Reviews by MathBrush

This game is one of the more interesting branching sequels I've seen in an IF game.

I played through 2 rounds. In the first, I was married to the queen. It was up to me to participate in a fake tournament, organize the kingdom in the queen's absence, deal with diplomatic treaties, negotiate with barbarians, and engage in wars. I died in good old age surrounded by family.

In the second version, I was a minor lord in a kingdom ruled by evil, mocked and despised and humiliated by the evil king. I was thrown in jail, and took over my daughter, and ran into some familiar companions that gave me a smile. I didn't see the end of this run, as I died after finding my father but giving the reason for the evil king to kill me.

I think there are other possibilities as well, as you can play as a non-king lord and there are also some special quests from the main menu.

Overall, I was pleased by the level of detail and amount of polish. Some of the fights did drag, as other reviewers have noted. There was a lot more storytelling in this game, more descriptiveness, especially in the 'kingdom of evil' version where you rebel (there is one actual story-story that takes up like 8 pages).

One thing I like about this game is that it has clear evil and clear good, not of people (who are generally mixed good and evil, with some noticeable exclusions) but of acts and options. Mercenaries actually kill people; good people can become damaged after imprisonment and torture. Death is real and can happen; women and children can be lost in war, but relief can come and justice can be served.

When playing some of the less popular official Choice of Games, which are designed to have multiple competing interests, one common thing I see is having two or more factions set up that theoretically oppose each other but don't really do anything 'wrong'. Everything is just a misunderstanding, or a mild difference of political opinions (I've done this before myself). What a lot of the best hosted games do (and best choice of games do) is, when they come to the brink of making a character actually unethical or an act truly awful, they don't pull back, but push through it and allow evil to exist. Like Choice of Robots letting you decide to conquer the world with a robot army or develop doctor robots to save your mother's life or a companion robot to marry, you can make decisions that are actually evil or actually good or both.

David and Goliath wouldn't be nearly as interesting if Goliath was just gently bonking guys on the head instead of killing them. Hamlet would be much less interesting if it turns out the uncle accidentally gave the king an overdose and Hamlet forgives him and asks him to talk it out. If Cinderella gets along with the step-mother and sisters, then why would she even want to leave?

When I say it's good for games to allow true evil, I don't mean this in a grimdark way, like a game having a lot of murder or sexual assault with an awful protagonist is good; I don't really enjoy games like that. I like it when the bad contrasts with the good; people can die, but they can also be saved. We can let people down, but we can raise them up, too. Depicting real evil acts allows real good acts, and vice versa. A completely grimdark game is just as boring as a completely harm-free game. And like I said, it's the acts that are good and evil, not the people. This game does a good job with that, like a neighboring country that can be an ally but also can be overbearing, or a barbarian tribe that loves violence but respects you if you are a noble warrior.

Anyway, my main complaint of Swamp Castle was that it was too short, and this is the opposite of that, so I enjoyed this a lot.

This is the third game in the series.

The first game, Evertree, was a fairly short but very branched mystery fantasy game set in an inn.

The second was both long and vary varied, with a ton of different options.

This game was so big, so complex, that the author had to split it in two. So we have the first half of a great game. The combinatorial explosion does seem to have given the author some burnout, who took time off to make a separate game (Kitsune, for Choice of Games) and had a full-time job that took up time. Fortunately, he's recently come back to writing in the last few months.

In a way, the game branches almost too much, which is something I also experienced with Jolly Good:Cakes and Ale. Both games give you a ton of important tasks and not enough time to complete nearly any of them. In both games, I felt overwhelmed, but once I started I realized I had more time than I thought. I guess for me, there's a sweet spot between freedom and forward impetus; in Sordwin, there were competing goals, but I felt like no matter what I picked the main story progressed and I moved forward. Once Lux City of Lies (the projected sequel) is finished, I wouldn't mind if the next book in the series (if the author wants to continue) went back to the branching level of Sordwin.

Anyway, that's my only major complaint. This game itself is a lot of fun. I played a brownie druid and focused on going to work and meeting a fellow druid. I also focused on the main mystery of the mayor's death, and ignored all other side mysteries. I did attend events with Daisy, who carried over from the main game.

Story-wise (sorry it took me so long to get to this), you arrive at Lux, the big metropolis city, like Rome/Paris/London/NYC, and you get to have a job, find an apartment, and answer a summon from the mayor. You soon discover that the mayor has been murdered, and you are a top suspect!

In addition to this mystery, you find a big cast of new characters and reocurring old ones. Each day you choose what to do and who to spend time with, dealing with mysteries at night. Everything culminates in a great festival.

