This review was too long to put on steam hi
NOTE. ALL OF THIS IS UNDER THE PRETENSE THE TEAM WILL KEEP THEIR WORD AND REMOVE ALL OF THE AISLOP, NOT JUST GIRL WITH FLOWERS. IF THEY DONT, DISREGARD THIS COMPLETELY AND GIVE THE DEV TEAM HELL.
Regardless of ANYTHING else, check out the soundtrack. You won’t regret it. Absolutely wonderful and all human made. I love Otto’s theme in particular. That being said.
Hoo boy.
This game is a doozy.
I suppose this is how I should start it out.
DO YOU LIKE PLOT TWISTS THAT ARE SO RIDICULOUS AND OUT OF NOWHERE, THEY DELEGITIMIZE THE ENTIRE GAME UP TO THAT POINT AND INSULT THE PLAYER?
IF NO LIKE A NORMAL PERSON: Check out the soundtrack and look up a playthrough of chapter 4, the absolute high of this game’s story. Then never, EVER, touch this game EVER again. Save your time.
IF YES BECAUSE YOU ARE A CRAZY PERSON LIKE ME: My god, this game. It put me through the five stages of grief. It makes so much sense and none at all. I understand all of it and none of it. It is the worst game I have ever played and the best game I have ever played. It is so, so stupid, that it manages to loop around and be brilliant just by the sheer AUDACITY of what happens.
I think my review I sent my partner upon finishing it sums it up pretty well: “It went from I’m pensive about this -> This is unironically great -> These reviews are making me feel like shit for liking it -> These reviews are all completely right -> This is a guilty pleasure -> This is the best game ever”
So, let’s take it step by step.
1) I’ve already praised the OST, but the art direction that isn’t AIslop is stunning. This is my first experience with KOHSKE, and I am not disappointed. The CGs at the end of each chapter combined with the OST are absolutely GORGEOUS. Some of the best musical and visual combinations I’ve ever seen in anything, tbh. I love the graphics and the designs of every floor. My favorite is definitely Christoph’s because it shows what a complicated person he is. Some people have said the graphics look bad, and maybe they do. But as a guy who tends to play Baby Games for Babies, I thought they were lovely. That being said, it being offset by AI is EXTREMELY offensive to the player, and not in a fun way like the twist. Shame on the dev team for including it in the first place.
2) I do love the character writing. For the most part. Getting the bad out of the way, Noah is extremely bland and has no real personality. It doesn’t feel like he actually cares about anyone but Hell until the final auction, when his bond with Edgar is FINALLY shown after an entire game of only telling. I genuinely did not care for him most of the game, and wished the protag could have been anyone else.
-I wish the protag could have been anyone else, but ESPECIALLY Edgar. He does a lot to assist Noah throughout the game, and is a MUCH stronger character and lead. He does just as much work (offscreen), and has a much stronger presence than Noah, Guy Made Of Cardboard, ever did. Him and Otto have their entire own story completely unique from Noah’s, and I wish I could have seen that instead.
However: his relationship with Otto at the start of working together is EXTREMELY forced. Even just one cutscene of them having a heart to heart (lol) after Otto’s auction with the common ground they found during it would have done MILES to improve things. That being said, I do like their dynamic a lot and it feels much more authentic when it settles in place. Again, the game would have been much better had it been about them instead.
-I love Otto. He seems like he’s going to be SUCH a sleeze and scumbag when things start out, but he’s actually a total bro. Had a very enjoyable presence.
-Lorraine… sure is a character! Her VA has been everythingI love, so I absolutely loved her voice.. Besides that, she has such a charming personality and is a real sweetheart with a lot going on behind the scenes that is never explored, ESPECIALLY with regards to Karla. It’s a shame.
-Christoph is the best character. Full stop. There’s a reason I say his chapter is the only one people should bother with if they want an actually good game and story. His trauma and his mother’s relationship with “X” are very compelling and real, and his response when he learns the truth is so very raw. This teeters into spoilers, but as someone who is friends with multiple systems and whose partner is a system, they handled him very, very lovingly in that regard as well.
The biggest waste in the game is he is basically completely irrelevant before and after his chapter. He could offer so, SO much more to the story, but the game refuses. It’s such a disappointment that still pisses me off, honestly. Also he has insane tboy swag but that’s 100% a headcanon thing and not anything related to the actual game or his character whatsoever.
Karla… I have a lot to say about Karla. I’ll get to her later.
3) Calling this a game is… generous. It’s completely linear with zero room for exploration. When I played the demo I thought it was just the first chapter keeping kid wheels on before letting you actually get to do things for yourself. It was not just the first chapter keeping kid wheels on before letting you actually get to do things for yourself. Every single thing is done for you.
You think you’re going to get puzzles and explore for things, even just have correct/incorrect options to choose from on what to research, only for that never to be the case. The game frames it as such, only for there to be zero options except the correct one.
I did enjoy the auction gameplay. A lot! The only problem is… it never goes anywhere. Again, it was fine in the demo where I thought it was just a first chapter glorified tutorial, but it… wasn’t. The entire game held your hand every step of the way with the same amount of puzzles and the same amount of options and the same amount of difficulty. As someone who loves Ace Attorney (clearly) and Danganronpa, I was expecting the cases’ complexity and difficulty to increase similar to those games. It was not the case at all.
