AMPLITUDE: A Visual Novel

[h2]Doodle Aaron: Always Remembered, Never Forgotten[/h2] [b]Played Character Route Order: Simon ◈ Jon ◈ Ari ◈ Secret Character ◈ Katy ◈ Eric ◈ Michelle ◈ Grace ◈ Luna ◈ Liz[/b] [i][b]Amplitude[/b][/i] is criminally underrated, and it makes me quite sad to know that this vivid yet, [i]admittedly[/i], unpolished gem will never get the love and attention it deserves. This peculiar Visual Novel is a wild mix of different genres: slice of life, stat-raising, Otome/dating sim elements, horror, mystery, sci-fi, comedy, and more while also featuring a crafting and questing system that, however, still leave room for improvement. Sounds absurd if not chaotic right? Let me tell you... IT IS, but it's crazy in an enjoyable way. The developers managed to balance out all these genres to create a unique experience, and I loved every second of it! Normally I've made the experience that nothing good comes from mixing everything together, but [i][b]Amplitude[/b][/i] proved itself to be an exception. I still need to find the time to get around [i][b]Frequency[/b][/i], the previous game from the same developers that is, unfortunately, not available on Steam. This time, I won't give you a story synopsis. Firstly, I think the store page already tells you everything about the plot you should know before heading in. Secondly, there's so much else I want to say that a simple re-telling of what awaits you seems like a waste of (very limited) space. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1767679340 What compelled me to buy [i][b]Amplitude[/b][/i] was the Otome content, but I had to realize that even if there are many love interests to choose from, romance is clearly not the most elaborated aspect of this game. This doesn't mean that the romance part comes short, it's quite the opposite, in fact! It's just that the emphasis on everything else simply takes the spotlight away from it. And in this particular case, I'm totally fine with that, and that's coming from someone who can't get enough heart-fluttering and tension-filled moments in any kind of media and that often criticizes the lack of romance in many localized Otome games. I'm surprised what I actually got instead of the simple dating sim I expected it to be. You ought to play through [i][b]Amplitude[/b][/i] several times to truly understand what's going on. If you get the feeling that the story and premise are too confusing, please keep playing. It is totally worth it, and in the end, you will be happy that the majority of your questions got answered. The story and events are cut short a few times, but given the amount of content you get for just nine bucks, it's a flaw I can overlook. There are so many things for you to do and to discover, which makes it impossible to see and finish everything in one single playthrough, especially with activated stat-raising, since the in-game time you have is limited to one month. Fear not my stat-raising hating friends: the developers thought of you and implemented a cheat mode that makes it possible to enjoy the story to its fullest without this annoying obstacle. I'm aware that there are people who like it, but I don't, so I appreciated being able to deactivate it, especially regarding re-plays. It doesn't lock you out from earning achievements, either. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1740662274 Although I do recommend [b]not[/b] to make use of the cheat mode while you are still on your first playthrough. Even if I dislike stat-raising, it was kind of fun and immersed me immensely when I played it for the very first time. [i][b]Amplitude[/b][/i] even managed to make me enjoy the feature I usually dislike so much that I decided to reactivate it before I started my fourth playthrough. If you liked the Visual Novel and city roaming part in [i][b]Persona 3[/b][/i] for the PSP (It's kind of different in comparison to the PS2 version), then you will love [i][b]Amplitude[/b][/i]. There's a map that lets you navigate to different locations that you are able to visit during all times of the day. You can click on different objects to interact with them, NPCs appear on certain days and a specific daytime, and there are shops where you are able to buy items. Some of the NPCs just chat with you for a bit, others will give you quests or hints to quests that can be found elsewhere. You can choose to play as a man or a woman, furthermore, you may choose whether your chosen vessel should be male or female, too. I loved the combination of [b]Kate[/b] as the vessel and [b]Adam[/b] as the murder victim that now have to share mind and body. Their banter is so witty and entertaining! That was definitely my favorite combination and perspective to experience the story from out of the four available options. One of my favorite parts was when Kate's strawberry-week kicked in and Adam had to realize that menstruation pain and PMS are not so pleasant after all, now that he's forced to feel the same pain as his vessel. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1751774064 Most CGs are quite stunning and gorgeous, however, others can also look very strange and unnatural, unsightly even. All in all, the art quality is pretty inconsistent. The soundtrack always goes well with the atmosphere without attracting too much attention on its own, creating a vibe that makes it even easier to get immersed in the game. The only downside is... THAT YOU CAN'T ROMANCE ADAM! He's damn hot, right!? It's like seeing a delicious cake right in front of you, but you are not allowed to eat it. It's torture, I'll tell ya, and completely unfair! I can whole-heartedly recommend [i][b]Amplitude[/b][/i] to anyone who likes Visual Novels and the flair of games like [i][b]Persona 3[/b][/i] with a unique story and a broad variety of possibilities that will undoubtedly spice up every single playthrough. The writing, among other things, is unpolished and in dire need of improvement, and yes, [i][b]Amplitude[/b][/i] is by no means perfect, but it doesn't have to be. [h3][quote]𝐅𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰 [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/33853800/]𝐎𝐭𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐒𝐞𝐤𝐚𝐢'𝐬 𝐂𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐨𝐫 𝐏𝐚𝐠𝐞[/url] 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐕𝐢𝐬𝐮𝐚𝐥 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐉𝐑𝐏𝐆 𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰𝐬[/quote][/h3]

