So I made the mistake of buying yet another quin rose game, but this will be the last mistake I will make with Quin Rose. I loved the original Alice game, anyone who reads this blog will know it. Hell I’m even raving about how much I loved it in my original review. However my high hopes were crushed for the umpteenth time with this remake and after the jump is just a collection of rants about this game and Quin Rose in general. If you enjoyed this game or like Quin Rose, I suggest reading my original review and not going beyond this point! Additionally there’s CG spoilers everywhere so if you’re new to the game and don’t want to be spoiled it’s best to stay away. Otherwise, read on!
Let’s begin with the major difference from all previous Heart games. There are no more turns. Quin Rose made it into a straight VN so you just twirl your way around the choices, get the scenes immediately and not have to sit there with an excel spread sheet. THEORETICALLY THIS SEEMS LIKE IT WOULD HAVE BEEN A GOOD IDEA.
But in fact it wasn’t. By removing the turn system, it puts a focus strictly on QR’s writing and because you have no turns or turn events to break up the scenes, I STARTED TO PAINFULLY REALIZE THAT I REALLY JUST DON’T LIKE QUIN ROSE’S WRITING. I have absolutely no idea what made me like QR games so much but it finally dawned on me. The systems were so annoying and painful that it was like taking a beating and then getting rewarded for said beating. So after being like “hell yea thanks to my awesome strategy I just got to unlock Julius event 3 and Peter event 4” I didn’t even care what the event was. I was just happy that after spamming 50 turns I got my brief CG event reward. Now that there’s no PAIN to go through, IT MADE ME REALIZE HOW FREAKING BORING AND POINTLESS A LOT OF THESE EVENTS REALLY ARE.
Ok forget writing, let’s talk about the main reason this game was remade: Fujimaru Mamenosuke’s ART. YES we came here for THE NEW PRETTY ART RIGHT. So why oh why THE FUCK DO YOU CUT OUT LIKE HALF OF THE CGS. I am paying the same amount of money as I paid for Anniversary but FOR SOME REASON I am getting LESS CGs, LESS SCENES (since technically the turns had you have conversations with the guys) FOR THE SAME PRICE LOL. Is this some kind of joke? But let me sit back and stroll through my last few QR game reviews. Oh yes I see this pattern: suddenly there’s less of anything and everything, stuff feels half assed and shoddy and well I just don’t feel like I’m getting my money’s worth for the SAME PRICE THEY’VE BEEN CHARGING FOR LESS CONTENT IN ALL THEIR NEWEST GAMES.
Ok so back to Alice. I’ll admit right now, because this game disappointed me so much I couldn’t find the motivation to finish it. I WILL finish it because lol I paid for it etc, but I will be playing it on the side in between other things. As of this post, I’ve finished the stay & visitor routes of Peter, Blood, Elliot and the twins. Still, these 4 routes were pretty much enough to give me the idea of the quality of this so called “remake”. So let’s break this down:
Missing CGs:
As I mentioned above, there are a lot of CGs that were completely removed from the game. With Otomate for example, when they do a remake/port, they ADD new CGs. Quin Rose? Removes them. LAWL. Now okay I can understand removing CGs that don’t really contribute much to the story like this one:
However I’d like to ask their staff why the hell the below CGs have been cut out ??
I don’t get it. They made the game go from Cero C to Cero D but they cut out the suggestive CGs……does not compute. Also due to them removing a lot of CGs, they had to fill the space with SOMETHING. So what better to fill it with than…the same CG over and over!
At some points, there wasn’t even a CG at all and the scene just felt ENDLESS (aka the intro scene at the ball for every stay location ＿|￣|○ il||li) And to add more salt on to the wound, the CGs that they COULD have taken out like this one:
..they kept in even though it could have easily just been a pic of their sprites that would have given the same effect. (；一_一)
Half Assed CGs:
Missing Cgs aside, let’s talk about the REMADE Cgs. A Cg which once had multiple people in it has been reduced to 1 or 2 people…or to absolutely nothing.
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There’s a lot more but it would be endless to list them all -_-. If you’re just going to half ass the CGs anyway…WHY ARE YOU REMAKING IT. Clearly you don’t have the budget or time or resources (even Fujimaru admitted to asking a lot of art staff for help) so just DON’T DO IT. You are pretending to be a 5 star restaurant that serves Happy Meals to its customers! Those customers aren’t going to be coming back to your 5 star restaurant when they can get a happy meal at McDonalds for 1/8 the price! Lern 2 buzinez!