I really liked having gameplay break up the vn sections and I think it COULD have been good. In the end, like many aspects of the game, it just ended up being wasted potential.
4) The Hitler shaped elephant in the room. This game had zero reason to be connected to Hitler or WWII, so I’m confused why they intended for it to be about him from the start. Especially with the twist- it’s so far removed from our actual reality of the Holocaust and WWII, it almost feels like a marketing gimmick. Had it been something INSPIRED by Hitler and WWII but still very clearly in a fictional universe separate from our reality, it would have been much, MUCH better and not NEARLY as tone deaf. They don’t even give him sunglasses and call him Fuhrer. What a waste.
There’s only one chapter (King Christoph) who actually comes out of it angry at him and swearing against what he did. The other chapters… Otto’s father is also a victim of Nazi experiments, and his chapter is relatively solid- it just focuses more on his sadness that he didn’t try to understand his father and how his father never realized he was being played from the start vs actual anger at the experimentation.
Edgar’s dad is a child soldier who ends up defecting, but not for anything to do with the war or atrocities itself- he chases after his friend who DID defect for those reasons, but not for them himself. Even more tone deaf and insulting is that Hitler is the one who made him defect not out of disgust, but because HE GAVE HIM A MOTIVATIONAL SPEECH.
Lorraine’s dad was literally an arms dealer. No elaboration needed.
And then there’s…
5) Karla. Karla, Karla, Karla. KARLA. She’s the center of this game, and there is a MESS around her that’s hard to make sense of. There is a LOT good about her, and she is very likable and interesting. Like a lot of things in the game, however, this comes with a big, “but”.
It’s really hard to get a grasp of just what they want to do with her character. She praises her grandfather for being so committed to Hitler, but is then… completely horrified at the reality of her grandfather being a Nazi. For the most part, the horror, disgust, and wanting to stop him is consistent (a good thing)- but the scene at the end of her auction completely throws a wrench in this for a feel good ending that is extremely out of place and makes her character very confusing as a result. There’s also a subplot with a radio and her communicating with her exiled father. I was expecting a lot all of this, but neither are mentioned past a throwaway. I feel having these aspects front and center would have given a MUCH stronger narrative.
There are also certain parts of her backstory that are just, honestly, kind of stupid. Specifically related to how she was born. It’s hard to really go into without spoilers.
6) Oh
Oh my god.
Let’s talk about the twists.
Chapter 6 brings five twists through it- one that is basically spelled out in chapter 3; one you should have figured out at that point; one that, while being really dumb, was clearly set up solidly in hindsight; one that’s really cliche and predictable and I’m mad at myself for not seeing coming; and, finally, The Twist.
The way the game handles most of these twists are good. In particular, having the Parrot Man’s identity confirmed after you already put the pieces together was VERY satisfying. The foreshadowed one between Noah and Karla was also extremely obvious, but made a lot of their relationship sweeter in hindsight. The solo Karla one was dumb, but there were actually a LOT of hints foreshadowing it. The twist involving Noah’s dad is extremely predictable and I absolutely should have seen coming but somehow didn’t.
The thing is, the game and story are AWARE you should have figured all of these out on your own, and treat it as if you did and cuts to the point- something I like, and again, felt especially satisfied with the Parrot Man reveal.
Then
There’s
The last twist.
I think the most insane thing about it is that it’s something that makes zero sense, yet is treated like all of the other twists in that the game expects you to have figured it out by now. Except, one problem: There is nothing in the game to EVER clue you into this. At best, the “foreshadowing” feels chalked up to badly written inconsistencies with the setting before the reveal.
And this is where, despite my critical thoughts on the review so far, I rated that I recommend this game.
Again, if you somehow got this far and are offended by offensively bad writing like a normal person, buy the soundtrack, watch a play through of chapter 4, then completely remove the rest of this game from your memory.
For people like me who, for some ungodly reason, LOVE these kinds of twists, this is where the game stops being a mid game if guilty pleasure, and starts getting AWESOME.
It’s hard to get into without spoiling, but oh my god. Oh. My. God. It’s so fucking ridiculous. It’s hard to even question and point out the plot holes because it’s just THAT unabashed about it. The game genuinely believes you should have guessed it by then with zero elaboration. One minute, you’re talking to Parrot Man about his hatred of Noah’s father, the literal next he is dropping the most insanely stupid shit you can imagine. And the characters are mildly surprised at best. It’s fucking amazing. Not a single thought went into making this believable, it just happens. It happens and expects you to not question it, to think it was obvious.
I wish I knew what was coming so I could have made a save after the chapter 6 auction. I wish I could just watch the climax and this stupid reveal over and over and over again. The game has no self awareness, it plays all of it seriously.
And I love it. I love it all so much. It has full confidence in itself that this is a good narrative decision. It really shows the strength a writer should have in pride in their work, even when they really, really, really shouldn’t.
The last scene of everyone after all of this does an extremely sappy trope that gets me and makes me cry every time. Also, I want to get Hell pregnant.
At the end of it all, after everything is said and done, Dark Auction is just a jump to the left.