Lemma Soft Forums

So I boot up the game, hoping not to have the dang thing lag on me like all the other NaNo games this year. After a bit of rage, I finally got one window to open up properly. Sweet menu, sweet beginning, ¢hu« is adorbz, OMG NOT THE POM-POM D': I never wanted to hurt the poor guy T_T Iris comes in, talks about death, and I'm like, "Nuuu what happened to my cutesy gameeeee orz" After that I go through more of the dialogue, enjoying the little chibis, when the time comes to either split routes to Iris or Alesia. Well hey, I wanna see what the NPC has to say! So I go through all she has, and then ¢hu« wants to buy her some earrings as a gift. My heart drops because I know Alesia won't take them, but I cross my fingers and hope it's not terribly depressing. ¢hu« proceeds to drop the earrings for her, Alesia won't take them, and I'm screaming and crying inside DDDDD: He just kept talking to her! The poor AI just wouldn't stop! And when ¢hu« decided to wait for her party to show up, I was holding my head in my hands and sobbing and just aksfhfs it broke my heart ;-; Finally Chaz showed up, and ¢hu« merged into his account, and I seriously had to close the window and take a walk. It was just too much for me.

After getting myself a piece of chocolate, I go back to the game and decide to go on Iris's path. Things aren't too bad so far, until suddenly OMG HACKER AHHHHH!!! I just wanted to be friends with Kitty! Orion, don't you lsfhdgfhskldh FFFFFFFF THIS GAME DDDDDDDDD: ¢hu« didn't do anything wrong! HE JUST WANTS FRIENDSSSSSSS :CCC This ending really got to me and I seriously got a nervous breakdown. No kidding. How could anyone be fawning over the moe of this game while ignoring this extremely dark plot?!?! I had to go sweep my backyard before I could regain my bearings.

Just one more ending left. With a feeling of dread lingering in the back of my mind and a tear in my eye, I started the game once more. It's all normal so far, and then Zale decides to join my party! Oh wait, what's this talk of what a knight is supposed to be? OH SNAP IDENTITY CRISIS Q_Q As if this game couldn't get any darker. But whoa, I could make other players into AIs too! Well now, that's swell- I'M NOT A HACKER OMG ARGHHHHH D:< Orion, you better not be an ass and oh sweet, a final battle. This is going to be so cool- 1HP LEFT FFFF I MESSED UP TAT I was really scared, okay? I actually thought I was going to get a game over. But suddenly, I'm Orion O: It was so trippin' to see his character not be a douche, and I was thrilled to have this uber account. Oh hey, a happy ending for once! But I still have all these leftover feels... OTL

While I was playing the ending of the Survivor ending, I was going "DOT HACK LEGEND OF THE TWILIGHT OH CRAP ORION IS GOING ALL BALMUNG ON HIS ASS!" Actually, if you haven't heard of it, the .hack series in general has a lot in common with this game, .hack//AI Busters especially, but .hack//Legend of the Twilight (manga, the anime has a completely different plot), too. Of course, that's probably because of the shared concept, so it's not crazy or anything. i just thought you should check it out.

As for the endings, I didn't find Aselia's ending that depressing, but I totally thought that Aselia was going to kill someone after she said "You're not Chaz," but then it ended. Actually, I was kind of loling at Chaz the whole time because I'm not a sympathetic person. Shame. I liked Aselia a lot, though, if just for her last line. Also, I lol'd when the moderators were all, "I thought they were joking." I think that makes me something of a bad person...

The Survivor ending I loved, if only for the kitty (which I petted on impulse, because that's what you do with cats you don't recognize) and Iris, who is the best character ever. Also - sending the players to be eaten by the witch. That was great. I didn't like the ending of the ending, since Iris was so depressed, but the content was wonderful.

The final ending I did like a lot. When he sent the party request, I was like, "I'm totally gonna say no and see what happens." And Keefe was chill with it, which was awesome. I was a little scared when he found out Chaz was an AI (mainly because in .hack, they tend to kill AIs a lot), but he was totally chill then, too. Keefe is a chill guy. But during the start of the happy part of the ending, even while I was laughing at "I went over to his house and beat him up," all I could think about was Iris going, "...Swordy?" at the end of the Survivor ending. She should hang out with him, too! I mean, they can have a happy ending together! (Feel free to take "together" in any context you want. ) Let it happen! Stupid Keefe, do you not remember the girl who brought him to you?

But I do confess, I've got a little bit of a crush on Keefe, too. Though you can never expect too much if a man is a level 71 mod of an MMO.

]bawling when Alesia wouldn't respond to him, it felt like two giant pom poms were squishing my heart to death. I wanted to reach into the screen and just give him a hug, the poor, poor boy. And then when Alesia went "Give... Chaz... back", I think I nearly cried. Heartbreaking, just heartbreaking. In fact, I got that feeling for him for nearly the entire game. Lisa's path was cuter and a bit lighter, but the contrast just served to make the ending even more shocking and impactful. And of course, the happy NPC-world ending was epic. I think the detail I liked the most about that end was that the person controlling Zale had to go over and punch the Orion player in the face or whatever first - that single detail revealed so much about their relationship and the backstory of the game itself, it felt like pure concentrated storytelling awesomeness to me.

Although some people have been comparing this game to the .hack series, it actually made me think of the novel Mogworld by Yahtzee Croshaw. It's pretty hilarious, especially if you're a MMORPGer, so check it out if you have time.

I also need to commend you on your stunningly beautiful GUI. I will say, though, even though I liked that you could click on the skill buttons to see skill descriptions, I was expecting to be able to use the skills in fights. Which resulted in me mashing the "spell no-go" button repeatedly when Orion was charging up his spell, since I assumed that that would nullify the spell. And then I thought about it more and then it all went click in my head: this was actually a mindblowingly brilliant design choice because Chu the avatar is using the skills WITHOUT the MMO GUI, so it wouldn't make sense for skills to trigger when we click on them in the GUI!

In short, this game was short but absolutely amazing. Now to get my little sister to play it.... fufufufu

I first wanted to add battles where you could indeed click on the icons for attacks, but we realized it was going to be impossible in just a month (we barely made the deadline without the battle-system attached), so we nuked it. At the same time I also thought it was all right to nuke it, because in the end the reader only helps the main character come to a logical conclusion - but only one which he would still have made. He won't give you choices which are out of character, what you see is his inner debate XD. So, the player doesn't really control the main character anyway, that's also the idea of this AI.