Additionally a lot of CGs which had Alice in them…have taken Alice OUT of them. What is the point of this. You make her be this strong heroine but you can’t even be assed to put her into a CG
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Also I haven’t even done Gowland’s route yet and I was scrolling through CGs for this post and CAME UPON THIS REALIZATION:
The Voice Changes
I have no idea why this even happened but they decided to hijack Dum’s voice. You know Dum’s voice. That horribly annoying voice that I secretly wish was gone but then just got used to it cause that’s just how he is. Yea well they actually replaced it. But here’s the kicker: They only replaced it in SOME scenes and not others. So as you are doing the twins’ route you seriously start to forget which twin is talking because Dum’s voice changes so much sometimes they just start to sound the same! I feel sorry for Dum fans! The other problem is because this is like the 3rd time they’re adding new voices, there are parts where the new voices come MID SENTENCE. This was PAINFULLY OBVIOUS in Blood’s route. He would have this somewhat higher pitched voice and mid sentence it would be LOUD AND DEEP. WTF ( ﾟ∀ﾟ)ァﾊﾊ八八ﾉヽﾉヽﾉヽﾉ ＼ / ＼/ ＼ . Needless to say, it ruined a lot of romantic scenes for me.
The Painfully Terrible Writing is More Clear Now
Here’s where I’m having a huge issue that I never realized before and I realize now after so many recent QR games just irritating me. As I mentioned above, due to them taking out the turns the scenes were pretty much back to back. However, it’s during these turns that you really got to “know the guy” and since the conversations changed as you grew affection with him, you could feel like he’s growing on both you & Alice. Without this, all of a sudden out of nowhere BLOOD HAS ALICE PINNED ON THE COUCH. FOR NO REASON. WHAT IS HAPPENING. You know in the first game Blood made me きゅん a little bit but dayum son I would be lying if I didn’t say my feelings were on the opposite end of the polar spectrum this time around.
Not only this but…..ALICE’S ATTITUDE MAKES ME WANT TO PUNCH A BABY. NO RATHER I JUST WANT TO PUNCH HER. I knew Alice always had problems and stuff I KNEW IT however if you played the Dia games she’s a lot more nicer and deredere and shit..and I got used to that….so playing Heart all over made me realize HOW MUCH I REALLY REALLY HATE HER LOL. Seriously in a scene with Blood on top of her on the couch she’s like “so do you like couches or something? Well what is it?” I’m sorry I laughed. I laughed all the way until the end because I was like “are you kidding me, how in any way is this romantic. This is a joke right.” Or how with the twins, they just one day go Oneesan you’re our first love. And she’s like lol. And then they’re like oneesan don’t play with our pure shota hearts! And she’s like きゅん and I’m like ｶﾞ━━(;ﾟДﾟ)━━ﾝ!! You know what, maybe the original intention was supposed to be this anyway. Maybe we were supposed to ignore the interaction from the turns and only focus on the main scenes. If that’s the case, then yea it’s no wonder I am annoyed because Alice is so fucking irritating but the guys just IMMEDIATELY FALL IN LOVE WITH HER despite her pushing them away (cough Elliot’s route) and babbling about how much better her sister is. (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻ At least with the turn system, you had to stalk them 200 times for them to finally be in love with her which in an odd way made sense to me :lol:. Don’t even get me started on the bullshit that went on in Peter’s visitor route how she refused to move in to the Heart castle until the END..SHE REFUSED TO MOVE IN BUT MOVED IN WITH EVERYONE ELSE WHY. ┻━┻ ︵ ლ(ಠ益ಠლ)
Also oddly enough Peter’s route gave me a new theory of him constantly going “forget the medicine bottle forget the medicine bottle”…maybe Alice drugged herself and in fact the entire game is just her tripping balls. Like Lorina died, Alice became some drug addict to escape reality and that’s why Peter’s like oh god don’t think about the fact that you’re just in 1 giant drug trip (which would actually match the original Alice stories har har.)
The Actual Improvements
In order to pretend that there’s good reason for this remake I’d like to point out some CGs that were at least an improvement upon the situation:
The kissing CGs for the most part were an improvement. Since well it actually looked like kissing now:
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They added extra scenes for Peter and an extra ending for him:
The ball scene was cute. It was obnoxiously shoved in for no fucking reason and totally cockblocks Blood’s route since I did Blood first…but lol yay Peter so I didn’t care. HOWEVER They added 1 new ending for Peter called ペーター&女王END WHICH TURNED PETER INTO A CRAZY YANDERE WTF.
