The World Well: Blood of Caro

good

Before i talk about the game itself, i have to ask this : How is this game only 12$ ?! Now let's start with [h1]The positive :[/h1] [h2]The game length[/h2] It took me around 30h to finish the story once. I'm yet unsure how the choice made along influence the narrative or how much time it would add to the experience. [h2]The presentation.[/h2] The game feature dozens if not hundreds of gorgeous detailed backgrounds. Lots of music to accompany the action. Some CGI cutscene and some live2D to animate some parts. All in all, the presentation quality is exceptional. [h2]The story[/h2] The story is about war, racism and progress all with a very down to earth view of it. To this end the game present these theme both at a geopollitical scale, highlighting how these elements shape the actions and history of countries, but also at the individual level, how the layperson and the elite fare in this world and how they view things at their level. It's a dark story and a dark world presenting a story that doesn't stop at "good guy needs to kill the bad guy", that show that there is no perfect solution but that someone still has to try to make a change. [h1]The negatives[/h1] [h2]T…

An engaging story with a surprising amount of depth and nuance. If I had to criticize anything, it would be that some later scenes are quite exposition heavy. I don't think this necessarily disrupts the narrative, only that it is noticeable when the story until then felt quite seamless and well paced. A very enjoyable read.

This is a massively over-engineered visual novel. I cannot overstate how over-engineered it is, I mean, there's a whole interactive 3D world map that serves absolutely no purpose, the game didn't even tell me it was a thing, I just found the button by accident. There's numerous 3D cutscenes (though some seemed to be running at 15FPS for some reason) and a lot of work of to give 3D depth to otherwise 2D scenes. Considering the technological work, the 12€ pricetag, and the ~20 hours length of the game, I'm putting this as a positive review. However, I must note that the pacing is truly atrocious. Getting through the story felt like an absolute slog at times. Story progress is interrupted every 5 minutes by interminable flashbacks and lore dumps. The actual journey of "4" and "Noma" together, the two main characters, is much shorter than you'd expect; most of what you'll read is flashbacks of their past and future in an alternate timeline and significantly less of about the present. Even when you're actually playing through the present, you're often interrupted by interminable philosophy discussions (mostly nihilism). Eventually I reached a point where the game started another one…

While I haven't finished this entirely, just know I heavily enjoy how they subtly portray Noma's arrogance in the similar attitude of so called "enlightened liberalism" in what Valencia embodies. Very nicely touched in the contradictions of liberal philosophy & ethics, though as someone as interested in STEM I'm as curious as I am worried with the central argument of self-autonomy & skill learning with the relation of automation (dear I hope it doesn't disappoint me, as the many other fetishisers of this field). Dynamic classism & liberal thinking is rarely portrayed in what does seem to be "progressive" media (if the yuri wasn't outright stated in the marketing), and I know how coastal states often range from being very good in portraying this tragedy & position (Rayashiki from R:1999 comes to mind, as someone who loves Soviet history), to outright centrism (which disappoints). It does at least slant on how ineffective and borderline useless conservatives are, let alone the full portrayal of liberal futility in the face of struggle and its contradiction with social organisation within post-scarcity. As an equally red-blooded ebil communist that also loves yuri, I enjoyed it so …

Very excellent VN. One of the best I've read. There's no voice over but the music is also very good