X-note

Here's the run down: X-Note is a visual novel created by Zeiva Inc. You play as Essi, a psychic who's mother died ten years previous to the game, leaving her only with a USB flash-drive with a locked folder on it called "X-Note". Essi is approached by a young man named Yuon and invited to join the Xen Institute to investigate a murder and a disappearance that may be somehow connected to her mother's death and the X-Note. Essi accepts, and the mystery begins. Before you even play, there's one thing you should know: Bad endings seem rather inevitable without a guide. When a bad ending occurs, most likely you will have to replay the entire game over again. This happened to me on two occasions, and it does get very tiresome. If you want to go forth straight to get the endings you desire, you're better off using a guide. Though if you prefer going on your own, by all means, you should play without a guide. As a VN, the game is primarily text with quite stunning but unique artworks, with a few choices popped in here and there, plus mini-games to up your psychic powers (which I will talk about later). Sometimes the choices don't matter. Most of the time, they do matter and lead to a bad end if you don't know who's route you're going for. However, the routes themselves are quite short. You'll spend roughly an hour to an hour and a half going through one, depending on how much you struggle with the mini-games. There are three guys in the game you can go for: Yuon, Anon and Oure. I've only gone through Yuon's and Anon's, but they were both really great stories. I especially liked Anon's, for reasons I will not spoil. I do intend to go through Oure's, as there are still things I have not learned and you don't find out every mystery in just one play through which is what I really like about this game. It adds to the replayability and enhances the mystery. To be warned, there are some things are easily predictable in this game. But other times, I was pleasantly surprised and shocked to learn what this mystery had in store. Another key factor of this game is pretty much your "skills" of the game. Essi's psychic powers. You have the option to choose between Psychokinesis, Clairvoyance and Telepathy. Generally, one power is more helpful in certain playthroughs, depending on which guy you're going for. However, you're still going to want get them all up to max by the end of the game. I think the powers were a little bit of a let down mostly, as your character didn't change really whether you specialised in one form more than the others. There were not really any scenes where the outcome seemed to change drastically by what you had powered up more. I think this game could have improved a lot more if it had more focus on the psychic powers. They were critical in the big picture, just not to certain scenarios. To achieve these powers you must go through different little minigames (such as memorising and clicking at the right time) which grow to be quite challenging as the game goes on. They were quite fun, but at times I admit that I grew frustrated with them. If you can get this game on sale, like me, go for it. I still find that it is worth twenty dollars however, even if it is a little short. Overall, X-Note is a really a fun game, with a good mystery and some rather dark scenes within. You feel for the characters, some more than others, and Essi turned out to be an interesting protagonist, with her own quirks and interests (like obsessing over the colour black and drinking straight black coffee). The music is rather basic in my opinion, but nice to listen to and not annoying and repetitive. All the music sets very certain tones for the scenes, which kind of reassured me about what was going to happen next. The story is well written with lots of incentive to go through all three routes, the artwork is unique but lovely in my own personal opinion, and I'm pretty excited to keep playing and go for Oure's route. 7.5/10

X-note: it's a visual novel based on a girl with some psychic powers that lost her mother, when the girl was younger, her mother gave her a USB with a file called X-note, that she can't open. Things a side: the game will only give you like 2-4 hours of entertraining. Overall game has a pretty intriguing story but it's not worth its total price try to get it from a bundle or on sale.

Decent visual novel but getting removed from some peoples' account. EDIT.. need to email devs for a potential replacement key https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/337940/view/4183265241951785076

The Developer has exposed a major flaw with Steam's digital distribution thru their actions. Able to revoke games from an account under the guise of "recent payment problems" even 6+ years after the game is purchased. What ever ability exists for Developers and Publishers to revoke content automatically from players should not exceed that of the player to recover their money in a similar way.

This otome visual novel feature a female protagonist Essi who is an ordinary schoolgirl with latent supernatural powers. One day, she was approached by Yuon to study at Xen Institute and to investigate the deaths of her mother and several of the Institute's staff under mysterious circumstances. Along the way, Essi has to train and develop her latent powers through 3 different minigames, interact with a mysterious ally Rexus and develop a romance ending with Yuon who is the current director at the Institute, Oure who appears to be a regular student who frequently hangs out at a corridor inside the Institute or with Anon who appears to be the local computer expert within the Institute. The game has up to 15 save slots to enable quicker replays to reach a different romance ending or to see an alternative bad ending, in-game tips to guide the player to progress further to reach a better ending upon reaching a bad ending and a password system to instantly jump straight into a particular chapter with a certain storyline branch and skilltree progress or to unlock a special CG and soundtrack gallery. Soundtracks, artwork and overall game presentation are good, it would have been nice if the game allows the take screenshot button on Steam to work. Recommended when at sale or in a bundle offer as all 9 endings can be reached and the entire game's unlockable CG and extra content at gallery can be completed in less than 10 hours.