In a nutshell this game is a stat rising, murder mystery, dating sim using point and click gameplay. I played it's prequel Freak Quency a long time ago but I can see some obvious visual cameos for the game even if my memory of the game is kind of blurry on the details XD With more than 1 MC to choose from there's replay value not to mention the MC combination with each a possible romance ending out of 4 (or more) romancable characters. So use your days back among the living wisely (and be at least over 50% evil) to get through the crazy game XD The gameplay is pretty much like Persona 3 Portable with no dungeon crawling and you still have to work to get money. There's partial voice acting that pops up every now and then at random times and there are some typos but I don't think it's too much of a problem aside from the times they mention the wrong date (it happened a few times on Katy's route) lol

[h1]Pros:[/h1] - Fun/colorful UI - Gender options - Interesting crafting and job system - Plenty of choices - Unique powers for characters [h1]Cons:[/h1] - Writing feels unpolished - Same sex relationships were cut - Very edgy story / characters - Some scenes and dialogue feel extremely drawn out

Do you recommend this game? HARD NO. I never write bad reviews, but this game is just so, so bad. Laughably so. The story reads like it were written by a 13 year old on Wattpad. It literally makes no ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sense. The main character is an annoying, illogical, manipulative edgelord mary sue. I wanted to like the universe, but there's no world building. The creators just took different random elements and smashed them together. There's no relevance to the (non-existent) "plot". This game is extremely outdated - not only in it's shoddy subpar (mismatched) art and voice acting. There's a transphobic character/caricature, a character who fetishizes gay men, the MC makes pedo jokes about another character for having a young-looking friend, etc etc. (SPOILER) The main character befriends a character who confesses that he had (similarly) attempted suicide in the past. Instead of sympathizing with them, she immediately makes it about herself and gaslights them into believing that they are at fault and she is the victim. They brush off this bizarre interaction with a giggle and go get lunch or whatever (.. what .. ?). Yes, you could argue that this is the MC's character - obnoxious, entitled, and bratty. But why the ♥♥♥♥ would anyone enjoy a character like that? There are literally 0 likable characters in this game. Everyone is extremely two-dimensional and boring. The non-existent story is gruelingly long and... non-existent. The writing is so, so, so, so bad. So bad. I'm convinced a child wrote this. The quest system is just okay. The crafting system (...which, YOU have to figure out on your own w/ no tutorial) is annoying because you can only access recipes at night, and they don't supply you with the names of ingredients. You have to memorize the tiny little icons (or take a picture). It's also frustrating because the game doesn't specify what items you need for a quest or event. For example, the green chick told me to make a dress and buy makeup for the ball event. So I made a dress and bought makeup. Only for her to tell me on the day of the ball that I didn't make a dress, robbing me of 10,000 dollars. Do I still enjoy this game? Somewhat, yes, because I enjoy Persona type of games. If anything, I applaud the devs for their ambitious attempt with RenPy; you can definitely feel their passion and ambition. I still have no idea what the ♥♥♥♥ is going on in this plotline or what the point of this game is. But I'm morbidly intrigued enough to continue on. But would I recommend this game? Absolutely the ♥♥♥♥ not. I can't imagine buying this game full price. I purchased this game on sale for 0.99 cents and I honestly hate this game so much that I wouldn't even recommend this game on a dirt cheap sale. It's that bad. I purchased the dev's newest game that came out recently, and if it's anything like this game, I already regret giving them money.