The Peter that I know loves Alice and would never do anything cold and mean to hurt her intentionally. However I guess the few “bits” of coldness he had they decided to ramp up x 100% and they added the above scene where he’s like bitch u ain’t goin nowhere as long as I have anything to say. And when Alice kisses him to be like yea yea I’m staying his reaction is “don’t try to distract me with your kiss” WTF. PETER SHOULD BE LIKE JUMPING FOR JOY THAT ALICE EVEN SHOWS HIM ANY SIGN OF AFFECTION (ﾉಥ益ಥ）ﾉ 彡┻━┻. The yandere babble went on & on that I just completely 萎えた. Yea you know all those horrible FDs Quin Rose releases where they rewrite the routes and reset them to make the character totally different than before. Yea this was it. And this is basically a taste to me of how awful Twin World is going to be. I guess they just don’t care about the characters they have created. It feels like going into a museum and spray painting an afro on the Mona Lisa ヽ(。_゜)ノ. Hm wait this was supposed to be the improvement section…
Cgs that were better in Anniversary
You’d think with the newer artist the CGs would be better right. But due to the half assery, it was actually worse.
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Something about Peter’s face getting punched just feels more hilarious in the original while it feels like some half assed chibi with speed lines in the new one 😦
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They couldn’t even be bothered to draw a CG for the drunk Elliot scene so they gave us these half assed Chibis. They don’t even look like Fujimaru’s chibis which is what makes it even worse. I’m generally convinced that Fujimaru might have done SOME Cgs but she probably did some rough sketches, character sheets and the staff just kinda traced and filled in the gaps for the rest. I have the entire collection of Cheshire Cat Waltz and I’ve read it enough to be able to tell which art is just NOT Fujimaru’s work! Doesn’t help that the rest of the staff has bizarre pen names like C or GELL:
There’s actually more but my PSP crashed while trying to screen cap them all and I gave up 😆 (Which also makes me think that Quin Rose uses these nicknames to try to evade employment laws so the overworked and underpaid staff can’t come back and be like hey I worked here and they go that’s funny your name is Yamada Tarou not Gell, lol sorry!)
Concluding Thoughts:
I think for those whose first Alice game this was they may have liked it. But I just cannot forgive them for this half assed release. I didn’t expect anything that new BUT I expect the same quality with BETTER ART than Anniversary. I expected them to add or somehow “seamlessly” sew in all the turn scenes so that the romantic progression would feel more natural. I didn’t want some choppy patch work quilt that this game has become! And let’s face it, if I didn’t care or like the series, I woulda just been like lol shit game and used it as a paperweight/frisbee. But here I am completely sad and heartbroken that this had to be the final nail on the coffin of my dying trust and loyalty to Quin Rose. It could be just me growing out of otome games, I’ve taken this factor into great consideration, but recalling that I did enjoy SOME routes from Arcana Famiglia 2 I can at least say that it’s not all that! All the little inconveniences really damper the overall game for me and I start to question why I liked this game or series in the first place. The constant writer swapping, the disaster that was mirror world and the god awful fanfic that is Twin World makes me realize that nobody’s driving that bus anymore.
Anyway I think this is really it for me and QR games. Otomate’s not that great either but at least their art is consistently decent, and aside from a few idiotic yanderes, they do give me some sense of chara moe even if the story ends up being balls (see Snow Bound Land.) With Quin Rose, and the way their writing (and FD resets) are going, I don’t feel chara moe, the CGs are mostly derpy & terrible (compared to like really good sprite art) and the really really DULL and endlessly long scenarios with almost no effect on the story progression make me want to take a nap. Basically they are saying the same thing over and over in different ways. The best example I can think of is like one of those terrible light novels:
I woke up on a regular average day. It was just the most average day, and the sun was shining. My average day began as soon as the sun shined and my imouto would come knocking into my room. My imouto would always do this room knocking thing to wake me up on one of these average days.
(It’s almost on par with Otomate and their awfully written hit & run battle scenes in their 和風 games.)
I’ve ordered -8 and NinKoi which I’m waiting to receive in the mail. If I end up not enjoying either one, then it’s probably time to take a long (if not permanent) break from otome gaming. If I DO enjoy them though, then it just means that Quin Rose games are no longer for me. If you still enjoy quin rose games and don’t feel like they’ve dropped in quality then more power to you. For me, I think I’ve had my fill and it’s time to move on.
Bread Master Lee 
I think I’m moving on…unless QR turns around their “quality” I can’t deal with their template of BAD lol
Just asking out of curiosity, if Spade (or the last official canon game of the Alice series) gets released, will you ever play it? Or just move on lol?
Yea I totally agree with you on that and totally with the QR copy pasta lmao xD
They are bad in the exact same way each time so its pretty tiring by now.
The new twins look like they were designed by someone other than Fujimaru, I don’t even think Fujimaru’s doing the art…I think its like how they did the art for Anniversary copying Himeringo’s designs.
Either the heroines become wishy washy or they are so tsundere they completely ruin the romance for no good reason. That was always something that annoyed me with Alice, but the thing is, the mostly awesome guys always made up for it. That and the parts with long, tedious gameplay that spaced out the events, so besides getting more development with the guy you also got a break from her bitchyness.
