In hopes of seeing some actual good endings, I decided to get the Virche FD. 🤡 And yea it’s impossible to talk about this game without spoilers so there will be spoilers, however it will be mostly my personal thoughts and not a full summary. CGs will be either only from the official site or just sprite screenshots from the game.
Encore and Emotion
So the Encore section is basically “AU endings” to the first game and well the writers decided “let’s make everyone even more crazy than before like they did 10 years ago in Rejet games YEAAA”. The routes begin kinda midway through the first game and derail into crazy land. The Emotion section is stories that take place either after the good end or the bad end of the game.
Mathis Encore – So they decided to make Mathis a lady-killer in a literal sense. I mean wow, I can’t believe it, they actually made him more psychotic than Camille! Basically all the murders that Camille committed had now been shifted over to Mathis doing his bidding instead. And he’s in this crazy murder trance until he stabs Ceres enough times😇. Poor Mathis, was actually a good boy but they wanted to make him yell and sound all yandere like a budget Kaji Yuki. 😂😂 And the Jean thing isn’t even resolved (and it’s this in a nutshell lmao) so it ends up being such a weird plothole – but fortunately we know what the real ending is. What was most angering is how fucking Camille got a happy ending out of this. (ノ# ﾟдﾟ)ﾉ ┫:･’∵:．┻┻:･’．:∵
Mathis Emotion – UGH so this section has after stories both after the good and bad ends of the last game. The bad end after was weird, Mathis just glitched and then it ended with an awkward CG that was definitely NOT drawn by yomi. And in the after story of the good end, everything for me was ruined by the fact that Camille is basically ~forgiven~ for all his bullshit and Mathis vowing to make up for his crimes. W H Y THOUGH. щ(ﾟДﾟщ) And then despite this supposed to be a happy end, they reveal that Mathis will die once a year because he glitches when his love with Ceres gets too strong. WONDERFUL. Can’t even get a happy ending in the happy ending! (ノ# ﾟдﾟ)ﾉ ┫:･’∵:．┻┻:･’．:∵ The rest of the route ended up being this ~past memoir~ of Camille and honestly I am so fucking sick of this guy being not only a huge jackass to Mathis in 2 games, but derailing his only GOOD ENDING. ( *`Д’)凸 Instead of seeing cute scenes with Mathis and Ceres we went on a memory lane trip for the abusive asshole!! The entire concept of forgiving this abusive fuck just enrages me. ༼ง=ಠ益ಠ=༽ง
Lucas Encore – Honestly what was even the point of this section? Lucas dies either way like in the first game, and mostly in the same fashion. There’s just less of a focus on Pedoccino and his pedo speeches. It’s mostly focused on Lucas hack n slashing everyone with his spear. The only actual good thing was we got to see a small flashback of how Lucas actually had met Ceres early on as kids when they were running away from their parents. At the time Ceres wasn’t told his name so that his parents wouldn’t know he’s there. I got excited when he didn’t die after the battle with Pedoccino’s army but then the game is like lol did you forget that he didn’t wanna reliver and was like almost 23 years old? Jetstream pugya 🤪🖕So yea get fuckin rekt Lucas once again.
Lucas Emotion – I had forgotten how grotesque the bad end was for Lucas and well I honestly don’t know what else I expected to see out of this little “after story”. Oh you want to see that gross bad ending but extended version? Here ya go! 🤪 And since Lucas’ “good end” in the last game was a bad end too, they just straight up started making shit up in here by having Ceres magically follow him to hell as she watches him get stabbed a million times to atone for his sins lol. Like come on, if you can make shit up like this in here, then why not make shit up in the Encore ending and give him just ONE happy end. Make him a reliver, make something GOOD happen to him at the end. Because basically it means he gets 0 happy endings just like Mathis and then it’s like well what’s even the point of this fandisk???? 🤦♀️
Yves Encore – Weirdly enough I actually kinda enjoyed this section as it was a bit of a different spin on the entire story. It also kinda gave hints that Scien pretty much knew all the bullshit that Dahut was doing which made it really interesting for me. The angst/crazy was brief (and kinda weird like come on guys the place is gonna blow and you’re making out) and the only thing that truly bothered me is how Crapaccino was suddenly one of the “good guys”. Like no, sorry but you’re still king pedo, and even if you’re temporarily on our side in this route I still wish for you to be burned at the stake 🔥🔥. That said I actually quite enjoyed the good ending! Was surprised at the outcome and it’s kinda bittersweet in a way, but it kinda has that “hope” feeling I really liked. The 2nd encore ending hit my weak point and actually made me cry. 😭 Weirdly enough I can’t truly say either end was a true happy end, but somehow I liked both of them…a lot more compared to the previous 2 routes.
