This review was originally published on Fuwanovel Forums on February 9th 2018. Since then, Ebullience Games has disbanded and all their games, including AIRIS, were removed from Steam and other sites that hosted them.
Although a significant portion of VNs produced in the West is published for free on platforms such as Steam or Itch.io, most of them are very short and simple projects, often made by starting-out developers or as quickly put-together entries for contents such as Yuri Game Jam. Still, from time to time, it’s possible to find a VNs on a completely different scale also available as free-to-play releases – AIRIS, created by Ebullience Games for NaNoRenO OELVN event and published on April 2017, is definitely among the most expansive games of this kind, with proper route structure and impressive story variation, that will require you many hours to fully experience.
While at first glance this otome might look like a generic fantasy romance, it offers a few fairly unique ideas (which I will not spoil in the review) – and those go far beyond its loudly advertised inclusivity, expressed through various LGBT+ themes. While not straying far from the typical formula of the genre, AIRIS indeed offers both a fully-fledged yuri romance route and another one focused on a non-binary character. More importantly though, it takes the somewhat overused trope of MMORPG and gives it an amusing spin – one which created some really interesting storytelling opportunities, even if their execution often left something to be desired.
The diversity of the cast and possible romance options is definitely one of the game’s selling points – thankfully, all of the characters are solid and there’s no obvious agenda present in the storytelling (no, the bear is not romanceable)
AIRIS starts like a run-of-the-mill fantasy VN, focused on Aliya, a female swordsman and adventurer, and a few of her companions. Quickly though, the very literal use of RPG tropes and language, along with various game-like events within the story suggests an underlying mystery behind this at first generic-looking setting. This intrigue, which proves a bit more complex and unorthodox than you might expect at the beginning, is the game’s biggest strength – it leads into many interesting moments of drama, heavy moral dilemmas and affects some of the romance scenarios in a very unusual way, especially in Everea’s route.
To fully understand the story, it’s pretty much necessary to play through all three main character routes, each one providing a very distinct perspective on the main mystery and uncovering motivations of the people involved. Every path is connected to an unavoidable romance arc, but with the impressive variety of endings, it can lead both to fulfilling epilogue and to tragedy (or even to a straight-up cataclysm for the world where the action takes place). It also doesn’t follow a simple good/neutral/bad ending structure, with most of the available conclusions being bitter-sweet or morally ambivalent in one way or another. Many of them are rather surprising, but stay true to the overall mood and message of the story, showing that there might be no clear “good” option when caught between powers beyond one’s control.
The game's protagonist, Aliya, is definitely one of the highlights of AIRIS – while stubborn and impulsive, she’s definitely a proactive, strong female lead with a lot of character
While the main ideas behind the story and the overall characteristics of the main cast are well-thought out and enjoyable, the game’s background of being a NaNoRenO entry, developed within one month as the rules of the contest demanded, weights on it quite heavily – the scale of the project was clearly not appropriate for such time schedule and this visibly affected the quality of the writing. One thing that you quickly notice after launching the game is awkward wording, often poorly fitting the presented situations and characters. Seeing mercenaries in a medieval fantasy world talking repeatedly about “consuming too much alcohol” is at least enough to make you roll your eyes, if not completely take you out of the experience. The overused RPG talk, even if partially justified by certain plot points, also comes out as unnatural and confusing.
Also, while the game is already fairly long (6-7 hours for a single playthrough, more than 20 hours of content in total) and occasionally struggles with pacing issues, some interesting ideas put in there stayed visibly underdeveloped. The prime example is Lyall, the non-binary romance option, whose identity is never really explored in the story, affecting mostly their visual design and pronouns used to address them. As much as one could argue that naturalizing their presence was author’s intention, it mostly feels like a missed opportunity or a hollow “diversity checklist” gesture. The short development time and the overly-complicated script seems to also affect how romance is present in the story – in Lyall’s and Everea’s routes it shows up fairly late and without proper build-up, making it look like if developers were struggling to fit it properly into the narrative.
Introducing a non-binary character by itself looks like an interesting idea, however, Lyall’s identity is not explored in the game in any meaningful ways
The aspect that suffered the most from limited time and resources developers had available was definitely the AIRIS’ visual design. While character sprites are fairly aesthetic and complemented by good-quality backgrounds, their expressions and variety leave a bit to be desired. CGs on the other hand, very few (9 in the whole game) and of mediocre quality, are seriously underwhelming and take a bit of impact from crucial romance-related scenes, for which they’re mostly used. While music is rather pleasant and fits the climate of the game, in general, production qualities feel inadequate for a VN of this size.
Still, for the most part, AIRIS is an enjoyable experience and, as a free game, something definitely worth trying out. With all it’s failures it also shows a lot of creativity and talent within its development team and makes me pretty enthusiastic about their first commercial project, The Masquerade Killer. While I’m not sure if I can recommend playing through all of it, if you really enjoy otome games or if you take a guide and play only through the routes you find most interesting, you should have a very good time with this freebie – and a taste of what’s probably coming to us with Ebullience's new projects, this time in much more polished, well-balanced form.
Final verdict: 3/5
Pros:
+ Three highly distinct story routes
+ Interesting use of the main premise and creative endings
+ Pleasant-looking sprites and backgrounds
Cons:
- Few, mediocre quality CGs
- Poor sprite variation and scripting
- Occasionally sloppy writing
- Pacing issues on some routes
VNDB page
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