Henrick was mercilessly hooked on the stimulating lust of electrocution from the first time he stuck a paper clip in the electrical socket mounted to a desk in middle school. Leading up to that point, he had been the type of person who was numb to life in almost all senses of the word. The days passed him by so placidly. Some that knew him - the few friends he associated with - eventually said that he had died before his mom had given birth to him. He was, perhaps, not exactly depressed, but there was rather an absence of any semblance of pleasure or feeling. Relationships, personal interests and hobbies, social banter: none of these things brought him the slightest shade of contentment, and instead, he spent his days in a hazy dream, uncaring of his life or where it went.

That was, until he discovered the effect electricity had upon him.

Replicant, the progenitor of the Nier series.

The most pervasive theme throughout the course of this project is the following adage: there is always more to the story. There are things you are not seeing with your biased, limited perception, but things which nonetheless exist. All it takes is more time and a shift in perspective perhaps, and slowly, you begin to develop a fuller, more universal understanding. And with increasing perspectives that are not so self-referential and thus, self-limiting, you begin to develop compassion. You begin to develop empathy.

This VN deserves another playthrough from me. Due to life circumstances, I played it in brief and sporadic chunks. It’s best read in a few long stretches closer to one another, or even a single sitting if you can manage it.

It feels like an awkward trope to bring up Dark Souls in a review for a souls-like game, but I can’t help doing so. Part of me wonders if the developers of games like this are honored or if they instead become mildly nauseated when seeing another review comparing their game to their source of inspiration instead of reviewing it for what it is, floating by itself in a vacuum.

Fallen Eyeball

One listen to the main menu theme song was a prognostication that this was going to be good. I remember seeing this game back when there was a demo available, and I knew I’d buy it as soon as it came out.

I won’t repeat the obvious information that you’ve seen in the description and tags, but I want to say that this game, rather than being a “souls-like,” is more of a “bloodborne-like.” It takes a lot of inspiration from Bloodborne, ranging from the blood vial system to the names of certain areas and the overall dark gothic, cosmic horror aesthetic. Rather than copying directly off of Bloodborne, however, it sort of deviates by doing its own thing with the setting, most notably with the main character and her role.