supagogoman

[supagogoman]

Bunch of Noir

[supagogoman]

if you can’t own the anime figure, why not draw it (lol!)

[supagogoman]

I felt a set of eyes on me.

視線を感じた。

[supagogoman]

[supagogoman]

カツブシよこせです

Give me bonito flakes!

#c@

[supagogoman]

🐙

[supagogoman]

Nessa close up! ^^

Consider supporting me ^^ PATREON GUMROAD

[supagogoman]

[supagogoman]

[supagogoman]

A haru doodle while I work on stuff

[supagogoman]

[supagogoman]

[supagogoman]

Korone strikes again | hololive SUPER EXPO 2024

[supagogoman]

"it's not a phase mom !!"

Goth Ceres Fauna Fanart

[supagogoman]

I recently finished Altdeus: Beyond Chronos. This is a relatively short visual novel that I kinda purchased on impulse as an occaisonal weeb VN enjoyer, and the premise of a VN in VR intrigued me. I quite liked it overall and I felt like writing some of my thoughts about it.

I won't spoil anything specific about the plot, but basically the story takes place in a world where humanity is hunkered in an underground city as the surface has been destroyed and is swarming with giant monsters called Meteora. Giant robots called Makhia are humanity's only defense against these threats. It takes a few cues from things like Evangeleon, but the primary focus is a story focused on the protagonist, Chloe, a genetically engineered super soldier who is one of two pilots of the Makhia who is dealing with grief after the loss of her best friend Coco at the hands of the Meteora. Overall the characters were pretty compelling to me. I found some of the designs a little generic in my opinion, but after a while, as each characters goals and motivations are revealed, it's easy to get heavily invested and it even had me tearing up at points in the story.

While Altdeus is a pretty competent visual novel on it's own, what makes it a little more unique is the fact it's designed for VR (although a non-VR Switch version is being released soon). This is both pretty cool and also a missed opportunity. When I think of VR experiences usually I think of cool 3D visuals or stuff where you interact with the environment to help immerse yourself in the world, but as a visual novel the interaction is barely present. There's only a handful of instances where you solve "puzzles" in the world and this usually involves picking up an object and using it on another object right next to it. The only other physically interactive moments come from the giant robot fights which are heavily scripted, only require minimal input and all play out more or less the same. At the very least the robot fights are cool to experience, each one having a hype as hell soundtrack, but they're such a small part of the game. This isn't inherently a problem but I almost feel sorry for any chumps who purchased it purely looking at the Steam page lured in by the description of "a sci-fi adventure full of robot battles" because that's borderline false advertising.

As for the rest of the experience, in true Visual Novel fashion, 90% of the time is standing there listening to characters talk and making the occaisional decision to detirmine where the story goes. As such, it's a little difficult to justify playing it in VR and why it was originally a Quest exclusive, however there are a few things where VR does enhance the experience:

The experience of fighting in a cockpit of a giant robot in VR, even with the limited interaction, is undeniably cool as hell.

Talking face to face with the characters is pretty neat.

They will also invade your personal space

You can hold hands and hug the waifus in VR.

In my mind I keep thinking of little things that I want to keep complaining about for whatever reason; for example I could complain that the English dub is unfortunately pretty bad. I could also mention how most of the time the graphics are pretty basic and character animations are almost non-existent during the visual novel portions; this would be expected in a regular 2D visual novel with sprites but having 3D character models in VR stand mostly still and phase between poses does hurt the immersion a little. It seems all the animation budget went into the mecha fights and the pop song concerts (because of course the game features a virtual diva character).

Dispite all that, though, the story and characters were enough for me to be intrigued throughout and I'd still recommend it. As a non VR version is being released soon, I'd say it's worth checking out if the premise interests you.

I may have complained about how Altdeus doesn't use VR to it's full potential, but it turns out they've made a newer game Dyschronia: Chronos Alternate. This has been out on Quest and PSVR2 for a while but is soon releasing in VR and Non VR on Steam and Switch and after playing the demo this one seems a lot more promising, with higher production values and presumably a higher budget (theme song by Suisei of Hololive zomg). More importantly it features actual gameplay and feels like some kind of anime Minority Report, so I'm definitely interested in checking that one out eventually.

#blorg post #Altdeus: Beyond Chronos #Crying into my £900 Valve Index headset #They also made an earlier game called Tokyo Chronos but I haven't played that

[supagogoman]

[supagogoman]