Amarantus

A hesitant do not recommend, it wasn't awful, but wasn't good. Took about 4 hours for one playthrough. Pros: -Lots of choices -Like the art style a lot -The branching romance options are cute - Has an option to skip to the next piece of unseen text, that's a really nice feature to have in a VN (I think all should have this feature) Cons; -I was so confused for most of it, everyone speaks in implications, so you think you get the gist of what's happening, until someone says something plainly like 'I can't believe person x killed those people' when the whole time it was implied that it was someone else. You think you're making sense of something but you're not. -You have to replay the whole game twice to get a 'true' ending, the second play thorough has a few extra scenes but it's 90% the same until you get to the ending, was annoying and unnecessary. -A lot of special lore names that aren't explained and you have to work it out from context, pretty confusing. -Even with 'instantly display text' turned on, it doesn't, the game waits for animations to finish and sometimes has 10 seconds of a black screen (changing locations/scenes?), I thought my game froze till it happened a few t…

I was surprised how much I disliked my limited time with this game. I returned it after spending two hours trying to understand what was going on. The art is great, but a visual novel relies on its writing and the writing just didn't work. This story suffers from having the protagonist know too much that isn't shared with the player. Information is provided in weird snippets of dialogue that are frequently incomplete (or interrupted) to presumably add mystery and conflict which ends up just being annoying. When I did get information I still didn't get enough. Exposition is provided in long segments of dialogue that were tremendously boring, and the limited choices i did have to interact with the NPCs led to nothing interesting. The positive reviews of this game confuse me - I feel like we weren't playing the same game. I'm sure if I played it all the way through something interesting might happen, or I might figure out why I care about any of the characters other than just being told I care about them, but honestly I'd prefer my (deeply discounted) money back. It just wasn't worth it, even at 50% off its normal price.

Alright, I suppose this game isn't for everyone. But if you suspect it might be for you, *please* do yourself a favor and give it a shot. And do at least two runs, to get the full story. Personally, I loved this game enough to write my first-ever Steam review just to recommend it. Every character is The Character of All Time™. There are so many lines of dialogue that I screenshotted and sent to myself because they devastated me, made me laugh out loud, or evoked some mysterious third emotion. I bawled through the entire ending(s). I got my heart broken! When was the last time a game let you try romancing a character only to fail miserably and suffer for it? At the same time, the romance scenes I *did* get gave me butterflies, and they're all the sweeter because I knew I wasn't entitled to them just because I gave Character X enough gifts to make them love me. Amarantus might have the best romances I've experienced in a video game! And they're not even the point of the game! The platonic relationships are just as touching! AAAAAA I think this is also the kind of game that rewards multiple playthroughs and close reading. It's not impenetrable by any means, but it doesn't lore-dump…

I rarely quit a game this early but this game is just not good imo (and my besties, steamed it to her). Its decriped as messy and its messy alright but not in a good way. The way you are first in the game didnt feel very good, it felt like something was missing. Text will be skipped after like a second a lot of times and you have to constantly go into the history to know whats happening cause of that. Then there is a lot of name dropping like a lot and you have no idea whats going on and who is who and if thst not enough they drop more names at you in the form of nicknames. The MC calls his parents by their names which is ... why? Besides that the MC is very unlikeable, he thinks and talks sh*t about his parents who did what they could to save him. He is selfish af. For example his parents are put to prion but poor lil MC was woken up from his sleep and now he is big sleepy and cant stay up after fleeing. Who in their right mind would be able to sleep in such a night?! T.T Its not well written at all, which is sad for a VN. The concenpt sounded pretty amazing so yeah disappointing. I have never before written a bad review and I am kind of upset I have to but the very few english re…

There are many typos and honestly boring. The story premise is also unrealistic.

Very underwhelming...and confusing at times. I made the mistake of toggling on a setting that introduces "natural interruptions," which wasn't very helpful when trying to figure out the opening scene. I felt like I walked into the middle of a movie. Granted, I was also distracted by Arik's youthful looking dad. My interest waned the more I learned about the story and character motivations. Didn't care for Marius, Raeann was alright for a bit before she became insufferable, Major was great and I enjoyed her romance with Mirelle. Arik was alright as the MC; male romance leads can be very hit or miss, but he was more of a softboi and tolerable for the most part. As for the art...the main sprites were great! The CG scenes not so much. I had trouble identifying what was actually happening in them, which was a disappointment. Secondly, everyone kinda had Hobbit hands and feet. I love Hobbits, but the inconsistencies really bothered me. I was originally on the fence about buying this, esp since the only romance I care to read is sapphic, but can get by with male leads. But ideally I'd be more engaged with the overall story and this had a really good premise. Just wasn't my cup of tea.