[quote] Please follow our curator page, [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/4680120/]Otome Lovers[/url], if you'd like to see more reviews like this one! [/quote] Amplitude is an interesting concept for a visual novel that with just a little more care in its construction, could have been a very rewarding gameplay experience. As it is, we have an offering that is caught a little in the middle of wanting to be both a VN and an RPG; the result of which is a chaotic ball of confusion that is difficult to get a grip on and will likely lead many players to never finish their first play through – a conclusion somewhat borne out by a glance at the Steam global achievements for the game. Of the 78.7% of purchasers to have started playing, the next highest achievement percentage plummets to a mere 48% at time of writing; this serving as a stark indicator of lack of player desire to stick with it. Which (having fought off my initial preference to abandon the game early) is something of a shame, as a lot of things to do have been packed into the relatively small package on offer here. The story makes much more sense once you are on your second play through, and at least 3 of the 4 potential MCs are wholly supportable, which makes player engagement easier. We have unusually refreshing character choice options. The player character is a dead soul of either gender, who is granted life anew within the body of a young suicide victim, also with a choice of genders. You have the freedom to mix these together in whichever combination takes your fancy, and the story will have differing subplots dependent upon your initial selections. The main story takes you on a timed journey lasting around 5 weeks, during which time your objectives are to find the killer of your chosen dead soul, and ultimately put the world to rights using your vessel character. Along the way there are a whole range of other minor story possibilities, including several short-but-sweet romance paths and a whole catalogue of optional mini-quests which all add to the replayability factor. Graphics throughout, on the whole are delightful. Just occasionally the character sprite and CG would look more like cousins than the same person, but for the standard presented, this is an entirely forgivable quibble. There is also a huge gallery to unlock, which would require a large number of replays to fully conquer. Frustrations in replaying the same content repeatedly in order to view a tiny alternative subplot can be largely alleviated by shrewd use of the plentiful save slots. I recommend saving at the start of every single day, in a new slot. Doing this enables you to match up the slot number with the in-game date, so you can easily load back to the day of your choice (so, slot number 15, for example, would reload as the beginning of April 15th); and then simply make an alternative decision to get your different storyline. The game also has an efficient skip function (the instruction for which is easy to miss, so allow me to confirm here that you access it by holding the CTRL key down); and a recent text history which displays upon keying PageUp. This combination of facilities makes additional playthroughs a LOT less painful than would otherwise be the case. With so many positives in the game, why can I not give it a recommendation? Certainly, with just a little more care in the text department, there would have been a thumbs up at the top of this review; but, sadly, the author clearly possesses an absolute misunderstanding of the usage of past and present tense in the English language; and transposition of the two occurs with such alarming regularity that it is positively jarring. Just a few typical examples are below: [spoiler] “Tried as you might, you failed to recognise that person.” “You went inside the bathroom, hearing Aron said, 'fifteen minutes'.” “You spinned around to face the source..” “You tried to stand up and get away, but it's impossible.” “You know if you have used my body properly and kicked that creep's butt..” “.. guy came out of nowhere and spread some weird toxins that seemed to ate your flesh..” “How did you guys made up?” [/spoiler] There are also frequent similar occurrences with gender assignment and even singles/plurals. Had the time been taken to put this game through a full proofreading, the end product could have been a shining example of where the genre can be taken. As it is, the game's primary failing acts as a tar pit from which the rest of it, despite its best efforts, cannot escape.

