BURIED STARS

I walked into Buried Stars thinking that I would enjoy it from the sheer amount of times it was recommended to me, but it fell very short of my expectations. The gameplay is extremely redundant, the dialogue in gameplay sections is pretty repetitive and the actual mechanics of it just felt like a bland rinse and repeat over and over again. The log only holds 20 lines of dialogue (at best), which was an issue for me since I rely on logs for backreading a lot. This becomes an even bigger issue with the fact that the localization is definitely a machine translation. There are multiple lines of dialogue that contain misspells, no punctuation, wrong names, or just entire lines that don't really make any sense. The game locks you into a bad end your first time around, which I didn't really understand the point of. This ending was paced too fast for any of it to land on me. When it picks back up from the forced end, It was easy for me to be able to predict the killer. The next plot twist it tries to do was not smart at all. They set up one character to be a red herring only for them to make the actual person behind it an unnamed third party who never gets brought back up. While I did like all the Rapport Events in Route A, I felt like all the characters besides Seil (who doesn't have his available in this route) and Inha didn't really develop much in the main story. All the characters with the exception of Plughole spoke in the same tone with some variation for the most part (which is likely due to the MTL). Another issue I have is that the game's narration is written as if we are hearing inner thoughts but is in third person (with multiple errors accidentally switching from third to first). The entire reveal was underwhelming as I already knew who it was with confidence, and I just really hated how they were written. Eventually, I will do Route B & Route C to finish the game completely, but I don't think it will improve my opinion of the game.

정가 주고 살 게임이라는 후기를 남기고 싶었는데... 할인가에 사서 다행이라는 생각이 들어서 씁쓸하네요 스팀에서는 추천/비추천 둘 중 하나만 선택해야 하는데.... 아주 비추천을 받을 정도의 게임이라고는 생각하지 않았습니다. 더빙이나 연출 등 제작진이 공을 많이 들였다는 점은 분명히 느껴졌습니다. 그럼에도 주변 사람에게 선뜻 "한 번 해보라"고 추천은 못 할 것 같아요. (사이 안 좋은 지인에겐 추천해줄지도..) 스릴러는 긴장감을 유지하는 것이 중요한 장르인데 아래 요소들 때문에 플레이하는 내내 흐름이 자주 끊기고 캐릭터에 몰입하기보다 감정 소모가 더 크게 느껴집니다. 1회차 플레이만으로도 피로감이 있습니다. - 대화 구조가 긴장감을 유지하지 못합니다. - 2회차 플레이의 속도를 높여 줄 장치가 부족합니다. 이미 읽은 내용을 빠르게 넘길 수 있는 스킵 기능이나 반복 플레이를 배려한 편의 기능이 있었으면 좋겠습니다. - 같은 정보를 다른 인물에게 다시 확인하거나, 확인을 위해 비슷한 대화를 반복하는 구간이 많아 플레이 타임이 불필요하게 늘어집니다. - 비주얼 노벨 장르 특성상 대사의 비중이 높은 것은 이해하지만, 조사 시스템을 활용하는 재미보다 반복적인 대화의 비중이 더 크게 체감됩니다. - 사건이 본격적으로 전개되기 전에 설명과 감정 정리에 많은 시간을 할애하고, 여기에 시스템의 답답함까지 더해지면서 스릴러 특유의 긴장감이 자주 끊깁니다. 더 압축된 전개와 반복 플레이를 고려한 편의성이 있었어야 소재나 캐릭터의 매력이 좀 더 와 닿았을 것 같습니다.

按照攻略来都进不了B线，不知道卡了什么BUG，不让我看我就只能差评了。主要是故事虽然有不同走向，但是没有流程图，也不方便从分支处切换，要走其它剧情还得从头再来，跳过对话也不能只跳过已读，全部都一起跳过了，就看不见哪些是新对话，非常的不方便。