Yves Emotion – The bad end after story turned Ceres into a yandere necrophilliac so I don’t have much to say about that one. Good end after story was surprising as I expected Yves to die but then magically, in the nick of time, he lived! I still thought it was funny how they were like “well I’ma die soon how about one last bang for the road”. Too bad the CG was terrible as usual. But in the end, everything worked out and Yves even got a wedding CG! (Though the black dress made it look like a funeral LMAO but okay.) Everything resolved really well and actually I’m happy with this ending for once!! Now why couldn’t they just do this for Lucas and Mathis? Or do the writers just hate them so much they don’t deserve a happy ending?
Adolphe Encore – This was so bizarre cause Adolphe’s route was supposed to be the one that reveals and kinda solves everything? But instead it just kinda derailed off into “Ceres is dying from poison” and Adolphe has to decide to either live with her dying body or do a happy murder suicide end lmao. It was just so weird and confusing especially since they kinda briefly skimmed over the entire Liam/Christine plot.
Adolphe Emotion – Pretty much a little “tie up loose ends” ending where Adolphe and Ceres try to live their best for Ankou and Nadia is recovering and pretty much everyone is alive. Adolphe gets his wedding ending here so nothing particularly bad happened. It wasn’t that interesting, and if it wasn’t for the fact that Ankou is getting a route in this FD, this would be another jab in the wound for Ankou fans to be honest lol.
Scien Encore – This was actually funny because you have everyone against Scien here, except Ceres, even though it’s his route. They easily revealed the truth about Christine and Liam here and it follows the same story as Yves where Scien was going to kill Ceres to use her body to make live clones to absorb the radiation on the island. Ceres of course is like yea ok anything for u BBY 🥰 but everyone else was like wait no wtf lmao. It was so comedic especially Ceres’ reactions of “uwu he’s so posessive of me (as his lab rat)” 😂 The ending was similar to the clone end in Yves’ route but it had Scien being a tsundere grandpa and I was really cute lol. (n*´ω`*n)
Scien Emotion – Daaaamn Scien was a deredere cupcake in his good end after story. (and also very horny 😂😂) Also laughing at how he just had this giant ass mansion sitting unused for 60 years until this after story?? 😂😂 I’m glad he got a happy ending but bummed he only got the proposal CG and not the wedding CG. I’ll let it go cause he had some horny scenes at the start of the route. (́◉◞౪◟◉) Not much commentary for the bad-after since he just went yandere over his love for imaginary girlfriend Ceres lol.
Drifter – This is the arc that focuses on Yves’ grandfather Tamaki, and how he ended up on the island. It shows how his ship from Japan got caught in a shipwreck and he was the only survivor. Since it’s the same artist, it literally looks like gramps basically escaped out of Ken ga Kimi. 😂 Because of that unfortunately the ojisan voice and young ikeman sprite didn’t match at all. It also focuses on how Tamaki met with Ankou, gave him that name, the outfit, earrings and asked him to be a grim reaper of the spider lillies so people wouldn’t burn them down. The only thing that had me HMM was that Tamaki’s wife, Lilu, was an unborn baby when he arrived on the island and by fate he ended up meeting with her I guess 15~17(?) years later since she had been visiting him for a while before they had a baby and she died almost immediately at age 21. I guess age doesn’t matter in the fantasy setting here but it was kinda awkward lmao. But ehh fine I can roll with it. I wish we had a bit more background on Yves’ parents cause other than Noel, I honestly can’t remember anything about them.
