This was a VN I wasn’t initially too keen on, but I eventually warmed up to it. While I liked the basic premise, I didn’t like how much of a dick Ulfor was towards AElla (I’m just going to spell it like that for convenience’s sake) for basically no reason, especially since he did treat Raf kindly. The eagle not being who the other two thought he was basically undermines anything Ulfor says, which is a shame, because some of what he said was pretty cool and justified. I also didn’t like that AElla’s relationship with the other two was developed off-screen. Just kinda feels like the VN just expects me to believe that AElla got along with the others while I wasn’t looking, which was annoying. The section after that was nice, with Raf and AElla discussing tales they’ve heard before, and the banter was cute. Then the sex scene happens, and I just wasn’t really into it, because none of the characters were that attractive to me, although this is just a me thing. After the sex scene, though, I did start caring about the characters and writing a lot more. It’s hard to describe, but I do like the vibes the VN has. As these characters reveal more about themselves, you start to understand why they act the way they do. I liked AElla the most, but the other two were pretty cool as well. There’s a weird sort of hesitant hope in the VN, being compulsively cynical but understanding that being kind towards others and keeping your foot forward is the surest way to keep living. And I fuck with that. I also like how the theme of folklore and stories are used.

The writing took some time to get used to. I ended up reading the VN pretty slowly at first. I think it has a good, elegant flow to it, but there are instances where I do think it doesn’t understand what exactly it’s doing. I can’t really describe it, but sometimes it feels clunky to read. When it locks in, though, it locks in. There are some pretty nice quotes in there.

The presentation is pretty great, especially with the GUI. The unique text boxes for each character and the GUI in general are just gorgeous, and really do a good job of making this VN feel alive. The sprites also look great, although I’m not a fan of Ulfor’s sprite. It looks like someone put a wolf’s head with spaghetti on it on a human’s body. Ulfor looks a lot better in literally every CG depicting him (Okay, maybe not the backstory CG, but still). The CGs are pretty well done. I think the way the VN presents its sprites and uses the camera is pretty neat. The music isn’t my cup of tea, but it’s well made, and it fits the scenes they’re in.

Overall, I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. I think I enjoyed it less than other people due to my personal preferences, but I still liked it a good amount. If you like people form close bonds in the midst of a war, I’d recommend reading this one.

Ratings for Categories:

Presentation: 5/5

Writing: 5/5

Theme: 4/5

Story: 5/5

Creativity: 4/5

Everything's very scary to review here. It's powerful. I'm gonna go blind if I look for too long. It has given life to this world...

Fundamentally fantastic VN, everyone is firing all cylinders, the presentation, story, audio design, accessibility, prose... it's all quality. I'm struggling to think of a slight it presented. Someone else mentioned that Ulfor should've died, and I can see why that makes sense, but the horrors of war are only so focused on. It's meant to be more character driven, and towards the end, I knew; 'Ulfor would have no purpose after the fighting is over, and even now he doubts himself for it, so... if he dies, it'll feel wrong. We already spent so much time with these characters, and less about the senselessness of war, so with that it mind...'

And now he sells flowers! And not fighting!

This story is scary. It felt like six people were standing atop a skyscraper and tracking me and everything I was doing while reading this, that's how good it was.

Lots of success with presentation here: character designs that immediately tell you a lot about what everyone is like, skillful synthesis of different art styles to fit the purposes of each scene, brilliant color coordination that makes the VN feel like a cohesive whole. And even a very cool logo... There's definitely some unevenness – I wish the campfire animation was a little better for all the time we spend staring at it, and as gorgeous the UI is, it genuinely feels like a big oversight to not have colored names for the speakers – but on the whole, it's a lot of really solid work. On the music side, I must note that Pink made yet another banger Sex Music mp3.

On a general level, I also enjoyed the writing. While I don't necessarily get the use of 2nd person mostly in that it singles out Raf's perspective & interiority very strongly in a way that seems incongruent with how the VN positions its three primary characters, the prose is always nice to read, and the unpretentious, matter-of-fact tone suits the story. All in all, though, I'm having somewhat of a hard time wrapping my head around how well I think everything ultimately comes together.

