- Apr 22, 2016
- 238
- 44
Assuming you mean RJ417027, then I found that, much like the circle’s other works, it's simply a disappointing waste of what is a great structure.
The premise is interesting; you and your lover are agents sent undercover to a mansion to find evidence of the noble’s widely rumored misdeeds. Your lover, Azami, is highly skilled and has that cool sort of personality which is always nice to see fall. The eight side heroines are also a mixture of tropes and relatively interesting in their various ambitions; I especially liked Karin with her amusing antics. Also, somewhat remarkably, all the heroines are almost entirely voiced which is obviously impressive for this kind of work. The art, too, is very nice.
And now, the problems. The premise is good, the actual game system itself is, potentially, interesting. Except in reality it is terribly, terribly, terribly dull. The basic system is this: You need to raise affection with the other maids to get their events, their events will have you find clues as to the location of the three keys needed to clear the game, while maxing their affection will have them confess to you and then promptly NTR’d. You have only three actions per day and, at night, the antagonist will have his way with a chosen maid.
The issue with this is that there are no stakes whatsoever. You can choose to ‘peek’, ‘interrupt’ or ‘ignore’ the encounter at night as you like, except interrupting carries no penalty. There is no time limit to the game. The side heroines will not be NTR’d save for an abrupt scene once their affection is maxed. Indeed, the game will never actually end until you find all the keys. In other words, even halfway through the game you’re simply clicking mindlessly to advance a maid’s affection once per day to get the clues you need to advance. And while I appreciate the attempt at mystery with Azami’s scenes if, like me, you choose not to peek, it doesn’t really matter. There are no daily scenes regarding her corruption, her personality does not change in your morning interactions, and she’s actually barely present in the story itself as she remains locked away during the day. What’s more, the side heroines only have two scenes themselves to begin with. Their automatic fall into NTR and then another corrupted scene which is locked, for some reason, behind their first scene happening another five times(!). Something which itself is reliant on the antagonist’s random choice of maid each morning, unless you make use of the nun outside.
The actual evidence-search gameplay is also dreadfully dull, too. One can find the green key entirely by chance on the first day, while other clues are hidden randomly behind different events you have no way of guessing at. And even with all the clues I couldn’t find the trick to getting the blue key either.
In the end, the premise is great. The system itself has potential and I do, personally, enjoy being able to lose an entire collection of heroines to a single opponent. But the game is just far too much of an unrewarding slog. In my opinion, save yourself some time and money and skip it. If nothing else, you can unlock the full gallery in the recollection screen by pressing Up five times, Down five times then Enter.
