Elisa: The Innkeeper - Prequel

If I had one word to describe this: Awful. The art may be decent, but the story, which should be the main point of a visual novel, is really bad. In less than 10 minutes of playing I stumbled upon clichés after clichés. The game is divided into three branches, each putting one of the character in the main spot, with the Innkeeper, being the link between them. It starts out with The Prince having a wet dream about Elisa. Honestly, that was a bit too much, and that's right at the start. Right there, I knew I would dislike the game. The personality of each character seems to be really fluid, not constant, and it just screams "bad writing!". They are also all jerks with almost no redeemable qualities, even if you choose the good option. First, there's The Prince. Depending on your choices, he's either a cheapskate, a liar, a thief, someone's not respectful, someone who doesn't know what privacy means, or even a beggar. He also may force Elisa to do his binding, or even threatens t...

I was going to play through all of this for the achievements as well as for the sake of the review, as I normally do, but it glitched me out of the game three times or so. Doubt I'm gonna finish it. Cute art and music, smoothish transitions, terrible characters that I just absolutely despise and hardly any valuable story. The vibe it tries to have is nice, but it's just lost somewhere in the background as the stupid, hateable characters argue in front of you all the time about whatever silly shit that occurs in no real human being's brain. It's kind of a disaster in the sense that it seems to have been written by someone who simultaneously hates and glorifies women. r9k? There's a bunch of technical things that are getting on my nerves and I can't tell if they tried to be archaic with the writing because it's just so bad. The dialogue is not realistic at all, making the already nonbelievable and one-dimensional characters plain ridiculous. This game is a joke. They tried here and there...

This prequel contains about fifteen minutes of inane bickering between a Prince and a Merchant, both unnamed, as if someone spent a while "free-writing" and then decided to make a visual novel out of it. There's no point, no plot, and only the barest shade of characterization. The author has not yet learned how to use punctuation. The innkeeper of the game's title shows up only briefly at the beginning, and then at what I presume is the end of this prequel. I say "presume" because after a line of her text, the screen faded to black while the music was still playing. A mouseclick brought up the main menu. I tried to start a new game, but then the new game's music and the old game's music were playing at the same time. I see no need to spend any more time on this.

This game has an annoying repetitive OST and the story is about a guy having a dream about a girl who works in the same inn as he is sleeping in

I can see why this is free. The story is weaksauce, the art is alright, it's certainly better than I could draw but it's not at the level I expect from a VN that intends to be commercially released, and the music is entirely forgettable. But the main problem is this engine, I don't know if they rolled their own or if it's some very cheap "make your own VN" thing, but aside from missing small things that every VN engine has, like text speed, it's buggy as all getout. The first time I played this, I got a few scenes in and suddenly the text and scenes blew by like a speeding car and crashed the game. The second time, I got what I assume is halfway through the game only for it to freeze on a scene transition and take me back to the main menu with no saves. This isn't ready for release, IMO. If it were fixed and tightened up presentation-wise, it might be an interesting little VN. But as it stands I simply cannot reccomend this.

Pros: -Neat artwork for a VN. -Good music. -A few instances of comic relief. -User friendly VN controls. -Helpful autoplay option. Cons: -No option to go back to the main menu after opening a tab. -Story not interesting enough. 1.5 to 2 hours of gameplay to cover all the three story arcs covering about 15% of the main game. Serves as a good preview of what to expect from the actual game. Recommended for fulfilling its role as a free to play prequel. Although you could do without playing this game. Rating- 5/10.

Over all a good game althought short, but its a prequel so that is to be expected. Amazing art.

The prequel looks promising, the music is very good and the art is amazing.

A little demo that advertises the full game. This is a great idea since now I know the quality of the full game and won't be ripped off. BTW this is good and you won't be ripped off if you buy the full thing.

Good game please keep up your good work :)