"My radience." | Ballads at Midnight | Game Review

Game Review 020

Ballads at Midnight

Synstoria

[July 16th, 2022]

When a sarcastic bard is arrested and exiled to an abandoned castle, she expected to be at the mercy of a hungry, blood-thirsty vampire. She soon discovers that the vampire, Lucius, is not starving: he is gravely bored. She may just survive on borrowed time, one ballad each midnight.

 

Level of Execution =

75% with an entertaining storyline with a lot of levity & stake to spare

It's really hard to get it going at first... I'm sure you know if  you've been here before.
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a case for the conversation between the prey and the predator:

Going in blind is always a good principle for me when approaching new games that I don't really know much about since I won't be making any preconceived opinion without having a hands-on experience myself. That tagline (above) alone is enough for me to give it a go, although that very positive reviews aggregate from 246 users on Steam is certainly the one that pushed me over the edge to make that decision. Maybe I'll make a post on it soon...

The genre of visual novel is as simple or as complex as it could be, a dichotomy that is decided by the ambition of the developer, whether to cater to the reading comprehension aspect of this medium or the more interactive and active participation hence the gaming aspect of this medium. It could be just a passive experience when you use the auto-play function to move from one dialogue to another but when you have to decide to go down from one path or another no matter how big or small they are, it is a much more fulfilling gaming experience to me. To me, this game certainly plays on the boundary between the former and the latter. The world-building is great from the get-go but the first-person narrative is the one that keeps me going here. I really could tell her playful personality is a great defence mechanism against the grim situation she's in, a great levity to counterbalance the barbaric medieval fantasy she's in. Trying to use modernized dialogues and expressions in stories based on classic tale setting would always cancel each other out if they couldn't find that perfect balance between the two elements... but not once did that thought ever cross my mind since I was instantly swept away in her narrative right away. Not a concern at all. 

It is an adept dark fantasy romance that's both lighthearted and deep (especially in the later half of the playthrough) that uses the relationship tropes to their advantage with actually believable dialogues and/or banters (moreso the latter) that help me to determine where the main protagonist would prefer to go naturally. Speaking of which, the main couple of branches that I could pick from feel natural to come up from the conversation they've been having on the island and the escalation of severity notches up bit by bit to coincide perfectly with the degree of relationship between them. I will always go for the nicer approach during my playthrough but I am actually interested to see for once what the other side of this coin could look since I always never go back for a second bite at it. The sprites are beautifully drawn as well as the background locations, pairing up rather splendidly with the fitting BGM, although I would have loved to have more of the voice acting across the game since they're too little to have much impact and the performances leave much to be desired, with rather monotone tone of reading clashes with the more serious scenario they are in in one of them for example. Hey, at least the bard songs live up the expectation of this bard!  

P.S. "This visual novel was created in one month during the NaNoReNo 2022 jam." Huh, I guess that made sense! If they have more time, I believe they could improve upon it and polish it into a better product. No wonder this is free to play, certainly a good representation for the studio!

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+ Positive +

a great (free!) entry into the vast genre of visual novel.
? Main contention ?

I wish there's more voice acting throughout but considering how it's made in the first place, I'll take what I can get.
- Negative -
that being said, it just left me wanting more, although it's a great short, consice piece of storytelling.

(Developer - Synstoria | Publisher - Abiding Bridge | Genre - Free to Play, Otome, Vampire)

{Rated T for suggestive material, strong language, alcohol use, & allusions to trauma, child abuse, & fantasy violence}

- Steam - vndb -

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