I can totally get why the author got burnt out, there are so many options and people online have really strong opinions and are asking for so much, but I just think that's a sign of how good the series is. If this were the first game in the series (and a complete game) people would be astounded and only have good things to say. It's only because it's compared to the past games in the series that people get critical. It's the way people will take a game like BTD6 or Terraria and say it's the worst game they've ever played, but only because 1)they've never actually played really bad games, or forgot about them, 2)heard a ton of people praising the game and tried it because of that, and 3)it didn't live up to their expectations. Now no one's said this game is awful, but it's in the 'famous + good series' tier which attracts more negative comments. I support the author in whatever he decides to do, even if it means cutting things I like to make a complete game.

No arcs are resolved here; each of the subplots hits an important note right near the end but there is no resolution.

This was a great game to play, definitely top 10 among Choicescript games I've enjoyed. It's a mystery (one of my favorite genres) and lets you be a mage, which is cool.

This is the second game in the Evertree Saga. The first game was also a fantasy mystery, but felt very short. This game, while each chapter can be completed relatively quickly, feels very substantial and has a ton of branches.

You come to an island which has been quarantined due to some kind of malady. Your employer has tasked you with recovering a package that was due and which is delayed on the island.

The mystery turns out to involve mysterious attacks, and everyone's on edge. You have to investigate not only the missing package and the attacks, but also your mysterious companion and the drama going on in town.

The game does great in at least 3 things that popped into my mind:

1-Lots of options. I maxed out my magic stat and used it for almost everything. The game felt like a breeze since I could read minds, teleport, fly, etc. This worked perfectly until one very crucial moment, but that tradeoff felt worth it. You can equally play as a buff or deceptive character. You can also bring in a completely different companion depending on your first game choices, which is very hard to code.
2-Good dialogue. Dialogue dominates this game, and the author manages to make each character feel distinct and fresh.
3-Real stakes. There are multiple competing goals, and it felt like I could make real progress on some if I invested time, but it meant leaving other parts of the game unexplored. However, the game manages to make you not feel like a loser for missing out on the other stuff, and all failure is accompanied by cool ways of getting out of it, often at the cost of others. This kind of thing is really hard to do, so I was impressed.

Overall, a great game.

This is the fifth game in the Samurai of Hyuga series.

I wrote a lot of this review in my head when I was 90% of the way done with the game, so I'll get that out of the way first and then talk about the ending.

I think I liked this one the best so far. One and two had too much of the suggestive content towards your minor charge, and four was super depressing. Three was my second favorite of the batch.

This one feels like the author has finally settled in and figured out what kind of story he wants to write. The ronin MC is sad but moves forward, is tortured and has lost hope but somehow continues on anyway, which is nice.

You spend a lot of this one lugging around the comatose body of your young shugenja companion. I liked how instead of focusing on gross sexual comments towards a minor it found other ways for the MC to be obnoxious/boundary breaking (like trying to clean out earwax). It made me think that the author should just go back and edit out all the crap in the first two games to make it more like this (and maybe to fix the Japanese; it might make sense to pay a native speaker a few hundred dollars to go through and redo the chapter names of all 6 games).

The game has a lot of adult content between the actual adults. I made choices that led to sexual encounters with Toshie because I felt like it fit my character, but because I don't enjoy fictional depictions of sex I skipped past them (they were very lengthy). Other mature content in the game includes frequent suicidal reasoning, torture and humiliation, descriptions of gore and rape (and the consequences of rape).

The main storyline is split in 2. In the first, you are suffering some kind of psychosis after your experience in hell and are trapped by the Silent Lady. You have to break out and then break into her stronghold to try to save the shugenja.

In the second half, you encounter nuns and christianity and have to deal with them and zombies while also being confronted with the concept of forgiveness and redemption (which you have an extreme adverse reaction to).

I liked the depiction of Christianity in the book, as a Christian. It felt very authentic. The MC hates it and doesn't believe in it and is disturbed by its teachings, but it generally sticks very close to the original source material and its believers seem sincere. So it's like the opposite of a straw man; the game kind of debates Christianity but in its full-fledged real form rather than the superficial or sophomoric takes many fantasy games set up as an evil state religion.

The game at this point has dropped almost all pretense of interactivity. At this point each choice is just for flavor text or for getting achievements, with some occasional consent choices for romance. For this specific story, I think it's a good choice. The author didn't want a branching story, he wanted to tell this story, and it feels engaging on the story alone.

Unfortunately, the last 10% of the game did sour my mood. I thought the author had maybe grown as a person and dropped the sexualizing minors idea in the last decade. And that still may be true! But the last chunk (and one fragment earlier on) has your minor companion create a fantasy world where they're older and in love with a romanticized version of you. Now that's not bad at all (when I was 14 I had a crush on Scully from X-Files, having a crush on an older person isn't weird at that age), but it does make me feel like the author has seen the relationship between you and the kid as a romance all along.

