Misericorde: Volume One Reviews

very enticing mystery vn, great setting and characters!

eye contact? what for? my encroaching metanarrative elements are down here, you know.

found this through a random google search while i was looking up different types of medieval weaponry for a writing project & im really glad i lucked into it. this is sort of like if you mixed Obsidian's Pentiment with the aesthetic of a Persona game. the writing's great and there's a surprising amount of depth and research in it, including whole passages in latin. the supporting cast is also fantastic; my favorite is Sister Moira who is too good for this world its worth noting that this is one-third of an (apparent) trilogy so the story is incomplete here, but its an incredibly impressive start considering it's mostly the work of 1 person. if it sounds like anything close to ur thing i really recommend it, an indie project well worth supporting

A cozy, fish-out-of-water mystery about being profoundly uncomfortable and damp. The music slaps, the art is delightful and unsettling, and the writing makes you genuinely care about the wretched, selfish cast (though not as much as you care about Darcy, of course). Read it in the dark with a bottle of fortified wine; it's worth the eye strain and tooth stains. Can't wait to start Volume 2! Anyway the cat-drawing minigame isn't interactive; 0/10.

I was not expecting to become this obsessed about 15th Century nuns, but here we are. Misericorde is a wonderful little VN. The writing is fantastic, brisk and playful without ever seeming trite or tedious. An quirk of the writing, which I found interesting, is that the characters all speak in modern styles (Darcy especially speaking entirely in lower case, a great touch), yet retain their 1482 sensibilities. It serves as an excellent reminder that these women, from over 500 years ago, are just as human and relatable as we are. Each one is fleshed out, nuanced, and it's honestly hard to pick a favorite. Even Angela and the Superior, ostensibly the driest characters, are full of personality and life. I care deeply for these women, and I honestly wish none of them were responsible for the tragedy that began this whole drama. Speaking of. Catherine II, despite her absence, casts such a shadow. It's difficult to write characters in this role, and yet, like Hedwig, I feel as if I know so much, yet so little, of her. Her subtextual relationships with the other nuns is sparse but intense all the same. All of them have opinions about her. Even Hedwig herself, lovely in her narration and personification, is touched by her. Hedwig is a wonderful protagonist. Her anchorage is a fantastic means for her to serve as audience analogue, questioning an unfamiliar world just as we do, separated by half a millennium as we are. She's meek, anxious, insecure, yet prone to shocking degrees of bravery, courage, indignation. She, and not Catherine II, is the strangest character of all, and one I'm perhaps most interested in exploring in subsequent volumes. I adore the soundtrack, too. There's so many tracks, and all of them perfectly capture this strange new world, evoking the past without remaining shackled to it. And the presentation! While I find some of the assets a little too under-textured and low-quality, the choice to display everything in a slightly-grungy monochrome, with beautifully expressive, hand-drawn portraits, lends the work a distinctive, intimate quality. There is one scene in particular, late in the novel, where half of the nuns, in sequence, hold a sword. Yet none of them hold it in the same way, and the ways they're drawn in their ready poses is detailed and, again, expressive. And yet I feel, like Catherine II, I know so little about them. Another scene, when Hedwig shares a bath with Moira and Eustace, again presents a moment of intimacy. Moreso than the nudity (which is, thankfully, very tastefully and chastely presented), I felt struck at the sight of Eustace's hair color and style. Indeed, Eustace is one of the most explored characters of this first volume, but I can't say I have a definitive picture of the other nuns in my mind apart from this. It's an understated but compelling moment. I truly don't have anything negative to say. I adore these nuns and this work, and I'm very excited to see the rest of it.

Interesting and unique historical setting with a compelling plot & cast. The text is simple & engaging to read and kept me entertained throughout the entire experience. Instantly bought the second one upon finishing this one, looking forward to seeing what the author does in the future. If you like visual novels, I think it's safe to say you'll like this, and its a really good length for the price.

Really good read that will keep you guessing till the end [spoiler]and then some because the mystery is to be resolved in future volumes. You will not get resolution here.[/spoiler] At first I was a bit turned off by the modern feel to the writing, hoping for something more along the lines of Pentiment. But that was quickly assuaged as I got into its flow and the interesting characters. Told from the perspective of an abbey anchoress (a nun that lives her life in a cell never to leave as to "anchor" the abbey) yanked from her peaceful life to undercover investigate the grisly murder of fellow nun and clear the name of the accused. A bit of a stretch at times, the good writing did a great job at holding my interest. Even in the scenes revolving around the mundane everyday life. The jazzy/trip hop music was quite nice though there were a couple tracks that were a bit too sweet to read to. But that was rare. I will definitely be reading vol.2 and recommend this to visual novel fans in search of something unique.

To quote a friend, the visual-novel-to-bible-studies pipeline IS real. I wishlisted [i]Misericorde[/i] pretty much on the strength of its trailer alone and I'm so glad I did. This is an astonishingly stylish game with an incredible soundtrack and really strong character work. It's a kinetic (i.e. no player choices) murder mystery that follows poor Hedwig, a former anchoress who's a complete fish out of water in her own convent but is still tasked with solving a very mysterious murder of a very mysterious woman. The pacing isn't exactly what you'd expect from a crime novel: the story moves quite slowly as we discover this small cloistered world through Hedwig's eyes. She is unfortunately not a particularly skilled detective but an extremely compelling and complex protagonist, as are all the other characters who all may or may not be murderers. I really enjoyed spending time in the convent and slowly picking up on small details that may or not may not explain what happened, as well as unpeeling the complex layers of the relationships between the characters, which Hedwig is often unequipped to fully understand but can still grasp at. This is an great visual novel, and I'm thrilled that at the time of writing Volume 2 is available, so I'll go play that too.

Absolutely electrifying stuff. You'll never believe what these friggin' nuns get up to.

would heartily recommend to anyone who was super devoutly catholic at a young age because of all the "mortification of the flesh" and "hallucinatory mysticism" stuff and then grew up gay and full of seething petty rage