Orion: A Sci-Fi Visual Novel Reviews

Even for a fiver, this cost too much to what it has. That's it. That's why I don't recommend it. Oh, it's get worse. As much as I just want to point out that the price is too high, considering how short this game is. I just wanted to leave it there but how the game pans out, I can't help to explain the contents of how bad the game is and I really hope I'm not being so harsh about this. I really do. The game markets itself as a sci-fi visual novel. It's a slap together visual novel with a sci-fi theme too it. When you see it, you see how poorly tackled together the story is with the theme of it being sci-fi, then you see how the developer somehow takes away and monopolize the idea of it being a sci-fi visual novel. Somehow the developers has made the scif-i theme extremely generic like it's never been done before, only to find how narrowly driven the story is, maybe because the developers feels that it's their game and to respect it. There's loads of actual other visual novels from Japan that take the science fiction setting and their art is way better and somewhat stylish, then this game, to express that it's more entertaining if anything and doesn't take itself too seriously. This game seemingly does and places it as decoration. The story, you play as a guy who gets thrown in the most predictable situations that have almost nothing to do with science-fiction or anything. It's Anything social, like having to stand up to a bully or be taken away by some ghetto styled characters. There's a woman character who's extremely stubborn and gets her friend to breathe down your character's neck and to gang up on you, to see if you can handle the situation and then that's really about it. Like we need a situation like that in a game theme like this? It does feel like it's being forced on you with the artwork and bullied into it. There's nothing else in the game, where you explore or find anything new, to feel lost or anything. The more bizarre element about this game are the artwork you unlock as you progress and replay the game. The game normal presentation is the anime style illustrations but as you unlock scenes, you find these water-color painted style artworks which glow and bloom, like it's meant to be a 80s neon wash render of Logan's Run, which seems to be the award of playing the game and seeing the different endings. It's hard for me to understand why there was a mix of these to begin with. It looked like they were made for an entirely different game and assume us that we know that's meant to be the award, for playing and unlocking endings. They're nice but it doesn't fit or gel if there's one style to watch and then to see the other style. The ideas are smashed together to the point where I don't see where the game's story is going with.

I think this is a good game and worth playing, as long as you are willing to complete all 9 endings. There are 4 bad endings, 4 okay/good endings where you're encouraged to continue figuring things out, and 1 "true" ending. The plot is overall interesting and the game took me about 4.5 hrs to complete fully. For the 4 "good" endings you must take a pretty specific path. I struggled to figure out how to get to the last one out of the original 8. The developers have provided a guide for anyone else who gets stuck: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5znc6YqFiPhMEVzbmNhZTgxQjQ/view?pli=1

I was impressed by the beautiful art (kudos to Badriel), but also by the protagonist being an actual character with personality. The voice acting really sold the emotions and even fight scenes. I suppose the setting itself isn't super unique, but the time powers are interesting and Virgil's pretty awesome. Now to the gameplay/replay. The short version: it's a Renpy with lazily designed flags and endings, although this lack of control ironically matches the theme of it being difficult to control the timeline. The long version: The four paths are accessed by specific choices, while the endings are determined by flags. Based on personal experience and the walkthrough, these aren't the good flags based on points; it seems like everything has to be exact to get the good ending. This is what we call "fake difficulty", where the game gives you choices that don't actually work so it feels either counter-intuitive or broken (unless you're already familiar with these types of VNS). An opportunist could say that it matches the theme of not having total control; and the good endings do feel satisfying with the aforementioned acting. It's just a shame that they give you a "gameover" message even on the good endings to push you to unlock all the endings. Overall, I enjoyed this experience quite a bit after getting it on sale. I just can't recommend it as a game at full price. Grab it when it goes on sale, and don't try unlocking all the endings at once.