I think a lot of my doubts come down to the tension between the VN's minimalist "three people sitting around the campfire" setup and its gestures towards more far-reaching topics and stakes. For example: the folklore theme, courtesy of the jam, often comes off as a bit strained. We get a lot of stuff about folklore as a source of prejudice in particular, but the story's tight focus on the core trio doesn't leave it with a lot of opportunities to shape it into effective drama – as a social milieu, the camp is ultimately pretty loosely described, so what we get usually boils down to the characters thinking about what kinds of stories they tell about whatever species. (As a sidenote, even the theme of the relations between the officers, normal soldiers, the medics fades into the background as the story goes on, which I found a little strange.)

Maybe what specifically feels strained to me is that how bluntly functional the game is about folklore: it's so often directly aspirational or a direct inspiration for prejudice or behavior. I'm meant to understand that the characters like hearing and telling stories, but for this being the case, the dimension of aesthetics is oddly downplayed. A part of it is probably that a layer of complexity is removed when the characters are all anthros and their tales revolve around animals taken as direct parallels for actual people. To state the obvious, this is not how it works in the real world: the fox in the animal fable probably ought to be read as an image of a kind of person but not a concrete group of fox guys who actually exist out there, making the entire story take on a more symbolic, more ambiguous meaning. So while the VN is definitely "about folklore", it's concerned with folklore specifically as an element of furry worldbuilding. While this is obviously not a bad angle to pursue, to me it feels a little unsatisfying that the story misses out on getting to talk about everything that's interesting about folktales in the world we live in, namely that they're aesthetic objects people can have all sorts of complex feelings about.

Another thing that comes to mind (re: the tension between everything the VN tries to do) is how though the situation with the food feels like a good metonym for the harsh conditions the characters face in theory, the threat of the dwindling rations ultimately remains a little too abstract. I'm thinking about this line, for instance: "It’s been a long summer, and now that fall has set in, many of the nicer rations have run out." Like, sorry for the CinemaSins, but unless the world is higher-tech than we've been lead to believe and they have like a train that brings in new stuff, I feel like they'd probably have run out long ago by the time the story ends. (There's of course foraging and looting from nearby villages and so on, but it's still a bit much for how enormously important and difficult logistics of food were in premodern times, and arguably still are.)

It's not that I need to have this egregious plot hole addressed, but to me, the story feels like it doesn't always know when to sketch out things in more detail and when to just ignore it. The fact that we know very little about the war itself is perfectly appropriate; it would be the worst media literacy roll of the century to complain that we don't even get to hear why they're fighting. Meanwhile, though, a lot of what we get about the trio's day-to-day life in the camp comes off as too nonspecific and broadly described to provide the grounding we want from it. The food situation feels like a salient point in that it could spur dramatic incidents and generate an atmosphere of hopelessness, but instead it just remains a something we hear about every so often without the impression that it's actually a deathly important thing in the lives of the characters.

I think contributing to this is also the sparseness of the narration. Big timeskips come and go like it's nothing, and for all the time the characters hang out in that same spot – unless I'm missing something and they're actually moving around, which would admittedly make sense – it doesn't really come off as a place. The backgrounds do such a good job at establishing the vibes that I wish the prose complemented them a little better.

All this is admittedly a bit difficult to talk about because in general, I think the story consists of affects, themes, ideas, and formal moves that make sense individually, and what I'm unsure about is only whether they cohere into the most potent expression of any of them. Basically, my question is: which way, visual novel? Are you a hyper-stripped down, hyper-lowkey character piece that dramatizes the pointlessness of war with purposeful absences and an intentionally loose sense of time and place? Or do you flirt with the weight of material stakes (the food situation being insane, the injuries the guys get from being in combat) and occasional spectacle (in the form of the two misdirects, the dramatic backstories, the big moments realized with exquisite visuals, and the emotionally satisfying conclusion)? I think you could probably get a stronger whole by committing harder to an interesting shape rather than picking the best bits from multiple ways to approach the premise. Still, though, it shouldn't be understated just how pleasant of a read the VN is and how strong many of its components are at the very least on their own.

