Above all this game is depressing, tragic and leaves you with the bitter taste of hopelessness
Setting
The game is set on an island that is cursed by the god of death (depicted as the grim reaper), so that every body dies with the age of 23. But they invented a technology, called revival, that allows you to back up your memory and download it again to a clone. So as soon as you are backed up death becomes nothing more as an inconvenience. The other strange consequence: Everybody looks young, but can be suuuuper old, you won’t know. In general you can’t even see who’s a reliver and who’s not, except for a mark somewhere on the reliver’s body. Because not everybody wants or can be revived, it’s also a matter of money, and therefore social injustice or conscience. There even is a church that is highly against the technology of reliving, because relivers lose their emotions and especially the feeling of romantic love.
The story starts with Ceres, a 18 years old girl, who was raised at several orphanages, because for some reason people who are near to hear befall a terrible death. And that’s why she’s called the daughter of the god of death (or the reaper). Driven into despair by that fate she attempts to kill herself, but is stopped by a mysterious man, Ankou, who introduces himself as the sentinel of death, and wants to enter an agreement with her. Because on the island are occurrences of strange death incidents and he wants to shed light on their origin together with Ceres.
And this hunt for a killer called the executioner takes place in the long common path, that took me about 13 hrs (but keep in mind with looking up a lot of words). During the common path all the characters are introduced and the bonds between characters established.
Routes
Especially the common route was full of adorable character interactions and cute dialogue and scenes. But despite of this many adorable slice of life scenes, the prologue also made it unmistakenly clear, what this game is about: Blood and more blood, it felt like half the time I couldn’t see anything because my display was filled with sprinkles of blood! The common route felt a lot like a VN, but still was quite enjoyable and the anticipation high, that I could romance those guys.
Each story contains 4 chapters, that took me about 9 hrs.
Except for the final route, that took me 15 hrs.
The first three playable routes are Mathis, Lucasa and Scien. The order you play them in doesn’t really matter, though I feel Lucas has the most spoilers?
Than Yves gets unlocked, who reveals some things about the deadly flowers, the curse and Ceres and also connects the other three routes a bit.
For all these four routes only the bad/despair endings are attainable in the first run.
Than finale route with Ankou and Adolphe gets unlocked last. It contains crazy revelations about everything.
Only after the final route you are allowed to play the good endings of the other characters! The good endings to some extent better, than the bad endings, but still you can’t expect anything like a happy ending. Good only means slightly less sad – sometimes.
The first two chapters of the character routes are a bit like in a normal otome game, but with the third chapter the crazy sci-fi mess begins. Very often it was about sci-fi revelations or the characters’ secrets and that’s when the plot really began and their relationship was put to a test – quite literally.
I’ll start with the main characters and then shortly touch upon the sub characters.
Main characters
Mathis
Mathis is so cute and shy that he even stammers when he’s nervous meeting new people. Can sleep on the spot, is the worst driver, but no one has told him that. He can be stubborn and naïve, but is now out for revenge for his brother who was killed by this very same executioner, Ankou and Ceres are looking for.
In this route the MC starts working at Mathis’ house as a Maid to cheer him up and that’s how they fall in love. Right at the beginning you also find out about his childhood abuse and that’s only the beginning of the weird sci-fi revelations of Mathis’ route.
Mathis was so very sweet and almost feminine, that I couldn’t really connect to their romance. I would say his story has the weirdest sci-fi elements, that kind of caught me off guard. But he has still a very interesting background
Lucas
Lucas is extremely sweet, gentle, soft and understanding, like you would expect from someone, who commits his life to the church and being a teacher. He’s an extreme worrywart and above all cares for his unbelievably cute, but terminally ill sister.
In his route the MC starts working as his teaching assistant, where they get a chance to spend more time together, but somehow I ended up only caring about his sister. Because at this point I already understood that the characters are not allowed to be happy, so I hoped at least his sister will be fine. But soon Lucas’ dark secret threatens their love.