Nowadays though, they’ve so completely run over our beloved characters that there’s no point. I can’t even recognize Elliot anymore. And I don’t even like their new character designs. The new twins aren’t nearly as hot as the grown up twins. I’m seconding my thoughts on getting their routes if they ever port it to smartphones now…
Like, at least otomate, even when being bad, has some variety on how they fail. QR is just copy pasta all around. Sad to see how such a great company fell so far.
lol yea I heard and I’m laughing my ass off because it’s perfect:
there’s less CGs so there’s less data to put into each route which makes it completely logical to be on a cell phone!
But also shows that QR’s games have come down to cell phone quality lol.
I think I’m basically done with QR games. I’ve picked up the “pattern” that’s in all their games and it pretty much irritates me now.
Their heroines become wishy washy and no better than Otomates, lots of yandere dudes lately, but the art still sucks and the price tag is still high. No thanks!
Have you heard? Apparently, QR thought this was such an awesome remake that they are porting it to smartphones. You’ll have to buy each character you want and will be able to choose between a voiced/non voiced version.
Like, are you kidding me QR? If it was a port of Anni, you know, the game with more CGs and some actual gameplay, I could see it being worth the money. But for this half assed remake that ends up offering half the quality and content Anni had? No way.
Also, how the heck are they gonna make those ends that required two characters to work? Like the Blood and Vivaldi endings? You can get some through one or the others route, but I’m guessing you’ll have to buy both. And what about friend events? Wanna know what, I don’t even care. Screw you QR.
Although, I will have to admit that if they do this for Twin world, I might get the two new chara routes just to check them out. Would be a lot cheaper than buying a whole game that was just going to shit all over my favourite characters.
I guess I really enjoyed Anniversary that I was able to finish it despite all the turns. But here I am 2 months crawling on a turn-less game lol.
Yea I’ve only read terrible things about Doubt but I hope you can enjoy it somehow but yea I’m glad I didn’t bother.
And well I’m pretty old honestly sometimes I wonder how long I should be doing this hobby.
I think it’s almost come down to me just playing games for the sake of writing sarcastic reviews xDDD
Agreed. Quinrose is what Otomate used to be…seems some Otomate stuff is decent these days (like Shinobi Koi Utsutsu -happy fluff, but that fluff is so moe! I’m loving the characters so far <3).
I bought the PC ver of Alice, the anni one and the one on this review. The turns were sooo long that I could only finish Boris once -_-; so sad to hear about this one. I've wasted too much $$$ on this title!
Gah! I bought The expensive ver. of Doubt because I loved Arabians Lost so much (Curtis Nile!). I was so waiting for it (for years, like seriously) and now ppl are saying it's bad (dies a little inside).
A while ago, I couldn't find any good games (the Genroh period..ugh, I fell asleep playing that one so many times I gave up) , but I love wafu, and there's been an influx of really good ones, imho (Hanasaku, Chou no Doku, Geten no Hana, etc.) so I've been pretty happy. Sorry to hear you've had to waste money on so much junk 😦 hope something nice comes up for you soon! It's kind of sad to see otogamers disappear…makes me feel…gasp! Old…
You’re welcome, maybe one day you’ll get back into it again. Just stay away from the little mermaid one, if I don’t like it then you might not like it. I was thinking to myself awhile back, if I could I would try to send some ideas to Quin Rose about a wizard of Oz game, and have it stay virtually the same to the original novel series, not the movie and not whatever went on with Ozmafia, which I read your review on and was a little let down about the game. But no point in moping about it, hope we can talk more together again soon.
After playing enough QR games I can tell well enough to stay far far away from Snow Black but thank you for the suggestion!
Even though I’ll never be able to get Quin Rose’s games, I thought the remake would be cool, but I guess not. It’s a bit of a let down to tell you the truth. You might still give them a chance, they have a Snow White game coming out this year that looks a bit promising, it’s called Kuroyukihime -Snow Black- . The art looks pretty good, and the plot seems decent, it might be worth a try. I heard they’re coming out with a little mermaid game in the future, it does not interest me much at all, the art doesn’t catch my attention, the characters seem dull, and I don’t think the plot will be much better. So that’s all I’m going say, so I don’t annoy you. I’m a guy if you’re wondering.
Yea I thought they would do that too and maybe in SOME places they left some of the “turn” conversations but since it’s all so shoved in, it feels weird anyway.
And yea I’m still sitting here wondering what exactly is it that made the game go from Cero C to Cero D??? Nothing looks any more “erotic” than it did in the original version (especially since they cut out so many CGs lol)
I don’t even think Fujimaru did the art for twin world. It reeks of copycat artists!
it just says “I should see her” or “It’s a good idea to see her” lol
What does the screenshot say about visiting Vivaldi? (can’t read japanese sorry)
I’m really glad I decided to put this off for later.