I was so scared this wouldn't have a happy ending, that even when the game ended I was scared it would turn out to be a dream. I'm happy I was wrong. The custom game elements were well done and I loved that the sounds and music had pop ups that would signal what the sounds were. The CGs were beautiful, the only thing I think could be improved upon would be making the sprites more emotive. It was hard at times to see whether the characters expression changed. 

'To The Noblest End' is a romantic drama about the perils of war and battle, the stories that we tell ourselves to find motivation or hope, and how even love can bloom on the battlefield. The story is tightly knit, with a lot of lovely character friction, character drama, all of the dramatic backstory reveals, and even more dramatic hot love-making scenes. I thought it all blended together wonderfully in a package that sees these unlikely members of an army, from different walks of life, come together to find meaning in each other, saving themselves from their lonely lots in life.

The story starts in the middle of a war, from the POV from a field medic, Raf. He meets with a mercenary wolf, Ulfor, and a young officer, Aella, and things do not start well for them. Raf is a raven and Ulfor is a wolf, two species that are considered more on the outside of society, while Aella, an eagle, is known to be from the upper crust. There's so many great moments that describe who they are, Raf with his flower crown, Ulfor always carrying his sword, and Aella with a proud bravado. Aella is tasked with improving morale among the troops by going to fraternize with them, which Ulfor immediately sees through as Aella being put through his paces. Lots of animosity. As the war goes on, eventually, Aella confronts the slights against him by Ulfor, essentially Ulfor perpetuating stereotypes that he himself has been subjected to. That puts their friendship through a restart, as now everyone in this throuple is having little bits of moments where you can read that they're all developing feelings for each other. This all comes to boil over when tending to Ulfor's wounds after a battle, Raf and Ulfor start getting frisky, only for Aella to walk in, and then join in. I really loved that this moment gave way to the throuple plot, instead of the love triangle. And then as they've now all agreed to this trouple idea, Ulfor and Raf can tell their sad backstories, and then decide to strive to live for tomorrow. The war is over, and a fake out again later, the three are all working domestic lives in a city. Also love that it kept me guessing on whether the outcome was going to be a tragic one or a hopeful one where we don't know which characters die or live. I think this does the happy ending right, in that it had kept me guessing until all the characters were showing up in the epilogue, which means it really could've gone either way.

The presentation is off the charts, with ImRikun and their amazing menu ui's just give this visual novel such a polish that it's crazy to think how much a game is elevated by something that looks simple, but I know takes an experienced hand and eye. The art is also amazing, with CityofSneps pulling out really stylized character sprites and PinkNarcissus giving some amazing CG spreads, especially the really hot sensual scenes. Lots of strong dynamic color choices, and difficult perspective shots, definitely worth all the praise. The writing is also really amazing and tight.  Deepbluefeeling taking their previous experience and just refining it even more so. The characterization is really good in making each one have a point of view and a distinct personality from the others. The transitions from scene to scene, each individual moment of adding levels of detail and character, even the way that the folklore tales are interwoven into the story. It's all just elevated from their previous one, even keeping the pacing surprisingly good, making sure to show all the big moments and still find the right spots in the story to do backstory reveals. I feel like Raf's backstory could've been revealed a little earlier, just to help spread each character's backstory, but that's just splitting hairs.

The folklore aspect is great, not only referencing so many tales that it'd be difficult to recount each one, but also the use of them as the way folklore tales are used, as a way to bolster resolve and to understand each other. Lots of very clever call backs to the folklore also in each character's backstory. All of them so terribly tragic. This is crazy creative, from presentation to even tackling certain themes, like, making a throuple plot make sense to me. It's very difficult for me to come up with a constructive critique, since I think every element of this project was done to their highest potential. I'd even be hesitant to say that I would like 'more' of this story, since I feel it was trimmed up nicely to where the essentials were left as needed. Obviously, since they're all in a battlefield in a war, it's difficult to find places of 'downtime' where the characters are allowed to explore other facets of their personality that aren't strictly business, but it works in the context of a game-jam with a limited word count.

