way to play FPS arena games, this will be a nice project, completely supported by its developers and will continously be updated
– Real player with 26.1 hrs in game
AI＊Shoujo/AI＊少女
If you like customization and life sims, you’ll love this game
This review contains what I would consider a minor spoiler or two, which will be written in spoiler text
First, let me start by saying that if you do purchase this game it would be wise to download the free official uncensored patch, and the unofficial one as well. The unofficial patch is called the hf patch, which adds a decent amount of mods (clothes, hairstyles, items for building mode, etc.) and also fixes almost all of bugs that the american 1.0.0 version has. Google is your friend in this task.
– Real player with 144.1 hrs in game
I bought this game on sale for $50, downloaded the h patch, and it’s honestly it’s still not worth. Definitely not a $70 game. At first the game seems massive and in depth because it initially takes awhile to advance to other areas, and there is a lot of features you can put into the house that you create. But by the time you complete the house you actually like, and your frames drop, you realize how limited your playthrough is. I don’t recommend it, but it’s not terrible so I won’t immediately uninstall, but I wish I didn’t pay $50 for it.
– Real player with 103.3 hrs in game
Endless Love
Endless Love is a “template flip”, that is to say, it’s a “game” that has been produced by copying a game template and changing a few things. In this case it was a game construction kit/template for doing a simple jigsaw puzzle with less than a handful of low res images of Manga art girls. The “developer”, Rosa Special Studio, has done this over a dozen times now:
-
Sweet Halloween
-
My Sweet Ants
-
Mystical Lights
-
Cute Girls Love Books
-
Otaku Club
-
True Spring Love
– Real player with 0.1 hrs in game