Usually, I don't cover foreign games, but I've been meaning to get around to reviewing a few english language games because I think they're still relevant and I think maybe they are not all bad, it's just unfortunate that many of them seem to be typical 'Hentai' games.
Outside of the blog, a few people have asked me "Are you going to follow Katawa Shoujo?". My simple answer is "No." I don't understand why the protagonist is 荒らし (Internet Troll) and calls the girls 片端 (Katawa). Maybe I don't get it, but I think it could offend many people who visit here so I don't want to attract the wrong attention. Re Angel however, is a different matter.. As always, click 'Read More' to read the entire preview.
Re Angel is a Visual Novel created by a Thai company called StudioGU, who whilst being independant, claim to make their games to a professional quality, and just by looking at the website, you can tell this is no doujin eroge. Whilst being from Thailand, there is a japanese language version of Re Angel, and as long as you know Thai or Japanese you can play it and understand it. But bewhere, it's from Thailand, so this means there will be probably be at least 1 trap somewhere (Chief of Artさん is going to bash me for saying this!).
So far, Re Angel has appeared in magazines and has gotten attention from websites and blogs such as ITMedia and Danny Choo, so I decided it was time to try it out and this is technically Finding the Blue's first coverage of a foreign game, that's a merit of some kind I'm sure. Here's the OP movie; a short glimpse of what you're in for.
The OP song is in Thai and apparently is "just about an angel who came down from the heaven to look for
OP song: Re Angel's Love
Lyrics by: Nike
Sung by: Fen
Recording by: NTK Music Studio
Production managed by Geneve
The lines in the OP are something like:
"[Because] everything has already had [their future] decided" "By the power of one single thing" "Fate" "Re.Angel"
More of the OP Text. Translator notes are in orange.
First character sequence:
"Fa" "Pratt's little sister/imouto"
Quotes:
"Fa don't think it should be like that"
"Eh...(Equivilent of "Hmm...) Fa does understand it though"
"But if brother Pratt (Equivilent to saying Pratt Onii-chan) is satisfied, Fa is also happy with you"
"Heh heh, not to that point (not that much)"
"Fa just said that because Fa was worried"
Second character sequence:
"Manari"
"The selfish Demon"
Quotes:
"Why can't I do that, Ri?" "Don't be so picky, Ri!"
(She ends her sentences with 'Ri')
"[I] understand it now, Ri" "I like it [alot], Ri. Like this, Ri!!"
Third Character Sequence:
"Kanlaya" "Pratt's childhood friend"
Quotes:
"By talking like that, you're asking for trouble?!" "I didn't mean it like that at all" "Really?" "(I'm having a little bit of a problem reading this bit but I beleive it's..) You're not just joking are you?" "What... Did... You.. Say!!!"
Final Character Sequence:
"Misty" (Not Thai name I can assure you, lol) "The mysterious older sister (Could mean family sister or just someone older than you, in this case it seems like the latter)" OP quotes: "My friends call me Misty" "If it bothers you too much then I apologise for it" "Don't see it as something unimportant like that" "Just do whatever you want to do"
Big thanks to Chief-of-artさん for the translation!
Synopsis: "The story begins when Pratt, a young male teenager with a special ability to see the super-natural, finds out that he is in the middle of an argument between "angels" and "demons" in which it seems both sides has set their eyes on him as a target"
"--- An event in the past that has had it effect to the present, a battle that is tied to how we live"
"[Fate] is what controls and dictates what happens in this world"
"Find out about the story that envolves 4 girls"
"Who are involved in this battle"
Pratt wakes up to see a young girl staring at him. She looks cooldere but she's just a very polite imouto.
Walking to school with Fa. Look at the background...
....And check again! Basically there is a looped animation of walking to school and the scenery changes. Sorry for the cursor being in the way on this image.The game is animated a lot, the characters eyes blink and move and so on, it looks like flash, but it is not. In fact, I don't know which language it was written in, maybe I should ask. It reminds me of School Days. The text speed is slow, and I couldn't see an option to change it, sometimes it gets annoying reading slowly. Hopefully the full version will have an option to speed this up.
Promotional posters for Re Angel in the background. Fa is very well developed for a younger sister.
It's not nice to trick your sister, but more importantly what is the large tower in the background? It reminds me of something from Popotan.
I don't particularly like the art style but it's not bad quality. Maybe this is a common style for artists in Thailand.
Pratt's childhood friend Kanraya has smaller breasts than Faa's
You can't see it, but her fist is shaking with rage. I really like the small animations in this game a lot.
I kept accidently capturing the mouse whenever I do a screenshot of the game, I think the mouse is rendered separately much like you would find in other games (If you play a shooter, you will notice crosshairs and so on) Commonly in eroge, to put it simply they use their own version of the windows cursor, that's why it disappears if you take a screenshot. It is game dependant though.
And she's angry again. Note the pillar in the background, odd. The signs are in Thai too.
くそ！ Her power levels have raised!
Because there are no H-Scenes, I have to keep reminding myself to stop choosing routes in my head. Instead I'm playing the game as it develops, but I'm in favour of Fa. Kanraya looks on enviously.
くそ！ Her power levels have raised!
Because there are no H-Scenes, I have to keep reminding myself to stop choosing routes in my head. Instead I'm playing the game as it develops, but I'm in favour of Fa. Kanraya looks on enviously.Re Angel has it's touching moments. Despite her attitude, I feel like Kanraya will get 'Unfortunate Childhood Friend Syndrome' if I don't pay attention to her, and I never like seeing that. The music just adds to my guilt of favouring Fa orz
Overall, for an independant game, Re Angel is not bad at all and the animations make a nice touch, I wish more eroge companies would adopt this a little more as it would really bring the characters to life. I'm not sure if there are Seiyuus planned yet or not, but the demo is voiceless (For Japanese at least) at present.
It makes me wonder, ever since 東方 the quality of games produced by independant or small-scale entities has really gone up a lot, as more and more people have free time they are beginning to spend it on projects like this, I think that soon, doujin games will begin to give commercial companies a lot of competition.
I don't know when Re Angel is to be released but it's worth keeping an eye on it, it is very impressive for what it is and definitley worth downloading the demo if you want to try something new. You can download the demo here.
Whack!
Overall, for an independant game, Re Angel is not bad at all and the animations make a nice touch, I wish more eroge companies would adopt this a little more as it would really bring the characters to life. I'm not sure if there are Seiyuus planned yet or not, but the demo is voiceless (For Japanese at least) at present.
It makes me wonder, ever since 東方 the quality of games produced by independant or small-scale entities has really gone up a lot, as more and more people have free time they are beginning to spend it on projects like this, I think that soon, doujin games will begin to give commercial companies a lot of competition.
I don't know when Re Angel is to be released but it's worth keeping an eye on it, it is very impressive for what it is and definitley worth downloading the demo if you want to try something new. You can download the demo here.
I recently downloaded the demo of this game, the animations are very nice! You are right about the simple japanese too. I can understand a lot! I ended up favoring Kanlaya. I hope I can see more VNs with animation! I love it that way.
As for Katawa Shoujo.. you have the wrong idea. The protagonist is not a troll at all! Act 1 is very sensitive and touching. (pease research before making a judgement) But since the title is offensive I can understand not wanting to print it.
I see, I am mistaking him for his friend.