The writing is horrible. Whatever story this game does have is half-assed and sloppily executed. Some of the dialogue regarding forgiving certain people is so ‘horrible fanfic’ level and terribly unrealistic with how easy the ‘forgiveness’ part is dished out with no tension, conflict, doubt or even remotely trying to talk about the subject at hand before granting the forgiveness. The plot is very rushed, barely giving you the time to get to know any of the characters or the politics of Orion at all, before launching you headfirst into a convoluted story where all of the side-characters refuse to properly explain anything at all. You know, in stories like fantasy and sci-fi, the backdrop is half of what makes the story interesting. Not properly showing it off is a huge mistake. There’s just too big of a difference in skill between the CG artist and the character artist. One makes the characters look like adults, the other makes them look like tall children (or like a ten-year old with breast, you know, that girl bully). It was the CG’s that made me think I was going to play an adult character, only to find out afterwards that the MC is a minor. In fact, I didn’t even realize that the character art and the one in the CG were the same person at first and kept waiting for this boring child to get off the screen so the ‘real story’ could start. I really don’t like young adult stuff, not now that I’m an adult. I prefer to play as an adult, which given the CG art I thought I was getting in this game. My mistake. To be honest, I didn’t care about a single character in this story and started skipping through the story just to get to the endings, which were equally unsatisfying. Not a single ‘ending’ ever showed the consequences of your actions. (Well, maybe the bad ones kind of did, which is why they were only slightly more entertaining than the rest of the story.) This is a huge fail as a writer. You want your readers to stay engaged in the story and connecting to your characters, not skipping ahead and thinking they don’t give a damn if the whole space station blows up right now. Ideally, you also want to write a satisfying ending that shows the resolutions and the consequences thereof (not skipping over them!), whether that ending is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ (aka ends happily or unhappily). This game failed on all three. It even failed on the art. Of course, there’s always going to be some differences between the character art and the CG art in a visual novel. But here, the differences were so great that the character weren’t even (or only barely) recognizable between the styles. Do I really have to spell out how bad that is? The bullies suddenly becoming Sam’s friends is some higher order BS. I’ve been bullied, alright? They don’t just stop on a whim, no matter what you say to them. Virgil felt like the author’s self-insert, guiding you along to the ‘true path’ (the ending they wanted), while resetting if you’re on the ‘wrong’ one before even letting you properly see where that path and its consequences would lead. Because of the way the 'endings' were done, it ultimately makes any 'choices' you make feel empty and meaningless, since you're in essence always heading for the 'true' ending and any of the other 'endings' aren't really an end at all. You also don’t want your protagonist to come off as a whiny brat, that generally doesn’t endear them to your readers.

In Orion you play as Sam, an intelligent 16-year-old boy with a knack for computers. Sam lives peacefully with his brother Louca, in Section 6 of one of the many floating cities in Earths orbit. Reoccurring nightmares, however, has made life rather difficult to deal with, and suddenly getting a strange message from an unknown person named Virgil isn’t helping at all. “The setting sun rises as the moon weeps.” I didn’t hate Orion but I didn’t much like it either, and while I prefer to give it a “meh” vote, that’s impossible so this review is negative on the basis that if I could have gone back in time to stop myself from getting it, I would have. The best thing about Orion is definitely it’s art, and the voice acting honestly wasn’t too bad either. However, there are a few things I don’t like about this game. [u]First[/u] – you need to play eight different endings to reach the true ending. [u]Second[/u] – It’s hard to reach any of the endings because if you deviate from the path even once, it doesn’t count so following a guide is necessary. [u]Third[/u] – all of the endings are incredibly underwhelming. The true ending is as mediocre as every other. TL; DR: If you had an hour and thirty minutes of free time and are looking for a fun/interesting Sci-fi VN to play and pass some time… it’s not this.

I'm only in chapter 4 of the game, but I have some constructive criticism. I've had multiple "choices" to make so far in the game, however many of them appear to be completely inconsequential. Stuff like "stay here" vs "make a run for it." Except the "make a run for it" option has you recaptured a second after, and there doesn't seem to be any indication that it has any impact on the story that "stay here' wouldn't have had. In chapter 3 I ran into two choices, both that led to really vague game overs. Speaking of which, the game overs I've been getting have been very oddly written. It seems like the game expects me to be discovering these endings on replay, because they don't make very much sense. Almost as if I were stumbling into the end or middle of a game's story without any context. Like in one ending I successfully meet a character I needed to meet. Then the game ends with "Was this the right one?" "No. But I can't say why. Sorry." It is too early to really render a final verdict, but my initial impression isn't as good as I was hoping. If you're a fan of VR's, itching for a new one to play, and don't mind dropping the 11-12 dollars, then based on my current impressions I'd say maybe go for this.

