I really loved Taaraadhin and it's proof you guys improve every NaNoRenO!
The things I loved about Taaraadhin:
1. Color Schemes. The use of blue and orange really made Taaraadhin's world rich and exotic. Especially compared to Nishtif's blue sapphires, gold, and orange fabrics with Djedi's turquoise and red. The GUI pops out as good design.
2. The music. The music in Taaraadhin is very beautiful and has a fairy tale-ish like feeling in it. I think music is extremely important in visual novels as they provide an atmosphere and setting that can make a fictional world memorable and vivid. Props to Pierrot!
3. The true end.
Forcing the player to go through all the bad endings is an interesting way to structure a visual novel. At first I felt a little peeved and was mocking the game because the romances become marriages in a span of three days so the romance felt very faked to me. Not to mention the "yes, maam. You are right about everything!" attitude of the slaves. However, after going though all the bad endings, the true ending really covers everything. The slaves act the way they do as to not get in trouble with their masters. Araerda easily gets into a romance with Neqtia because that was her profession so of course faking her real feelings to allow her lover their fantasy would be something she can do very well. And Jyrik goes along with Neqtia because he's terrified of his situation in Nishtif.
4. Characters are great.
At first in the bad endings, I was unimpressed with being just told that Araerda and Jyrik are handsome and beautiful when they didn't really show any substance of character development in the first parts of the story. But that changed as soon as I played through all the death scenes. Comparison between the two slaves are very unique. I like how Jyrik is just this emotional, muscular softie and Araerda is this cool, strategic woman. Yay for inverse gender assigned personality traits! Yay!
Neqtia herself gets the most character development of course. It's an excellent portrayal of people who in their upbringing are not raised to be evil but are just ignorant of reality. What's important was that Neqtia wanted to change her ways after she talks with both slaves. Their personality and the correlation to how they behave based on their situation is subtle and well written.
Well done!
5. About the romances..
Romance is not the end all, be all ending. As video game critic Yahtzee once said, "Why does a love interest subplot have to be shoehorned into everything? Imagine if there was some parallel universe, where regardless of genre, they would try to incorporate at least one line dancing competition. We would think they were all raving lunatics!" Although I'll give otome games and games like Taaraadhin a pass since these visual novels are focused on human relationships. This is what makes Taaraadhin stand out and a breath of fresh air; if users try to take the romance options, they end up disastrous to the characters' lives (for good reason of course). And not only that but the romances are superficial and unsatisfying for their short length and lack of interaction (also for good reason). At first I thought these guys were going to be in a threesome at the end but that would've seemed incredibly inappropriate. I'm really glad they all became friends in the end and not into any kind of sexual relationships with each other(and don't get me wrong, I actually do love erotic stories with threesomes but I feel those elements would have wrecked a story like this). I'm real happy Cyanide Tea went with the platonic route, despite what others may say about romance being the #1 goal here.
The only problems I could think of is...
1. Telling and not showing. This would be heavy on the artist's end since she would have to draw more backgrounds to show a bustling dining hall with rich looking folks on a limited one month time period. But besides the limited number of backgrounds,
the thing that stood out to me was when the writing was trying to portray a romance with either Jyrik or Araerda. The text box tells me that Jyrik is charming but to me, he simply agreed with everything Neqtia said. Same with Araerda. Text box tells me that she is clever and intelligent, but she just says yes to everything Neqtia tells her. Then the text box tells me that they joked and enjoyed each other's company for the night instead of showing that to me. I know these romantic routes aren't supposed to be deep, but I think if you showed Araerda actually showing her intelligence to a crowd (like some magic trick or social engineering trick) or Jyrik doing something cute (petting a kitten?) it would make their death have stronger impact since the user would feel/relate to the characters. You actually did the showing part well in the True end where Jyrik jokes that he treats his little sisters like princesses and Araerda makes a smart remark about it. Now that's something I'd like to see more of in all the endings.
2. Alright small nitpick, this is a GUI thing that just bugs me. Neqtia's portrait almost always appears in the text box. I think it would be a better idea to have Neqtia's sprite show up alongside with Araerda and Jyrik's sprite on screen and having each individual's portrait show up in the text box when it's their turn to speak. Even though their names are highlighted above what they're saying in the text box, I couldn't but think subconsciously that Neqtia was saying everything since it's her portrait that's next to all the dialogue. That's just me.
I know you guys only had one month to develop this game so I'll let the number of backgrounds slide. But anyways,
TLDR;
Taarradhin is a solid short story that tells its purpose very well. Great music, great characters, beautiful setting! I really recommend others to play through all the endings and paying attention to the subtle details before making assumptions about the characters.
