Episicava - Vol. 1

[quote=] This review was brought to you on behalf of [b] Abyssal Ascent Reviews [/b] in collaboration with its publisher. If you liked it, please [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/32607787-Abyssal-Ascent/]Follow[/url] the Curator and [url=https://steamcommunity.com/groups/AbyssalAscent/]Join[/url] its group. Thanks! [/quote] [quote=] For a focus on lewd games, check out [url=https://steamcommunity.com/groups/candytray]Superfabs Candy Tray[/url]! Curation is [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/32749084/]here[/url]. Thanks! [/quote] [b]Episicava - Vol. I[/b] is your typical visual novel with adult content mixed in. The narrative is mainly focused on the protagonist (well, he’s not your regular hero type by any means) and his quest to take back what was stolen from him; a quest of vengeance of sorts, and finding a reason to live and fight for what he believes in. As far as narration, there are some switches to various character thoughts and perspectives at times, and it takes a moment to figure out who is who sometimes as far as which character certain parts of the story are being centered around. Overall though, the writing is good, the story is well paced in my op…

Some people consider visual novels to be watered down versions of regular novels because the story is usually told from a person's perspective only, with many constraints. This game is even more watered down than that. As much as I want to enjoy it, it feels like I'm reading some juvenile's fantasy. It feels like the writer is either inexperienced or impatient as they skip through much of the necessary steps of building up the atmosphere, characters, plot etc. Also, Alacria's sprite isn't even aligned properly! She literally doesn't have a pair of lower legs! As such, it is simply impossible for me to recommend this visual novel. The dev will really have to step up on a lot of things in their next creation if they wish to persist without being buried by other competitors.

5/10. Mediocre art. Poor writing and characters that were actively offputting. A few interesting threads in the story which hint at future improvement, but which can't really elevate the present experience. I should be giving this a "not recommended" but I feel bad doing so for something that skirts the edge and has so few reviews. Technical details / Presentation: no technical concerns. The art is mostly meh, except for a couple things: 1 character's sprite cuts off at her knees, so there's a visible gap between her and the bottom of the screen. Second, every single CG (or simply non-sprite image) of a given character looks completely different (the MC's sprite looks completely different from the the three other images of him, which all look completely different from each other). It's a little jarring. Music is pretty listenable, though nothing really sticks out about it. Gameplay: It's a VN. There are a few choices here and there, but they tend to lead swiftly to an untimely death, so you're almost always on the right path. It's mostly kinetic. Story: This VN is hard to pin down. The store page mentions Fate/Stay Night; this is basically shonen turned up to eleven. The main ch…

It's so hard to bear with the bad writing of this linear "Visual Novel". It's more like a kinetic novel but they forced themselves to add arbitrary choices where one choice leads to an immediate bad ending, just to be able to label Episcava a Visual Novel and not a Kinetic one. There are forced battles and action scenes at every point in the story. The main character constantly gets into unnecessary fights an immature child would get into for the sake of defending their pathetic ego. And if he decides to behave like a normal human being for once, some random event happens where he has to fight. Some criminals want to shoot him and his friends in a drive-by all of a sudden or he has to save his classmate by the thugs that want her "to go to their apartment for some quick fun." The fight scenes are badly written and it's hard to care about the outcome because the annoying protagonist is going to win and keep boasting about it anyway. I had to skip most of the text just for the few scenes that had some decent dialogue. The music is just terrible. Getting tortured by the terrible writing was enough, so I played with the music muted. The UI in Episcava doesn't make sense to me. What's…

This VN is so bad that it made me angry. Cut content. Terrible writing. A mary sue player character who is so morally bankrupt and unlikeable, right from the start, that he makes me want to puke. Update: Oh, now I know why the main character is such a piece of ♥♥♥♥. Turns out he's a socialist.

I am very sorry to say I couldn't make it through more than a few minutes of this game. Vague spoilers for those couple of minutes below. I really like the art, and was intrigued by the mention of Fate/Stay Night as the game's inspiration. Looking at the screenshots alone, I could tell a world had been crafted here. But almost immediately upon starting the game, it heavily dumps lore exposition on you in ways that made me feel as if I was back in school. Suddenly there were so many names and terms simply being rolled out like a history book, rather than being introduced organically into the story. Now, I can certainly look past such things if the immersion is there, but only a few seconds later the game introduces a rather sudden, dark scene illustrating the main character's past. It's incredibly dramatic, and is written in a way that perhaps some 40 hours into an RPG would be written, in that it assumes you will have sympathized and connected with the characters at this point. But unfortunately, only a minute or so in was not quite enough for me to really have any emotional investment in this rather over the top scene. I felt a bit awkward reading the shounen-like action sequenc…