As someone who actually liked HnK system the best out of all Alice games – if wishing for counter that counted actual turns, not rounded-up values – this game is really useless to me if it doesn’t have a lot of new content. I had my doubts, but I thought they would know better than just put scenes back-to-back – figured they would put some of dialogue from regular “stalking” at least, or perhaps something new. And I don’t care for art that much, particularly if they didn’t add a lot of new (and sexier) CGs, so it’s seriously not worth it.
As to why they cut out Alice…I have a nagging suspicion this might be QR going the way of other otome game makers and making it easier for player to “self-insert” as opposed to making the heroine an actual character.
Also WTF is the deal with Twin World and that hair?
Yea the quin rose anti-thread had a field day with this lmfao
“Not only that but they have a scene with Curtis eating Aileen’s eyelashes or something.”
I’M LAUGHING SO HARD ARE THEY FOR REAL
Wow, that sucks, two games+shipping is a lot of money. If they are lost I hope you can get a refund without any issues at least. Honestly, I wouldn’t blame you for quitting otome games for a while if that happened though. Given yours (and mine’s) current enthusiasm with these games, that sort of frustration would be the nail in the coffin for me.
Or maybe Fujimaru asked for help from too many people lol, that it became a medley of crap from different artists.
The older artists were not only creative in terms of shots and design, but they created better character designs as well.
Or maybe Quinrose was on drugs and decided to fire all the good writers and artists to reduce their budget 😛
See I’m not sure if it’s even Fujimaru doing the work or Quin Rose going “hur dur here’s like a set of 10 poses, use these to make 50 CGs even if the same pose is used for multiple charas” and the art staff is like “ok pls give me fujimaru’s character sheet”. I’ve seen cg packs where they basically had like “rough sketches” of the poses and it looks almost as terrible as when I personally tried to use a posebook to trace poses for fanarts hahaha (which is sad since im not even a professional)
and yea there’s a lot of ZOOM INS on heads in the CGs which makes them look really creepy. In that sense the older artists (himeringo) definitely were “more creative” in their choice of designs. Twin World is some kind of AU FD to Heart no Kuni I think and it’s been announced a few months ago. But yea it’s best to avoid and well probably just best to avoid QR games in general because well this is the quality they put out 😆
^ I mean Spade* not Diamond
I have always thought that the older artists put more heart into the art than Fujimaru has. Ya, Fujimaru can make characters look hot/cute/moe or whatever but the older artists at least placed more effort into their work and used better angles/composition/ etc etc etc.
Some of the newer drawings are indeed very creepy and awful…
And forgive me for the language but what is this “Wonderful Twin World” SH1T they put out? D: Just shouldve went straight to Diamond to end the series already…
I’m sure they played it but didn’t care lolol.
And yea I am with you on Twin World, I won’t be buying that (or any other QR games).
And yea having her be married is the worst it reminds me of that Aeromarie game “Gin no Kanmuri” like you go around NTRing lmao xD
(UNless maybe shes only married to blood in his route? idk)
and yea I feel you on the mediocrity of otome games. The 2 games I bought in January are missing in action, I don’t even know if my package got lost or what but that’s kinda killing my motivation too. I’ve been playing FF14 in the meantime and I just play Alice to waste time on my commute.
And lol dialovers I’m done with that crap. It’s at the Alice/Hakuoki/Hiiro no Kakera milking level now and as we can tell from history repeating itself, that never leads to anything good.
“The Voice Changes”
Say what? Now I always knew that the game was gonna be crap without the turn system, and I got the CG pack to see the art damage myself, but this I had no idea about. Just wow, did no one play test the game and say “this sounds like complete crap”. Probably not, but I guess it wouldn’t matter anyways given QR’s new quality standards. I’m so over them and this series that I don’t even wanna buy any more doujins. Not even the new Julius one! Much less even consider paying for their new crap game that removes our beloved pair of twins to add….another pair of twins we don’t care about. Brilliant! Oh, and make her married to Blood because it’s not like that is gonna make any players feel so guilty they won’t even want to play the other guy’s routes, even if they hate Blood. Everyone loves reverse NTR right?
Meh, I think I’m also needing a break from otome games. I have jewelic nightmare and I don’t even want to play it. It’s all like, been there, seen that you know? I’ve seen most fetishes and clichés, and there are few otoge with a good enough story to draw me in despite the flaws (from the top of my head, I’d only play CZ and BWS without the otoge element). I’m hoping the bee sex game will at least amuse me for a while but it’s like, even r-18 is boring now. I have all the megaten series to play and would rather save the money to buy a note 10.1. Unless something really good comes along or I get a new furry/monster boy game to amuse me (the werewolf one doesn’t count because it has an annoying vampire, fuck that), I’m out of this scene for the time being.