Overall, this is an amazing showing by this team of heavy hitters. Strong story and direction, amazing art and UI work, adherence to the theme and still making it super hot as a my-wolf visual novel? Check marks on every box, full points, 10s across the board. It's a tight cast, with only three characters, all of their topics are interpersonal drama, and yet you can feel the world still exists around them. Sure, it's often filtered through their experiences, but there's enough back and forth show they're bonding through telling tales of themselves to each other, and through their protection of each other on the battlefield. Yeah, can't say the praises enough, super good visual novel, looking forward to more of the work this team and their members will get up to.

This was impeccably good. It did a great job of making me think I was going to dislike an aspect of it, but making me warm up to it very quickly. Loved the characters and the art by the end, and the story, though a bit cliche, is still heartwarming. Though... Can't say I've ever been jumpscared by a sex scene before, but honestly, the suddenness and almost... tone-breaking nature of it makes me love it all the more. I love how much folklore is mentioned too, and having done so much research on stuff on my end, being able to pick a bunch of them out made this super fun to read through. Overall, really enjoyed it!

I had some doubts for the first half or so; the game felt a bit like some disparate scenes from a bigger story. But I was caught up with it before the last battle. The three characters are really likable, and seeing their relations evolve was satisfying. It was pretty cool to have a nice and stable throuple to root for. The VN really laid those death flags thick, maybe a bit too much to subvert them at the end (I was always a believer, though^^) The writing is mostly good, but does have a noticeable number of typos and little errors.

The presentation is immaculate; the sprites and CGs look beautiful, the music worked great, the UI as well, with different textbox background for each character and the custom cursor. Some elements couldn’t be finished in time, but it doesn’t detract for the VN. The skull on the textbox sometimes felt inappropriate, I guess^^ Kudos on the numerous accessibility options by the way!

The characters like talking about various stories during the VN, all taken from real life folklore (as far as I can tell). It’s interesting that the tales about animals are transposed to be about anthros instead. Some of the tales are then nicely paralleled in the story.

Overall, a great VN that excells in many ways. Excellent job!

This is a pretty fun VN, gorgeous UI, nice music and sound design and such. Cute characters and such.

Edit:  Changed some stuff based on creator response.

THERES A RAVEEEEEN  *\ (0v0)/*

I honestly don't have very many notes, this is great. Pretty much any complaints could be boiled down to personal preference, so I'll spare that bs lol. This is fundamentally a fantastic VN. Great work from the entire team.

And this gets bonus points for having a raven protag :)

Can't yet leave a rating since I have to work on my queue, but man what  a treat, just really solid craftmanship from everyone in here- for disclosure, I have seen and enjoyed previous jam entries and other projects from most of this team member so I was on board even before downloading the game

I like the decision of weaving in myths and folkore with the stories the characters tell each other recontextualising the texts to interpret the jam theme, and how even the other stories they tell each other have the gravitas of ancient myth. but also being concise and used in a way where they didn't muddle or overcomplicate the events story,, that built tension by just piling up death flags and raising both the stakes and inevitability of a final battle together with the tenderness of the relationship blossoming.

I like how the writing gives a strange timelessness to the setting, that it's somewhere between WW1 and a FE campaign, but in a way where it's some sort of undefined Ur-war, some senseless calamity that will strike the land because it's a cruel and uncaring force. It's also reflected in the designs of Ulfor, Raf and Aella not quite coming together as the costumes of people in the same kind of setting going respectively for some rule-of-cool dark souls fantasy armor, quite grounded medieval costuming and very modern militarist attire, as if the war itself transcend time and space

The presentation is very effective, efficient with the use of striking background and that makes the sprites and scene pop, shout out to madman\miracle worker Rikun for the UI work, it has so much personality. Same for music, it's incredibly efficient in setting tone and characters, accompanies and elevates the scene tied all them together but without just being a check of instrument related to a member of the main trio

I guess if I had to nitpick, while Ulfor first lines are an attempt at flirting, I wish maybe that the romance angle was a bit more of a slow burn, maybe it ramps up a bit to fast... but at the same time, lonely men that found each other and every day could be the last on the battlefield... I get that, but I do wonder if the story would have benefit from a prior moment to confirm the mutual attraction, could be just  a matter of personal taste.

