The Dark Side Reviews

It is a cute otome visual novel with multiple different and interesting endings. Some of the technical mechanics are cumbersome but it really is an interesting story. To my surprise, Theo's routes were the most enjoyable. I don't typically go for the guy next door thing, but he proved to be well worth the read. Adrian actually disappointed me a little. I tend to find the whole "Dark Lord" troupe exciting, but his story unfortunately fell short of my expectations. Even with that, I still recommend the story.

This game is interesting. It has a great story with likeable characters, nice art and music with a unique writing style. I liked the story and I liked the characters. It's also a good length and affordable. This game makes for a fun afternoon!

No. Please, just don't. No matter how good the discount looks, this is not worth the 85 pence, 30 rubles or whatever units of currency you might use in your country. The writing is atrocious, and annoyingly so, and playing this game in Russian just grates on my nerves. I can't even say it's so bad it's good, it's just bad. The experience is akin to reading the metaphorical term paper of a stereotypical bad student - there's a bunch of words to increase the word count, and, idk, make the author look smart (hey, see? I have a huuuge vocabulary, so I'll just dump all the words and adjectives and adverbs and what not that I know in so you can see FOR SURE how good of a writer I am and who cares if my overly convoluted sentences ruin the flow of the narrative and make no damn sense? I'm the new Tolstoy), but no real substance to the text. I'm drowning in all that water. This game DESPERATELY needed an editor to put a stop to the lead writer's creative diarrhea. On the other hand, I must commend the translator's efforts. It must have taken a great deal of patience and skill to go through this drivel and make it readable. Sure, you get some mistakes here and there, but the overall flow is so much better than the original that I gotta hope that the person translating the text got extra pay for editing and trimming all the unnecessary stuff away. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2072047063 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2072047091 A translator can't rewrite the entire game, though. I can almost guarantee that most of the comprehension difficulties that you might encounter in the English version are directly caused by the horrible writing of the original. So, yeah, the writing is bad, the story is rushed, cliches, the MC is boring, the sprites have one expression, no skip read text, no text speed options besides "instant" and "animated", no backlog, Unity. I thought no game could ever top Never give up! in its ridiculousness, but this is a new low. 1 tall, cold guy out of 10, but that one goes to the translator. I was contemplating refunding the 30 rubles and buying a sandwich instead, but there's that whole pandemic business outside so I guess it stays.

The Dark Side: No, no, no, no, no!! Just... Just –[b]NO[/b]! [i][b]The Dark Side[/b][/i] is one of the worst things I’ve ever read! I actually ended up getting a refund on this drivel, which is something I basically [i]never[/i] do! It was less than £1 on sale and I still didn’t want it anywhere near me!! The game starts out with [b]Diana[/b], the main character, and her father moving into the house they inherited from her grandmother because of financial reasons; fair enough. However, very quickly we learn that there was tension between this grandmother and Diana’s father, to the point that they stopped talking. Now, without any idea about the full story on this matter, Diana decides to get all high and mighty and starts an argument with her father after one of the locals, a complete stranger, tells the girl her gran was actually a nice lady; and I mean, she COMPLETELY flips out! I found her attitude disgusting and hypocritical as, up to this point, she listened to her father without question when she could have reached out to her grandma and made her own decision on things. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2074672503 The picture on the main menu of Diana is pretty well drawn but, to me, it makes her look like she’s roughly 34 years old. However, in-game, her [i]cool dude dad[/i] says [i]she’s not even an adult yet[/i]. So, how old is she? I don’t have the slightest damn clue! I’d assume she was underage though which swiftly leads me on to my next point... the clearly trespassing [i]cold guy[/i] she stumbles upon, that is an LI, is seen as being 25. Don’t get me wrong – I like older men myself but I am actually an adult (according to society based on my age at least – mentally is another matter xp) so... an assumed under-aged girl and a 25-year-old that clearly sends off red flags (which she completely chooses to ignore) on their first meeting... yeah – no! She also has literally no sense of self-preservation either. [i]Mr. Cold Guy[/i] that gives her dangerous vibes asks her if she wants to walk closer to the river and she does. It’s a good thing he didn’t want to push her in because he totally could have drowned her if he so wished! Oh, and then there are the [i]aggressive[/i] and [i]flirtatious[/i] tropes that just met her. Two grown men and complete strangers offer for her to come inside their house for tea and she, again agrees without question or thinking about the potential consequences. Am I the only one that was taught not to go off with strangers, especially inside their house when no one knows where you’ve run off to in your teenage tantrum? https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2074678901 I mentioned the art on the main menu looked decent but in-game, Diana looks a lot different. In fact, she looks like she’s wearing a green hospital gown that is incapable of having any kind of shadowing like normal clothes do – must be some weird magic I suppose! A few of the backgrounds are like this too, lacking all shading and leading it to look like some strange backdrop instead. The character sprites... oh the sprites! They aren’t that bad but they severely lack any kind of emotion – as in, everyone in the world only has one facial expression. I can’t say I’ve ever seen this before. I’m no VN artist myself but one would assume that once you have a full-body layout, changing the face wouldn’t be that hard. I suppose it would add a little more work to the coding of the game to constantly have the sprites changing, but again, no one else seems to have a problem with doing it. Honestly, in my opinion – and I’ve read a lot of visual novels, [i][b]The Dark Side[/b][/i] is bland, boring and the tropes are over excessive. The translation isn’t the best and I’ve heard the original Russian version is even worse story-wise. I’d say skip it and save your money to buy toilet paper instead because at least you can wipe your arse with that! [h1][quote]𝐅𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰 [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/33853800/]𝐎𝐭𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐒𝐞𝐤𝐚𝐢'𝐬 𝐂𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐨𝐫 𝐏𝐚𝐠𝐞[/url] 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐕𝐢𝐬𝐮𝐚𝐥 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐉𝐑𝐏𝐆 𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰𝐬[/quote][/h1]

I would say get it when it's on sale, only if you are willing to put up with the problems. Yes, the translation leaves a lot to be desired. There's tons of mistakes, but you can get the gist of the story. The story idea is interesting, but it has the typical far too innocent teenager as a protagonist. I really wish games like this would take the ages of the folks buying these games into consideration. Okay so there may be SOME teens buying them, but most of us are adults, thanks. Anyway, I got a great ending the first time and so-so endings the other two times. Will try more later. Mechanically, the game suffers from a couple of bad mistakes which other reviews have mentioned. Skipping skips everything, including the stuff you haven't read which makes skipping pointless and a bother which affects or prevents additional play throughs. Secondly, advancing the story requires hitting the space bar, however, when the skip function doesn't work properly we tend to hit the space bar continuously, so i was pretty shocked when a choice came up while hitting it and my rapidly hitting the space bar to get to that point also made the selection for me. The choices should not be linked to the space bar. Everything should stop and you have to use the mouse or enter to continue. Anyway, I give it a very tentative 'thumbs up' only because there isn't a 'maybe'. It's not the best but certainly not the worst either. If I had to give the game a score out of 10 I would call it a 6. About average, really. Again, get it on sale.