Wondering what this series is about? What's with the "crappy" rating system? Find out all about it here!
Before Dharker Studio became the semi-competent producer of smut we know and (occasionally) love today, its founder, AJ Tilley, made a name for himself through his personal VN publishing brand, AJTilley.com. Throughout 2015 there has been an impressive number of decently-sized games released under that label, the whole endeavour fuelled by a never-ending stream of crowdfunding campaigns, making Tilley one of the most notable creators on the fledgeling EVN scene. At the same time, his activities were spawning increasing controversies, mostly over the appalling quality of some of the games in question and overuse of Kickstarter. In April 2016, after just a year and a half of presence within the EVN scene, the infamy around the label became intense enough that Tilley himself decided to terminate it, removing all of its online presence and transferring all the rights to his company’s “development arm”, Dharker Studio. The "restructured" company then both continued working on the franchises introduced by AJTilley.com and created new ones, including highly successful ecchi VNs such as Negligee or Army Gals, while its creator’s name was conveniently hidden from the public’s eye.
Despite the horror stories circulating around these “dark beginnings” of Dharker Studio, the games from that period always interested me quite a lot, both because of my usual, morbid curiosity and the significant role they played in the history of EVNs. While it’s easy to argue that titles like Sword of Asumi or Divine Slice of Life did a lot to reinforce the general impression of EVNs being cheap, awkward imitations of their Japanese predecessors, I wanted to find out whether they’re really as bad as people make them out to be. In today’s episode, I’ll cover four of those pre-Dharker projects – outside of the two mentioned above, I’ll be including Highschool Romance and Highschool Possession, which, amusingly enough, have exactly nothing to do with each other, utilizing drastically different artstyles and telling stories that could hardly be further away from each other, at least apart from the obligatory high school setting. The one game I’ll skip, for the time being, is Beach Bounce, initial episodes of which were published during this time, but which was later heavily reworked and fully released as a “proper” Dharker Studio title, Beach Bounce Remastered. After that, it even spawned its own little franchise – this series, with three VNs in total, deserves a separate look and will be the next topic for Shovelware Adventures.
So, going back to our main issue, are the AJTilley.com VNs really that bad? The answer is: no. Because in reality, if you treat them seriously to any extent, they’re even worse than I've expected – at least outside of one, notable exception.
Imagine a game featuring a female assassin in an alternative-history Japan, where shogunate won the late XIX-century civil war and what in our world was the Meiji restoration followed a different path. The samurai class never lost its dominance, preserving its ethos and prestige till the modern day, while the militaristic government relies on secret police and agents such as our lead, Asumi, to keep people in check. At the same time, a new terrorist group rises, aiming to violently oppose the established order. Sounds pretty cool, right? Only in theory, as the reality of Sword of Asumi is one of the most amazing trainwrecks I’ve seen during my involvement with EVNs, rivalling Winged Cloud’s Legends of Talia with how absurdly stupid and tone-deaf it is.
The first thing you might notice after launching the game is that Asumi is possibly the dumbest assassin in the world, spewing edgy one-liners and engaging in small talk with her victims instead of focusing on getting the job done. A moment later, when a member of the Edo's (this universe’s Japan) secret police, a Justicar, shows in the house of Asumi’s latest hit and start discussing extremely delicate details of her next assignment in the middle of the murder scene, you know you’re up for a ride. And be sure, the stream of utter stupidity and inexplicable writing fu**ups never truly ends (like Asumi causally approaching other characters in her assassin’s clothes, while being undercover – I can understand that kind of mistake in writing, but when you can literally see it happening on the screen???). The somewhat-decent romance options, both male and female, help things a tiny bit, but can’t change the overall dreadful quality of the experience.
The absurd fanservice (it seems assassins have a strong taste for overly-elaborate, sexy lingerie, especially when preparing for a mission) and the fact how seriously the game treats itself are pretty much the final nails to its coffin. While the likes of Sakura games are after dumb and trashy, they’re self-aware and try to have fun with the formula. In Sword of Asumi, the only fun you can have is the kind fully unintended by its authors: the high from how astonishingly bad and absurd it is. And unless that’s what you’re looking for, there’s really no reason to read it. Sorry Kaori, even you couldn’t save this one…
I’ve learned about Divine Slice of Life, AJTilley.com’s second release, through a rather brutal review by Tyrael, published back in the day on Fuwanovel. However, despite the 1/5 score, I’m not sure that post gave justice to just how much of a worthy successor to Sword of Asumi this game is. In its story, our average high schooler protagonist, represented by a creepy, faceless character portrait, is suddenly confronted by two female demigods (holding the spirits of Ancient Greek goddesses Aphrodite and Athena) and recognized as the reincarnation of Zeus. To claim his godly powers and rightful place as king of the Pantheon, he has to choose one of those beautiful, horny deities as his wife – but, his generic school crush and the deredere childhood friend won’t give up on him easily and if he dares to fall in love with a mortal, his godhood will be lost forever. Thus starts the awfully short, divine slice-of-life harem scenario, spices up by junky animation, cringy voice-acting and an assortment of mediocre hentai scenes.
