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No. 12927
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This really took me a lot longer than it should have. I apologise for the ridiculous length of this post, but I'm sure you appreciate detailed feedback, right?
I know from your blog that you value honesty in reviews of your work, so I'm not going to hold back here, but keep in mind that I did enjoy a lot of things about it. The ending parts definitely left a bad taste in my mouth, though.
General opinions
I'll start off by saying that the first half of the game (the part before the murder happens) is undoubtedly the most polished and enjoyable. The beginning has a very leisurely pace to it, and reads a little like Umineko EP1's introduction - and that's fine. The atmosphere was well-done, the dialogue felt natural and flowed nicely, and it served as a perfectly good way to get introduced to the characters. It's a very well-done build-up, and it was very clear that a lot of time had been spent on getting the feel just right.
But from the point the murder happens, the pacing just seems to accelerate to a point where it's difficult to really take anything in, and we lose the smooth flow of the first section.
The initial investigation and discussion about the murder is fairly good, but mostly seems a bit dry and lacking in character (though Butler's antics help that a little). There are also a few really awkward parts of conversations that really should have been proofread more carefully (like where Gilligan spontaneously changes his attitude towards the closed room three times in a matter of minutes, going from undecided to convinced he's solved it to completely hopeless without any obvious trigger), and overall the dialogue just didn't flow as naturally as it did in the beginning, especially with the bizarre way Cecila was acting when she came to try and 'console' Gilligan. But it was still passable.
The very end parts, starting from the discovery of the will, were...quite obviously extremely rushed, unfortunately. I assume you were just rushing to finally get the game out after all this time, but you really should have gone over things more carefully. Towards the end, it seemed like almost every textbox had a typo or something was awkwardly phrased. Some of these were particularly bad since they actually obscured the meaning of things (like Butler getting 2:00 AM and 2:00 PM mixed up repeatedly while talking about Galvano's note). ...Also, seriously, Eliza delightedly exclaiming how cute the stuffed animal she bought was while going over everyone's alibis is not a natural way to act when a murder has occurred under any circumstances, especially the murder of someone you're really close to. There were a lot of moments in the game when I thought that, and they were all distracting, but that one has to be the worst.
The main problem is that all of the discussion in the second half of the game seems to be dedicated to solving the mystery; with a few exceptions, it all feels more like a /gameboard/ discussion than the way people might conceivably react to an actual murder. The pacing also sort of feels like the whole sequence of events is just based off a checklist of points that needed to be ticked off - again, losing the natural flow that the first half had. The first half is completely focused on the characters without any mystery, and the second half is completely focused on the mystery with barely any emphasis on the characters - it just feels unbalanced. It also didn't help that despite the heavy emphasis on the mystery, several parts of the solution were quite awkward and not particularly intelectually satisfying...But I'll get on to that later.
Characters
Gilligan: As I said in my first post, he was a really good lead, and his characterisation was one of the things I liked the most about the game. During the first half, he somehow managed to pull off "spoiled rich kid" in a way that actually made him likable, which is quite something. The awkward and apathetic way he interacted with everyone was really well-done, and gave a really clear feeling that he didn't really care about his life or any of the people around him, but in a way that made him seem more sympathetic than annoying, at least to me. The portrayal of that particular apathetic and disinterested kind of depression, where you don't even realise it yourself until you talk to someone else about it, felt really genuine and believable. The scene where he opens up to Butler on the deck and almost commits suicide was probably the highlight of the game for me. His shifting feelings for his father (both before and after death) were also quite interesting, although I felt he changed his mind a little too dramatically after the talk with Howard. It would have been nice if there could have been a more gradual change leading up to that.
Butler: Was pretty much exactly what I expected. I liked that he was basically exactly the same person that Meta was in Board of the Golden Witch; he really doesn't need any more of a personality than that, to be honest, because the character is perfectly entertaining just as he is. His complete detachment from the events was great, and deserved to be played up more by contrasting with the other characters (shouldn't Eliza and Howard have had more of an objection to the way he was treating their CEO's death like a game? These are the kinds of things that made the characterisation sort of fall flat in the second half). And the crazy nonsense theories he came up with for everything were always amusing (though he seemed to just sort of stop doing that midway through, unfortunately).
It seemed odd that he was suddenly able to immediately figure everything out at the end though; I kind of thought the point of his character was that he was sort of incompetent and spontaneous, but somehow always ends up stumbling across the answer anyway? Instead of him knowing the answers from the start and just laying out the correct train of logic to reach them, I think the final deduction scene would have been a lot more entertaining if his reasoning had been more chaotic and rambling, having things corrected by the others and eventually getting on to the answer through extensive brainstorming...Something like that would have been more suited to his character, I think. It's more fun if the detective goes through a few failed theories before getting the right answer, trying to connect the clues in different ways before getting them lined up right; that's why the tea parties in your fangames were such fun to read. (And hey, that was technically mostly Meta in those too, so it would have been perfectly fitting to do something like that here!)
