CyberRebeat -The Fifth Domain of Warfare-

[h1]Video review (including score):[/h1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezTIrfJlKSQ [h1]The rundown:[/h1] [b]Pros:[/b] + Good character designs + Language-switching feature [b]Cons:[/b] - Barebones settings menu - Lack of keyboard controls - Text issues This visual novel is a rather odd release. On one hand, it is a VN about hackers and the world they live in, a concept rarely touched on in VNs. On the other, it is a freeware title that is still available to download on the developer's website, although without the English translation. The game may have some good art, but it definitely shows signs of being a freeware title, and not in a good way. [h1]Pros:[/h1] [b]Good character designs.[/b] If there is one thing CyberRebeat does really well, it would definitely be the character designs. These designs take a more "artistic" approach compared to what appears in many Japanese VNs today. Sure, the designs may look rough, but it actually matches the overall theme of the story. This is a story about the darker side of hacking after all. The art actually reminded me of what I would see in a manga, and definitely not in a bad way. It was a nice change of pace compared to the tried-and-true art I usually see in the genre. [b]Language-switching feature.[/b] CyberRebeat may be lacking in features (more on that later), but it does one-up other VNs by having a language-switching feature. This allows the player to toggle between Japanese and English in the menu or anytime during play. It is an incredibly handy feature to have for those learning either language. I am currently learning Japanese, so it was nice to see how the translation compared. I have only played a few VNs that actually have this feature, so CyberRebeat has done well in that regard. [h1]Cons:[/h1] [b]Barebones settings menu.[/b] CyberRebeat has one of the most barebones settings menu I have ever seen in a visual novel. The options consist of text speed, audio volume, window opacity, and language, that is it. While these are good options to have in a VN, the complete lack of other basic VN features is a bit troublesome. There is no control customization, no display settings, no font settings, and no auto-mode speed option. These are just basic settings one should expect in every visual novel, so it is a bit unfortunate that several are lacking here. The game at least gets some credit for the on the fly language-switching, but it definitely needs some more work done elsewhere. [b]Lack of keyboard controls.[/b] As if the barebones settings menu was not enough, the game also lacks when it comes to keyboard controls. I usually play visual novels by advancing the text with either space or enter, but neither of those options worked here. In fact, the only way to advance the text was through left-clicking. This is the first time I have encountered a visual novel that behaved this way and it bothered me so much that I ended up configuring an AutoHotkey script to simulate left-clicks with space and enter. What is strange is that the game allows message skipping and auto-mode toggle through keyboard controls, so it is honestly baffling to me that text advancement was not given the same treatment. The AutoHotkey script did allow me to play through the game without much of an issue, but this should not have been an issue to begin with. [b]Text issues.[/b] The game does have a few issues outside of its settings menu, mainly with grammar and textbox overflow. The former was not nearly as bad as many bigger visual novel releases, as it was usually just a misplaced comma or two, but it should still be noted. The textbox overflow issue is much more apparent, with several scenes filling up the entire box with text, sometimes even spilling out of it. Most of these lines could have easily been split, which would not only solve the overflow issue, but would also make the reading pace a bit more steady. [h1]Overall:[/h1] For a visual novel, the story is rather average, but the game does have some nice art to go along with it. What really makes it a hard sell though is the lack of settings, some of which are essential for every VN. A VN that does not allow the player to advance the text using a keyboard is definitely an oddity. On top of that, the game does have some grammar and textbox overflow issues. As such, I would not recommend the game unless if you are really into the subject matter and are able to bear with the numerous technical issues to get through it. Follow my [b][url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/3215371]Steam Curator Page[/url][/b] for more reviews + videos!

Strongly recommended for VN-loving computer geek. このゲームは技術的にだいたいあってる。 普通そういうことはない。ノベルゲーだけじゃなく小説も漫画もアニメでも、コンピューターシステムとかハッカー／クラッカーの描き方は、全然違ってなかったとしてもよくてそれっぽい雰囲気描写どまり（あのシュタゲでさえ）。そりゃしょうがないシナリオライターはハッカーじゃない当然のことだ。 でも本作は、容赦なく専門用語が使われているうえに、少なくともぱっと見で萎えるような間違いがない（本職のハッカーから見てどうかは知らん）。だからハッカー同士の攻防シーンとかすげえ引き込まれる。前半の展開と登場キャラが気に入ってたから中盤の急展開に最初はえーと思ったけど、むしろそこからのほうが止まらなくなった。 システム周りは貧弱だしストーリーの肝心のところが読み手の想像に丸投げされてるのはけっこうマイナスだけど、達者な語り口とキャラクターはとてもよくて、絵もなじむと好もしくて、差し引きするとノベルゲー好きならだいたい楽しめるんじゃないかと。そんな人がどれだけいるか知らんけど、ノベルゲー好きの鯖管とかセキュリティかじった人とかもしいたら、強くお勧め。

While the game system is poor and off-putting, CyberRebeat provides a wonderful story and an interesting concept worth reading till the end.