While the goddesses spend most of their time spewing obnoxious mythological references and expressing their disdain for regular mortals, and the school beauty tries to make the protagonist jealous by going out with the biggest asshole around, the childhood friend, Taka Shinobi (those names…) is pretty much the only ray of light – she actually has a bit of personality and charm, while the other heroines are either completely one dimensional or heavily off-putting (or both). There’s also the mischievous class representative, Akame, who… Does her own thing, to not spoil anything, but the total of five scenes in which she's featured in could hardly make her into a compelling character. To not be unfair, the general aesthetic of the game is not bad and it doesn’t treat itself seriously, playing with the absurd premise especially in the harem endings (there’s a threesome one with both goddesses and a “divine harem” with all five girls), but the awful writing and inexplicable technical issues, like the lack of basic quality-of-life features and the frequently bugging-out audio, make it an extremely hard sell, even by the 2015 standards. And nowadays… It’s simply to be avoided by all cost.
After what the earlier AJ Tilley’s games had on offer, I can only describe Highschool Romance as a major, positive surprise. Despite the literally most generic title possible, this VN is notable at least for two reasons. The first unusual thing about it is that it’s a rare “trap protagonist” EVN, that uses the “guy cross-dressing to get into an all-girls boarding school” setup for mild ecchi and romance, and not full-on hentai. The second way in which it stands out is the unusual, cartoonish artstyle that will probably not be to everyone’s taste, but which I personally liked a lot and which matched the tone of the story very well. Outside of that, it’s a very basic romantic VN, pretty much devoid of any serious drama or genuine surprises, but still managing to be rather pleasant to read and… Wholesome, in a way that very Dharker titles, and possibly no other trap game ever managed to be. While out of the three routes the principal one includes a few layers of “inappropriate”, mostly due to the heroine obviously being into her sole male student from the moment she met him, even it can hardly be considered vulgar or overly pervy.
The general cuteness and simple, but competent writing made it hard for me to believe that it’s a game by the same team that came up with Sword of Asumi just 10 months earlier. Obviously, the extreme contrast doesn’t mean that Highschool Romance is a particularly good VN. Its short and basic plot, low number of CGs and limited expressions on the sprites place it in a similar category as the higher-end Sakura games – still borderline trash, but competent enough to be genuinely enjoyable. And, as some of you might know, this is exactly the standard this series is aiming for – pointing out to the rare, edible fish in the stale, polluted pond of ecchi and eroge EVNs. Thus, Highschool Romance receives this episode’s sole positive recommendation – if you’re looking for something brief and lighthearted, it might be genuinely worth your time.
After the sole positive accent in this post, let’s delve into the weirdest and possibly most disturbing game I had the displeasure of playing in order to make it. Highschool Possession starts in a fairly unassuming manner, showing our generic protagonist, Hikaru, interacting briefly with his two high-school crushes, the friendly school beauty Akiko and the shy Kasumi, a fellow member of the school’s swimming team. The next day, Hikaru inexplicably wakes up in Akiko’s body and… Masturbates furiously, after being turned on by her reflection in the mirror. After this classy piece of hentai, he proceeds to wake up as either Akiko or Kasumi (obligatory masturbation scene here too) every morning, learn about their personal problems and starts messing with their lives, assuming that “making things right” for them is the reason he was made to enter their bodies.
The tone of the story is just as poorly-communicated as it is grim. The switches between highly-questionable sexual content and overly-serious drama never really stop, culminating in which was probably the most uncomfortable sex scene I’ve seen in a visual novel – and this comes from a person that quite recently completed euphoria. Around the midpoint of the game, Hikaru, while possessing Akiko, is coerced into sex by her abusive boyfriend – considering all the implications, this was neither something I’d ever expect to see in a non-Clock Up eroge, nor something I’d ever want to see. There’s also very little that could redeem the game beyond that point, as the plot and the ending are serviceable at best and the visuals, by the same artist as in Sword of Asumi, is nowhere close to being brilliant enough to compensate for that. So unless you’re looking for a VN that’ll make you feel bad for all the wrong reason, skip this one. In my opinion, it’s worth avoiding even more than all the other AJTilley.com titles.
And this would be about it, when it goes to the AJTilley.com era of Dharker Studio – somewhat embarrassing beginnings that nonetheless laid the foundation of one of the longest-active and most productive ecchi EVN developers. For all the bad things I’ve heard about these games, I don’t think I was ready for how absolutely dreadful some of there were, but it was also very interesting to see how much the studio grew over the years – despite it being mostly a producer of silly hentai games, it managed to significantly improve quality and tone down the questionable practices, such as excessive reliance on crowdfunding, which made the AJ Tilley brand toxic. And also, unlike many games by Winged Cloud, for example, I don’t believe the less fortunate titles by AJ Tilley and Dharker were this poor due to lack of effort – they always included interesting ideas and strived to be original, but simply suffered from atrocious execution. And in the end, the fact we got games such as Negligee, Army Gals and the Highschool Romance: Magi Trails later down the line might be a decent-enough compensation for that slight PTSD Highschool Possession gave me...
In a few weeks, the Shovelware Adventures will be back, investigating the last missing pieces of AJTilley.com legacy – that is the summer resort themed Beach Bounce (the "Remastered" edition) and its two sequels, Beauty Bounce and Bunny Bounce. And for now, I hope you enjoyed this little retrospective from the early, dark era of ecchi EVNs. Have a great weekend everyone!
In a few weeks, the Shovelware Adventures will be back, investigating the last missing pieces of AJTilley.com legacy – that is the summer resort themed Beach Bounce (the "Remastered" edition) and its two sequels, Beauty Bounce and Bunny Bounce. And for now, I hope you enjoyed this little retrospective from the early, dark era of ecchi EVNs. Have a great weekend everyone!
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.