I wish I could recommend this visual novel. It had sone great concepts, the music and sound design are decent, and there was so much potential. The voice acting is also fairly good. I hold a particular fondness for Virgil. But the endings are dissatisfying, especially the true one. Its execution started off fine, and I commend the alternate solution Sam comes up with, but shortly thereafter it rushes straight to the epilogue without showing how things went down, which is just lazy and poor writing and totally anticlimactic and disappointing. Most of the characters felt flat and not very well fleshed out. There also should have been more reflection of the MC's ability to retain memories across timelines, like unlockable extra lines as you finish more endings. I also have a complaint about the artwork. Many, actually. Mari's sprites make her eyes look really weird due to the art style. Sam's sprites make him look way younger than he's supposed to be, in a way that doesn't match how the CGs DO manage to accomplish making him look his age. Also the differing art styles between the sprites and CGs are much more distracting than anything else. The same character looks way too different between the two art styles, creating a sloppy production effect. All in all, this visual novel had too much potential flushed down the toilet due to sloppy writing and execution. I don't regret playing through this but it is not worth full price. Only buy if it's severely discounted or you receive as a gift. Or if you have a huge boner for plots that utilize timeline shenanigans and like sassy AIs who've mastered the art of sarcasm.

Orion is a little strange for a visual novel. It features above-average voice acting and beautiful CGs. For a visual novel to have decent voice acting is usually a sign that it is a Good Visual Novel With A Budget. I'm not so sure if Orion actually qualifies as good, though. It has many intriguing plot ideas, but the execution of said ideas is very poor. The average scene in Orion is as follows: 1. Meet a character 2. Learn some background information 3. [2-5 minutes later] PSYC! Plot twist, none of that information was accurate. 4. Virgil laughs 5. Repeat There just isn't enough time for the first round of information to feel like the norm before a plot twist is attempted. I felt dazed and unsure of if anything anyone said could be trusted, and the impact of the twists were severely diminished because I ended up never believing the established information in the first place. Due to its rushed and poorly executed storyline, head-scratching (and not in a good way) path to achieving the true end , and general incoherence, I can't recommend Orion UNLESS you are solely interested in the voice acting.

Lovely artworks. Well arranged story. But there is a problem. If you want to unlock "Ture" ending, you should reach all 8 of "normal" endings. The problem is, finding those normal endings is pain without walkthrough information. The story is designed to play again and again to obtain the truth. But good or not, there is no achievement, so ... enjoy your way. I like this game, but think not worth full price.

Completed the game. It didn't take too long. In fact, in my opinion it was a little too short. Appropriate for the length of a standard EVN perhaps, but you wish that it took a bit more time to flesh out the world of Orion. So, the good thing is that the bones are all there. All the main nodes that should be there are there, and the logic as far as I can see it is sound. Unfortunately even a beautiful skeleton is just that, and the various flaws I want to point out still stems from the problem that there isn't enough content to flesh out Orion. To start with, Orion is a world of Unionism but you barely get a sense of it from complains mouthed by various characters. The main character is a naive kid who is shielded from this reality, but even then he should've seen some acts that are considered 'abnormal' in our society in his daily life. We don't get that. During the whole adventure, since you're constantly on the move there's no time to appreciate the world. All we get are verbal woes from characters we barely scratch the surface. In fact the only character you'll feel familiar with is Virgil. Everyone else, even your own bro Louca feels terribly distant, and while you can feel his (almost disturbing) love for the MC it... could've been more elaborated. I wonder how many people will feel tricked by the Mari CG. She totally isn't important at all in the story and could've been replaced by a faceless goon for all I care. Really, I enjoy the game quite a bit, but I must repeat again and again that there just isn't enough flesh or time to make these seemingly cool characters endearing or even memorable. I guess that's the tradeoff for having full voice acting in the game. This is quite high quality stuff, but can be seen hollow in the inside.