The Ancient Magus' Bride Midsummer Pilgrimage

Is this better than nothing? It comes down to that No voice acting, except for a smattering of random lines unrelated to the text (that you'd get in the side quest portion of an RPG or something) Several months ago, when I found out there would be a magus bride visual novel, I was very excited. If someone asked what is my favorite anime, it would be this one. The lack of voice acting totally killed my excitement after I started the game. But the worst is the obvious AI translation. I ultimately don't care how you do what you do, but the end result matters. And using AI to do a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ translation job is just insulting. For example, when someone first mentions a "snow bug" (雪蟲 yuki mushi), you get a "glossary" pop up, and in that pop up it's translated as "Snow fly". Because it was obviously run through a LLM chatbot without context. I very rarely click on Not Recommended, but this is where I draw the line. In terms of functionality, it's very barebones. You can't properly skip because the game gets stuck loading sprites. You can't advance the text with scrollwheel down or open the log with schrollwheel up, which is basically a standard VN function since at least a decade. The…

Game has so many translation errors that it's funny. Or maybe it's just me. Anyways I love Mahoyome so I'm not complaining.

No advertising and just dropped out of nowhere. Music is absolute fire. Translation is kinda garbage but being a massive fanboy of this series it doesnt bother me. Give me more I need it.

Foreword: The Ancient Magus' Bride Midsummer Pilgrimage is a surprise release. I found it by accident while looking at the upcoming releases on Steam. I was a big fan of the anime, so, in spite of its price, I decided to give it a shot. Aesthetics: The novel's characters are the same as those from the anime, with two new protagonists, Sol and Letty. The story takes you through the English countryside, London, aerie peaks with dragons, etc. Without spoilers, I found this visual novel heartwarming. The twist was kinda obvious, but the way there was beautiful. This novel, in my opinion, has amazing static art; the backgrounds and character designs were top-notch. The sound completes this atmosphere with picturesque and mystical sound effects and music. The character voices were good. Functionality: The novel reads as intended. No crashes and has all features expected from a visual novel. I do not know Japanese to rate the translation, but there were quite a few weird sentences in English. It did feel kinda short. Enjoyment: I have enjoyed this novel; the endings (2 choice based and one common epilogue) made me shed a tear or two. Conclusion: I found this novel worth it. As …

I'm going to refund the game right after this. This is so disappointing. Don't buy it. I was so excited to get this game, I was expecting to get something like the Re: Zero novel (The Prophecy of the Throne) which is also here on Steam. But instead what I got is a cash-grab that is trying to exploit the show's popularity. In addition to all the issues reported already by other people (lack of voice acting, AI translations, ...) the game doesn't even f'king allow you to maximize the window or set it to full screen. Which is something unacceptable for a 2025 game. Don't buy this game, get the Re: Zero novel instead if you haven't played it yet: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1277510

A fairly short, simple VN. Solid story penned, I believe, by original series mangaka Kore Yamazaki. Being a self-contained side story has its benefits and drawbacks - the original protagonists ultimately come together nicely, but also simply aren't as complex as longer running characters from the main series, and also can't match the fanservice value of seeing faves from the series. Production values are an unfortunately mixed bag - the anime designs make for gorgeous and highly polished sprites, and the soundtrack (mostly reused from the anime) is very good, but basically every other aspect of presentation is pretty visibly cheap - minimal voice acting, limited foley, fairly limited backgrounds and only the crudest sorts of camera pans for animation. Most disappointingly, the localization is functional but quite crude, almost certainly lightly edited machine translation, often making small but noticeable flubs or outright mistakes with subjects, proper nouns, or character voice. All told, a fun enough side story for die-hard Magus Bride fans like myself, but not remotely essential.