Firstly, thanks to Kuri for her initial post on this, which brought it to my attention.

Secondly, i hang my head in shame in admitting i had never heard of this game, and worse yet i have never heard of Go! Comi, what’s worse is they actually release several titles I’ve followed as scanlations and wished someone would license.

I’ll be rectifying that mistake shortly as I’ll be ordering a tone of stuff from them the next time i order manga. (So Go! Comi, i already blew this months budget!!)

Anyway’s, back onto the topic, i played through the prologue of the game which is available for free. According to Kuri you have to sign up first, but i didn’t have to. Though you can not save any progress unless you’re signed in, however given the prologue only takes a few minutes at best to play through it’s not important

Though i have to admit after spending some time on their site, i did sign up anyway

The game plays much like any other Japanese ADV the story unfolds and at certain times you get to make choices which effect how the story unfolds. In a lot of ways it reminds me of the old Fighting Fantasy series of books by Jackson and Livingston, where you read the page, and either choose a direction which would send you to a new page, or random flip the pages which had dice on them, and then do as the dice instructed.

The method Go! Comi use seems interesting, but the prologue isn’t really enough to judge how well it’ll play through.

What is impressive is the art, the character designs have a definite anime feel to them which i love, and the system is smooth running. Considering the game is flash based i was expecting a little bit of jagged movement, but it was smooth and consistent.

The only thing i hated about it was their choice of music, a few seconds of it was enough to tell me i hated it, and by the time I’d finished the prologue i wanted to rip my ears off >.< Thankfully you can turn the music off in the settings, which i highly recommend doing!!

The problem i see is the cost, this game is split into episodes much like an anime, and each one costs $7.99, since there’s no details on the number of episodes it’s hard to judge, but the costs of buying this could be astronomical. It all depends on the number of chapters. However even if there’s only four or five, they have to be something special to justify the cost.

You have to bare in mind that Gonzo are selling episodes of anime for $3 and you get to keep those. This release is totally web based. It would be good if they had a downloadable version. there are many downloadable flash games, so i don’t see how hard that would be to incorporate. Even so though, i think they should drop their price to either $3.99 or $4.99.

Sadly, for me at least, while the prologue got me interested in the game, it wasn’t enough for me to spend money on. I think it would of been better to have had the prologue and first chapter as freebies, or at a reduced price, say $1.99, to tempt in people.

Like Kuri i may at some point buy the first chapter to try, but at the moment I’ve to many manga volumes i want to buy.