So, overall, he's a very good character, but the other characters' reactions to him needed some work. After all, with really eccentric characters, seeing the ways that people respond to them is half the fun!
Galvano: Was probably the most three-dimensional and well-developed character. I can't really fault anything here; his characterisation was basically the whole background of the game in a way, and gradually learning about him from the employees after his death was a pretty interesting way to do things. ...That said, insisting on making Eliza the next CEO without even listening to Blythe's objections was pretty fantastically dumb of him. But yeah, I did feel pretty sorry for the guy, and thought his actions were generally believable and understandable. Well done here.
Howard: No real problems here. He basically served a similar function to Hideyoshi; there's nothing particularly interesting about him, but he's perfectly believable, and the very fact that he's so honest and uncomplicated is part of what makes him a likable character. He served pretty much no function at all in the second half, though...I think he could have somehow reacted a little more to what was going on. I thought it was pretty weird how undisturbed he was by Galvano's death, even more so than the rest of them; considering that he was his best friend, it felt off that he was so completely unaffected. So, a little wasted potential here, but not bad overall.
Eliza: Was pretty interesting. Her relationship with Galvano was unexpected, and I really didn't expect her to have as large of a role in the case as she did. That said, I didn't feel like we really got that much of a look into her motivations; most of what we know about her actions comes from Blythe, who is obviously biased against her, but what was she really thinking? Was she being actively deceitful in seducing Galvano and deceiving him about the state of the company, or was she just trying her best to stay close to him and gain his trust without properly considering the consequences to the company? Or somewhere in between? I liked that there were shades of grey to her character, but I would have liked to see a little more exploration; perhaps we could have had a one-to-one talk between her and Gilligan after Blythe left the bar following the card game, and that could have given us some idea of the nature of her feelings for Galvano and her commitment to the company. I know this would have been hard to do without spoiling things, though.
...Still, her accusing Gilligan was pretty stupid. Although it was at least a rare example of a genuine emotional reaction to the murder, so that's something. I already brought up her bizarre breaking of character while checking the alibis.
Blythe: Pretty good, except AAAAAH KINJO THAT ENDING WHY
......Um, but, yeah...I thought she was a pretty cool character; she didn't get much development before the final reveal, but I got the idea that she was calm, collected and condescending, and that was probably all that was needed. The thing with the trading cards was a nice little quirk to enrich her character a little. While her confession was a little rushed, I thought that you were reasonably successful in "showing a strong enough movement of the heart to lead to murder", to use Battler's words from EP7. It was believable as a crime of passion, and we saw enough of her character to understand her mindset. Disappointment at not being made the CEO wouldn't be enough to bring a normal person to murder, but from what we saw of how much importance she put on working hard and having her skills acknowledged, it's possible to imagine how she might have felt, especially since Galvano's decision was clearly illogical (and it was made clear that Blythe has no tolerance or understanding for decisions based on anything but logic).
So yeah, she was a pretty impressive culprit character really...Except then you decided to break the whole thing apart with the last scene. I was warned over Skype that this was the most rushed part of the game, and I assume you are planning on going over it properly at some point, but since you did decide yourself to release it in this state, I think I have a right to criticise.
I...honestly have no idea what you were thinking with this scene. Why on earth would she have been planning to kill him from the start? Her character completely loses any believability with that twist. Everything about the crime suggests that it was done on impulse, right down to the improvised murder weapon and the hasty coverup afterwards...If it was meant to be premeditated, there were a million better ways that she could have done it. But besides that, there's no motive at all. Galvano's decision to make Eliza the CEO was only made right there on the boat trip, so that couldn't have factored into Blythe's decision if the crime was premeditated. So what? She just wanted to kill Galvano because she hated him? Why? Surely it would make more sense to kill Eliza, since she's the one who actually wronged her? She has absolutely nothing to gain from Galvano's death at all; it's not like she would gain any greater position in the company from it, since Gilligan would still have taken over regardless. There is no logical reason for her to premeditate this murder, and everything about her character suggests that she's sensible enough to realise this. It made perfect sense as an impulsive crime, so what was the point in going back on that?
