This World Unknown

[h1][i]This is a story set during archaic period in a small village where you work as a nurse tending to soldiers who had the chance to come back home from war.[/i][/h1] [h1]Game’s premise:[/h1] [b][i]This World Unknown is a choice-based Visual Novel about the bond between three childhood friends who took each their own path once grown up. The connection remained nonetheless loosening up due to everyday’s obligations. However, a mysterious illness seems to have contracted the priest of the village who happens to be one of the highest reference figures of inhabitants. The only villagers able to save him happen to be you along with Asa and Luca, your childhood friends who will have to take a dangerous path through the forest – at the end of the venue you should be able to find a helping individual, however the forest is inhabited by inhuman creatures addressed by most villagers as “dangerous monsters”. Will you be able to succeed at this mission and return taking this occasion as a possibility to reunite with your cherished friends?[/i][/b] [h1]Village’s setting:[/h1] The game is set during medieval era in a small village which happens to be very old-fashioned coming to the rules, fears and unacceptance enforced by the priest himself. While writing and reading are not of common knowledge and education is for privileged people only who had the luck of being born in wealthy families, the common inhabitants who are relatively ignorant are treated less seriously and wealthy personages are supposed to hold more importance in other people’s eyes. It is said there are demons outside the village and while there are different types of creatures such as dryads, slimes, succubi, etc – all of this has no matter to the obstinate priest. Who does not happen to be born as human is considered a dangerous monster. This causes several discriminations from the human side towards other beings, who at the same time realizing so, started to despise humans. The inhabitants are very religious and look up to the priest whom with the features of an angel is considered to be the messenger of God himself. [h1]The three childhood friends:[/h1] [b]Rhea[/b] is the main heroine of the story and while viewing herself as a typical ignorant girl who did not have any privilege such as attending school given her poverty, she happens to be really intelligent and observing. She might find difficult expressing herself with complex words not having had the opportunity to study, but she always manages to state her point of view clearly and not many people do notice it given the importance of difference of classes of each human being. Appears to be a simple clumsy girl at first, but she is really hardworking and passionate about everything she does, her work at the hospital included. Tends to go out of her way to make her patients feel at ease while conversating with them and listening to their troubles. [b]Luca[/b] is one of the two childhood friends of Rhea. He decides to go off at war to serve the lands seeing it as an important duty to take as mature person while leaving to peace his cherished ones. He makes a promise with Rhea that he will surely return, however at his return the things don’t turn out equal to Rhea’s expectations. When he spots Rhea after re-entering the village he decides to avoid her and becomes a cold and distant person, unlike the typical reliable and collected Luca from years ago. He has a little sister named Lucia whom he cherishes a lot. [b]Asa[/b] is the most easy-going out of the three friends. While he finds amusing to joke around and teasing Rhea, he is also a really hardworking person working at Meirin’s bakery. He often is not taken seriously by the surroundings given his personality. [h1]Other characters:[/h1] [b]Selene[/b] is the [b]priest[/b]‘s daughter and while they both are seraphs, the villagers don’t look up to her the same way as to her father. She happens to lack confidence and really wants to work hard, but she feels like she can’t perform her duties properly which causes a lot of clumsiness during the work while her father is hospitalized. [b]Doctor Valerian[/b] is the head Doctor of the hospital where Rhea is employed. He often mocks her and some people would describe him as sadist. Tends to scold the nurses a lot and while showing an impassive expression to the surroundings he cares about his work as well as the employers and other connections of his. [b]Clair[/b] is Rhea’s cheeky friend and colleague. Most of the villagers despise her given she was born with two horns, but that was not the case of Doctor Valerian who treats her as an equal. [b]Garrett[/b] is patient at Doctor Valerian’s hospital who was found with a broken leg at the entrance of the village. He is very upset at himself that he can do nothing but sit still while his comrades are on war. Aspires to be a real hero like the ones portrayed in books. [b]Meirin[/b] is an elf woman who appears to have lived for centuries or so the rumors go. Not much is known about her whereabouts while she knows more than she should’ve about other villagers as she really does enjoy gossip. [h1]Featurings:[/h1] This is a ~26h long Visual Novel featuring different routes determined by choices you take during the playthrough. The dialogues are not voiced but accompanied by few sound effects and background music that matches the mood of the scenes you are going through. The gameplay is really easy and with a bit of intuition it is possible to complete the routes with no use of guides. The story presents no sexual content and features romance and discovery of the background story of the characters that do surround you. Being an Otome game you play as a girl and are able to go out with male characters only. The heroine’s face is displayed and the character sprites are on point. While I really enjoyed the coloring of the sprites, what felt slightly amiss were the head proportions used by the artist. The characters were accompanied by simple backgrounds with generic idea of the surroundings to fit the scenes in question. The characters appear to be mostly cheerful and very endearing. While the narration is easy to apprehend and held at the right pace it presents periodic sad moments coming to background stories of the characters and the story setting. [h1]Overall:[/h1] Recommended if you are looking for an easy-going read that still features sensible topics such as discriminations of diversity. Not recommended for public disliking fantasy genre. 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Some parts of this game were interesting, however, most of it was boring. I hated Asa the most. He disgusted me. I hated the fact that we play as a 17 year old girl and yet we can date a man in his late twenties!? It made me so uncomfortable. I finished the entire game just for the achievements.