Overall I would recommend it to everyone

IT'S BRILLIANT! BRILLIANT! BRILLIANT! I TELL YOU! PEAK, I SAY! Everything about this was amazing! Congrats to everyone who made it!

The implementation of the theme as culture and sharing stories between comrades, followed by a telling of their backgrounds. AND the inclusion of actual folkloric pieces, where the ones I can catch are about Prometheus' punishment, The Rainbow Crow, and The Legend of the Forget-me-not flower (My favorite in particular due to liking another VN which has that story)(Also I swear to GOLLY that story just HAD to be placed on that particular scene OMG). I mentally screamed when I clocked those references.

The story? The writing? PEAK. I THOUGHT IT WAS GOING TO BE DOOMED YAOI, I AM VERY GLAD. But to be serious, I loved the progression of it, and grew to love these characters just from the short time of reading about them. Though I don't know why I got surprised when Ulfor and Raf started getting it on after one scene, but I was even more surprised that it was POLY??? (That was great by the way), Unfortunately, in my mind I can't help but think that it's more "Ulfor and Raf... And Aella is there too, but it's not them without him." But if I have a complaint, I have no idea what time period this is set in, because there are swords but a pistol as well, but I don't mind, just a power difference in weapons.

The presentation also? Top notch! From opening the VN, the dynamic and very gorgeous UI, the accessibility options, the SFX and music citations, the custom names of the start, and even closing, calling it "Flee to desktop." My goodness. And the designs of the characters, the moving backgrounds, the CGs. And one of the audio tracks I heard being multidirectional was amazing.

All in all, so far, it has to be one of my favorites for this year's May Wolf my goodness, I bow down at how peak this is. 5 on all the boards!

THANK-YOU to those who worked on this project! I really enjoyed this unique story, well written and carried through. It's a horrible time period that was once part of everyday life of those long ago. Dark and depressing as the time period was this is a great read. Flow and subject is moving and makes ya feel in the story. Loved the "quote" scene *wink wink* saw it coming and was pleased by it. I'm really happy how this story played out, check it out for yourself and leave a good review too. Just wanted to add that the last scene I took a screen shot of and is now my home desktop background! <3 :) 

This is a perfect example of what an FVN can look like when everyone involved is at the top of their game - from the fantastic story, to the beautifully painterly sprites and CGs, the incredibly unique and polished ui, and even just how animated it all is (both in the backgrounds literally being animated and in the various ways the sprites are manipulated and moved about in order to make them pop), in spite of the relative (yet very understandable) lack of sprite variety - I think this is a fantastic example of just how far these individual elements of visual novel creation can be pushed, and how they can all combine together to make for a great experience.

The story moved me: the war, their backstories, the ending… It was beautiful

Shout out to the beautiful sprites and CGs omg.

Good job everyone!

blue, you cooked ao hard its crazy.

the tone specially is really nice. and visually the art direction was spot on. i love the fairy tale book ajacent sprites with the more baroque or rococo baclgrounds.

the cgs. those were hot. and brutal. i love the after battle one. i love how very low rendered it is. gives the reader imavination to fill the blacks and makss the scene even more brutal.i might have to apply that to my own more gory paintings.

that said i would love to see more poses going into that rococo style, but i understand, sprites expecially painted ones like that are crazy. paid my due in mfl and also ik this is a jam game.

also here the not so fun part

the start of the game dint hook me very much, ik im a jingling keys type of guy. but i would like something more crazy happening in the begining, something like the mcs hou burning around him or something. im not a writer. as u can see for the zilion typos here.

and blue. qrite more smut PLEASE. u are genuenelly insane at it. made me like a vanilla scene.

Alright, I'm probably going to come off a bit more critical of the story here than other commenters, but I also likely have a much different perspective on war media than most others, so take my observations with a grain of salt. 

Before we get there though, I want to touch on some of the other rating criteria first.

Implementation of Theme:

Yeah, I think this meets all the requirements. The way the legends are associated so closely with the main characters feels a little thin, and that's part of a bigger worldbuilding issue that I'll get to later, but a very clear effort was made to establish your own folklore for the setting and weave it into the narrative, and that's enough for full credit here in my opinion. 

Presentation:

Oh my goodness. 

