I posted a list of games I was working through about a year ago, so I thought I'd post an update on it here.

[b]Muv-Luv Alternative:[/b] Wow, what a ride! I feel like getting a bit more in depth with this one, but it's still going to be a spoiler free review. In fact, I'll talk about the whole series.

Muv-Luv Alternative is the third instalment in the Muv-luv series, with Extra being the first and Unlimited being the second. Not confusing, right? Anyway, it's hard to give an overview of the plot without entering spoiler territory. The series starts out as a romantic harem comedy set in a modern day Japanese neighborhood, complete with a business tycoon's daughter who is able to vacate and demo a town to build her ultra large mansion right outside the MC's house. But the series transitions into a no-nonsense, dreary alternate reality where the earth is being sieged by the BETA. On the upside, mecha are a thing now.  

Yea, it's a wild ride.

Muv-Luv is an early 2000's VN, so it's still recovering from 90's trends. Extra feels more like an episodic harem anime, and is really more an introduction to the characters than the plot. Your main hoes are going to be Sumika; your sweet yet prone-to-punch next-door neighbor, and Meiya; the wealthy yet socially inept import. Joining them is Miki the wanna-be cat girl, Kei the delinquent, and Chizuru is the teacher's pet. There's also Mikoto, a strange survival expert, though he's a guy, so why would you want to romance him? All of the characters are pretty charming. Even your teachers and other minor characters are a welcome site. I can't really think of a character I didn't like. Though I must admit that the lack of a real plot did make Extra a bit more tedious. My friends kept telling me muv-luv as a whole was the best visual novel ever, and I kept waiting for the story to develop into the alien invasion. But few things in Extra are more dramatic than your average harem romance hijinks. Having said that, I did enjoy the side routes a bit more than the main ones. Kei and Chizuru have surprisingly dark backstories, but weren't so heavy that they felt out of place in an otherwise lighthearted VN.

And then there's Unlimited. It's really hard to talk about it without spoiling it, but this is where we are introduced to our main setting. I've seen a few reviews where they praise Muv-luv for its ability to expertly shift genres from the goofy harem modern to the alternate alien apocalypse. I can't say that was my experience. In the first scene of Unlimited, we're treated to a scene that happened near the end of Extra. Then we're just sort of dropped into the BETA apocalypse. Despite the change in setting, the tone does feel eerily similar to Extra in a lot of ways. One example is MC is still going to school, but it's to become a mecha pilot. One of the bigger changes is a lot of the super silly nonsensical stuff doesn't happen anymore. There are still jokes here and there, but they are more grounded and feel like they could happen in reality. Probably the biggest change is that unlike Extra which has branching routes, Unlimited is linear, with your choices only really determining which waifu you're going to end up with in the end. I had mixed feelings about this. On one hand, having alternate paths dedicated to characters you're interested in was really welcome in Extra. On the other, it was also kind of nice to just have all that woven into the main line and not have to hunt for Kei. Seriously Kei, it can be really hard to find the dialog options to see where you're sitting every day. Especially when I need to pick options related to other characters just to have them show up. And I'm suppose to remember where all of these are from previous playthroughs just to trigger your route? WHAT KIND OF SHIT IS THIS?!?!??!

And once you're done with that, you're ready for Alternative. 

Calling Extra and Unlimited homework makes them sound a lot more boring than they actually were. But it's the truth. They were homework so that you could properly enjoy Alternative. By this point, Muv-Luv has fully pulled away from being a quirky harem anime and is ready to bring you full on no-nonsense BETA induced despair. And despair is not a word I use lightly with visual novels. Anyone will tell you about the handful of shocking deaths that happen in Alternative, but there's a lot of somber realizations that also help reinforce how utterly screwed everyone is. After spending several hours following Takeru (MC) as he trained to become a mecha pilot, it's rewarding to see him and everyone else engage with such horrific creatures. It's not all fights with the BETA of course. There's also a decent amount of political intrigue as you're introduced to other nations. There were a few times where the story lapsed into armchair philosophy, which always went on a bit longer than it had to, and there were some sizable info dumps that could have been managed in a more interesting way. But once I got hooked on Alternative, I pretty much played the last 15-20 hours of the game over a weekend. I don't recommend anyone do that, but it shows how much I enjoyed the end of this VN.

And I guess this is the part where people throw up their 10/10 score, and make some comment about how the score should really be higher and how Muv-Luv will never be surpassed ETC ETC, and those are all valid opinions. For me though, I think I'll give it a 9/10. It's a great story, and the only real holes I could poke in it were minor contrivances that could be chalked up to character quirks. The tech used in the game doesn't suffer at all. It's still more advanced than most other VNs I've played, making light use of 3D environments and sprite scaling to make characters appear closer and further away. But this is a 20+ year old game written in different times, and it shows its age a bit. A lot of the info dumping could have been done in a more interesting way. They spend a lot of time talking about how realistic the simulators for mecha training are, yet the writers opted to have instructors explain to Takeru How to best take down each type of BETA and raid a hive. Why not have Takeru experience and deal with this stuff in a simulator? The main route of Extra is also painful to get through if you aren't a fan of harem anime (like me), but is absolutely necessary for Alternative's more emotional moments to hit true. The series is an easy recommendation for anyone who's into VNs. 

By the time I was done with those, I think I had 14-16 hours invested in Extra and Unlimited combined. Mind you that I cleared every route in Extra (struggling a bit to find Kei) and just did Unlimited once. My clear time for a single play of Alternative is about 30 hours. So it's quite a bit longer than the previous titles.

[b]SYNTHETIK:[/b] I beat it via multiplayer, which was a pretty rewarding experience. I stand by my original review of the game: If You're done with Hades, it's worth a look. 

[b]Gris:[/b] Disappointing. I knew it was going to be a pretentious artsy platformer, but I didn't realize the experience was going to be so vapid. It's pretty, but that's it. The puzzles are too simple to be challenging, and are an exercise in tedium most of the time. The theme of grief is really shoved in your face and I doubt anyone could really miss it. Aside from a few well animated scenes, I don't see any reason to pick this one up. It cost as much as a deli sandwich, and somehow I still feel conned.  

[b]God Eater 3:[/b] I actually went back to playing god eater 2 for a bit, and holy cow, you really overlook all of the quality of life changes they made to the game. God Eater 3 is easily the best in the series, with every improvement imaginable from better camera angles to an upgrade system that makes sense. 

[b]The Fruit of Grisaia:[/b] I uh, heh. I'm still working on this. Needed to take a bit of a break after muv-luv.

[b]Tales of Berseria:[/b] My prediction was right. It's as good as any other "tales of" game, with an amateurish story and fun gameplay. The story does have kind of a sour ending, which was expected but was still disappointing. Though it occasionally goes on sale for cheap, so if you want 50+ hours of JRPG action on your first playthrough for 15 $ or less, might be worth putting on your steam wish list.