I don't very often write reviews, but I felt compelled to write one after this game. I wish reviews began with a broader question than would you recommend this game? because I have very mixed feelings. For the most part, I enjoyed the game and there were bits of story that I found to be really engaging. It was fun to speculate what things being brought up may be relevant later. It was interesting to learn how to respond to specific characters (in the early game I lamented how many times I managed to pick the wrong choice for Seil from only 2 options!). The music and atmosphere could be good at times. There's quite a bit of voice acting - I couldn't tell you how much of that is full voice acted verses perhaps just saying a line in a character voice to give an impression of tone (like the Persona games or Danganronpa may do, as an example). The characters do have character and I liked the different character relationships to each other. I have a friend who is into the K-POP scene and has spoken to me about it before, I think that context helped me a lot - without, I may have found this harder to enjoy. So why am I torn? This game desperately needed another editing pass. I don't mean in the sense of mis-spellings etc, but things that are a result of the initial translation that I'm sure are not an issue in the original. Sometimes a male character becomes a she for a line. 3rd person v 1st person - I wondered at what point if this was supposed to be meaningful, than had a line that had both 3rd and 1st person in the same narration line. A reference that is clearly to a situation that happened to character A gets referred to as character B for a line (being vague here to prevent spoilers). Most of these are small and don't hinder much, but I found they felt quite concentrated at one point which was unfortunately along the true ending path. Other things matter more and are clearly matters of translation: A character makes an argument as to their whereabouts and when they met up with another. Later, that character "reiterates their story" (which is the intent: they tell the same thing), but it gets mistranslated the second time and refers to a different location and then you have to wonder which part is the mistranslation. There was another time where I thought I spotted a factual inaccuracy as the facts as the game explained them did not line up and this was just nothing, so again I assume it was translation. Some of the choice points seem functionally identical in the text you're given to make that decision - you can generally work out what it actually meant after picking that dialogue option. To be clear, I'm not saying this is every choice or every decision point, but translation shouldn't be creating these issues. Replayability to see alternate endings is hampered by the fact that this is a visual novel with a skip feature, but no feature to stop at new lines as far as I could find. So you either end up trawling through a lot of very familiar stuff with minor changes that you've just read, or you skip and probably miss out on new content and the nuances of what is different. I think this is really unfortunate as it feels no matter which way you choose, it's unsatisfactory in one way or another. So do I recommend this game? I do, with caveats. I think if you know what you're going into, you can find enough to enjoy this, and I hope people do.

Played this with my friend (hi Nat) and we couldn't help but think "that's it?" with how simple the mystery was. Predicting the culprit way before the MC didn't feel satisfying- it just dragged. I would give the game points if the character writing was great but the characters are often too self-realized that it doesn't leave any room for depth. The story discussions of fame and social media were interesting but gameplay-wise were underutilized. Pacing was also odd. Idk how this game took me about the same time to play as Danganronpa: THH when this game is supposed to play out in a much shorter timespan.. could have worked if there was more gameplay/ a BREAK from all the repetitive dialogue. Disappointingly, Buried Stars was a mediocre mystery plot that left me and Nat wanting to play Zero Escape instead. Oh, Junpei...

1회차가 5-6시간 걸리는데 그게 구조대가 걸린다는 시간이랑 비슷해서 좀 묘했음 나머지 엔딩이랑 컬렉션은 공략 보고 진행했고 100%까지 총 19시간 걸림 도전과제만 모을 사람은 통화나 일러스트까지 모을 필요 없음 추리x 스토리 몰입게임

玩了12小时打完了A线所有结局，评价是作画和制作对得起100多的价格，但是剧情只能对得起11块的价格。本以为这个游戏除了南通，起码还有别的亮点，实际打下来发现游戏唯一的卖点就是南通了。考虑到我确实也是花了11块的价格体验了这个游戏，给个好评吧，刚开始玩的时候觉得这个游戏模式还挺有趣的。 [spoiler]打了这么半天结果就是给我喂了一坨难以下咽的南通，我真没绷住。[/spoiler]角色刻画说实在也没有太出彩，个人感觉比较烂大街，感觉没过多久我就会忘了。可能是不对我胃口吧，高光都给了其中两位男士，不知道在哪看到过有篇推荐说女角色的刻画也很出彩（也可能是我记错），实际打下来感觉刻画是有，不多，甚至有点在扮演丑角的感觉。[spoiler]一个说点比较残酷的话就掉好感，一个脾气火爆动不动就要和人爆了，在对过去的刻画上也是平铺直叙，像是淡淡地看了一个新闻一样。推进剧情扩大矛盾也都是让梦璐或者红、绿毛哥来干，梦璐清清白白的，怎么是和反派放一块的啊？男主、李修杰就美美沉默或者说点不得罪人的话，被刻画得完美无瑕的，黑点也都是些无伤大雅的东西，哪怕真做了无法挽回的事也有合理的理由。甚至我一见钟情的女角色（导演）最后发现是若智反派，也没有活下来了解的机会。主剧情感觉就是围绕着李修杰的深仇大恨展开，真是为了卖南通铺了好长一条路啊。[/spoiler] 打B线心情：游戏主打的是刻画人物真实，确实挺真实的，有的角色真是我越了解越恶心啊。

20h全流程精美立绘的粪

10块钱就当看CG也量大管饱了吧 虽然玩法有一点坐牢 但是我还是很喜欢玩的

앉은 자리에서 까자마자 11시간 풀로 달렸습니다 첫 엔딩을 볼 땐 가히 충격적이였지만 이후 엔딩들은 감동을 선사해주는 맛을 주셨습니다... 정말 기승전결이 완벽합니다 게임 끝나고 박수쳤고, 남은 엔딩도 짬짬히 보고싶을 정도로 감명 받았습니다. 추천합니다!