Category Archives: Individual Games

Nurse Love Addiction: The Smell of Gas Lights

As we’ve already seen in our initial exploration of the common route and Nao’s ending, Nurse Love Addiction is a visual novel that goes in some interesting and unexpected directions.

Rather unusually for a visual novel where the routes are themed around the protagonist developing romantic and/or sexual feelings for one of the heroines, the game features quite a few examples of relationships that can be quite reasonably regarded as unhealthy — even in that route’s supposedly “good” ending.

A great example is that of Itsuki, a character who you know pretty much from the outset is going to be trouble — and how. Let’s take a closer look. As always, there will be major spoilers ahead.

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Nurse Love Addiction: Living in the Here and Nao

We’re going to spend a few articles exploring and dissecting the visual novel Nurse Love Addiction by Kogado Studio. There will, of course, be major spoilers ahead.

You might think you know what you’re getting with a pastel-coloured visual novel called Nurse Love Addiction that depicts five pretty nurses getting along swimmingly with one another on its cover art. And you might even be partially right; this is a visual novel with an all-female cast of (trainee) nurses and multiple narrative routes, promising potential romantic entanglements with all of the main heroines.

It’s so much more than that, though. And that’s what we’re going to delve into from today.

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Summer Loop: The Beach Episode as Existentialist Nightmare

The idea of existentialism is a concept that a lot of people have been brought into contact with through various forms of media — most notably for us in the gaming sphere, Taro Yoko’s masterpieces in the Nier series.

But how much do you really understand about this philosophical concept — and how might it relate to video games and visual novels? These are the things explored by Summer Loop, the third volume in the My Time With Dee Dee series of visual novels, produced by friend of the site Matt Sainsbury from DigitallyDownloaded.net.

Matt was kind enough to once again provide a copy of the game for me to explore — if you’re interested in trying it for yourself, you can find it right here!

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My Time With Dee Dee, Vol. 2: Learning to Love the Male Gaze

Those of you who have been following for a while may recall that friend of the site Matt Sainsbury from Digitally Downloaded has been beavering away at a series of visual novels based on his site mascot for a while now — you can read about the first one here.

I finally got around to making some time for the second volume — and a look at the third one will be following shortly! — so I figured it’s high time we talk about it. Because, much like its predecessor, it does an excellent job of raising some interesting and relevant talking points without becoming preachy about it.

Volume 2, subtitled Meet Lo and Nettie! focuses on the topic of the male gaze, which is a term bandied about so often these days that its original meaning has become somewhat obfuscated. Let’s see if three cute girls can sort that whole mess out, shall we?

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Should You Play Phantasy Star Online 2 When Final Fantasy XIV Exists?

Yes, it’s the question someone somewhere has probably asked at some point: with two highly regarded Japanese online RPGs on the go right now… is one “better” than the other?

Well, let’s nip that one right in the bud from the outset: no, because they’re two rather different experiences from one another, and as such aren’t directly comparable in terms of “quality”.

We can, however, compare their different approaches to various aspects of the online RPG experience, and from that, you can hopefully determine whether or not one or the other is “better” for you personally. So let’s do just that!

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Phantasy Star Online 2: Day 1 As an ARKS Operative

Well, after an inordinately long wait — about eight years, to be exact — Phantasy Star Online 2 has finally arrived, for both Xbox One and PC players… and possibly with other platforms to follow.

To say that English speakers have been eagerly awaiting this game is something of an understatement. The Dreamcast original, being one of the original breakout successes in online gaming — and many players’ first experience with cooperative, social online gaming — is a widely beloved game, so in the eight years since Phantasy Star Online 2 released in Japan, people have been finding increasingly creative ways to get their fix, with particularly dedicated fans even going so far as to provide translation patches.

Now, none of those workarounds and fiddly tweaks are needed; everyone can just play Phantasy Star Online 2 as they please. So I thought it would probably be a good idea to jump in on the PC launch day and have a go. Read on to find out how that all went.

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My Time With Dee Dee: Learn Through, Uh, Doing

One of the nice things about being a non-commercial site that isn’t funded by big corporate advertising bullshit is that I’m not obliged to be in “competition” with any of my peers.

That means that when people like our friends over at Digitally Downloaded do something cool and interesting, I can explore it for myself and, more to the point, make you aware of it, dear reader.

If I haven’t made this abundantly clear already, the following relates to a piece of media created by a friend of mine. And if you have the slightest interest in media criticism and making use of the conventions of gaming to educate or learn something… you should definitely check it out!

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Custom Order Maid 3D 2: The Reluctant Idol and the Photoshoot

It’s Tuesday! That doesn’t mean anything in and of itself, other than the fact that I’ve arbitrarily decided it’s time to pay the Empire Club of Custom Order Maid 3D 2 another visit. And that has nothing to do with it being Tuesday.

Today, we continue getting to know our “main three” maids a little better as Hi-chan tries her best to convince Majima-san to join her on her quest to become an idol maid. Aya, meanwhile, has numerous things to practice. And who knows what that mysterious little fox girl is up to?

Dust off your membership card and come on in, and be aware that there are NSFW images and themes ahead!

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The Zelda Diaries: Part 6 – A Beast of a Time

Last time, we talked about how Breath of the Wild makes use of its shrines as a short-form, handheld-friendly take on the Zelda series’ dungeoneering.

There’s another major part of the game that provides an interesting twist on this traditional aspect of the franchise, however, and that’s the Divine Beasts.

Providing significant, dramatic, story-critical challenges for Link to overcome, the Divine Beasts may, once again, be a bit of a deviation from Zelda’s previously established norms, but they’re still very cool.

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Custom Order Maid 3D 2: Sex, Sommeliers and Song

It’s time to pay The Empire Club another visit after our initial look at what went down on its first day of business.

Today, we meet the other two maids who stayed on after our uncle decided to leave us with a crippling debt, start to get to know our staff a bit better and finally begin making a bit of money.

It seems at least one of them has an ambition, too… Let’s check in with them and see how things are going!

NSFW images ahead!

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