Man, what a complicated reaction to this game I've had. I mean, I love it just like I love Xenotake- don't really know why, but something about how Vosmug writes his games just ticks some box in the back of my mind. Miss Sui and her ghost hunting rival are WOEFULLY underused in scenes, but I almost feel like that's less of a direct complaint than it is a sign that I was so excited to see them get into all sorts of sticky situations. It's the same thing with the Captain and Malla from Xenotake, who I really wanted to see more of than Eerien herself. Though if I did have one actual complaint about the game's story, I feel like Vena's two friends were a bit of a waste. They barely got any action, and I can't really say that I'm disappointed about it because they just didn't leave much of an impression.
Of course, there were a few missed points here or there that left me feeling a bit disappointed. With so much of the build-up, I thought that the two ghost hunting thugs would really have more scenes, but for all of their talk about planning to betray their boss, they just get the one scene with Miss Sui and the blonde friend before being unceremoniously killed off. I guess we're supposed to assume that the two ghosts double-teaming Sui's rival near the end are their spirits, but I would've much preferred to see them actually turn on her. They weren't exactly the most interesting antagonists, but in a game that spends so much time dealing with faceless ghosts with no personality to express, I feel like it was a waste to get rid of those guys so early like that when they could've served as a much more present, interactive threat to Vena's group. And not really related to that point, but the whole ending sequence also just felt a bit lacking to me. Exposition is fine, but there was just sooooooo much being explained at the last minute, and then you just get a brief slideshow of the girls honoring their silly bet. =/
Now, on a much less glowing note... I'm not a huge fan of the gameplay. The combat is fine, I suppose, but feels a little too demanding for how aggressive the ghosts can be. Unless you get lucky with them floating in the other direction before they decide to initiate an attack, you're left with almost no time to actually react- made that much worse by their obsession with constantly trying to cross from side-to-side. So many times, I'd be trying to move Vena away from a ghost so that I'd have some buffer room to stun them, but they'd just follow right on top of me and then attack from like an inch away. Also, the map is a complete nightmare, and I feel like about 40% of the time, the game just didn't give me enough of an indication of where I needed to be going. It works fine when the game is pushing you to progress forward, but every time it decides to send you back to somewhere you've already been, I had to spend about fifteen minutes going up and down each floor until I found the magic combination that would lead me to the right section of the map.
And the gallery is... hm. Not great, though I do appreciate the idea of it. Like being able to view every single character sprite in the game, and not just the sexy animations? That's a positive touch. But not having any sound is just baffling as a design choice, and the interface for cycling through every option feels like it is fighting me every step of the way. Oh, and it seems like most of the animations can only play so long before they just stop, at which point, you have to manually edit the speed option for it to start back up.
But I think out of EVERYTHING, my biggest gripe with the game is the sheer inaccessibility of the cutscenes after you've beaten the game. Sure, you can find most of the raw animations in the gallery... but if you want to see them with the accompanying dialog and context? You'll have to replay the whole game every single time. Heaven forbid that you want to revisit a scene close to the ending. Xenotake had a bit of the same problem here, but at least gave the option of skipping right to certain checkpoints in the story, so that if you wanted to see something again, it would only take five, maybe ten minutes tops to reach it so long as you could remember which checkpoint was closest. I guess that wouldn't really work here with how backtrack-y the game is; makes it a bit hard to break it down into clear "levels" you could quickly jump into. But man, I really hope that Vosmug adds an option to the gallery at some point for viewing the full scenes.