Overall the game was just too confusing. What I really disliked about the game was, how I had no idea what to do, after the intro story. You are let lose on a city, but where to go? What to do? There are jobs you get, but I often didn't find the people, and all of a sudden without any warning another day is over. So you can't really plan the day, ANY click on a character might suddenly end the day, and since there is a timer, I played two weeks without getting ANY bit ahead of the story. The walkthroughs were kinda vague, and when I found I had after two weeks not met a single of the romance options beside one default, I realized I had really ♥♥♥♥♥♥ it up. It is just way too easy to screw yourself entirely over. Like I had to make a dress for a ball, but I had no money and after 2 weeks still being broke, I gave it up. It is sad, since the idea of the game is nice, being a ghost inside someone else's body. But clicking people and "!" in the world - you have NO idea what is what and what will do what. So its a bit more like whack-a-mole, and good luck clicking something useful. My initial excitement with the story vanished quite quckly and have place to total frustration. I would suggest to pass this game, since as far as I have seen, there are no really useful walkthrough's either. Spare yourself the frustation.

Finished 25 percent of the game - gettng a true route is not too hard - lots of fun activities like crafting and stat management with lots of heavy story visual novel elements and a coherent while fascinating plotline. Very well-polished with good writing style, great art, good music, good plot, and a professional quality experience. I know the entire plot and I am replaying it for another trial which is proof of the excellent quality from someone like me who remembers every single little detail. 100/10 for an independent game! <333

This game is pretty twisted and to be honest my normal playstyle landed me the bad ending first time through and left me stunned and wondering why. After i read through some of the comments and the forum I figured out the "how" but had serious doubts about whether i wanted to go for a good ending after i figured out what was required of my choices to get one. Without giving away anything, in order to progress to any of the good endings, you have to be more "evil" than good, as summed up by all your choices in the game up to that checkpoint, otherwise your snuffed out in favor of another, presumably more evil, choice and.... welcome to your bad end! Let me be clear, it works peferctly well in the games setting, in other words it makes sense in its own context, atleast until you choose to be evil enough to progress to the end of the game, where suddenly you get to be the good guy! Huh? What? You mean the good guy that cared about everyone and tried to be kind and make everyone elses life better gets snuffed out without some much as a "defend thy self!," and the lazy, manipulative, spiteful guy gets a pass to go and be the hero?! Yep and the game doesnt even ask you oh evil one, if you want to go save everyone! Isnt it too much effort? Are they even worth saving to you? Wouldnt you rather just rule over their broken trembling forms? The offer if made, but your never even given the chance to accept. Nope your a hero now! Thats what I mean by twisted. Is the story line good? Its amazing. Are the characters deep and meaningful, well fleshed out. Yes! Graphics? check! music? Ok. I cant decide if what's wrong, is something thats missing (uhm a route where the good guy knows he has to decieve a certain someone into thinking their truely their best minion when their actually knowingly working against them, best unlocked after first bad end playing as a good guy), or the game itself is wrong (for me and maybe you) and simply targeting that group that believes evil is fun and should be rewarded. You Decide.

Honestly? I want to like this game. Its not like I hated it. You could guess that Ceylon Entertainment put a lot of work into it. But there were so many things, which I didnt like, so I cant recommend it. Pro: - Partly synchronized in english - You can choose your gender. This choice will change your site of the story! - Many event CG's (quality differs though) - Unique Powers of characters Neutral: - Music - Colorful UI Cons: - The UI feels a bit overloaded - It takes a few minutes in game until you can use the UI and save the game - Story. I dont get it. Its confusing. It felt like something was left out. Sometimes the thing just happend so fast that I didnt get anything of it. [spoiler] There was also a part were one character was freaking out and eating her parents and her friends were like really chilled about it in my opinion. WTF[/spoiler] - The game tried so much, but didnt succed in everything well (crafting, questing, dating sim, visual novel, stat raising,..) I mean its not that bad, but I think if they did choose a focus it would have been better for the game.

Bought it, played it and I love it. So far it's very well written and interesting. However, I can't wait for a small walkthrough to be out since I have some difficulties completing missions that are important to the story line. Maybe I'm just bad at it ? Edit: The True ending is quite easy to get, which I find extremely nice since sometimes it can be TOO hard to find it by yourself. This game has a lot of replay value since each vessel and body is different, you have 4 different combination that changes the story a little. I also like the fact that you can't complete all of the quests in one playthrough, so if you really want to do them all, you will need multiple and each are quite interesting to do, even if they might be simple. All in all, this game was worth the wait and an incredible sequel to Freak-Quency. I can't wait to see what the company will give us next ! But whatever they decide to make in the future, they sure got me as a huge fan not only with the game but also because of how nice they are.