Also saw the new DiaLo CDs. Which is certainly going to spawn another game. Couple that with the sub par sequel, the remake of a relatively new game on a different system just to get more money from fanatic fans, and I think DiaLo is going to end up just like the Alice series in a few years, at most.
Why, QR? I used to love the Alice series, but they sound like they’ve just been awful lately. Hopefully -8 and NinKoi won’t be as terrible.
Yea I recall raving about how much I liked their games and now I look back and go HMMM WHY DID I LIKE THEM SO MUCH/!?
Maybe at the time I was sick of Otomate’s doormat heroines or something so QR’s girls felt like a refresher…but after more decent heroines from both Otomate and Rejet, QR’s just start to annoy the crap out of me! And I hope they are as well, still wondering where they are floating about!
This is really sad to hear about QR considering one of my first otoge was from them and I quite enjoyed that one. (Wizard and Master) Otome games at heart should be stories like any other visual novels, and with the content decreasing its quality I can see why they’ve got bad reviews. Well I don’t blame you for taking a break at this rate, but i do hope your up-coming games are more enjoyable for you. :’)
haha well they already have Twin World which is basically a blatant “we just want to remake a fanfiction with Alice characters” game.
At least they’re being blantly honest instead of ninja changing characters like they did in this game and most of their FDS -_-
nah I”m just killing time with it waiting for the other games to arrive lol.
I picked airmail and with all the snow storms its taking its sweet time coming from Japan.
Hopefully I’ll have it this week but in the meantime I have FF14 to take up my time so Alice has been reduced to time wasting during my commute lol
If anything’s bad about -8, it’s prolly the length of each character’s route and/or the artstyle. I think it’s possible to finish one route in 3 hours? They have quite a handful of common events with different variations according to the guy you chose, so after the first playthrough, you’ll be skipping past quickly.
Whereas art-wise, it’s definitely very much different from Otomate’s eye-candy… Backgrounds are simple and recycled many times, character sprites have just a few variations, and some of the poses are drawn rather awkwardly.
It feels like a low-budget otoge if not for the VA lineup, tbh. XD
Btw, what’s next after this horrid Alice title? Or are you going to push yourself to clear this before starting a new one?
Looking at how disastrous it is, QR is probably thinking for another remake version 2014 / 2015 for Alice or perhaps another anniversary remake per year!
Rejet is probably our only otome savior. HuneX count as well, hope their next game would be great. Ahhh I was so looking forward to otome now that I bought a few and start reading / learning Japanese Y U DO DIS?!
Actually Quin Rose already ported Alice to the Vita – at least the remake is available via PSN to download as far as I read. I’m guessing it’s also then adjusted to fit a PSvita screen? I’m not sure. Also the average day thing I just made up XD But a lot of light novels really do sound like that e_e;
I’m thinking about doing some kind of post for the 2014 releases and point out just how many of them are ports/FDs rather than actually new games.
Thanks for the review, as usual! “Wonderful Half-assed World”… gold!
Anyway, I always wondered how profitable ports are, since companies seem to love them more than pointless sequels. I figure that you wouldn’t have to hire voice actors and artists again (or at least, not for the whole game) so it’d be cheaper… but everyone interested has likely already bought/played the game! This is not just with Quinrose games, too. Starry Sky has been doing a similar thing (apparently showing no signs of slowing down). It’s only a matter of time until QuinRose or honeybee announce PS Vita ports, LOL! 😉
As for that “average day” nonsense, I figured they were trying to be repetitive in an artistic way, but that failed miserably, LOL. It’s not an easy style of writing to pull off. Those bunny CGs are super adorbs, though~ ❤ Also, I laughed my arse off at the blatant trace/"highly referenced" kiss CGs you compared.
While your rants are funny, I hope you get to play something you really enjoy next time!
if you count all the ports its like the 5th time?
1. port to PS2
2. Port to PSP
3. Anniversary for PC remake
4. Anniversary port to PSP
5. This game
so yea like 5th time xD
Yea new art is better especially Gowland & Peter but missing CGs and derpy CGs wtf 😦 Defeats the whole point!
sorry this game has been suuuuch a drag I’ve thrown it aside many times and played FF14 instead ＿|￣|○ il||li
and yea its not cheap. Limited edition QR game: 8500 yen, Otomate game: 7800 yen wtf? I know Otomate FDs are pretty watery too so they’re not angels either but they have way more staff and a milking cow of hakuoki/dialovers/amnesia. QR cant milk anything anymore (this game only sold 6k copies)
yea i mean if you’re going for consistency then it might be better to stick to the “himeringo” style of the older games.
sure the systems and turns can be annoying BUT if you know what you’re doing it’s not as awful and you get a lot more CGs so the scenes don’t feel monotonously long & endless. Maybe I’ve become hard to please too, it’s hard to say but I hope the games I’m waiting for change my mind 🙂
I saw the bad reviews too but I still had hopes I might enjoy it….guess not.
