Project LUX Reviews

I really wanted to like this but $25 is far too much for 1.5hr, at $15 or below i might recommend it but still this is a very shallow game. 1 environment, no interaction, no updates to content despite being in early access for a year+, great voice acting and motion capture though. Amazing premise though would like to see a full fledged 10hr+ VN in this universe.

A zero-interaction VR Visual-novel. Personally I liked the theme, but not implementation. This is a niche product and not what most expect from VR (definetely not something I normally would expect from VR). Pros: - Rather nice environment and motions even if textures leave more to be desired - 'Governmental monotone' of the 'cyborg' at the start somehow left me impressed. It really gave me an impression of a Human in Cyborg body (but it was japanese with subtitles, that might be how oficial japanese sounds like in general) Cons: - Zero intereractions - Zero movement. Small things like opening the door and entering by yourself, ability to touch books, would have really added more depth. - Load time between 'scenes'. It is not long, but immersion breaking. It happened only two times but it still left a negative impression. - Controls are terrible at my Oculus. Taking into account lack of interactions, not much of an issue, just weird and counterintuitive button-behavior.

Very similar to the rest of Hasekura's work, and much like Spice & Wolf VR, is rather short but sweet. Hasekura writes in a very simple manner akin to ordinary day to day conversations which makes it feel personable. I feel if this medium evolved from this, to even minorly interactive (moving arms about even would make this conversation style VR visual novel much more immersive) and lengthier experiences (2-3 hours, like a movie, would probably be ideal) we might have a seriously cool genre on our hands. As is, I would only recommend this to people who are fans of Hasekura, and also only on sale. $25 for an hour or maybe 1.5 hours is still too much. Also, unlike S&W VR, there's no quality options. Please let me turn off the bloom, holy shit, SO MUCH BLOOM edit: SPOILERS FROM HERE ON you heard me there is a slight suicide theme near the end which is frankly lampshaded, so while the act of suicide is committed, it's kind of a bad cop out. the 'good' ending is imo the 'bad' ending, despite what it means, and I think this is an inherent flaw on Hasekura's work; it always has to end out good in the end. The bad ending feels more like 'me'. The good ending feels... wrong. I had a great experience overall, minus the 'good' end. It was fun.

Pull up a chair and dive in for a story. A wonderful tale that is presented in an imaginative new way. The majority of the game is just listening to the musings of two individuals as they explore emotions, the thought process and the human condition. While there is minimal gameplay to this (you can't even move your hands and the controllers are just used for menus. Think "ABE VR") I found it to be quite a refreshing break from the majority of wave shooters, simulators and horror VR games that are availible. Lots of reading due to the English subtitles (since it is voiced in Japanese), but I never felt it took away from the immersion. A couple bugs here and there like my hand being caught in a weird position, but nothing game breaking. Over the course of five episodes you develop a fondness for both characters as well, since the game provides insight into where both characters are coming from. Oh, and the maine heroine is fully mo-capped by the VA so the movement is very natural. I went into this expecting a completely different experience, but I did not walk away dissapointed. The steep pricetag might put a few off, but I found it worth it for the experience (plus I am a fan of Isuna Hasekura's work). The game is a bit on the short side as well, coming in at around one and a half hours. I feel if it had gone on longer though, some of the appeal might have been lost since it is more akin to a movie than a game. If you're looking for something new and different, or maybe you like Isuna's previous works, this is definitely worth checking out.

This game is quite broken, as in it fails at the one thing its set out to do, and that is to tell you a story. More on this below, but first getting some other glaring issues out of the way; [h2]CONTROLS[/h2] This steam version is a port of some basic VR platform, and it shows. What little hints of control it gives you, are pointed at the wrong buttons, which meant I had to resort to googling how this game is supposed to function on a valve Index headset. Ontop of that, the game was originally programmed for headsets with only 3 axis of movement (rotational only), which means that if you move your head out of its original position even the slightest, you will be obscured by a wall or looking at your own neck. They could have solved this simple issue by constraining the camera but it seems they were only after a quick buck. [h2]CONTENT[/h2] Probably okay.. if you speak fluent Japanese. The main problem I experienced with this game was how very broken/lazy the english subtitles are. Some of the dialog gets cut short, or even gets completely omitted all together, making the story ring hollow. I dont fluently speak Japanese, but even I know you can not subtitle a long winded dialog with "I see..". The moments where subtitles just stop while a person is still talking were even more of a letdown. The game has a 'backlog' function which I had to look at more than once to check if I didnt actually just miss some dialog. But it turned out to just be missing every time. [h2]PRICE[/h2] Boy, was I glad I did not pay the full 26 dollar retail price for this. Not only is it shoddy, it only lasts 2 hours at most. I've had better experiences for a quarter the price. Even on a discount I still wouldnt recommend it to anyone unless it ends up ducking below 5 bucks and theres nothing better to grab. [h2]REDEEMING QUALITY[/h2] It has few, but atleast it looked pretty, and the animation was well done. [h2]VERDICT[/h2] The game gets a meager 4/10 from me. Its a lazy port, worth barely 5 bucks.