I guess you might have been trying to work with the 'truth/happiness' theme here, but if so then I have to disagree with your story's themes on the strongest terms. Gilligan was absolutely right to acknowledge that his father's murderer is still a person, and to feel sympathy for her position. That's a perfectly admirable and human way to feel. It's not denying the truth; on the contrary, it would be easy for him to decide to draw "happiness" from the thought that Blythe was just an inhuman monster and be glad that she got what she deserved. To sympathise with her is to acknowledge the discomforting "truth" that even the person who murdered his father is no less of a human being than he is. That's a much more powerful message than...whatever you ended up going with. It's like the total reverse of Umineko; you had a believable and sympathetic villain, and then decided to spontaneously transform her into an incomprehensible cackling evil witch for no reason. If the message is supposed to be that we should accept the "truth" that some people are just irredeemable monsters who aren't worthy of understanding, then I thoroughly dislike that moral.
(Now, obviously, Gilligan responding to that feeling of sympathy by freeing her from her bonds was a genuinely stupid thing to do, and you were completely right to highlight that. But she could still have taken advantage of the opening and tried to escape without randomly turning into a completely different person. The whole ending sequence could have gone exactly the same way without reverting all of Blythe's character development. I actually like that she almost escapes because of Gilligan's naivety, but what follows is just ridiculous, and I couldn't take the game seriously at all any more after that.)
Jack: Well, I got a decent idea of his personality, but the various aspects of his character didn't seem to tie together too well into a complete picture. The backstory we get from Donald...doesn't really seem to have that much bearing on anything; I thought the parallels between Gilligan and Jack were interesting (with both of them growing up detached from society, and having had serious family issues), but that never really went anywhere. Aside from that, we don't really have anything on which to base his character except for his actions as an accomplice to Blythe...None of which really make much sense at all, as I'll go into in the mystery section. So yeah, I'm pretty much indifferent to this guy.
Cecila: Not really sure what to think of her. That one sequence where she discussed the case with Gilligan was a little too reminiscent of Umineko; it was basically a total recycling of Maria in EP1/2, right down to the creepy laugh. (And also pretty out-of-place, considering that his dad had just been murdered...Maria has reasons for acting in such a screwed up way in that situation, Cecila honestly has no excuses and it's a little weird that Gilligan doesn't seem particularly bothered by her insensitivity.) Other than that, she's just a klutzy maid, so I guess that makes her Maria+Shannon. There's nothing really interesting or notable about her character, but I guess there didn't really need to be. Not much else to say here.
Donald: The poor guy didn't really do anything, but he worked as an effective red herring suspect. I totally thought that he must be behind the crime after we found out that Galvano was responsible for his family not inheriting the ship. Would have liked to see Butler pursue that line of reasoning before realising the truth. He seems to have literally no purpose beyond that, though.
Mystery
The mystery itself...well, it was reasonably good, and had a lot of clever tricks to it, but there were also a lot of weak points unfortunately. I got the impression from the first half that this game was meant to focus more on the story and characters than the mystery, but then it kind of trailed off in the second half so the mystery was forced to carry the plot...and I don't think it was really solid enough to do that. Your Seacats VNs had a huge advantage here because they were fully focused on the mystery from the start, and were never intended to be anything more than a logic puzzle...Because of that, you could focus all your energies on the puzzles, and as a result I think those games were much more solid mysteries than this one. That said, this was by no means bad...But I'd certainly say that the characters were a lot more interesting than the mystery itself here.
Things I thought were done well:
-Galvano's note was nicely played; I liked the ambiguity of whether "be back at 2:00" referred to 2AM or 2PM. (Although Butler evidently got a bit confused while explaining it, hehe.) Figuring out that Galvano left for the meeting during the night, and not early in the morning, really turned the case around, and that was pretty clever.
-I really liked the idea that the story about the haunted elevator wasn't invented until after Galvano had been murdered, making it retroactively seem like "Galvano was killed in a haunted elevator". That was a really neat idea, although it didn't have that much of an impact on the story since nobody really took the ghost story seriously as an explanation. But I still liked the trick.
-The classic "culprit brings the key into the closed room after its deconstruction" was well played here, and done in a way that wasn't obvious at all. I admit I felt a little of "Oh, that was all?" finding that out after all those crazy tricks Butler was suggesting earlier, but I think that's actually effective. I do like those sorts of tricks that mislead the reader into thinking about all sorts of ways to get into the room, when they should actually be questioning whether the culprit would need to enter the room in the first place. (You managed to pull off a really impressive fight in the chapel in "Trick of the Golden Witch" using a similar sleight of hand...And I guess my room in the blitz was basically the same thing.) So yeah, not a really complicated trick, but a perfectly acceptable one.
-The thing with Howard sitting on the watch...was kind of incredibly convenient, but it was a decently subtle and clever way of providing the decisive piece of evidence. Good job with that. And the SOS/505 thing was sort of neat too, though again, it's an incredible coincidence that Blythe just happened to have a room with a number that looks like "SOS"...