It looks like a very cute and interesting game and I did fall in love with it's characters and the world they live in, but.. There was a lot of completely useless dialogue that has absolutely no relevance to the story and it was quite boring in the beginning. The only route that I actually liked as well was Valerian's which was kind of a disappointment, as there was 4 routes in total. If you like otome games and don't mind pure and sweet romance without a smutty side, then this is great for you, just be ready for some pointless dialogue.

Maybe the good things first - the setting sounded interesting enough and the art is unique. The uniqueness is both its strength (if you like it) and its weakness, since... they all look *very* young. And that's... probably were it ends since tbh, I only "finished" it for the achievements. And by "finishing it" I mean that I just force skipped through like 80% of the VN. For whatever reason I found the story and/or writing to be rather boring and not very rousing. Hence I gave up midway in the first route (Asa's I think) and just... skipped through it. It may be a slow burn, but I for my part was also bothered by the fact that it feels like it takes a whole hour until you actually get to make your first choice and from what it looks like the specific routes actually do not start until after your *last* choice. Which... appears weird. Now, at this point I by far didn't actually read the story anymore so I have no idea wtf happens there but I assume it can turn into a very bad kinectic VN feeling. Nothing wrong with kinetic VNs per se if you like them but I don't want to just... read through half of the story without having a say in it, rather literally? At least not if it's a Otome Game we're talking about or at least an interactive VN. The casual soundtrack did also get on my nerves at some point as I didn't like it for whatever reason - which is not a critique per se since it isn't *bad*. It just wasn't my cup of tea and I at least did enjoy the soundtrack from the humorous scenes. I'm not saying you *shouldn't* buy it - if it strikes you as interesting then by all means, do buy it. Maybe you won't have the same problem as I did. Maybe I'll give it another in the future since I've heard Valerian's route is quite good (and tbh, he was the only character I *really* looked forward to read the story of) but as it is now... I'll rather turn to VNs which are more interesting in story and writing to me.

Is it all happy? NO Is it 100% non-depressing fluff? NO Is the game incapable of making you cry? NO Would I reccomend it? YES

I would compare this VN to a math problem that has 4 different solutions to it. You always get same "answer" to the problem that is introduced to story, but process of finding solution for every route is different. You're able to do choices only in introduction part and after you'll complete it, you get to read 4 different stories, that somewhat linked to each other, but all of them introduce secondary characters that you'll see only in this exact route and nowhere else. It's refreshing to see novel that doesn't replace one character with other one while giving same story and slightly changed details. Another good point is that when you choose one route or another, it looks into problems that you might have (or already have) in relationship with this or that characters, that are realistic and might be relatable, something that is worth looking at instead of empty drama over nothing. Then there's boring parts, which is noticeable downside of This World Unknown. Some of the characters (Selene for example) are simple and they have obvious lines like "Thank you, thank you very much" for 2nd or 3rd time in this exact route. While I do like Selene's visual design, I was absolutely not interested in anything she had to say, which was almost nothing than her simply being nice to other, giving some lore information or stumbling with not knowing what to say or how to react. There's a lot of character's dialogue and story text that could've been cut out without losing anything, some parts are extremely obvious and you don't need to read full explanation to understand what is happening. Prime example of that would be "was it Garrett or was it not him?" in Luca's route, that was laid out before you with full thought process of characters, when you as reader would be saying "yes, him-him-him" the first sentence you've read about it. For visual part of novel you'll have to judge for yourself, since some people do like art style that characters are made with, I personally don't. Would also add, that female characters look way better than male ones, while game also doesn't have even single f/f route, which might leave you with "I don't like any male characters at all". Speaking of characters... some of them (and yes, Luca, I'm looking at you) have both boring visual design and uninteresting character's traits, with pretty dull route (especially if you saw Asa's route before, since those two have a lot in common). And problem isn't me, problem is you, Luca. [spoiler]If you look up achievement statistics for game you also see that % of people that did complete Luca's route is lower than other 3.[/spoiler]

画风好呆槑 标签还写着"爱情" 咻~ 还是双马尾~ [strike]好久没看过双马尾的车了[/strike] 游戏意义不是很明 不过，这个评测意义也不是很明..

按照指南里将所有线路都走完后，会取得5个成就。然后关闭游戏再重开，就会自动获得第6个最终成就，并补全所有CG。完美游戏+1

This is a cute and sweet little visual novel. The world is well-made, filled with a lot of different fantastical creatures. Catboys/girls, slime girls, succubi, angels... Anyway, worth the price.

You play as Rhea, an incredibly normal girl born in a small, secluded village in the country of Aslande, who has been at war for centuries. Fortunately, your little village is far away enough from the fighting for it not to bother you much, unfortunately, most of the men in the village were called to fight, including one of your childhood friends. All you can do is your job as a nurse, help people get back up on their feet, worry, and pray for your friend to come back home and for a successful harvest come autumn. While I did enjoy This World Unknown, I liked it more for its unusual point-of-view you don’t usually read about, rather than its romance. (Being an uneducated girl who can’t read or write, and themes such as PTSD, war, famine, disease, death, prostitution, religion, abuse, dismemberment without being gory.) Speaking of romance, I wasn’t particularly impressed with the four options you have available - Asa, Luca, Valerian, and “Garrett” - but considering the time period and the disappointing life expectancy I guess I shouldn’t ask for too much.