Animamundi

[lebateleur]

I should not be allowed out of my house on weekends, as it only results in my spending far too much money. Today's acquisition of choice is Animamundi. I've only played for about fifteen minutes thus far, but let me tell you: This is one snazzy game. The graphics are snazzy. The music is snazzy. The voices are snazzy. It combines Seikai no Houretsuden's production values with Mori no Kioku's user-friendliness. (The latter two games are my barometer by which to judge BL games on the whole. Seikai had a great story, great seiyuu, excellent artwork, and high production values, but was lacking in the options department. Mori had all the user-friendly options a gamer could ever ask for: rewind, fast forward, and scene replay; but the game itself was so crappy I can't imagine why anyone would want to use them.)

And more importantly, like Seikai before it, Animamundi appears to be an actual game, with a developed setting and, better yet - player choice that affects outcome, thus creating motivation to actually care about the characters and plot. The game itself takes place in Hardland (RIP Martyn Bennett) - a small European country whose royalty, wizards, and alchemists find their very existence forbidden in the name of progress and the burgeoning industrial revolution. The artwork is a Yuki Kaori-esque gothic delight, and the soundtrack has got all the tolling church bells and ominous latin chanting goth fans could ever desire.

Animamundi starts with a scene where the player character is confronted by Mephisto, who asks various Probing Questions that either determine the scenarios one finds oneself in, the NPCs one can have sex with, or a combination of thereof. The first question and I was in love - it was just like the good old days playing Ultima VI (do I get a drought of compassion or valor?).

I imagine it's going to take me a bit of time to get through this game, as the language is overflowing with nanji's and wagaarushi's and yokarou's and all manner of archaic pronouns and forms of address. This problem is compounded by the fact that one doesn't just make choices in Animamundi, one makes timed choices - 30 seconds for each question and a nice animated clock to show one how little time one's got left in case one wasn't sweating bullets already. I imagine I'll be making frequent use of the scene-rewind function.

And also: Hakkai. Or rather, Ishida Akira, his VA. But it sure sounds like Hakkai to me. Talking about betrayal and madness and yeah...yum.

Digging around on the game's official site, I discover that it's going to be released in English. In an interesting sidenote to the art theft discussion in this entry, the character and background sample images on the English-language site are absolutely plastered with copyright warnings while the images on the Japanese site aren't. Make of that what you will.

So, Animamundi. I'm sure I'll be posting about it again.

これで以上です。

Comments

[lebateleur.livejournal.com]

Compassion, but that was over 15 years ago, when I was playing Ultima VI. I'm not entirely certain what I chose in Animundi, except that I kept siding with Satan a lot. >:}