This was a big team with a lot of experience attached to it, and boy did you all deliver a commensurate product. The default sprites looked good, there were some impressive CGs, and every bit of the UI was spectacular. I really, really liked the attention to detail on the backgrounds for the text boxes that corresponded to each character. I don't know if I can recall seeing that in anything else, at least not in a jam, and that level of effort is seriously appreciated. 

Music all seemed to fit as well, and I thought the tracks were all well-made and fit the tone, with the exception of the sex scene, but I'll have more to say on that in a bit. There was also another moment where I felt like there should have been a BGM shift when we go from Ulfor's fakeout death to the village, but the same track kept playing. This felt like such a natural break point I feel like someone just forgot to add an audio cue there. 

There are some other minor things I could bring up, like maybe having some more sprite variation (especially for when Aella is injured) and a few proofreading errors throughout, but nothing that could really justify taking off any points in this category. Excellent work all around.

Story:

Alright, so, there's a fairly famous old quote that "there's no such thing as an anti-war film." Essentially, the argument is that even if you intend to present a film (or VN, for the sake of this discussion) as anti-war, the nature of the medium will still inherently glorify it anyway. Now, I don't strictly agree with the premise here and I think it's a bit hyperbolic, but there is something to it. Especially if you're only engaging with war as a high-level concept, it's easy for certain themes to slip through and have a significance that wasn't intended.

Reading this VN, we're meant to see war as an inherently bad thing; Raf essentially makes this point explicitly in the camp before the final battle, and that scene tries to depict the situation as futile, with no one even knowing why they're fighting anymore. We also get a lot of emphasis on each of the characters' personal trauma before the war, showing the mental and physical scars they carry with them, which they hope to overcome by living on for themselves and each other after the battle.

But then let's compare that to a scene that follows shortly after: we pan across the battlefield to find Ulfor, and Raf and Aella dash to his side, thankful that the amount of gore on him must belong to all the enemies he slew. This emphasizes the same traits a more "traditionally" heroic war tale would: stoic self-sacrifice, bravery in the face of overwhelming odds, having the courage (and physical prowess) to defend your loved ones, etc.

What it does not emphasize is the fact that Ulfor just killed like 15 people. 15 sons, brothers, fathers, or lovers, all with their own hopes, dreams, fears, goals, and traumas that will never get to go home, and that will never get to experience the things they hoped for in their camp before the battle. If anything, the enemy is actively dehumanized in the previous scene when a wounded soldier lunges at Raf and is swiftly executed by Aella for what feels like shock value. I don't think the toll of these actions is ever really addressed either; it is just as, if not more, traumatic to take someone's life as it is to risk your own.

I'm not arguing that Ulfor killing those people wasn't justified; he's a soldier and that's what he's there to do. But I am pointing out the disconnect of you asking me to care so deeply about these three characters' motivations and feelings while willfully ignoring everyone else's. 

 On a similar vein, I get that sometimes you just want to have a happy ending, but "happily ever after" feels just a bit too trite for the themes you're ostensibly trying to present. To be frank, someone probably should've died. As currently written, Ulfor, though you could have changed the scene around and had it been Aella, I don't think it really makes a huge difference. You can have the two survivors be happy while still having that happiness be bittersweet, living with their own scars as well as the empty space left by the third lover. Yeah you don't get your throuple in the end, but I think that's more impactful.

This kind of builds into a bigger point as well that there are a lot of concepts being thrown around here, like war, racism, class divides, but they all feel more like they're tailored to the characters rather than the characters actually living in this world, which cheapens the impact of all those issues. 

Like looking at the war, we get practically no information about what this war actually is. Who started it? What's the goal? You might argue that's not important and the only thing that's really material is that there is a war, but I disagree. Wars don't just materialize out of thin air; the reasons can be selfish, evil, or stupid, but there is an impetus for the conflict. It's easy to write "rich officer bad", but that whole calculus changes if those officers are responsible for repelling an invasion to ensure the safety of their country's civilians. Since Raf joined the army to help people, it matters a lot if he's helping a defensive action or an unprovoked war of aggression. I know it's a jam and you need to limit your scope, but there are real opportunities here to add depth to your characters and setting. To that end, and subject to the same limitations, I do wish we got to see these characters interact with someone else outside their bubble as well.