I probably won't play the sixth one for a while, because these books, since they have low interactivity, have a big chapter count (25 per most games) and take a ton of time to play (I've averaged around 10 days per book). So I'll take a break and try some others before coming back to this.

I didn't play any of the Spring Thing games until after Spring Thing finished, to get a little more neutrality. This one was one of the winners, so I was interested in playing it.

I had a bit of trepidation going in because I've historically struggled with complex timed murder games in IF; I'm think of Varicella and Make it Good, mostly.

I was pleased that this game had helpful guidance early on and I was able to have some success on my own. The game nudges you on things and places you can go to and do next.

At one point I messed up the online interpreter by undoing many times in a row while messing with the tab (a problem with parchment, not the game itself), so I restarted, and that gave me the confidence to just use the walkthrough and see the rest of the game. I'm glad I did; this game seems like one designed for careful exploration and note-taking, things I'm not too good at.

I do like mystery games and this is the kind that is mostly solved by doing puzzles using information in books and through things found in exploration. It does require looking under things (something I typically don't enjoy in large games with tons of furniture) but it is hinted when you need to do so.

The writing is often workmanlike, which isn't to say that it's bad (the flashback memories of Aelred are wonderful), but that due to the large nature of the game and the ascetic setting, writing is often utilitarian and sparse.

The time aspect isn't as big of a threat as it seems, if anyone else is worried as I was. Essentially it divides the game into segments of 'everyone is available to talk to' and 'everyone is away and you can search around'.

Overall, it's clear why it won.

This is the third Social Democracy game, a series that has proven popular outside of the usual IF haunts (even the history teacher of my school knows about them and uses them in curriculum).

They are card-based games where you have to run a government and worry about both party and government resources and budget and policies.

They tend to go over my head, as I have not diligently studied government policy. Playing this one, I trundled along my way until the senate lost confidence in me, businesses lost confidence in me, communists lost confidence in me, and I was out of a job. Alas!

Overall, though, the production quality is very high and the concept is fun. As long as people are still finding use and enjoyment in these games, we might as well keep going (it would be fun to see one with a Chinese emperor like the Yongzheng one from the Qing dynasty).

This is among the larger french parser games I've played.

In it, you play as a doctor in a medieval type town that has left after a dispute with locals. But the mayor comes to beseech you to rescue people who have been consumed by a kind of dancing disease.

You go to investigate, and find a huge world filled with a ton of people, all of whom want help. Your main quest can be found far away in a big city, where four people can give you their idea of how to help the dancers.

In the meantime, you can find the 'true' way to help the dancers, or solve numerous side quests.

The parser has a lot of difficulties; synonyms are missing, 'S' doesn't work as a shortcut for going south, many things have no description, most items are listed both in the room description and as 'you can also see ____', there's no response for 'parler avec...'. Outside of that, the room connections are asymmetrical and it's easy to get lost.

Fighting both the parser and the French, I finally achieved the method of curing the dancers, only to realize I couldn't find them anymore. I ended up finding them all gathered in one spot where I was unable to free any of them, making me suspect the game has a timer of some sort, at which point I definitely stopped playing, as while I enjoyed my playthrough I do not have the desire to repeat all my actions.

This game took me quite a while to finish (a couple weeks!).

It's pretty different than earlier games in the series. The first two games focused heavily on anime tropes, while the third one had a great murder mystery plus some 'training villagers' montages.

This one takes an entirely different tack. Judging from online reviews and ratings, it is very popular. To me, it appeared well-made, but didn't appeal to my personal sensibilities. It is a story of unhappiness and mutual mistreatment and of broken, toxic love, which while I have enjoyed stories that include elements of this, the persistent nature of it throughout the game wasn't my favorite.

Basically, in the other games you have an ex who is a psychopath that threatens to kill anyone who likes you, maims people, and almost kills you by carving words into your stomach, which hurts you for a long time. In this game, you end up together with them the entire time.

This includes physically being put on a leash (well actually it's a spiritual leash but she pulls you along). Also, you lost all your powers and your spirit animal, and you have no friends. Your leashholder physically gropes you and makes advances on you, which your character always has at least something of a positive reaction to (you have some choice but not all). You ex belittles you, forces you to do things you don't want, uses you, is emotionally unavailable, etc.

And that's 90% of the game. There's also a fetish dungeon, an election and a big supernatural climax to the story, but most is being dogwalked by a controlling ex who uses physical intimacy as a weapon.

I see people all the time on reddit asking for stories with controlling or toxic exes or really messy/bad romances, and this definitely fits the ticket.

