Important note
Hi! This visual novel contains graphic depictions of violent rape. Not even typical anime funny haha rape like a Rance game, it's just rape. I won't show any of it of course, but if this post piques your interest in the game at all, I'd like for you to be aware of that fact coming in.
The game warns you too, every time you open it.
It's pretty widely regarded as one of the greatest visual novels of all time. I was also told "that's the rape game" when someone saw my Discord's Now Playing thingy. Suffice it to say, this game has quite the reputation to people who read visual novels. It was for that reason that I started playing it.
The game starts off with incredibly, incredibly strong worldbuilding. The game takes place in an alternate history post-WWII Japan (called Yamato) in a universe with sentient mechasuits of armor (called tsurugi) that grant you strength and the ability to fly are as ubiqitous as guns and swords are in the real world. War is fought by people, called Musha, weilding these tsurugi.
The game starts with a stand off between two musha about to fight to the death. Musha combat plays a lot like a kendo match if people could move at and perceive things at superhuman speed, and the writing is really good at conveying the extreme palpable tension, like the staredown before a Western pistol duel except a lot realer.
The worldbuilding is incredibly rich and dense, the story touches on things like how shaped the world was shaped by the invention of the tsurugi and the tyrannical empire ruling over Yamato during the events of the game. I don't think any of the soundtrack is going into my music playlists any time soon, the music of the game is amazing at buidling the tone and complimenting the worldbuilding too. From foreboding, ominous:
...to melancholy and empty:
...to calm and peaceful:
This is not a story of heroes
mild spoilers ahead!
I found myself really intrigued by the main character of the game, Kageaki Minato.
i would say "me asf", but...
He's a somber, aloof, socially awkward loser in such a likeable way that you almost forget that he's a musha -- one who looks super fucking cool when he fights. Oh and also he's a cold blooded killer. He's killed innocent people. Kids, even!
This is ultimately why I'm in for the wild ride -- he doesn't want to be doing the killing innocent people thing, but's he's bound by something called the Law of Balance -- for every evil person he kills he must balance it out but killing someone good. And I just simply have to know why.
