*** Spoiler-FREE Review ****
Bride of Darkness first of all is in Early Access. Chapters 1-3 are out, and supposedly there are at least two more chapters to come. So far it's a pretty short Visual Novel.. I finished it in 5.9 hours. Although that includes also backtracking and trying all choices to see what the ramifications for those choices would be. To my disappointment ,storywise, at this point in time, you may get lucky and get 2-3 additional lines of text that are different. Now is the time to mention that this is supposed to be a choice-driven Visual Novel, with multiple routes. 3 Romance routes, and one friendship route. The romance routes are easy to figure out as you get a picture of the love interest after the response. And it seems to be one of those Otome that is driven by an affection point system. Figuring out which response will put you into whose route is also pretty simple as when you make a response you either get that person's picture popping up on the upper right side of the screen (which means I guess one point of affection added for that love interest,) or you get NO picture meaning it had no bearing on any love interest. Earlier I said this is "SUPPOSED to be a choice-driven Visual Novel with multiple routes." Now I will tell you why I said "supposed." Well, the reason is simple. As of yet, in a Visual Novel that is supposed to be at least 4-5 Chapters in all, there are NO ROUTES AT ALL within the first 3 chapters, and the routes are supposed to start in the 4th chapter. Absolutely nothing. Just one Kinetic story-line. As for the supposed friendship route, it's OBVIOUS that only ONE PERSON is going to be a possible candidate "at this point in time" for a friendship route. However, in the friendship route there are NO INDICATORS. So you have no clue whether you gained any points or not. IN ONE RARE instance you could tell by the response, that that was probably the right response for a possible friendship route.
As it stands the store page does not mention how many actual chapters to expect for this incomplete VN. I'm going to take a wild guess and say if the project doesn't get abandoned it will be a maximum of 4-5 chapters. The developer even mentions the reason for the delay for the release of the next chapters is that they are working on another VN. So this one could very well get abandoned. I've played some early access games before, but this is the first one I think I've played that ends abruptly with not even a midway chapter ending. You don't get ANY TYPE of ending at all. And I'm not talking about individual route endings. Since there are ZERO routes at the time. I'm talking about like a chapter ending or a mid-game ending or something. All you get is a CG, saying thanks for playing. End of Chapter Three. Chapter Four soon. It's like walking into a room while you'r reading, and someone pulls the rug from under you. And you get up and say what in tarnations just happened?? And where is my story??? I mean that alone "makes it look like" it's already an abandoned project.
So now let's talk about this VN as it stands. Bride of Darkness is an Otome. According to the store-page it has dark/magic tags. However you don't get to see much of that darkness or magic yet, as this is still incomplete. At this point there seem to be 3 candidates for Romantic Routes. It's also supposed to have a friendship route as I said above. What I didn't mention is that the "friendship route" is going to be female. So is this really a "friendship route?" Or is this another Romantic Route but with a girl? I mean I haven't seen too many "friendship routes." in Otomes. As a matter of fact now that I really think about it, I've never seen anything called a "friendship route." However, if it is indeed REALLY a friendship route it's a first for me. But to make a long story short I'm going to take a WILD GUESS, and say: YAY, we also have the possibility of a Romantic Route with a girl for the beautiful princess. However due to unknown reasons, even in this day and age, the developer either chose not to or COULD NOT mention that the game that they're developing has a female Romantic route.
Now let's talk about details.
The art is abit above mediocre but not by much. The backgrounds are pretty colorful which I liked honestly. The bride herself is pretty cute, and innocent looking. And I didn't mean cute as in pretty here. I meant cute as in you want to squeeze her cheeks. I mean the sprites are not half bad and even have some degree of facial animation like eyes blinking, and the backgrounds are not bad either. The CGs though are pretty well done, as few of them as there are. The game has NO voice acting at all, and the soundtrack is pretty generic.
Now let's talk about the most important aspect of a VN. THE STORY. It starts off light hearted then starts turning dark. But sadly there isn't that much story here. I mean even knowing that it's in Early Access you would think that alot should have happened by now, with alot more to come. ESPECIALLY the SPECIFIC ROUTES. BUT no. There isn't much going on honestly. Since I don't want to spoil anything, I'm not going to talk about the story. But after you read it you will realize that you just spent 4 to 5 hours (without backtracking to try other choices) and ALMOST NOTHING has happened. I mean there is a little bit of story tossed around mostly like ideas, but without any development. It's like trying to write a story about your ascent of Mount Everest, and you write one paragraph saying I climbed the mountain and got to the top. But in this case there isn't even a top.. lmao ... Since it's incomplete. In all good consience I cannot give it more than a 3/10. HOWEVER if they rework this whole thing, and also WRAP IT UP properly it DOES have potential to be a good VN storywise. AT THIS POINT though it's just a waste of time.
The other issue is that the game starts off with pretty sound English. But the more you read, the worse the English gets. To the point that some sentences are totally incomprehensible. I'm not even going to mention the numerous grammatical errors. Those don't bother me as much as just monstrous translation. And it didn't start like that. It started just fine. It's almost as if they fired the translator somewhere during the story, and either did a Machine Translation or got someone who doesn't speak proper English.
There is one last thing I want to mention. There is a bonus menu, as is common in MOST Visual Novels. It has a CG gallery (which for some reason is missing the Romantic interest CGs, but has the Friendship route CGs.) And it also has a Music section, that plays the tracks in the game. There is also an Ending section, which if you enter will feel like an April fool's Joke, or even a slap in the face.
I am not a big fan of wasting time. As time is the most valuable commodity. And time lost is lost forever. Well, if you read the Bride of Darkness, that's exactly what will happen. You will lose 4-6 hours of your life. And won't get anything much in return. It's a total waste of time as it stands, and this is a review of Bride of Darkness Chapters 1,2, AND 3.
I hope that this review saved someone else from wasting their time.
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