Two more points here that I think are worth mentioning, but I will try to be brief because holy fuck this is long enough already:

- Be careful with leaning too much into shock value. It can be effective, but taking it too far can have the opposite effect and break the tension. Ulfor's backstory feels way too contrived. The barons' plans make no sense (why would you kill your villagers? Just retreat them with the main army. You need the farmers and miners to make money if you win. Also, even if they killed the mercs, you didn't accomplish your objective of securing the mine or subjugating the main enemy force, so what's the point? They can just hire new mercs. I could go on about this but you get the idea) and I feel like that whole scene is there just so we're shocked and appalled at the dead civilians. If you feel like you really need a tragic backstory for Ulfor (and I would contend that you don't and that the horrors of war should be enough on their own), you could just have Ulfor's unit be wiped out in regular combat and have him drift from job to job not knowing what else to do until he wound up in the current formation. You don't need to overcomplicate it.

- The sex scene felt tonally way out of place for me. Like, I don't have a problem with the characters having sex, and you can even use that as a point of levity, but I would have skewed the scene more towards the "awkward beakjob" mentioned in a comment below than "extra spicy Eiffel Tower threeway". It just felt too porn-y for this particular story.

Writing:

I'm going to keep this to a minimum as well, mostly because, my issues with the story aside, the prose itself is quite good. There are a few sticking points here, like there's some "therapy talk" especially in some early scenes. I didn't actually have a problem with this in Cygnus Leapt, but it did feel more out of place in this setting. There were also some moments, especially in Aella's and Ulfor's first meeting, where they seemed to be trying to exposition the world's race issues at each other more than arguing like actual people, but none of this felt particularly ubiquitous or overly bothersome anyway. I think this is a really solid category for this project as well.

Creativity:

Bit of a mixed bag here for me. The presentation is extremely creative, as discussed above, but the core story of people bonding and falling in love during war, or any other stressful situation really, isn't really breaking new ground. There are some attempts at creating your own universe for this story to take place in, but a lot of the pieces of that universe feel superficial and could've been fleshed out more to make a greater impact. 

You can say that none of this is really that deep and, sure, maybe it's not, but I did feel strongly about this, and do about war media in general, and if I'm going to take a stance opposite to the consensus I felt the need to explain that. Like I said, different perspective.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk anyway.

Final score of 1700 words out of 1 very sleepy opossum.

While this was a bit of a standard story, I feel like it was well told. Stories about soldiers bonding during a war have been told before, but I thought where this VN excelled was at how the throuple naturally developed over the course of the story, and how the approach to the folklore theme served to aid each characters' motivations and understanding of each other. The characters are immediately likable, particularly in how Aella stood up for himself to Ulfor. There was some folklore shared, but I think the theme was better represented in how the characters share their histories with each other in order to understand each other. Despite being a war story, this wasn't so much focused on the tragedy of war as it was on how people can hold each other close to get through it. I did feel like the writing got a tad predictable, particularly after the sex scene fakeout, which feels like it was written more to get a reaction out of streamers than to contribute to the story. It became clear this VN enjoys a plot twist, and I ended up seeing the ending before it came along, since I already knew to not trust what the text is implying. The presentation, however, was impeccable. There was a big team working on this VN, and it shows in every way, from the UI to the backgrounds. I liked the moving backgrounds and how the textbox is subtly different for each character. And of course the sex scene CGs. All in all, a solid story with a high level of polish.

Ok, so... I ended up only sharing half of my real thoughts please Blue don't incinerate me. The story had to grow on me because I couldn't get into it right away, the hook is missing, making the beginning of the game a bit of a slog to get through, it felt as though nothing was happening (Even if we were in the middle of a war).

Then we got around the halfway mark where you picked things up and I started changing my mind, but I think this is mostly subjective, never really been into war scenarios.

But I need to be objective, this is a really good work. From the UI, to the writing, the sprites, the CGs, the music, the BGs. Everything comes together perfectly and does exactly what you wanted it to do.

The wolf reminds me of those stopmotion characters and I really liked it.