This is a negative review, yes, but with caveats. Pros: - You can actually lose quite easily, making this qualify as a game more than most VN's on PC nowadays. - Most of the character art is very gorgeous in all the places it can be seen. - The setting is interesting and full of promise. - English script is easy to read/follow. - All the chibi Essi art is very cute and makes me want to get a little Essi doll. Cons: - The game refuses to provide any clues as to what training each attribute will do, or what the minimum stat required is to pass a scene, until after you get a bad ending. Getting a bad end is a matter of not having the information to prevent it, which is given after you get a bad end. This is probably by design since they want all players to get all the endings, but I still think there should be some subtle clues to prevent it. - The game never tells you that you can hold down the down arrow key to skip text. - Essi shows herself to be weak-willed, flighty, and unable to handle any kind of bad news, nor willing to listen to an explanation about it, causing all sorts of problems for others. - The main story is about as rote as it gets. - Guide is required to reach all the endings, even if that guide comes from the endings themselves. - Lots of loading/reloading saves and skipping dialog to reach more than one ending. - Password to the safe doesn't seem to be hinted at nor given during the route I played which asked for it. - There doesn't seem to be a "best" ending. What I mean is you won't be able to finish a route and understand the very important plot threads that were started; important information is locked to different routes. - At some points Essi does and thinks what she wants, regardless of what the player is thinking, cutting out possible interaction the player could have had and different paths to reach the different endings. Oh, here's a mysterious white-haired boy, I think I'll feel at ease and instantly trust him. Oh, here's a snarky information-gatherer type who notices I'm sexually attractive, I think I'll say and think bad things about him. - There's a set way to reach the end of each path and if you veer more than slightly away from it you can't reach it. I guess that's fun for some people? Not for me. - Arbitrary connection to phychic stats and story. Why would one more level in, for instance, clairvoyance, the ability to read the memories off of objects, suddenly make Essi not die, or change what the results were of an investigation Essi had no control over nor involvement in? If the skill itself was worked into the explanation for these story beats this wouldn't be a problem but it really pulls you out of the fiction. ----- Biggest cons of them all: The price and length for what is basically a VN flash game (think newgrounds), albeit a pretty and well-developed one. Nobody should pay full price for this, I don't think anyone should pay even a small fraction of the price; had it not been part of a bundle I wouldn't have had the chance to play through it. Thank you for reading my review and have a good day.

-Edit- The key as been returned to me through Steam at the request of the developer. While I appreciate his efforts to right the wrong I will leave the negative review as this doesn't happen by accident. -Edit- Key revoked by the developer 6 years after legal purchase. Disappointing action by the dev. A Steam Product code you activated has been removed from your account. 30 Jun, 2015 X-note Your recent Product code activation has been revoked due to a problem processing payment for this item. If you would like to purchase the item, please visit the Steam Store. (Very funny. Been there, done that. Not again.)

X-note is a game I have been following since the demo was released on Zeiva's deviantART page some number of years ago (the demo is also available for free off of Zeiva inc's webpage: http://www.zeiva.net/). Seeing the full game now available on Steam was exciting and I was not disappointed. The graphics, the characters in particular, were all very pretty and cohesive in style. Atmospherically, the combination of horror themes, music and lighting were done well and used sparingly to create dramatic effect during those scenes. The music was mixed frequently to help break the monotony of background sounds on a loop; plus the music was better than anticipated going into the game. As a note, there is no audio for the dialogue and narration. Gameplay wise, the game relies on both choices and mini games which boost stats. There are only 3 stats and only one can be trained via mini game per day. The mini games are doable without being overly difficult for the casual player. If you were to get a bad ending due to stats, the game gives helpful advice as to what to do for next time so it eliminates the need to go hunting online for a walkthrough. There are 9 different endings, and each ending adds something to the overarching storyline. My only critic of the game is that each path is relatively short and can be completed in roughly an hour. However, the story is interesting, emotional and I look forward to the sequel Area-X. One nice thing to note is that anyone who has already purchased this game off of Zeiva inc's website may obtain a free steam code by e-mailing them the e-mail address that they purchased the game with. It's hard to think of any other company that would do this.