Because We're Here - Act I

[h1]Review with accompanying screenshots and videos in Sinical Network[/h1] https://www.sinicalanimenetwork.com/post/because-we-re-here-act-1-quick-thoughts [i]Because We're Here[/i] is an episodic World War I inspired otome visual novel with romance, slice of life and thriller elements. It features a female postal worker, Elfriede Rauss, who works in the small town of Boschberg. When her co-worker and all the young, healthy men in her town enlist in the Wesslinger army to fight a war with another powerful country, everything in her life changes. Act 1 covers her daily life as a postal worker, getting to know all the young bachelors in town, and eventually joining them in the war as a messenger for Eighth Company. Act 2 covers the drama and intrigue among Eighth Company as the Wesslinger army and their Etgoesian allies are engaged in a war with Leyland and Levasseur with some backdoor diplomacy among the rank and file soldiers on both sides. This visual novel is an indie production using the Renpy engine, so it has to rely on the plot and diversity of characters to bring out the storyline, and route variety to make up for the average classical background music and artwork. There is a published community guide to help players get all achievements in the least number of playthroughs. Act 1 is a bit short and generic as it takes the time to introduce the first set of characters in the story (Around 3 hours), whereas Act 2 is considerably longer with plenty of suspense, thrills, addition and removal of some characters (Around 7 hours). After obtaining all achievements in act 1 and 2, the romance feels rather rushed as many of the specific character routes only have a few scenes before the protagonist and the chosen character confess their feelings for each other. Still, the large variety of characters with different personalities and backgrounds to pursue a romance more than makes up for this part. As for the drama and thriller aspects, it has good scriptwriting to keep the reader interested in reading the story because every character, including the protagonist, has at least a flaw or weakness somewhere. There are no Rambos or Mary Sues as the protagonist can be shot dead for failing at a battle of wits minigame, and some characters will also inevitably meet their end in an ongoing war in the trenches against an equally powerful and well-equipped army. Defections, collusions, and getting to know certain individuals on the enemy side (also hinting at possible romance options in subsequent acts) are described in vivid detail in act 2. Therefore, I can recommend this game with the act 2 DLC anytime, and hope to see the next two acts released in future. [h1]Visual novel, JRPG, Anime Steam group - Join the group and consider following the group's curator list for more reviews or otome visual novels[/h1] http://steamcommunity.com/groups/vnislife