Scien
Scien is an emotionless researcher and the genius who developed the revival process and thus an influential and powerful person. So he’s technically the ojiisan trope (old man), as he’s the oldest reliver. But he doesn’t really care about anything, except science. The stoic researcher frankly speaks his mind and doesn’t think too highly of other people. But his sweet quirk, is that he never cleans.
That’s why he hires the MC to keep his room tidy and thus slowly gets used to her presence.
And I just love that trope! The cold researcher who starts relying on the MC to finally notice that he likes her. Though it is of course kind of a problem that relivers don’t really feel love.. Still I think that their relationship felt the most mutually supportive. And having the prettiest CGS, it felt most romantic to me, hence he earns my most sexy award nonetheless. His bad end made me cry heavily and the good end made me swoon.
Yves
Yves is a a total goody two shoes, and he’s mocked a bit for that. He likes to cook, is friendly to anybody, calm, sweet, forgiving and sacrificial.
The MC starts working at his handyman shop and as their first met in the field of the cursed flowers, Yves seems to have a special connection to, his story finally reveals some more about these cursed flowers and thereby connects the other previous routes.
But his route is a death trap! On top of that I realized, that every route ends in a blood bath. So does Yves’, whose route was quite dramatic, like a tragic love story, like Romeo and Juliet, that moved me quite a bit, especially in the good ending.
Adolphe
Adolphe is Ceres’ step brother. He always cared for each other and protects her, as they are extremely close. Like a good older brother he is kind, gentle, earnest and loyal to Ceres.
Interestingly enough he shares a route with the mysterious Ankou:
Ankou
Ankou introduces himself as the guardian of the underworld. He’s obviously quite mysterious, knows everything, appears and disappears at a whim. But he also seems to care for the MC, as he wants to help her lift the curse.
For the final route you practically need to start over again, at the point when Ceres tries to kill herself. And this time around you can feel her pain and despair even more, because you lived through it in the other four routes that all ended in despair!
That’s what I call clever writing!
Not surprisingly this route included the most revelations, some of them totally mind-blowing and connected to all the other routes.
But if not already for the revelations, I enjoyed this route a lot due to the cute interactions between Ankou and Adolphe, who just don’t seem to stand each other, tease each other and get jealous if the other gets to near to Ceres.
This route had the best (bad) endings, that were the most interesting.
MC
Ceres is tormented by the fate of the god of death, bringing doom upon the people around her. Thus dshe behaves shy and insecure and always blames herself for everything. She’s full of self-hatred, kind of masochistic, as she cares more about others than herself. And like a good otome heroine, her favourite hobby is of course to cook and clean…That is probably why in many scenes throughout the game she appears more as an observer as an MC and is even left out of most of the CGs. This is well demonstrated by the CG above, where everybody is having fun in the centre of the picture and she stand apart from them, without taking part in the fun.
And that really describes her role in the game: Though she is obviously important to the story, she doesn’t take action herself. Not saying she’s not strong in her own way, but she’s at least not proactive. She reminded me of Lili in Piofiore in that regard, because she is the typical caring and housewify MC, who is loved for her tenderness, caring for others and never gets angry. Ceres only seems sad and lonely.
Side characters
Salome – mother of the orphanage of Ceres and Adolphe, she’s just too pretty!
Hugo – best friend of Yves, and the two of them have the funniest dialogues
John – Mathis’ helpful and caring butler
Nadia- little sister of Ryuka, cutest little darling
Cauppucchine – is his name really Capuccino?? Doctor at Nadia’s hospital
Dahut – cutest ojiisan in the body of a 15 year old
All the characters felt vastly important, and to some extent I felt more attached to them than to the main characters.