7.5/10. Barebones presentation and a couple of story weaknesses hinder, but are ultimately outshone by a story about an interesting topic with morally grey protagonists and antagonists that left me genuinely thoughtful about the future of the internet and how we interact with it. CyberRebeat is, as the store page says, a VN about hacking. UX is quite frankly poor. Things like full-screen or auto-play or skip mode don't have any buttons in-game, just a list of hotkeys in the "config" menu. If somehow the developer sees this review, I recommend using Fungus in the future if you're going to stick with Unity. The music isn't bad but most loops are short, so they get repetitive quickly. The art is also...not great. Most of the backgrounds are real pictures which are grainy and covered with some random overlay that makes them look odd. None of the characters truly look bad, but they don't look good at all, and those ears... Like other relatively short, low budget VNs I've played recently, however, I really didn't have a problem looking past all of that and delving into the the story, which is definitely atypical. As the store page states, it's about hacking; more specifically, it's about hacking as "warfare," in both analog and digital realms. I found it pretty interesting in several ways. One is the topic itself: it frames most everything around a hacking "game" called CTF. I don't have any experience with this, but their descriptions of it are pretty interesting to read. That said, at certain points they do also expand out into social engineering, which is really cool. Another facet of this is the portrayal of the hackers. Hackers are a broad group - the existence of the terms "white," "grey," and "black" hat speaks to that. The game frames the main characters as mostly white hats, paints most of the larger community as "grey" hats, and just a few here and there as "black" hats. It's not as "villainous" as someone big on IT security might prefer, but it's not nearly as clear-cut as it could be. Connected to this is the portrayal of the game's adversaries. I won't spoil who they are, but for me personally it was difficult, in that I wouldn't necessarily view them as adversaries. Seeing things from a different perspective is valuable, and that's a strength of this VN. I found myself struggling to decide who the true "bad guys" were, or if there were any at all. At the same time, there are a couple weaknesses in the story. The big one is their portrayal of hacking. It feels...exaggerated, larger than life in some of the descriptions they give. Example quote: "She didn't use anyone's hacking tools, nor did she look at anyone's password, but somehow, impossibly, words began to scroll onto the screen as though they were magical runes appearing from thin air." It's not like that all the time, but a fair portion of the more involved hacking segments use that kind of language, which just feels unrealistic to me. It takes me out of the experience. A second, more minor criticism I have is that too many characters are connected to one another. To a point it's a good thing, and it's cool and intriguing to see familiar characters at different times in totally different contexts and try to figure out how they got from one to the other. But when basically every other character has a history with at least two others in the group from before the VN, it gets a little ridiculous. Again, this is fairly minor. It's not a big deal, it can be overlooked; it's just suboptimal. Ultimately, however, I can really only recommend this VN.

サイバーっぽい雰囲気のサウンドノベル。 選択肢なしの一本道。 「[b]シュタゲの影響受けてそうだな[/b]」と思う通りなので公式サイト・作者サイトを確認すると良い。 初版は2014年公開で、無料版の配布についても書かれている。 [h1]システム[/h1] Unityで作られており、[b]ページめくりはクリックのみ[/b]。Retrunでページめくり派には辛い。 Ctrlでスキップ可能。マウスウィールでバックログが確認できるが、画面全体ではなくテキストウィンドウごとにめくらなければならないので見にくい。 設定変更は「文字表示速度」「音量」「テキストウィンドウ透過率」「日本語・英語」。文字速度MAXで一括表示。 画面は最大化もできるが、端を掴んで自由にサイズ変更も可能。 背景は自動的に切り取られ、文字サイズは自動で拡大される。 しかし立ち絵は画面のアス比に従うので残念な立ち絵を作ることも可能。 セーブデータは「AppData\LocalLow\E_N_Nach\CyberRebeat」にある [h1]感想[/h1] 長い。 長いというか[b]読みにくい[/b]。テキストウィンドウのサイズやフォント(特に英語交じりの日本語の表示崩れ)、1ページの文字数については考えられていない印象。 サウンドノベルとしてはテンポが悪く、読みにくいという印象しか受けなかった。[b]縦書きの小説なら[/b]違う印象を受けたかもしれない。 立ち絵・一枚絵・映像については力が入っていて、思ったよりキャラが動く。わざわざ映像作ったのはすごいと思った。 とりあえず[b]メイド服を着せつづけるのは良い[/b]。

