Corpse Party: Blood Drive - I bought a game, got a Visual Novel instead.
Sidenote: I will not be regarding the EX chapters as I could not be asked to read ♥♥♥♥♥ I don't care about, I just couldn't.
The good:
+ I generally like the story, except for the fact that they kinda retcon (?) (although I'm pretty sure they leave its origin as ambiguous as possible so they can make ♥♥♥♥♥ up later, which, if that's the case then more power to them, I guess), the creation of the Nirvana or whatever, and the weird ♥♥♥♥♥ Kuon Niwa does to Satoshi, cannot get over those.
+ Kuon Niwa's death is much better than that of Mayu Suzumoto. I feel like Mayu's death is more for shock value and to make the game seem more tragic than it actually is, as Mayu herself never really does anything in the game, other than get ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up by ghosts. While Kuon Niwa's character has been established throughout the game, and her death was to save the world, which makes her death all the more impactful than Mayu Suzumoto's.
+ I like the 3D style, it doesn't seem easy to translate a 2D game into 3D, and I think they did a pretty good job at it.
The bad:
+ Like the title of the post suggests, it's just a slightly fancier Visual Novel. I don't really mind Visual Novel. Although they might as well present it as such, as there's barely enough stuff in here to be considered gameplay.
+ Speaking of gameplay, it's an almost direct clone of Corpse Party 1, which is a problem, because the 1st game's gameplay ain't all that good either, it's just a massive fetch quest. There's no puzzle solving, no combat (will be talking about this in a sec, don't worry), no nothing that a fun game has. Although the environmental hazards do spice things up a bit. Though some of them get obscured by the map, which is horrible map design. It's kind of a nothing burger, as at least 90% of my play time is just reading and walking around, hitting triggers.
+ It's not survival horror (I don't think the devs ever claim that it is, but it has the tagline so I will criticize it for that), as it's not horror, horror is, of course, subjective, but nothing ever really scares me in my 20+ hours of playing the game, nor you survive in this game, surviving includes fighting and flying, and I ain't seeing any of the former. I would LOVE to play a zombie game (one that has proper survival features) that takes place in this universe, but unfortunately, that probably ain't gonna happen.
+ The ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ gym music, you know what I'm talking about.
+ Ayumi's character. Apparently, she trusts some random ♥♥♥♥♥♥ she never met, one who called her names and has nothing to show for the ♥♥♥♥♥ he said, more than her friends and, you know, her experiences with the Book of Shadows. It's not a nitpick because if she just tells Misuto to ♥♥♥♥ his ass off of her property, then the game wouldn't happen, and she and Yoshiki Kishinuma wouldn't be erased out of existence. Also, according to the (fan) wiki, she doesn't like adults, especially men, not sure how much I trust that but I'll take their word for it, so why the ♥♥♥♥ does she even thinks he's trustworthy in the first place.
The ugly:
+ Fetish. You cannot convince me that the writer didn't have some kind of fetish for holding in piss after at least 3 ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ games that have someone doing exactly just that, at least in this game they don't linger on that, which is pretty concerning now that I think about it.
+ Said weird ♥♥♥♥♥ that Kuon Niwa does to Satoshi. Open a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hot sprint at his house (apparently getting nothing in return if not for the free pass Satoshi's mother gave her), chew food for him, be naked in front of him, and probably more that I can't bother remembering.
Overall, 4/10. I like the game, but you should seriously reconsider if you want to buy it.