Things that weren't done so well:
-The captain's will is a really big Deus Ex Machina. Jack should have been a lot more careful hiding it; in fact he should probably have just disposed of it long ago. That really made him look like an idiot.
-The whole plot with the Cobalt Couple seems more or less pointless as far as I can tell? I think it might have been better to have just made the whole thing a fabrication of Jack's, without any truth behind it at all. The truth of their murders didn't seem to have any relation to the case that I could see; the important part of the will was that Jack wasn't supposed to have inherited the ship, so the whole story around the Cobalt Couple just seems to be a needless distraction, especially since it's told so quickly that it doesn't really leave any lasting impression. Hard to care about the story when we know so little about the people involved, and again, it just wasn't relevant.
-I don't understand Jack's motive for acting as an accomplice at all. If Blythe confessed to him that she killed Galvano on his ship, surely the most reasonable thing to do would be to immediately have his bodyguards detain her and inform the police immediately. I don't see how he gained anything from trying to make the crime seem impossible; surely obscuring the details is just going to make a detailed investigation of the ship by the police more likely? It's best for him if the case is cleared up as quickly as possible, which means that he should turn Blythe in as soon as possible. He's taking a huge risk by going along with her plan, and for absolutely no tangible gain as far as I can tell.
......Oh right, I guess at the very end, Blythe just said that she bribed him, didn't she? So maybe that was the whole motive. In that case, I don't see why the whole thing with the captain's will was necessary at all, and also I don't think the money motive was foreshadowed at all (it would have possibly been more excusable if there'd been some mention of him particularly needing money for some reason, but I don't recall anything). So...yeah, this is probably the weakest point in the case; the accomplice just doesn't have a motive that makes any sense, unless I missed something huge (which is entirely possible).
-The thing with the elevator key was a bit weak. So Jack just made up the story about giving Cecila the key, and he never actually did? In that case, why didn't Cecila call him out on that? At the very least she should have said something like, "Really? I don't remember noticing an extra key on my keyring" or "You gave me the elevator key!? You never mentioned that!" or something to that effect. Not to mention that Jack doesn't even give an explanation for why he supposedly gave Cecila the elevator key! And Butler never even really questions that. Jack's plan only works here because the characters just randomly decide not to question him at all for no obvious reason. That's pretty clumsy.
In summary
Good points:
-The quality of the writing itself, in terms of sentence structure and vocabulary, was generally very high.
-The pacing and atmosphere of the first half were really well done.
-There were some clever and original tricks used as part of the mystery, and it was more or less possible to reason out the culprit with a few logical leaps.
-Most of the cast were remarkably well-developed and likable characters, and they were written in a fairly believable manner for the most part. Gaining a more complete picture of the dynamics between the company members as the game went on was really enjoyable, and Gilligan and Galvano in particular came out as really solid characters. And of course, Butler himself was great.
-The presentation - the menus, the art, and the music - was absolutely perfect. I didn't really mention this in the main body of the review at all, since I was mostly just talking about the story itself, but I was really impressed by how professional the whole thing felt, and that made it much more enjoyable than it would otherwise have been. The original art and music are the main thing that the game has over your Seacats VNs, and they are really, really high quality. I found myself humming bits of the soundtrack to me a lot, and there was a really impressive amount of variety in the soundtrack for an amateur production. The opening movie was pretty good too.
Weak points:
-You really need to find a good proofreader, because the script in general is seriously riddled with typos. If you want, I'd be happy to work with you on this for any future projects; I'm pretty thorough, as I'm sure Renall can testify.
-Jack wasn't adequately developed as an accomplice, and the plot around him in general (the Cobalt Couple story included) seemed incomplete and disconnected from the rest of the story.
-The characters' reactions to the events, particularly the murder, felt pretty awkward and unnatural at times. There were a few moments in particular that were really glaring, where people (other than Butler, obviously, whose lack of reaction is intentional) were speaking in a ridiculously light-hearted way not too long after the murder.
-The whole ending sequence, in its current state, is extremely flawed and seriously damages the story as a whole.
Overall: While there were a lot of flaws in it, there were a lot of enjoyable things about it too, and it's really great that you managed to finish a project like this at all - it's much better to have a flawed release than no release at all, and I'm sure that working on this has been a valuable learning experience for you. If you just do a little cleaning up to the ending sequence, that in itself will make this a much more solid experience. Congratulations on finishing the game, and I wish you the very best of luck with anything else you may do in the future~
Last edited at 13/08/31(Sat)13:37:24
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