Ok, to preface, I think this game kinda sucks. And I'm being too kind with the “kinda”, but if I'm any more mean than this, I’d feel like I was being mean to Ruili, and that's no good. I mean, just look at her(on the left of your screen). Isn't she such a lovely little angel?
I used the remake art to decorate this page, but that's not the version I played. The original art is, well…
..it looks ass in a very specific way.
It makes sense given that it’s about as old as me, but this whole VN feels rather crusty. Like it got burned to the bottom of an old greasy frying pan and then scraped off with one of those metal spatulas that are somehow sharp enough to cut your finger.
The soundtrack goes hard, but I didn't expect any less. Hop on sword dancer.
They pull no punches by opening the VN on a rape scene—it's been a while, but I remember thinking there were a lot of h-scenes for such a short VN... Anyhow, we follow the protagonist, a jaded martial artist, as he goes around Cyberpunk Shanghai defeating his former comrades in order to get revenge for his younger sister—and get back the fragments of her soul, that they divided in five parts and installed into androids.
The imagery of a cute, emotionless little robot girl holding a very big sword is top tier, but I did love seeing Ruili becoming more human as they got more of her soul back—even if she eventually becomes something you're not sure you can trust.
I can't say I saw that plot twist coming. Ok, maybe a little, but not to That level. Hanachirasu if it was fucking bad. Oh my god.
Now, maybe growing up on Nitroplus works skewed my sensibilities a certain way, but I’m a firm believer that there's a level of “chuuni realness” that can only be reached by something that's kind of ass. Kikokugai is a great example of what I mean. Those fight scenes were fire. The feeling that your skull is getting smashed by a hammer (and that getting smashed by a hammer is probably better than what you're reading right now) was also, in a way, fire. Unrelated picture of Gen Urobuchi.