Kimagure Temptation and Chronicles of Refugia

So this is going to be a new thing where I’ll go through a couple of titles that I didn’t really have much to say on its own.

Kimagure Temptation:

Note: That’s not the main girl.
There’s a lot going for this one but plot isn’t one them. But really I doubt they were not going for a B-rated horror vibe. It’s made by Silky’s plus, the branding is confusing and I probably have parts wrong so I’m not going to touch it. But basically there’s three titles that share the same world. Nanairo which I had a lot of fun with, Temptation and Akeiro which isn’t translated but I think is closer related to this one. Basically you have a guy that’s uncovering a mass suicide mystery. Said guy is only there because he has high resistance against curse shit, otherwise they would’ve gotten a different guy.

Anyways, tt felt more like they were just having fun with that e-mote software and just slapped a plot on top when they dumped almost 200 different animations for the main focus, Anneliese. And that’s kind of sad considering that the rest of the cast gets 0, especially when they could’ve done a lot with Cooley.
It’s also kind of weird that they got some pretty good VAs when half of the side characters don’t really have that many lines to go through. Though to be fair, one of those characters actually did the best performance in this vn so maybe that’s why they got her. There’s a couple of themes going on and it’d just be spoilers if I list them. At least one is pretty rare to read through in the sense that it’s normally just either implied or something in the past.

Half of the endings are redundant to the point where I’d say you can just do a specific bad ending and the true ending and you’re set. The interactive component is pretty bare bones and I feel it’s mainly to differentiate two endings apart and that’s it. I don’t think there was ever a downside to going through all the options until it repeats. I did a small part where I did the opposite and the component I was trying to skip just gets inserted into the next scene or two since it’s an important item.

Part of what it was trying to do in the last 3rd kind of failed for me since I kind of went through tonal whiplash. Like I think they were trying to have a fun romp with the horror sections, but then comes a scene that can you’d see in a serious drama movie. But then it’s back to comical that eventually becomes serious by the last 5%. It’s mainly a question of “was this meant to be a campy fun experience, or was it a decent attempt of a plotline under 10 hours. And the rating fluctuates depending on what you think it was going for. Overall I gave it a 7, weaker than Nanairo but also half the length. Funny enough both of them have one really memorable scene.

Chronicles of Refugia

So this is an episodic title. Only the first chapter was released, and it was relatively cheap. It’s an otome game and I think it was around 8~9 dollars when it was first released. And it’s kind of rough, the art is great and the tracks are snazzy. Except there’s only like 5 tracks, sometimes no track is playing at all and some of them get way more playtime than the others. There’s no voices, and I’ve rated other titles highly without voices but I feel like they really should’ve have some for the main cast. Though really you just place the voices from other titles in your head anyway because otome has their own cliches.

There’s also some sound effects that take a couple of seconds and you can’t skip to the next line until it’s done. It’s split into three parts. The main plot that starts with a casino and what is probably the whole cast, and then pushes you 10 years into the past. It covers the backstory pretty well, basically the world is more or less fucked and most of the humans live in shelters. Your cast are nonhumans, they don’t reveal everybody’s monster but it’s part of the plot so I’m not mentioning most of them. It feels like it’s going to take forever when it feels like the whole main plot in this chapter covered maybe 1 to 3 weeks. It’s also kind of weak because most of it is exposition and explaining parts of why shit was happening 10 years in the future, of why the cast is there and their objectives. It works for what it is, but this whole chapter really feels like a prologue.

The second part is a side story concerning Noah, the sarcastic vampire and really the only plot that I can recommend from this chapter. It’s also the only section that feels like a generic otome but it works. I think most of the choices are pointless and there’s a couple of endings that work pretty well. If they only put this out and it was 5 dollars, I’d rate this higher than the whole experience. Technically you can pick whatever gender you want as the main character in here, so this one and maybe two other characters in the main plot work because there is no voice.

The third section feels like this should’ve been added in a different chapter since the main focal character wasn’t introduced in the past yet. What’s funny is not even the guy who refers to this guy is introduced yet. The only real reason I can see this being added here is to give perspective for the humans’ side.
I gave it a 5, what’s here is technically good but there’s not much of it. Like the character art is great but I think there’s only two cgs and neither of them are in the main plot. The price makes sense considering there’s no voices. And it might be the better call because you never know if the VAs are too busy with different works and forces some delays. Hell, some of them might die. If you’re a more positive person, you can think maybe the chapters will be frequent and maybe so but I don’t think it sold well at all.