CyberRebeat es una novela visual cinética, lo que quiere decir que el juego es simplemente una historia que tienes que leer y en la que no tienes que tomar ninguna decisión: es totalmente lineal, solo tienes que pulsar el botón izquierdo del ratón para avanzar el texto. Gráficamente no es nada especial, todo son escenas estáticas sobre las que se situan los personajes, que tienen dos o tres poses distintas. De vez en cuando hay alguna escena especial entre ellos, estática por supuesto, y raramente una escena animada muy simple y de baja resolución. En cuanto al sonido, cada escena lleva asociada alguna de las cinco o seis melodías cortas que existen y que se repiten continuamente mientras la estás leyendo. Lo mejor es bajar el volumen del televisor, son realmente olvidables pero molestas. El juego no tiene muchas opciones pero son suficientes: con la rueda del ratón puedes volver hacia atrás para leer todo el capítulo en el que estés, y puedes entrar en el menú de configuración para cambiar entre los idiomas inglés y japonés (no hay español). Algo también muy importante es la traducción. Siendo un juego japonés es habitual que algunos editores no se molesten en hacer más que pasar el contenido por Google Translate y publicarlo tal cual, pero en este caso no es así. Sekai Project ha hecho un gran trabajo de localización al inglés, incluido el vocabulario actual de internet, tanto la jerga más habitual como el más tecnológico y especializado, y tampoco he visto faltas de ortografía. Respecto a la historia, comienza bastante mal y es muy aburrida. Hiro es un joven que sobrevive como puede trabajando a tiempo parcial en varias empresas de dudosa reputación. Sabelotodo, con tendencia a soñar despierto, hacer chistes malos, creerse más importante de lo que es y ningunear a todo el que se cruza en su camino, no parece ser la mejor opción como personaje principal de una historia. Kana es una chica amable, sonriente pero tímida y muy crédula. O como diría Hiro, idiota. También trabaja a tiempo parcial con Hiro, pero a diferencia de él Kana cae bien a todos. La pizzería donde trabajan cierra inesperadamente, y él la invita a pedir trabajo en el cibercafé donde colabora y que le sirve de hogar, en el que tanto la propietaria como los clientes habituales son bastante particulares. Otro de los trabajos de Hiro es como reportero escribiendo artículos para panfletos que no interesan a nadie, y ahora la editorial para la que trabaja le entrega unos documentos confidenciales y le pide que escriba sobre un hacker llamado Warlock y un incidente que sucedió hace dos años (justo desde el momento en que Hiro padece amnesia), en el que se filtró información confidencial de numerosas empresas importantes. Pero ese mismo día la oficina sufre un incendio y todo el personal muere en el accidente. Esta explicación es únicamente el prólogo de la historia pero dura casi dos horas. Durante todo este tiempo estaba deseando que se acabase la novela de una vez, es todo muy aburrido y excepto Kana el resto de personajes tienen una personalidad aberrante similar a la de Hiro, soltando una frase ingeniosa y sin sentido tras otra. Entre eso y mi odio hacia el personaje, no entiendo como pude resistir. Pero entonces comienza la historia propiamente dicha con la investigación del incendio por parte de los habituales del ciber, y la situación cambia radicalmente. Hiro y Kana tendrán dos compañeras en la investigación: Misa y Lily, la primera una hacker experta y adicta a las bebidas de cola y la segunda una investigadora sueca que sufrió el ataque de unos hackers hace tiempo y quiere vengarse de ellos. Ellas serán las encargadas de infiltrarse en la red de la editorial para recuperar toda la información que pudiesen tener sobre Warlock. A partir de aquí se desencadena una serie de acontecimientos en los que se juntan ordenadores asesinos, guerras entre hackers, gobiernos corruptos, sirvientas reparando impresoras, bares de mala muerte que roban tarjetas de crédito y jugadores de MMORPGs ayudando a devolver la paz al mundo. La aventura es entretenida y juega con tus expectativas. El hecho de que Hiro tenga amnesia desde el mismo momento en que Warlock desapareció, por ejemplo, te lleva a pensar que son la misma persona. Pero cuando descubres la verdad le dan una vuelta de tuerca que no te esperabas y no importa si era cierto o no, porque el descubrimiento lleva asociados varios misterios más y revelaciones totalmente inesperadas. Así se va sucediendo la historia, descubriendo una trama en la que hay hackers enfrentados a hackers, y gobiernos enfrentados a todos ellos. Y con cada giro en la historia van apareciendo nuevos actores o los ya existentes toman nuvos roles, y va tomando un ritmo cada vez más frenético hasta su espectacular conclusión. Espectacular pero un poco decepcionante tras tantas preparaciones, y que deja algunas preguntas en el aire porque después de todo un hacker igual que un mago no debe revelar nunca todos sus secretos. Siendo una historia de hackers una parte importante es explicarnos su forma de actuar durante su trabajo. No sé lo realista que es pero me imagino que está bastante simplificado para que se entiendan mejor sus acciones durante los ataques a servidores enemigos. Hablan de términos conocidos como VPN, phishing, DDoS o virus y explican algunas nociones básicas de seguridad y vulnerabilidades de servidores. Es un relato bastante serio, aderezado con muy pequeñas concesiones al llamado "fan service", o lo que es lo mismo, vestidos provocativos, insinuaciones sexuales y dobles sentidos. Todos los personajes principales excepto Hiro son chicas, pero excepto el hecho de que Kana acabe con un traje de doncella o que Lily parezca interesada en ella no hay nada más, y es lo bastante inofensivo como para no resultar molesto. Como conclusión, CyberRebeat es un videojuego del que no esperaba nada cuando comencé a jugarlo, pero que me hizo cambiar de opinión al poco tiempo, convirtiendo el resto de las 10 o 12 horas que dura su lectura en una apasionante historia de intriga con un trasfondo informático poco común.