Ankou – So they finally decided to give Ankou the good end he deserved and the reason why I even bought this FD. A lot of the route was insanely boring because it was the exact same parts of Adolphe’s route form the first game so it was very repetitive and draggy. I mean I understand they wanted to make it more “whole” that way but I just felt it was too much…especially when they would repeat the same flashbacks over and over, including flashbacks we had just seen in Drifter. The best part of the route was actually the introduction of Spinel, who I had guessed was Adolphe’s long lost sister because they had the exact same eyes. Turns out I was right and she was his older sister, who ended up coming to the island by accident when she tried to give her last prayers after finding out their shitty parents dropped him into the sea. Honestly I loved her.
Not only was she a great character, but she actually made Pedoccino redeemable. Honestly I low key shipped them, even as they were dying and it’s a damn shame that she was only brought in as a sacrificial plot device. That said at least Ankou did get his happy ending but it was still unsatisfying because he would still outlive Ceres…HOWEVER the BEST end to me was actually the despair end where Ceres does what Ankou did, time travels and jumps to see him so they’re both kinda like time travel star crossed lovers??? Reminds me a bit of the Alexander storyline from FFXIV but honestly I really liked it. In fact I liked the despair end the most because like with Yves encore ends, there’s the hope that they would fall in love and be with each other “forever”. There was an actual after story to the good end where Ankou and Ceres have a baby but in another ironic turn of events the baby only inherits Ceres’ genes so Ankou will now not only outlive Ceres, but he will outlive his baby too (;^ω^)….honestly this is actually why I enjoyed the “despair” end more lol. I also forgot to mention they made Dahut so OC in the end like why would he give a shit about being “royalty” or give a shit about any of his dumbass relatives? When they killed all the shitty Revpowells, Dahut should have been cheering from the sidelines not being like HUR DUR FOR MY ROYAL HONOR. What. ಠ_ಠ Honestly felt like the entire game did him a disservice in general and really made his character worse than the first game.
I do have a lot of bitching and complaints (see Mathis and Lucas) but at least for Ankou – the reason I bought this FD – I can say I’m generally satisfied. While the happy ends aren’t as happy as I wish they were, the despair end oddly made up for it for me. Yves and Scien had great ends too and well Adolphe is Adolphe, but I have to say the game made me like him a little more this time around. (Or maybe I just have residual bias to his seiyuu for voicing my favorite dude in Tengoku Struggle.)
Overall though I think the Encore section was fucking stupid. It was completely unnecessary and it felt like reading a bad fanfic. I complained about “forced despair” in the first game but Encore took that and tripled it. Fortunately I had become jaded to Virche’s bullshit and I was just like 
The ultimate biggest complaint I have about the entire thing though, isn’t even any of the stuff above. It’s THE ART.
I refuse to believe that Yomi drew this art.
Ceres was the biggest “who are you” in the game with her face looking different in almost every CG. I am starting to think Otomate is using AI now to replicate the art and having someone just do basic editing like fixing 3 legs and 6 fingers per hand while letting Midjourney or whatever do the rest. Otomate is totally known for using copycats in their art, but the art still looked PRETTY GOOD for what it was…it just didn’t look consistent and didn’t look like Yomi had drawn it. In the credits there was also something mentioning “photoshopping/editing” for one of the staff so HMMM 🤔🤔🤔🤔 I mean I guess it’s way easier to get one of their staff to edit CGs from an AI than hiring someone to actually draw them from scratch!
So in that sense, the art was my biggest disappointment. One of the best things about Virche is the beautiful artwork, but if you have any familiarity with art or yomi’s works, you can easily see it’s definitely not the same.
Despite this though, I think the game is still a good addition to the Virche story. Mostly I like it because of the backstories they add to Ankou’s route as well as the history of the island including the arrival of Yves’ grandpa and his story. It was so enlightening I was really happy to be able to see this and unlike Encore, it actually added something to the game. Additionally, unlike Radiant Fail FD, there was actually a decent amount of content rather than me speeding through every route in 2.5 hours. So overall I would say I recommend the game, just keep your hopes low if you’re a fan of Mathis or Lucas, but tune in to get your deserved Justice for Ankou ™. ✊
Bread Master Lee 
You must be logged in to post a comment.