I just bought it and completed in in 88 minutes. I wouldn't recommend it. The room/skyboxes are not modeled very well (though the character is and the mocapped animation is great), the subtitles were hard to read because they were locked to a specific offset from your head that went outside the "sweet spot" of vision, and your height is fixed (EDIT: You can change your height by pressing R apparently). The gameplay consisted of looking at various objects to start a conversation about them and progress the story. There's only 1 decision to make in the game. I don't mind that so much, but I do mind that the timer for how long you have to look at something to select it is extremely short. I ended up making a decision on the one choice the game has just because the button popped up exactly where I was looking and it confirmed so quickly. The story wasn't that good, and it was hard to keep up with it between the difficulties reading the subtitles and the excessive technojargon. The game does have an option to pause and scroll through the text history though. I just wish it was a little more polished overall, like not lowering the volume so much when Lux walks away from you, or using the motion controllers for the few times your character uses canned hand animations. Also having the correct real-world height and requiring you to physically stand instead of just being teleported into the air while you're physically still sitting down would be nice. It's definitely way overpriced at $23. Maybe for $10 or less I would start to think it might be worth it if you're into this type of game, but hopefully better options will come out over the next few years.

For the first Visual Novel in VR, this game is amazing. The animations of the main girl are really smooth and human like and the voice acting is also great. If you have room scale VR, moving around while your body stays in the same place takes a bit out of the immersion, but I'm okay with that, as it is still a matter of figuring out how VN's best work in VR. The reason for the downvote is that this game should not have been out of Beta yet, because implementation-wise it's not finished yet. Even after just playing playing the first scene, I noticed that not all translations appear. The subtitles keep hanging, while a new sentence has started in Japanese (I understand moderate Japanese). Then when the next Japanese sentence arrives, the translation of the previous one just never showed up, not even in the back-log. For me it's also weird that when for a moment no-one speaks, the subtitles don't go away. Also, the menu-navigation is not natural. In most VR games you can open a menu with 1 controller, and chose with the other one an option. I was just staring at the opening screen trying different buttons to finally even start the game. Furthermore, the scene reloads after "selecting" an object takes away from the immersion. Probably this will be fixed in future patches, so I'll change this to an upvote then, because the game is enjoyable so far and I think I'll like it even more when I'm further in the story. By typing my frustrations out, I hope to help the developers and to release my mind from these thoughts.

I realy like VNs and VR but: This game is 'okay' at most. 100% of the playtime you listen to the dialog between the two characters. Same location. No way to interact, except for the one (yes, just 1!) simple 'this or that way' at the end to get the good or the bad ending. Average story, nothing new or unexpected, nothing catchy. At some point i had to force myself to even start the game, to finally get to the end (and it takes like only 2 hours to complete), since there really isnt anything motivating to keep you interested. Nice animations though. Right now the game is for 23€ and this is definetely a big 'no'. IIRC i got it on some many-%-off sale -> still absolutely not worth it. If you're like me and simply want to know how an anime character might look in VR with proper motion capturing (well done), well, then at least wait until you can get it for 1-2€. Spoiler - you probably wont make it to the end.

Less than 2 hours of non-interactive content at $25 is a hard sell to begin with but the content is also incredibly dry. The final part of the story isn't too bad but everything leading up to it didn't hold my attention very well. There are also long text-only segments at the beginning and end of the story that completely betray the VR presentation. Nobody wants to sit there with a VR headset on reading plain text on a black background with no voice or BGM. It should also be noted that by the time I played this it had been in Early Access for 5 months and there has not been a single news post concerning updates. Pretty disappointing support from Project Sekai. On the positive side, Lux is adorable, the aesthtic isn't bad and the ending is decent. If this were $5 I would recommend it, $10 would be a bit too much and $25 is just way too much. If you can get it on a deep discount, go for it. Otherwise, give this one a pass.

Pros: +Engaging story +Smooth animation and good looking models Cons: -Price -Odd forced perspectives Thoughts: This was not bad for the first VR anime ever (that I'm aware of). It follows a story about the degradation of human thought and emotion in the age of AI, which is very important to think about as the AI will be descending upon us very shortly . . . Unfortunantly, you experience this story through the eyes of one of the characters. This may not seem problematic at first, but it becomes apparent when they sit down; your perspective is forced into a position that you are currently not actually in (or vice versa if you watched the anime sitting). The screen freezes for a few seconds inbetween every scene as well. If you want a perfect, immersive film, this is not it. It feels a bit more like an experiment. There is certainly a long way to go in bringing anime to VR, but I deeply respect developer Spicy Tails for breaking the ice. Also, regarding the price, I don't think Project Lux is for the average VR consumer. You probably want to be a fan of anime or really intruiged by the possibilities of VR storytelling to pick this up. Score: 7/10