Art
stunning
Voices (from most favourite to least)
Scien (Hosoya Yoshimasa細谷 佳正: Rintarou in Kenka Banchou Otome, Loki in Kamigami no Asobi)
Adolphe (Yashiro Taku八代 拓: Goemon in Tengoku Struggle, Tokio in Paradigm Paradox, Raul in Cupid Parasite)
Ankou (Okitsu Kazuyuki興津 和幸: Tsukuyomi in Olympia Soirée, Rindo in Cendrillon palikaA)
Lucas (Hirakawa Daisuke平川 大輔: Laito in Diabolik Lovers, Saint-Germain in Code Realize, Cinderella in taishoxAlice)
Mathis (Amasaki Kouhei天﨑 滉平: Emilio in Piofiore)
Yves (Saitou Souma斉藤 壮馬: Kikunssuke in Tengoku Struggle, Outarou in Kimi Yuki, Mineo in CollarxMalice)
The sprites are so pretty, the almost look alive – expect weirdly for Adolphe’s front facing sprite…And Luka’s surprised face is just over the top!
The CGs could be summed up as dark, but beautiful? The depict dynamic and interesting scenes, are beautifully detailed, BUT sometimes the faces look a bit off and different compared to the sprites or other CGs. And sadly there were very few cute romantic couple CGs. For example half of Scien’s CGs are just him, what’s ok, because he’s beautiful , but its not particularly romantic. Also the MC is in most CGs non—existent or can only be seen half or from the back, that’s just a pity, as she’s pretty and I prefer seeing both characters in interaction
But that really represent the game: It’s not about love and romance or about the MC, it’s about the plot and how the LI’s influence the story.
The music is simply breathtaking. With happy and funny tunes, but mostly sad, suspenseful, tragic and utterly heart wrenching tunes. And I almost like the soundtrack as much, as my favourite soundtrack from Olympia Soirée.
Japanese?
…yes, IF you are intermediate learner. This is one of the hardest game I’ve yet come across. I think for intermediate learners it can pose a tough challenge due to technical terms. But all the complicated vocabulary – and there was a lot of it as well as an abundance of kanji I’ve never seen before – felt useful to me. I’m actually looking forward to learning this anki deck, because most of the words are quite interesting, like autopsy.
But having translated the promotional material actually helped me a lot to get into the vocabulary.
Tone
The game is predominantly in a dark sci-fi fantasy setting. The Cero D (17+) rating is solely because of blood, NOT romance.
Unfortunately there are only a few kiss scenes, and few classical romantic scenes, like looking each other in the eye scenes, or only one kabedon – that’s just disappointing! That absence of those classical scenes it sometimes felt hard to me, to fall in love with the characters too, because it felt like it was so little time to create the bond before the crazy sci-fi stuff started to happen. But still these sci-fi travels made them prove their love and strong bond. So to some extent the game was still about love, just not in a classical way.
And there definitely should be a suicide trigger warning added, as that is a reoccurring topic.
The game is depressing to such an extent, that it made me feel empty.
The main theme “hopelessness” is definitely accomplished
It also prioritises story over love, though the characters are still all vastly important and all have their dark secrets.
What also shines is the very good writing and exceptionally well foreshadowing! I would be worthwhile to play the game again to actively look out for all the foreshadowing and hints. And though the sci-fi-world is in a way consistent (If you don’t compare it to our science), it still is very made up and not everything is fully explained (or I didn’t get it).
Verdict
Overall Shuuen no Virche is a good visual novel. But as an otome game – I’m not so sure. For me it suffered a lack of romance and actually exceeded my limit of bearably despair. Usually I like dark and even gory games to some extent, like Piofiore, but Shuuen no Virche took this a bit too far for me personally. Though the story in itself is interesting it sometimes felt like it was dark, just because of darkness’ sake and sad, just to make you sad.
So if you like feeling sad and hopeless, only then you should play Shuuen no Virche – Error Salvation.
“That was a helpful review!
To show my appreciation I’m gonna purchase it via Lin’s amazon link to support her!”