Kara no Shojo

No novella has ever caused me such negative emotions as this one. This is a disaster. Starting with the plot logic, murders, character decisions, and pointless, too-hard rules. From the start, we can't structure evidence or get enough information. We just walk around telling anyone about our case. THERE'S PEDOPHILIA in the sexual content - my friend and I were shocked it appeared out of nowhere. All sexual scenes are immoral and pointless, including one with our dead wife. Seriously? I bought this game excited for a cool detective story about old Japan with a tint of mystery, but this is a total disaster. The author probably has issues with pregnancy and intimacy. This is not a detective story. Sexual pics with minors, including our own younger sister. Sex in the park with a minor? Do I really have to empathize with this sad detective who couldn't find the killer six years ago and still can't do his job? The only positives: good English and nice art style. Honestly, this is the worst detective story I've ever read. Mixing romance, smut, and detective won't end well. Even the plot alone is a mess. Choices barely rely on deductive logic. Aggressive pixel hunting - miss one tiny pixe…

The story could be amazing, but it is ruined by the execrable game design. There is no "skip to next choice" button, no indicator whether you've already read the text and the skip button has to be pressed after each day. All of this makes the experience positively excruciating, especially when trying to get different endings. The investigations are also defective, since you can just be locked onto a bad ending simply because you didn't collect the evidence in the correct order. Half the time I also had no idea what went wrong when I got a bad ending. Worst of all are the H-scenes. They pop up randomly, don't add anything to the story and are abysmally disgusting. This game will give you Euphoria levels of brain damage because of them.

A pretty good introductory chapter to the rest of the series. The art's pretty, the voice acting is great and the atmosphere was extremely well done. Aslong as you make sure you use a guide and go in with the expectation that this is part of a bigger trilogy and not at all a standalone experience you should be able to have a good time, but if it is possible I do recommend you play the the remastered version ("The shell part 1: Inferno") instead with the patch since i think thats less finicky and all round a better, streamlined experience with abit more content aswell (full voice acting for Reiji the protag, better visuals, a few extra scenes, better translation, etc). This is still not at all bad though so if you prefer the older aesthetic then go for it :)

This has to be one of the best stories I've read. Most of the characters felt unique and interesting, considering the relatively short playtime and the huge roster. The concept and the plot felt unique and worked very well with the structure of the game. When speaking of negatives, there aren't many, but all games have some. 1. The investigations. - A very nice concept with poor execution. The biggest problem is that they end automatically after you hit a trigger, so it feels like you have no real control over them. If they worked the same as in 'The Shell 2' where you can end them by choice when you wanted, these would have been very nice! 2. The fanservice - Of course they added the most useless fanservice in a detective game. I do realize that the fanservice with some characters was essential to deepen the tragedy of the story, especially with the two Tokos. But the fanservice is overall too much. 3. The mystery. - This may be subjective. The mystery felt a little too easy. It isn't baby level or anything, but the game narrows the suspects down to such a small scale, that you will get it right if you at least followed the story. The game tries to tackle some difficult subj…

I'm moderately new to VNs - I've only played AA, Nonary Games, and Raging Loop so my reference for story branch quality is pretty low, but I do enjoy good puzzles and overall this game mostly beats them out in how much I enjoyed them. I liked the game's story and dialogue quite a bit, and the character art was definitely up there. I did get stuck early on because I discounted a decision but I was able to figure it out with a guide after 5-10 hours of trying (lots of AFK time and messing with stupid things) and didn't get spoiled on anything else. The puzzles seem quite fair (some people complain about a specific investigation but I don't find the potential ones I'm thinking of to be difficult to deal with at all), and I only had that initial blockage in Char/Evidence Selection and one later on that were tripping me up, both of which could just be due to me going through stuff on autopilot. The only part that makes the game hard to recommend are the H-scenes for me. I don't care for them, but if you're not a total prude you can just skip through them all. There's one that's forced, but I think all the others are avoidable and give a dialogue option to deny it (par one on the …

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