Review: EXE

Synopsis: In a small city, a guy named Toya lives with his little sister Makina and his surrogate parent, Sayo, having lost his mother in a hospital fire ten years before. However, at night he passes a woman on the streets who looks exactly like his supposedly dead mother and follows her, joined by the transfer student, Yuu. When he catches up to her, she attacks and Yuu repels her with flames, only to be attacked herself by a girl with a katana.


Plot 6/10- To be perfectly honest, for a dark story-focused VN, this one lacks the depth that games like Devils Devel Concept and Dies Irae (or even Comyuu) possess, with the protagonist being your usual 'quiet, stupidly stubborn/naive, shounen' type. His personality, while rather straightforward, comes across as shallow in comparison to the depth of the protagonists from games like Dies Irae or even Draculius, where the protagonists' personality and drives were more clearly defined. However, the plot in general is interesting, with each arc having its own individual main antagonist (except the one 'peaceful' arc and the 'extra' arc with Sayo). The heroines are each distinctive personality-wise, with Kono Natsuki being by far the most memorable, both in appearance and personality in my opinion. If the story has a weakness, it is that it moves too fast and often lacks detail, skipping over parts where people die (though this is understandable, since Yuzusoft is normally a comedy VN maker). The real weakness, however, is in the lack of a real after-story for any of the arcs. Once the conflict of each individual arc is resolved, the rest takes little more than five minutes to read, leaving you still buzzing with the effects of the climax with no real tie-off to leave you satisfied.

Visual 8/10- Decent CG's, beautiful and unique characters, and some really good expressions (especially the psychopathic ones). Overall, it was one of the better looking VNs I've encountered.

Audio 7/10- The soundtrack isn't all that memorable, though the tracks are decent enough. If I had to point out a strength to the audio in this game, it would be the voices of Momiji and Kono. Momiji's sadistic personality hidden behind a flowery smile is well expressed in her speech patterns, making her one of the most memorable antagonists I've encountered in a while. Kono Natsuki's somewhat halting way of speaking does well in expressing her character's inexperience with human interaction.

Overall 6/10- It's sad when a story-focused VN's weakest point is the depth of its plot, but in this case it can't be helped. Despite that, this is a good choice to play if you like a supernatural/dark edge to your stories, but don't want to go too far in that direction/don't want to think too deeply. The character visuals and voices definitely pick up some of the slack from the story's flaws, but overall I can't give this one of my best ratings. I especially take off points for the individual endings, since none made an attempt at a serious after-story, even though they went out of their way to develop the heroines in their individual routes (to an extent that it made me seriously want to know what happened to them later).