The game decides a lot of your own choices and reactions. Like most of the series, most choices have a 'right' or 'wrong' answer (usually choosing what is most in line with your pre-existing character traits) rather than having significant branching. This makes for much longer gameplay; the game has 25 substantial chapters.

Overall, a lot of craftmanship was on display, but relationships are messy messy. It's more like Wuthering Heights or Chainsawman style of messy relationship than Jane Eyre or the Odyssey style messy relationships.

I liked this game a lot more than the first two in the series. Those leaned heavily on anime tropes and picked some of ones I don't enjoy as much mixed in with the ones that do.

This entry keeps the best part of the series (good action scenes, strong themes and well-distinguished characters) and less of the bad parts. It also adds new mechanics.

The first third or so of the game finishes off Samurai of Hyuga 2 with a detective scenario. I love mystery/detective games so that colored my perception of the rest of the game in a positive light. It has an unusual pattern; I've made classifications of IF mystery games before and written about them in posts, but this is a little different. IF mystery games usually have one of the following ways to model deduction (this is copied from a different post of mine):
1-Have a standard puzzle game that happens to be about murder mystery, with solving the puzzles leading to solving the mystery. This is like Ballyhoo.
2-Modelling evidence and clues in-game, which have to be combined to form a solution. This is how Erstwhile works, and most of my mysteries.
3-Collecting evidence through puzzles and conversation and then having a quiz at the end (where you have to accuse the right person). This is how Toby’s Nose works.
4-Collecting physical evidence and showing it to someone, being able to make an arrest when you have enough evidence.

This game is most similar to 3, except instead of one quiz, there are a couple of dozen mini-quizzes to see if you're paying attention.

Sometimes the logic of the author wasn't clear to me, so I used a guide on and off, both here and to keep my attunement high later.

I felt more engaged in the game because of this. The subject matter was very heavy, but the interactions were more enjoyable than other entries in the series.

The second half of the game involves you confronting the next Demon in the series, a powerful general of an army. At this point, I got a bit confused, as I was reading in bits and pieces over a week. I somehow got roped into training soldiers for a competition, my ninja companion went away, and one of the general's samurai killed three other samurai, and I don't know why (probably because I didn't accompany them when given the choice). So I was lost a bit.

But, I ended up losing my nerve as a ronin while also training a bunch of new people. The goal became to identify each person's nature, what they needed, and to strengthen up.

Again, I liked this section a lot. Again, my mind wasn't always in sync with the authors, so I used a guide sometimes (but I do that with a ton of parser games, so...). I liked the ending.

This episode really turned around the series for me. I said that I wouldn't have continued past Samurai of Hyuga 2 if I weren't reviewing all Hosted Games, and that's true, but since I did try it, I'm glad.

Samurai of Hyuga 1 was a game heavily influenced by samurai films and edgier anime, with a main character ronin who has killed countless people as an assassin and is assigned to guard a smart child while hunting demons.

In this game, you play shogi! For most of the time.

It actually works out well. Our character is kind of OP, so it's hard to think of creative obstacles for them. Rather than having more fighting, they are first severely injured and then roped into a shoji tournament where you have to take down a variety of foes while also being an uneducated and kind of dumb ronin.

The game broadens the world of the series by bringing in European influences. There are some opportunities for serious romantic moments. There are also a lot of dramatic deaths and bits of violence, making it one of the goriest IF series (compared to things I've read recently, it's similar to Centuria or maybe Kagurabachi in terms of gore).

This book also continues the trend of being plagued with questionable japanese translation and indecent behavior toward minors. The most egregious japanese example was translating the gold in 'gold general', a shogi piece, as 'gorudo' (the katakana transliteration of the English word gold, which is sometimes used for the color) rather than 金 'kin', which is both the native word and the actual word that is printed on the pieces themselves (including in in-game screenshots). Like the first game, other characters insinuate that our character is sexually attracted to our minor charge, and our character can attempt to flood the minor's mind with sexual images and takes a peek at them while changing. This is while the game frequently reinforces how young our character is, with chubby cheeks and being really small. I was recently on jury duty where we gave a guy 60 years in prison for abusing a dozen or so children, and witness testimony included families where he was starting the grooming process but didn't finish, and we also heard his own testimony. It was strange how many actions in the game were identical to things I heard that man say or heard testimony that he did, with the kids shaking and talking about their lives being ruined and not being able to trust anyone ever again, etc. And the minor grooming parts aren't necessary for the story at all; the 'innocent smart person that you're not allowed to be with' could just as easily be a celibate young adult nun or a monk, which have existed in Buddhism for centuries.

In any case, I'll finish the rest of the series, since I'm doing a survey of all the hosted games, but definitely would drop the series on my own because of the bad memories it brings up (some of the other jurors were vomiting during the trial and I was crying a lot).