WARNING! THIS POST MAY CONTAIN SOME SPOILERS FOR THE GREY GARDEN. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.
DISCLAIMER: THE IMAGES USED IN THIS POST ARE NOT OWNED BY ME. I FOUND THEM ON GOOGLE IMAGES.Ever since I played Mogeko Castle, I've been hooked on RPG Maker games. I've played Yanderella and Mikoto Nikki. Then I played another game by Mogeko (Deep sea prisoner). He's the same guy who made Mogeko Castle. I'm not sure which game he made first, but I think it was Mogeko Castle.
Let's start by taking apart the game play mechanic. Each enemy gives you tons of EXP. and all the enemies, including bosses are weaklings from start to finish. You won't need to do any grinding in this game. Hell, there aren't even any random encounters. You can decide to not fight any regular enemies and breeze through the game. You may need to go item hunting for more powerful weapons and armor though. If you played the game with minimal grinding like I did, you'll be OP through the entirety of the game. So needless to say, the battle system is unbalanced as flak.
However, I'm not going to hold this against the game as the "readme" text said that the main focus was the story and not the battles. So instead of judging this like an actual RPG, I'm going to judge it like a visual novel.
The music was excellent. It had music that fit the game better than Mogeko Castle. However, the title theme of Mogeko Castle was better than anything this game had to offer in terms of music. Just listen to this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0QizaHtzYw
It's not easy beating a master piece like this. However this doesn't mean the game had terrible music. Every theme fit the part it played in and every theme was great to listen to. So I can mark that down as a super success.
Now let's move on to that which the game sacrificed so much for. The thing that is the main point of the game. The story!
Unlike Mogeko Castle, this game seemed to have a clear-cut story. It's about a world where angles and demons live together in harmony. Now, as it has god and the devil living together in harmony and also sharing a somewhat romantic relationship, I'll tell you not to play this game if you're easily offended by... stuff? But if you're like me and can take a story as a story (and sometimes analyze what happens in the story) I'd recommend this to you. It's a really good game. I'm not going to expose too much of the story because of spoilers. The story is good. You can take my word for it. But as good as the story is, there are a few flaws that annoyed me.
This game tries to be clever by giving backwards names to characters. Etihw is White, Kcalb is Black, Wodahs is Shadow and Emalf is Flame. My problem here is that these names are really confusing to pronounce. How are you supposed to pronounce something like Etihw or Kcalb? If you tell me that it's obvious that these names are backwards, I'll tell you that I shouldn't be expected to read character names backwards just because it's obvious. The game needs to be made keeping in mind that I'll read the names as they are. If you want clever names, try the Ace Attorney franchise. It's got names like "Frank Sahwit ", " Redd White" and "Guy Eldoon". This is what I'd call clever names.
Another problem I had was with the plot itself. To me it seemed that the universe the game takes place in is not clearly explained. The game talks about multiple worlds and each with it's own devil and god. It also talks about how the Grey world is rare. What does it mean by worlds? Do they mean actual planets? How do the people travel between them then? Why do they need "holes" to travel between them. Are they talking about different dimensions? How do the people know about what goes on in these other dimensions. Taking what very little I know of the Many-worlds Interpretation into account, all the other worlds are the outcome of the grey world if things had gone differently. But if that's the case, the other worlds would be in alternate universes, in which something went differently in the past or future of the Grey world. It would then be impossible to have a "devils' gathering party" as the game states near the end.
Usually an unexplained or unclear universe would not be a problem. But in this case, major plot points are dependent on how the game's universe functions. I originally wanted to analyze and piece together how the game's universe works, but everything form the characters' age and sexuality to what Mogeko meant by "many worlds" is confusing. Instead of coming up with a crap theory, like I was able to do in Mogeko Castle, my head just got over heated. I'm not sure if this unexplained universe was intentional or not. But since I can't find any heads or tails of this, I'm just going to chalk it as an unintentional plot problem.
Another problem in the plot is that Yosafire, the main character is too scared to fly even though she has wings. The moment the story mentioned this, I knew for a fact that at some point, Yosafire will be forced to fly for important reasons. I was right. This big plot point was insanely predictable. The only way they could've made this more obvious is if there was a sign that read "Yosafire flies at the end."
Another trait if this story is that it offers shippers tons of ammo. Let me give you a list of all couples for whom I thought shippers were given plenty of ammo.
Yosafire X Froze
Yosafire X Emalf
Kcalb X Etihw
Wodahs X Grora
Macarona X Rawberry
Ivlis X Reita
Lowrie X Greif
Yosafire X Kcalb
Dialo X Chelan
Who do I ship? No one. I don't find any of the couples of this game shippable.
There is another thing I can say about the story. It doesn't make you feel like you are the chosen one. It makes you feel like someone who got caught in the cross-fire and had to get crazy strong on the way. It's kinda like pokemon in that sense. I;ll leave it up to you to judge whether this is a good thing or not. Personally, I found this to be a good thing.
Overall the game is lovely and I recommend this if you aren't easily offended.
I rate this game: 73/100
Thanks for Reading!
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