[h1] Summary [/h1] A racist, sexist, ableist mess of a game featuring an overabundance of terrible and/or forgettable LIs and one of the dumbest MCs I've ever had the misfortune to play. [h1] Review (Acts I and II) [/h1] [i] cw: discussions of racism, sexism, ableism, transphobia; mentions of death and Nazism [/i] [i]Because We're Here [/i] presents a simplified version of WWI as the setting for the game. The MC is from [strike] Germany [/strike] Wessling, which along with [strike] Austria? Italy? [/strike] Etgoes has recently gone to war with [strike] England [/strike] Leyland and [strike] France [/strike] Levasseur after the assassination of [strike] Franz Ferdinand [/strike] Fritz von Lohkamp. The game goes through great pains to tell you that people from Levasseur speak French and stereotypically eat snails and are known for surrendering, people from Wessling eat sausages and have a disturbing trend towards ethnic nationalism, and people from Leyland say things like “cheerio!” and some have Cockney accents (e.g. you meet a character from [strike] London [/strike] Lundgren, seriously). For some reason the devs decided that they wanted to stick with real-world history of Europe but consolidate the continent into four countries, which is honestly more confusing than had the game just actually been set in WWI Europe. But never fear! Though the devs decided to create fictional countries to fit a historical narrative, they made sure to leave in the “historically accurate” racism, ableism, and sexism. Nearly every LI at some point refers to women as “the fairer sex” or mentions how women can’t understand war. Several talk about going to war to “become a man”, and of course the devs couldn’t pass up adding a dose of transphobia by implying that one’s gender is determined by their biological sex (i.e. a character suggests checking their pants to prove they are a man). The game’s only disabled character [spoiler] until another loses his sight later in the game [/spoiler] is literally referred to as the “Infirm Home Guardsman” in the achievements and character page on the devs’ website while all the other characters are referred to by their personalities, e.g. “Dashing Duteous Dandy” or “Laissez-Faire Lance-Corporal”, because apparently being disabled is a personality trait. And then there’s the racism. One of the LIs is a Romani battlefield artist who constantly has racial slurs and accusations thrown against him by another LI. But it’s okay because the other guy likes animals, so surely he’s a good guy underneath all the racism, right? That’s what the devs want you to think, especially since they continue to have the MC converse with him no matter how much you condemn his actions because maybe one day he’ll come around. But the worst part of it all? [spoiler] The Romani soldier, who is a genuinely good person, stops in No Man’s Land to save the racist guy, only to die from his efforts while the racist gets to live and continue to spout his racist drivel about the man who saved his life [/spoiler]. Needless to say I doubt the treatment of the Indian soldier who had colonialism “whitesplained” to him will be any better in future acts. Slightly less bad is the LI who is obsessed with finding a wife with “superior genetics” so that he can create “genetically superior” children. That’s creepy in any view, but especially so given that he’s a soldier in the German-analogue army a mere five years before the Nazi party emerges. But this is war, and War Is Bad (though I highly doubt at this point in history anyone is going to learn that from an otome game). The game seeks to drive this point home early on in what was one of the stupidest plot points I think I’ve ever seen in an otome game. [spoiler] The MC decides to visit a trench on the front line, as a civilian (because a civilian can totally just drop in to the trench to say “hey!”) to see her friends from home. Of course she doesn’t know what to expect, so of course she hecks up and sticks her head out of the trench, so of course her childhood friend pulls her down to save her from getting shot, only to remain standing himself and confess his love to her then promptly get shot in the head while he moves to kiss her [/spoiler]. Now I’ve had many games reduce me to a bawling mess; I mean probably a month ago I was crying over a cat dating game. Seriously. But when [spoiler] childhood friend got shot right in front of the MC while they were about to kiss [/spoiler] I nearly died laughing. The game really wanted me to care, and judging by others’ reviews some people did care, but that was just the soggy cherry on top of the whole ridiculous mess. [spoiler] Childhood friend [/spoiler] was irritating, and no matter how much I tried to put him off the game still insisted that the MC had feelings for him. As for the rest of the game, I do appreciate that you can scroll back through dialogue and choices instead of feeling compelled to save all the time. I did also think that the use of faceless mob characters as an allegory for the people that the MC couldn’t bring herself to know for fear of losing them was a nice use of the typical otome faceless mob character. However, the battle of wits mechanic, while a decent premise, used terrible music and sound effects for what was supposed to be tense situations. Some of the other music was good, but the use of Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9 (which inspired the [i] Jaws [/i] theme and is regularly used to comedic effect) was a terrible choice for the moments that were supposed to be moving and sorrowful. Overall, the devs wanted to use a major historical event to showcase the atrocities of war, but showed no consideration to how the actions of characters in a historical setting would be perceived with modern-day values. With the rise of conservative politics and a resurgence of white supremacy, issues like racism and ableism and sexism cannot and should not be used as character flaws to showcase Grey Morality™ in a War Is Bad dating sim.

If I wanted unnecessary trauma, I would've gone to talk with my parents instead of playing this.

I just finished Act II and am still processing the rollercoaster of emotions and ideas I have been subjected to. Really amazing, and thoughtful, and truly unique, though I remain curious about the odd ahistoricity of some aspects of the storytelling and worldmaking... All that aside... I can't recommend this enough. Just make sure you take breaks and give yourself a hug when it's over. "I doubt we will ever be forgiven. All I hope is – they'll remember we were human beings." - Timothy Findley's THE WARS

Wonderful, devastating, and heartbreaking. A must for otome fans.

I don't often read otome's like these as I am quite sensitive but my inner history nerd compelled me to Because We are Here Act 1 is one of the most thought provoking Otome's I have ever played The Art is beautiful and the characters are realistic and easy to fall in love with.