I started Ace’s route on the subway today to kill time and when Peter shows up now it just breaks my heart ( ；∀；)
Rejet is okay when they make goofy games like Tokyo Yamanote and Renai Bancho. Tiny x Machinegun was great too (music is always amazing) but yea I think Diabolik Lovers and their upcoming Bad Medicine are just not my thing. Also I enjoyed Dot Kareshi. I think they have something for everyone and their games are usually high quality.
omg I”m so glad to hear that!
I saw bad reviews on Amazon and was like NOO NOT AGAIN but I’m glad it’s enjoyable! I can’t wait till it arrives 😀
This is the 3rd time QR does that game, right? .-.
I like the new art, much better, but I didn’t know about that missing cgs. Wth QR?
I tried to play the Anniversary version but that system was so confusing to me ><'
I'll try to play this one, I know the writing is horrible and all XD
And I LOVE Peter forever *O*
Yes! finally another review (reading your review makes me happy even if they’re rants since it’s way too funny LMAO) I seriously wanna flip a table reading part by part (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻, These kinds of games aren’t cheap and yet what they give to their costumers are shitty,cheap,half-assed CGs (It’s the selling point of the freaking game!!!!) and crappy story. orz. Seriously, if only these kind of companies would take their time in releasing their games, alot of their customers would be happy to wait for their game release. (As long as the story doesn’t sound like it came from a fanfic too LOL) 8(
I have both anniversary and the remake. At first, I didn’t know which one to go with. Graphics-wise, the remake looks superior, but then I wanted to play Clover, Joker and Omochabako and thought it would be better to go with Anniversary to get used to the art. I read some reviews on amazon, which complained about the remake but at the same time recommended it to newcomers and been waiting for yours before making my final decision. Turns out I should stick with Anniversary after all.
It’s sad to hear about your disappointment with otome games and especially Quinrose that you used to recommend a lot. I can empathize, since I’m an RPG fan and played so many and been disappointed with so many to the point that I have become so hard to please. Well, I hope -8 and Ninkoi will end up worth your purchase and restore your faith in the genre.
I was really hyped up for the Alice remake…… I heard a lot of bad reviews and now I’m glad I didn’t buy it. I don’t really understand why Quinrose rush out so many games like that. Wouldn’t fans prefer a good game that the creators took time to make, then something pushed out for the sake of quantity?
Btw this is totally unrelated but what do you think of Rejet? I’m curious about their games but apparently a lot of their games have yanderes in them? I’m not all that into yanderes….
If it’s any consolation, -8 is way better than SBL (the most recent game you’ve reviewed that i’ve tried). They make no pretense in disguising the plot as anything other than being a fangirl’s way of forcing compulsory in-school love relationships. That said, while the premise is kinda harebrained and the justifications almost non-existent, the characters are definitely the main highlights.
I’ve gone through 4 of the 8 guys so far and everyone’s enjoyable (if only ‘coz their conversations and predicaments made me tsukkomi like mad). I’m sure you’ll get your moe-moe kyun meter tingling in no time. XD
Ah, and, i dunno ’bout you but the VA lineup in -8 is superb as well. Can’t help but imagine a different character in place of the ones in the otoge due to similar voices (Ukyou from Amnesia acting way more harebrained and eccentric than usual, Shou from UtaPri/ Senri from Norn9, ironically, being vertically-challenged. again). LOL.
Don’t give up otome gaming yet! The year’s just started. ❤
old ones have horrid systems, new ones have horrid content and lots of terrible yanderes pick your poison! 😆
Yea I am gonna sell them to my local Book Off lmao I got like $30 for them XD
nah I won’t bother with Ken ga Kimi because I don’t like wafuu games lol. i hate historical games blah lol personal preference
and yea I heard Arabian’s Doubt sucks hah I’m glad it won’t be ruined for me!
Oh mann after reading so many reviews of bad Quinrose games I think I’ll be keeping Quinrose games within a 10 foot radius, or maybe I’ll just play the old ones since they’re getting so bad that even someone who hasntnplayed can see them.
Btw I heard you were selling certain bad kusoges or sth?
