Scar of the Doll

A fun 90s adventure throwback. The characters aren't necessarily well-developed or nuanced, but the writing is surprisingly tight. By the end of the game, I could trace where every character was at every point of the game and understand what they were doing and why. It makes me crave more mystery thriller visual novels in this style.

I didn't like anything about this Visual Novel at all. Horrible art (backgrounds, and Sprites if you could even call them that since they're so bad,) mediocre soundtrack, and what should be the integral part of any Visual Novel which is the story was just very poorly written, boring, and plain bad. Not to mention that it has pretty bad translation also, although I usually don't mind that, and just focus on the story. But this VN is so bad I don't want to even go on writing a review for it. So I will just post my final score. I will have to give it an overall MAXIMUM of 5/10. P.S. The game is short. My playtime is totally off, as I was afk for a long time. It shouldn't be longer than 3-4 hours in reality.

I played this at the same time as POSTAL 2 -- a game where you blow people's brains out for being too slow in line. I can confidently say that POSTAL fazed me not, and this game wrapped a rope around my psyche. Am I being watched right now? Probably. Scar of the Doll makes you FEEL it. Ah! These eyes are so coarse on my frail skin! Every decision is so tense, who knew I'd be uptight about dinky JPEGs and paper mache blood? I care a lot about our inquisitive protagonist and I want to see her through to the end. The game is plodding though and she likes to ruminate. But I'm as patient as a thing that is patient so I say ruminate, girl. Tell me your thoughts and take the trip to your goal one creeping step at a time. I'll be with you the whole way...

This VN is so f-ing 90s, and I love it for it.

I already played the remake for this and decided to play the original version as well, since I loved it so much. I think both versions are amazing, I feel like this one has shorter length (despite the content/plot being unchanged in the remake) but the writing is very well done regardless. The music and atmosphere are immaculate and I had fun experiencing the story again. I'd love to see more sci-fi mystery VNs like this.

У этой игры еще есть ремейк, но там полностью угробили аудио и визуальную составляющие. Я вообще не понял - зачем этой трехчасовой игре нужен ремейк? Им совсем делать нефиг было? Что касается данного оригинального продукта - я не скажу, что игра плохая, но у нее есть большой недостаток: она начинается очень интересно, интригующе, мистически - у героини пропадает сестра в Токио и она едет выяснить в чем дело... по приезде на место коллеги сестры утверждают, что первый раз слышут про такого покемона и она никогда здесь не работала, а ее хата пустует. Хм... интересно!!! Первые полтора-два часа интрига нарастает, реально хочется разобраться что же там произошло. Кто все эти люди, почему героиню хотят убить, почему все ведут себя странно. Увы, объяснение происходящему скучное и стандартное. Мне не понравилось. Но все же стоит похвалить игру за годный саундтрек, за клевую стилистику и за первую половину сюжета. Не всё так плохо, но за прoсранный потенциал от меня в конечном итоге минус.

「今もなお、紛れもない傑作（※98年リリース）」 「時の風化をものともせず、現在2017年の作品群として数えることが可能」とレビューされていたのでプレイ。 http://steam.degica.com/news2/shinjicook-scar-of-the-doll PS/SSの時代にリリースされたインディー作品としては群を抜くレベルでしょう。 「失踪した姉を追う」「主人公の周りで起きる不穏な現象」「怪しい研究機関」など掴みもばっちり。 良くできた作品だった思います。当時としては。 今やると選択肢がほぼ即死系だったり、展開が早すぎてろくに背景が描かれないまま退場していく登場人物など、どうしても時代を感じてしまう部分があります。 [spoiler] みんな頭がいいはずなのにすぐ直接的な手段に出るのはいかがなものか。 [/spoiler] 前半のきな臭い調査パートの部分は今でも面白かったので、そこにもっとボリュームがあれば…… 当時を知ってる人が遊ぶ分には良いと思いますが、現代でも通用するかというと難しいと思います。 それだけゲームも進歩したということでね。

I played the Remake right after playing the original game - that's how impressed I was by this one. While the Remake adds a certain emotionality to the characters and story, the original sucks you in through its unique atmosphere. It's a fast paced mystery with a little bit of trial and error that feels outdated from time to time, but it's still a really cool story with very interesting themes. You really can't go wrong with these action-packed 3 hours of a game.

用日语通关了。对于学习外语很有帮助。 剧情很棒，一个接一个的悬念让人很有继续玩下去的欲望。 每个角色的塑造都很不错，情感把控很到位。虽然只有文字和bgm，但是在生死关头却让人动容。 结局还埋了个悬念，希望女主能幸福地活下去吧。

Short, sweet, and to the point. I had an idea of how the story was going to go early on, but it still managed to surprise me. Gave me some real food for thought, too... Definitely recommend if you've got some time to kill on a quiet afternoon.