"ハッキング"という言葉にちょっと面白さを感じるのなら買うべし

本日ストーリーを全て見終わったので感想を書かせていただきます。 ｇｏｏｄ　 全体通して非常に良いシナリオでした。 山場も要所要所にあり、熱くなれる展開が多く最後まで楽しませていただきました。 内容としては、ハックとハックディフェンスそれに対する問題提起と解決方法の一例（一部極端）といった感じでしょうか。 詳しくはネタバレになってしまいますので、控えさせていただきます。 あと購入してから気が付きましたが、体験版あるようですので、ご興味あるかたいらっしゃいましたら、一度そちらをお試しの上ご購入を検討されてはと思います。 ちなみに、自分の購入動機になったのは、主題歌が非常に良かったからです。 クリア後にギャラリーモードが解放していただけるのですが、できましたら、サウンドモードの実装があると非常にうれしいです。 とゆうか、できましたら、サントラを追加で置いていただけませんかね？開発者様 ｂａｄ　 多少ではありましたが、誤字がところどころ見受けられました。 長文ですので、見落としがあったのかと思われます。 名前とセリフが一致していない箇所が数か所見受けられました。 セーブしてロードをしたときにＢＧＭが消失することがありました。 無事なセーブデータからおなじところまで進めると治りましたがおそらく、バグだと思いますのでこちらでご報告させていただきます。 総評 値段的にみて、この内容でこのお値段でしたら、非常にリーズナブルだと思います。 最近の小説なら一冊分、漫画でも2冊分のお値段で長時間楽しませていただける内容だと思います。

This was a special gem. I was pretty much hooked after the first part. The characters are all uniquely charming and the CGs look great. Soundtrack is on point too when the action ramps up. It gets a tad confusing at times, but generally gets resolved quickly enough. The only negative I had story-wise was how the aftermath of several incidents was not explained or just glossed over contrary to initial impressions of events. There is also a lack of using Spacebar or Enter to advance text (only left click works) which is just mind-boggling. A bit of a niche topic, but well recommended for anyone interested in this realm. Actual read time: 11 hours, 30 minutes (I spent way too much time with this running while doing other things).

I'm a huge enthusiast for the cyperpunk genre, and a premise this unique at $5 was hard to pass up. I definitely enjoyed my time with CyberRebeat and would recommend it to anyone who find its premise or subject matter interesting, especially if you find it on sale like I did. However, it's also important to note that, as a VN itself, its production quality is considerably underwhelming (though it thankfully did not deter my enjoyment as much as it may others). Let's start with the good though: The story is lengthy and very engaging. I found myself hooked from beginning to end and wanting more after the credits rolled. The characters and their designs are also a plus: I felt the characters were very well-rounded, not pulling too much (or too little) from their personality traits or backstories to leave a lasting impression on the reader. Background art doesn't wow much but gets the job done and, similarly, the BGM is also enjoyable despite a relatively short track list (an OST release would be a nice bonus). Despite the good, the overall presentation of it all leaves a lot to be desired. This game only runs in 1024x576, a resolution pretty low by 2014 standards when the game was originally released as freeware and certainly even tougher on the eyes in 2018. In fact, several settings you'd typically find in the average VN today are totally absent: There's no way to reconfigure keyboard/mouse commands, resolution (as noted above) or font at all. There were also a few instances where I not only noticed minor typos in the translation, but complete errors where the wrong character was listed as speaking as well. This happened enough to where I become slightly frustrated at least once from having to read dialogue over to avoid confusion. Transitions meant to break the narrative into parts were also ambiguous from time to time, but not enough to cause any real headache. Basically, it seems like the only difference between the the freeware version and Sekai Project's release is the English translation. I'd have love to have seen a few technical tweaks, at least... All in all, still had tons of fun reading this one. If the material piques your interest and you can overlook the presentation mishaps, you're in for a good time.