This review contains some [b] spoilers [/b] to the game.
I wanted to like Seventh Circle so much, I really, really did. I can’t say I did not enjoy some of it, but if asked if I would recommend others to play this game, my answer would be a no.
This is a slice of life game pretending to be more. There is no “fighting people with magic” or uncovering “a mystery stretching back decades”, as is stated in this game’s description. The game has this untouched mine of unique lore that goes to a complete waste - not much would have changed if the whole magic part of it would have been completely cut out. Game throws tons of interesting world-building stuff at players for it to never get applied to anything in the plot, and we, the players, simply proceed to manage our LIs mental health and dating problems. Why does it have to be set in the urban fantasy setting to do that remains unclear.
I came into Seventh Circle expecting some cool fights - I mean, it’s right there, in the very first sentence of the game’s description on the steam page; the promise of RPG-like elements only fueled my expectations. In reality, RPG-like elements turn out to be a simple decoration. It does not matter which class of magic you choose for your character, because your character [b] never [/b] gets to use any of their powers. Or to fight. [b] At all [/b]. Narration does imply that there are weekly battles going on between characters, but we as a player never get to participate in them - the best we can get is a mention of how we lost one of those fights, which, in turn, leads to a LI scene that has nothing to do with characters’ occupation and powers. The only thing that changes if you decide to try out a different magic class is a couple of lines and, frankly speaking, there’s no point or replay value in restarting the game just to see some characters’ greetings change from [i] “Oh cool, you are also a modification mage!” [/i] to [i] “I usually don’t like obliteration mages, but you seem cool!” [/i].
The next thing that bugged me was the art. When you look at screenshots and the trailer, you can see a simplistic but rather pleasant art style and a soft color palette. I dig it. Characters’ art was the first thing that attracted me to this game. Imagine my surprise when I reached my first character ending (it was Bowie, btw) and his first (and only (!)) CG came up... in entirely different art style. So different that I did not even recognize him at first. What’s worse, his CG had a complete change in color palette, it went from soft, pastel in-game colors to bright, strong neon, which put quite a strain on my eyes. Moreover, the art style difference was so immense that it totally broke off the mood of the said good ending. And it’s not just Bowie’s CG, other characters’ art seems to have similar problems, to a different degree, with Bowie and Marius being the biggest offenders. Inconsistencies between in-game art style and CGs art style rarely co-exist well in VNs, and considering that every CG in this game was drawn by a different artist, every new CG caused a significant shock.
The game’s CG gallery deserves a separate mention. As is mentioned above, each character gets only one CG. There are 31 slots in the CG gallery. Those slots are for the game’s background art. Don’t get me wrong, backgrounds in this game are really well-done, but they are not CGs. Considering that my first instinct when starting the game was to check out the CG gallery, I was quite confused and disappointed after actually unlocking the CGs.
Yet another thing that bummed me out was the game’s length. To complete the game and get at least one ending for each character (good or neutral) took me six hours. Six hours for seven characters means less than an hour of content for every character. What makes the situation even worse is the fact that the whole game is basically a common route; there is no characters paths and if you choose wisely you can get all the characters endings in one go - just make right decisions to maximize characters’ relationships and save before the last ‘choice’. This also takes away greatly from the replay value. Sure, you can focus on one character at a time and restart the game every time you want to romance/befriend someone else, but you’ll just be re-reading the same stuff over and over again.
While characters’ relationships in this game are really well-developed, there’s not much to romance aspect of the game, either. You can flirt a little with all the characters during the course of the game, but every - e v e r y - character has some emotional baggage and thus there is nothing romantic about ‘romancing’ them. Every ending goes practically the same way: [i] “I have some stuff to figure out but I also think that I may like you, MC. Could we try dating/going out platonically?” [/i] Credits. When I first realized there is nothing to the fighting aspect of the game (both gameplay and story-wise), I had hoped that at least the romance part would manage to deliver. Sadly, it did not.
I also want to separately mention the ‘special’ post-credits scene, that seems to appear only if you manage to gather some clues about the game’s ‘mystery’ during the playthrough. This scene basically has the ‘villain’ of the game (who does not really get any development/screen time) appear before your character to vaguely answer some of their questions - and to have a final boss battle, one may think, but nope. They offer MC a choice of [spoiler] either escaping or staying at the facility [/spoiler] and whatever you choose, it does not matter. Because this choice is the game’s finale. No follow-up, no epilogue. What was that, you may ask? I have no idea. And after that ending delivery? I don’t have any desire to find out.
The last thing that cements my negative opinion of the game is its bugs. The game crashes, the game goes in circles (literally, you sometimes have to play the same dialogue a few times to get out of the loop), the game replaces one character’s lines by other character’s lines - in one chat with Marius he literally gets replaced by Adrian at some point, and the game simply goes on. The game has no auto-play option. While the skip option is very fast in this game (this is a pro), the skipping does not stop after you make a choice and you have no option in the settings to change that (this is a con).
Seventh Circle and its characters had some great potential and it’s a shame to see it not getting realized, especially considering that the game had a quite successful Kickstarter campaign.
Do I regret buying this game? I would not say so, I even enjoyed some parts of it - for example, characters banter, which is rather quirky and lively. However, the game and its creators set some specific expectations they do not manage to fulfill and I can’t really recommend others to give Seventh Circle a try.