So Quinrose’s games become like otomate, that’s too bad since I like their past works orz. Btw you are lucky for not ordering Arabian Doubt, I heard from friend the FD is suck. Do you play Ken ga kimi? I heard lots of positive review for that one 😛
I’ve sold what I could on ebay but otherwise I have a local bookoff that took one back for $30 so I plan to bring a ton of them back as well. It’s not much but better than them sitting around collecting dust since I will never play some of those garbage games again 😛 And yea I also have mostly limited editions and you just can’t get much for them especially when they’re totally unpopular stuff (aka any quin rose game)
lol I’m glad my rage cheered you up! 😆
I figured it was a month since my last post so I wanted to post something to show that I”m not totally dead/rage quit otome gaming haha (though this game almost made me ugh)
I’m not sure maybe its a combination of all 3? I’ve played good and bad games but as far as quin rose I definitely will say their quality has gone down which is not surprising because they keep trying to release 1 game per month on a small team.
Glad you found the reviews useful and thanks for being a long time reader 😀
And honestly the turn system is bad but it felt like it gave some what of a game play transition between all the scenarios (and well previous game had more CGs even if more derpy ones.)
I KNOW RIGHT wtf Peter T___T I was all like ^_^ at the start of peter’s route then at the end （ಠ_ಠ）?! 😦 Lol I kinda half assed Arabian’s lost and got the main events but for all the side events I took a friend’s save file because at the time there was no decent guide available xD It was still fun though! See I wasn’t sure if its just bad QR games or my interest in otome games so yea hoping that the new games will brighten my spirits. I don’t think I’ll be buying anymore remakes or ports of anything again.
haha I can’t believe it turned out this way. It took me a month just to do 4 characters wtf lol
yea I know right? Like must be a bunch of low paid interns I mean the games don’t sell much ( this one only sold 6k copies) and they gotta pay money for all the voice acting so….xD Yea they’re definitely quantity over quality now
Magically wedged between Alice’s armpit I think xD
Honestly I’d take the old hell turn system over this any day. Those turns were oddly fun and the conversations in them were more interesting than some of the “scenes” that we get (or the scenes they added in ugh)
And yea why do a remake if the CGs are gonna suck anyway! That was the whole point!
Hello, Hinano. I’m sorry for asking this out of the blue, but do you know where to resell your otome games….? Over the years, I’ve bought a whole bunch but haven’t had time to play the majority of them, and I’ve tried selling at Amazon and eBay but have had no luck 😦 They’re mostly limited edition, too, so it kind of hurts when people come up and ask if they can buy it for less than half the regular price just because I mention that I need textbook money orzlll
Thank you so much for your time, Hinano.
Yay a review… sorta <333
(This has been a bad month so far but this cheered me up, thank you Hinano <3)
And, have the otome games always been this bad and you're just getting more fed up with them, or are they actually getting worse?
I meant Kurorisa, not Taiyaki. My bad.
Hey! First time commenting after almost one year following your blog!
Well, it’s pretty sad that QuinRose went downhill… I was hoping to play that remake since I, like Taiyaki, was scared of the turn system.
Just wanted to say that I really love your blog! Your reviews are usually funny and help me on my walkthroughs since I am not very good at Japanese, but since there are so many kusoges being released, I wouldn’t blame you if you stopped playing.
Thanks for being awesome! (and sorry for any grammar mistakes, I’m not a native speaker.)
It’s really a shame that they were able to make the game worse in the remake that’s supposed to have better art and all of that kind of stuff. I remember that you were totally hyped for Peter and then that yandere ending showed up and we were all “Wat is dis bullshizz?” And I didn’t even play any of Quin Rose’s games (except arabian’s lost in which I failed to get all the money and ragequit XD). Besides, I definitely don’t think the reason you didn’t enjoy this was because you’re growing out of otome games, even I, who admiteddly hasn’t played that many otome games, was almost zoning out and going like either “Meh” or “lol wtf?”. I just hope NinKoi and -8 are good so you can heal that heartbreak a bit ^^
haha im sorry but even when you make a post where your ranting its still really funny!And i cant believe quin rose would do something so stupid…..UNBELIEVABLE!
Woww they really hit rock bottom with this one. It’s funny that even with so many people working on the art they couldn’t manage to include all of the CGs from the original. I still don’t get why they force themselves to work under such a tight schedule, but I guess they have zero confidence in producing actual quality stuff so they just aim to cram as many releases as possible.
Dude where is one of Blood’s arms in that dancing Cg O.o
I’m staying up late and I found this to read your rants about this lawl
this is so sad coz I’m looking forward to play the remake. I was afraid because I’m not used to Alice’s system in the first place. When I read this review I thought well, they removed the going round and round system which would be good if we thought, but if they replaced with crappy writing then there’s no meaning orz.
and those half assed CGs are just horribles. bunnehssss are irresistable but SERIOUSLY.
but yeah you must be tired from all those horrids kusoge since 2013. hopefully NinKoi and -8 is good! REJET YOU MUST GIVE HOPES