Review: Bloody Rondo

This is the first game by 3rdEye. Shinkurou leads a double life. During the day, he leads a normal school life with other students, but when the sun sets, he heads out to the town to hunt the vampires that have slipped in among humans. One night, he comes upon a girl surrounded by vampires. He takes care of the vampires and takes the fainted girl to his home. However, he soon finds out that she isn’t human. How will a vampire hunter like Shinkurou deal with Luna, the last vampire princess who doesn’t know much about humans at all? An action-based game featuring vampires (including man-made ones), lycanthropes and vampire hunters.

~Description taken from VNDB



Plot 7/10- As vampire stories go, this was far less cheesy than the crap we tend to see coming out here. The protagonist, Shinkurou is a bit of a stick in the mud, but his calm manner is a nice change from the hot-blooded protagonists that tend to rule the action vn genre. As for the plot... I find myself complimenting the plot for not going in the exact direction I expected in most cases. This game never fell into the trap so many eroges do of the plot becoming an excuse for the love story, or the trap a lot of action vns do of the story becoming an excuse for the action scenes. That said, this story has its share of flaws. In particular, Alice's path was a bit of a stretch, with some serious inconsistencies in the ending in particular. However, despite the slip-ups, the writing for this story is quite good and I find myself looking forward to future efforts by this company. This story's weakness would have to be the fact that three out of the five heroines are idiots. Well, with Lynne, it suits her character, but with Rinko and Luna you have to wonder how they survived long enough to meet the protagonist... In addition, the attempt to make at least part of the game a 'gakuen drama' was rather poorly thought out in comparison with the darker portions of the story. Shinkurou being a freelance vampire hunter, a private detective, and going to school at the same time is not a believable setting, no matter how you look at it. For similar reasons, some aspects of the story might grate on some people, even though the overall effect of the plot is pleasing. I will say that in comparison to Luna's path, the other paths are a lot shorter, but that doesn't actually seem to cause any problems with enjoying them.

Visuals 9/10- As is seen in the pic above, the cgs in this game are quite excellent, and I found the character designs to be well-suited to the personalities of the characters involved. Francisca in particular... leaves a strong impression due to the gap between her outward appearance and her expressions/personality.

Sound 8/10- I took some points off of this section because the music itself is really generic as vn music goes, but since it is used appropriately, I definitely give this eroge's sound a passing grade. The character voices are very high quality, and some performances will leave a definite lasting impression for some people (Lynne's and Sayaka's in particular come to mind).

Overall 7.5/10- For vampire lovers, I can honestly recommend this eroge without reservations. For lovers of action eroges... a decent enough choice. For those seeking comedy/slice of life I can't really recommend this though. Overall, this is a decent eroge that I found to be worth playing, and the plot is good enough overall that it will remain in my memories for a while at least. I'm pretty sure people that go in expecting something extreme will be disappointed, as that was my biggest disappointment with it at first, but once you get past that disappointment, this game is quite enjoyable.