<- Back To Masterpost

lunar days sim date (F/M, F/F, free, /browser/)

• overall: C+. enjoyment: C-.
• lunar days sim date is a fairly formulaic pacthesis game about a girl who gets trapped in another world and gets mixed up with a thief and a pair of bounty hunters. some very nice gameplay and art upgrades get dragged down by a series of very unfortunate design decisions that hinder play, but the writing is fairly good and its worth playing for one fantastic character alone.
• plot: B. you're a young girl (default name karina) who finds a mysterious book that transports her into another world -- right into the middle of a fight between a thief and two bounty hunters. the thief makes off with your book, and the bounty hunters offer you a place to stay. the thief brings your book back soon, but it seems you wont get to go home until the full moon. until then, you want answers..! while its just an extremely literal interpretation of the basic pacthesis formula (girl trapped in new world for month), it actually fleshes it out into something very interesting. it leaves you wanting answers. do you get those answers? weeell. more of them than usual, but still not a lot.
• characters: B. they're varied, dynamic, and likable -- except for elias, anyway. he's not terrible, but he's kind of a dick - and more importantly, static. he's someone's type, im sure, but what you see is what you get; if you have a problem with his behavior, he's never going to improve. however, he's just one in a cast of 8, and all the rest develop in some way. they're a little basic, but nice enough. the real stand-out is veon, who is a fantastic character. he's interesting, compelling, and fun. he's an upgraded ian from kingdom days with the appeal of lance from wonderland days; he's a culmination of all pacthesis's various catboys, but he brings it together in something all his own. while the middling nature of the rest of the cast prevents me from rating this category very highly, veon is absolutely worth playing for.
• writing: B. it's pretty good, not gonna lie. while again the format restricts how hard it can go on any given storyline, it does well enough. each character (except elias, weirdly??) has a special cutscene when you're close enough with them which often contain character development and deeper moments. the dialogue itself is not afraid to hit harder when given the opportunity, and the gameplay upgrades when it comes to dialogue facilitate this, preventing the conversation from getting constantly broken up and interrupted. the writing represents the characters well, and while the "best end" epilogues are rather dull this game also has a separate set of epilogues if you get to "soulmate" rank and then leave anyway. these soulmate epilogues consist of you going home, returning to your normal life, before meeting an alternate version of your lover who doesnt recognize you. these scenes are sweet, full of hope, and frankly much more compelling endings for the most part than staying would be. its a very nice touch. though i really wish we were given more about the protagonists home life. we are informed that she's conflicted about staying/going, but without any idea what she'd be leaving behind it's hard to care much about the decision.
• routes: veon >> clyde > terrance > raine > aiden > fidel > sky > elias
• gameplay: C. this game comes with a lot of quality improvements to the general format. the conversations, which are still the same 10 HP - 1 dialogue exchange with a single pair of choices, now let you continue the conversation automatically until you're out of HP. you have slightly more HP than usual as well, and both changes serve to prevent the usual tedium of going back and forth between the "talk option" and your house to refresh. also, certain love interests give you the option to sleep over, making it even simpler to fill up. ...which is sorely needed, as this game's biggest flaw is the hideous and barely navigable map. exploration works simply by clicking arrows to take you to various parts of town -- and there are a LOT of arrows, in not particularly intuitive positions. i almost always wind up getting lost just to get back to where i was, and it's obnoxious. the stock photo backgrounds add on to that, as the muddy and dull images dont leave many visual landmarks to remind you what's what. part of the gameplay also relies on finding a couple hidden items in the backgrounds, and there is absolutely no way to do so without either knowing in advance or just moving your mouse over every part of every map until it turns into a hand. as for what to do with these items, well... one sidequest is very well done. its communicated visually, intuitive, and cute. the other two are just kind of a matter of going around to every place and talking to everyone until nothing happens anymore and then just kind of guessing. these flaws drag the game down substantially, which is a shame considering the huge improvements the other areas have.
• art: D. after the vast improvement of the last two games, this one is a disappointment. instead of hand-drawn backgrounds, the dev opted for badly edited stock photos. there's a lot more unique art than usually, with CGs and more elaborate cutscenes, but the anatomy is extremely bad in most cases, and the rare good ones just make the bad ones stand out more. the sprites are better quality, with thinner smooth lines and much better color balance, faces are getting there, with better eyes but the same anime-chin with no knowledge of what a jawline looks like. profiles are terrifying. the menu and UI design is MUCH better, it actually looks decent. but it cant bring the bad art up.

http://pacthesisgames.com/games/sim-dates/lunar-days-sim-date.html

More Pacthesis Games ->