Note: I played through Act 1 and dove straight on into the Act 2 DLC, so this is kind of a review for all of it so far. I almost missed out on this game because realistic historical games don't typically appeal to me. But I was looking for something intense and immersive and heartbreaking and a friend recommended I give it a go. Because We're Here is less sweeping historical romance and more character-driven war story with romantic interludes. The best part of the story has to be Elfriede. She's your main character and is compassionate, witty, driven-- I adore her. The rest of the characters are incredibly well-fleshed out with various motivations that sometimes clash. most notably, this game breaks from traditional otome in a really interesting way. [spoiler] In most otome, when you're on a love interest's route, they're safe until you reach either a good end or a definitively bad one. This one doesn't provide you with that safety net. Meaning it can be pretty tough at times. It's incredibly effective. [/spoiler] It also has some intriguing in-game mechanics where you engage in"battles of wits" with other characters (or sometimes it's an internal struggle between Elfriede and herself!) to decide the outcome of key moments. Some of those moments are big with lives on the line and others are small and only really change how you interact with specific characters. The background music is excellent and the soft art is lovely and, at times, jarring when depicting sometimes graphic moments of violence. If this sounds the least bit appealing, I highly recommend giving it a try. At this cost, it's a steal.

I've never had a game make me breakdown in tears as many times as Because We're Here has, it's a strong emotional story and completly ripped apart all my expectations then proved to be better than anything I could have imagined. Alot of those lost haunt me hours after finishing the game and it came so unexpectedly that each time one goes I'm stuck with some vague hope that there's a misunderstanding and that character will just pop up again. It's bleak and heartwrenching and the game makes you hope desperately that Elf will find some way to save everyone. //fingers crossed for oTTO CRIES If he goes then I'm sticking Elf so hard to Kettle but even that's not entirely safe. It really sales the hardships of war. ):

This is a review for Act 1. To preface it, I want to say that I've liked this game quite a lot. The setting is interesting (and as I've never cared about learning history in detail I'm as in the dark about what's going to happen as with any fictional story), the protagonist has personality and none of her choices seem out of character while being decently varying, everyone else is believable and likable despite their flaws, the story flows smoothly and draws you in. But there still are some things that kept the game from being perfect. First off, it's too short. For some reason I just assumed that act 1 would last until we get to the scene shown in the prologue and the next part would go from there. But no, just as things start getting interesting I get hit with a "To be continued" screen. Some music loops felt too jarring, with the volume constantly going up and down, and the sound effects started grating on the ears after a while (to be fair, the ones I remember as being the most annoying were the gun noises in the prologue and those worked well in setting up the tension.). The writing is good, no scene felt too long or dragging out. The explanations of game mechanics kinda broke the immersion though. But, and this might be because english is not my first language, at times I would get stuck at some sentences where it felt like a word was missing or something and I would just stare at the screen trying to understand what it was trying to tell me. The art fits the setting and is pleasant overall except for how disappointingly little of proper CGs are there. The store page claims 20 pieces but some of those are variations of the same image and all of the "ending" pictures are mostly similar bland scenes. I was satisfied with the quality of the images until I got to the end and then as I was going through the different character's paths I grew more and more let down by how samey they all looked. And now for my biggest complaint - the endings and the romances. The way I went through the game first made me doubt whether the mc was even aware of August's feelings, much less returned them (which would've made sense for romancing other people). But no, regardless of your choices the first romance is set in stone. Which I would not have minded so much were it not for the endings. [spoiler]Not an hour after her love interest's death the mc is thinking, oh, it would be nice to spend the rest of my life with this (other) guy. Like, what? Maybe it was supposed to be a way of coping by latching onto someone else but it really didn't work for me.[/spoiler] Because of that some of the scenes where you didn't get enough affection for the proper scene to play felt way more fitting as they didn't have sudden lifelong commitments. This romantic determination felt like it was coming out of nowhere and kinda brought the gravity of the situation down. Overall, it's an interesting start to a bigger story and I'm intrigued to see where it goes from here. Here's to hoping that next Acts are just as good story-wise and improve on what I've found to be flaws in this one.

The first act is pretty short, feels more like a proof of concept than a game. It however is a pretty good concept. Portrays war rather realistically especially in the beginning of the game. I'm not sure if this game is what your local recruiter wants you to play or not. Is it anti-propaganda or a little bit inspiring? XD Either way I appreciate the MC, Elfreide, a lot. I'll keep going with it, so I would say it's definitely worth the price of admission. The development however is very slow. I have held off playing this for a couple of years now. Hopefully act III gets done this year. Because if I were to adopt this game's mentality, you or I could very well realistically die before this gets finished. :P