Episicava - Vol. 1

Good art- bad story. Meaningful choices are actually just guesses that zap you dead if you guess wrong. It reminds me of a comic book someone could write about an immature 13 year old trash talking super villain. I had to force myself to finish it as it would not be fair to review it if I had not finished it. It was a struggle. The writer created an interesting world but the story leaves alot to be desired. Example: Main character is in a tough situation so we give him a new power or say he wasn't really trying hard until now--ect. Save your money!!!

Great art, music, story, and special effects. Well-written but not with a lot of exposition which isn't that important in Action VN's anyway. One important fact is that it is very long which is great for around 10 dollars. Can't wait for Vol. 2 and I have only played 3 hours so far. Most games this price are 3 hours or less making this one much better than most imho But the cringe is strong though I think this game is supposed to mock cliches so it's intentional but I like it since it's hilarious.

Some people consider visual novels to be watered down versions of regular novels because the story is usually told from a person's perspective only, with many constraints. This game is even more watered down than that. As much as I want to enjoy it, it feels like I'm reading some juvenile's fantasy. It feels like the writer is either inexperienced or impatient as they skip through much of the necessary steps of building up the atmosphere, characters, plot etc. Also, Alacria's sprite isn't even aligned properly! She literally doesn't have a pair of lower legs! As such, it is simply impossible for me to recommend this visual novel. The dev will really have to step up on a lot of things in their next creation if they wish to persist without being buried by other competitors.

Great Game.

5/10. Mediocre art. Poor writing and characters that were actively offputting. A few interesting threads in the story which hint at future improvement, but which can't really elevate the present experience. I should be giving this a "not recommended" but I feel bad doing so for something that skirts the edge and has so few reviews. Technical details / Presentation: no technical concerns. The art is mostly meh, except for a couple things: 1 character's sprite cuts off at her knees, so there's a visible gap between her and the bottom of the screen. Second, every single CG (or simply non-sprite image) of a given character looks completely different (the MC's sprite looks completely different from the the three other images of him, which all look completely different from each other). It's a little jarring. Music is pretty listenable, though nothing really sticks out about it. Gameplay: It's a VN. There are a few choices here and there, but they tend to lead swiftly to an untimely death,...

This VN is so bad that it made me angry. Cut content. Terrible writing. A mary sue player character who is so morally bankrupt and unlikeable, right from the start, that he makes me want to puke. Update: Oh, now I know why the main character is such a piece of shit. Turns out he's a socialist.

It's so hard to bear with the bad writing of this linear "Visual Novel". It's more like a kinetic novel but they forced themselves to add arbitrary choices where one choice leads to an immediate bad ending, just to be able to label Episcava a Visual Novel and not a Kinetic one. There are forced battles and action scenes at every point in the story. The main character constantly gets into unnecessary fights an immature child would get into for the sake of defending their pathetic ego. And if he decides to behave like a normal human being for once, some random event happens where he has to fight. Some criminals want to shoot him and his friends in a drive-by all of a sudden or he has to save his classmate by the thugs that want her "to go to their apartment for some quick fun." The fight scenes are badly written and it's hard to care about the outcome because the annoying protagonist is going to win and keep boasting about it anyway. I had to skip most of the text just for the few scenes...

I am very sorry to say I couldn't make it through more than a few minutes of this game. Vague spoilers for those couple of minutes below. I really like the art, and was intrigued by the mention of Fate/Stay Night as the game's inspiration. Looking at the screenshots alone, I could tell a world had been crafted here. But almost immediately upon starting the game, it heavily dumps lore exposition on you in ways that made me feel as if I was back in school. Suddenly there were so many names and terms simply being rolled out like a history book, rather than being introduced organically into the story. Now, I can certainly look past such things if the immersion is there, but only a few seconds later the game introduces a rather sudden, dark scene illustrating the main character's past. It's incredibly dramatic, and is written in a way that perhaps some 40 hours into an RPG would be written, in that it assumes you will have sympathized and connected with the characters at this point. But u...