Brilliant Shadows - Part One of the Book of Gray Magic

the characters are so charming and the voice acting is well done <3

An amazingly well crafted story. One of my favorite visual novels.

I'm this game's target audience. Like, ♥♥♥♥ yeah wanna play a lesbian necromancer! This game didn't really do it for me though. First, having the protagonist non-consensually kiss someone, not once but twice is... idk man. It doesn't really get looked at or examined as bad behavior either, it just kinda is. The plot didn't make much sense either. Some of it I'm sure is just because it's only a part of a larger series, but there are definitely plot-holes. Like, okay, Hector was a grey-mage. Why was that at all a surprise to the heads? Especially since they had a device that can check that kind of thing? A device which one of the characters specifically mentions as a reason why Hector couldn't be a grey mage? The game also tries and fails to do a strong theme around being lesbian. A good 90% of the problems the MC faces can be summed up as the VN vaguely gesturing to some unspecified homophobia that we never really see or experience. And, besides one instance of a straight girl being super weird around Ash (to be fair, straight girls behavior there was realistic in my experience) it's never really shown. Especially when the two heads of the school are both sapphic women. MC doesn't really seem to have almost any other problems that don't relate to her sexuality. The romance at the end is kinda bad too. Like, Ash, you've met her twice. The entirety of what Ash knows about her supposed partner is that she's pretty. Especially when Terra starts freaking out about changeling racism. Maybe it makes sense for Terra's character to jump to such conclusions immediately, but a) before Terra, Ash didn't even know that changelings even existed and b) that amount of trauma dumping isn't a good way to treat people.

Beautiful art, immersive music and great voice acting ! Almost half the cast is LGBT, including MC :] There's a good amount of moments where you have to make a choice, even though the number of possible routes is low. Once you've finished the game you can predict what are the other endings easily. But the story and the world stay enchanting, and the characters are very attaching *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

I started and finished this in one go. It had been sitting in my library for quite a long time and I regret not playing it sooner. The voice acting is one of if not the best I've ever encountered in a VN! There's only two things I found frustrating: the lack of an auto mode, and the inconsistency of the art. Don't get me wrong, almost all pieces are really well done, but the face of Ash changes so much over and over again it prevented me from fully immersing myself.

It's a good story for a modern audience. There are a few choices to make, but it's mostly like a graphic novel. I think the art and story are well done!

Bought it on sale, finished reading in about 4 hours for the 'Balanced' ending of the three claimed endings. I took this visual novel because of the living in diversity vibe, stories with magics, and the artworks. I was not disappointed :) The voice actings were enjoyable - I only skip the spoken words in lines with few words on them and listen to the rest. And the OST, those were great picks. No weird notes for my taste. There were also environment ambiences. (For example sounds of chatters, clocks, people reading a book when Ash was in the library.) I recommend to use head/earphones to hear sound details :) The story continues to Part II of the same 'The Book of Gray Magic' title.

+ beautiful art, gergous lady character, very gay A+ + awesome voice acting, funny jokes, bloopers at the end kinetic graphic novels are not my thing, you can make a few decisions wether you want the MC to be more meanie or nicey or balanced, but the story and the art are so good, and it is still good on the second read worth every cent !!