評論

• gamedeal user

  Jun 15, 2017

  [b]TL:DR - Sunrider is gut space opera VN. Stronk story, lot's of Waifu material, bishonen protagonist, tactical combat can be made super-easy. Play Mask of Arcadius first.[/b] [h1]The review[/h1] Sunrider Liberation Day(LD) is the most divisive game of the series. Just like Mask of Arcadius(MoA) (that you can get for free on Steam) it's a Space Opera. If you love Star Trek, Honor Harrington or (anime series) Legend of Galactic Heroes you'll feel right at home. A Captain and his crew facing difficult challenges in the endless expanse of space that will help them get together as friends while overcoming huge obstacles and threatening villains. Expect a plot twist or two and it should be noted that the game has some tactical parts that will remind you of the old Heroes of Might and Magic III with hex-based combat. It should be noted that both MoA and LD have difficulty options that go from - hardcore as hell and if luck isn't on your side even a reincarnated Sun Tzu is gonna pray for death to I let my friend's 1-year old daughter chew on the keyboard and she won the battle... Seriously easy mode is so easy you could win it blindfolded. But of course lot's of 12-years old need to play on super-uber-hardcore-nightmare-hard, then fail horribly and cry in the review that the game is too hard. All they are doing is admitting that they are insecure AND incompetent. As for why LD is the most divisive - Sunrider was supposed to be a Trilogy following the famous Star Wars style - 1st explores the world and is optimistic, 2nd crushes your soul and is dark as hell and 3rd brings you to the long awaited victory. Liberation Day is the 2nd part of the story. Sadly after completing it the Devs decided they were bored of Space Opera and decided to make an Idol singing game called Shining Song Starnova (you can read more on their twitter: twitter.com/love_in_space?lang=en) which as you can imagine didn't go too well with the community now being abandoned on a rather depressing cliff-hanger. So they released the Captain's Edition that involves a lot of time-travel and does provide an end to the series - which in turn pissed off everyone who was willing to wait after they finish their side-project to do a proper 3rd VN in the series - the Return of the Jedi with even more content, better visuals and so on. As it stands the game is good. The ending is pretty satisfying. There are several endings depending on which Waifu you choose with some ecchi/full nudity scenes - depending on who you choose. But one thing that the fans of the series can'/won't get over (and this includes me so take it with a grain of salt) is that it could've been bigger and better. The result is good. And for the HB price I definitely recommend it, but it could've been so much more... Anyway if you've gotten this far thanks for reading, have a nice day.
• gamedeal user

  Jun 26, 2016

  A bit short for it's price tag, but nevertheless a great enthralling story to experience. Now that the 3.0 patch has been released your free to pursue your desired waifuall with their own story arc. Denpasoft 18+ patch here: http://sunrider-vn.com/liberationday/?age-verified=405a404855 ( scroll down and its right at the bottom of the page ) 1. Extract zip 2. Find local download location by right clicking Sunrider Liberation Day on Steam, pressing “properties” > local files tab > “browse local files” 3. Drop “init_censored.rpy” “init_censored.rpyc” and “modarchive.rpa” into SunriderLiberationDay/game/ folder 4. Do not replace any files, or put the files into any other folder aside from the one called /game/ 5. On start up there should be a 18+ warning and “DENPA EDITION” should appear on the top left side of the main menu. > Game is fully voiced in Japanese >Beautiful CG >Well written sotryline and plot. I'd recommend buying it when it has a sale on.
• gamedeal user

  Apr 17, 2016

  For background, I’ve purchased all three Sunrider games, I’ve played Mask of Arcadius extensively and I’ve purchased Academy as a way to thank the developers as I really want to like them. I’ve played this game to completion on Captain difficulty, I did not listen to all the voice acting but I read all the dialog. This review is SPOILER FREE and applicable to V2.0. TL:DR: This game has many minor flaws and a huge storyline related flaw, as such I find myself unable to recommend it. Technical: This game suffers greatly in the technical aspect, Love in Space was a team of people that have a lot of passion on Eroge and Japanese Anime culture in general, however, they lack a lot of the technical talent in game development (which makes their efforts on creating games even more commendable) and have to resort to using what is basically a heavily modified version of the Ren’Py engine, which was never designed to create TBS games, leading to several gameplay related bugs, severely limited graphics fidelity and etc. The reliance of the Ren’Py engine is clearly showing and the unoptimised engine is really hurting and limiting on what the TBS portion of the game could have been, LD right now utilizes simple graphics and sprites to represent combat, with no animation whatsoever, the TBS genre is currently experiencing a revival, and what LD has to offer in the TBS department is simply lacking even when compared to other indie products such as The Banner Saga. Misc (Sound, non-gameplay related systems): This game have a lot of minor issues that would have been redeemable if there weren’t so many of them. The original English voice actors did not return due to scheduling reasons with the developers, they’ve decided that it is easier to have Japanese VN voice actors instead because they have the connection and it would be more convenient. Changing voice actors is going to be a bad idea most of the time especially for sequels (somewhat forgivable for remakes, persona 4 golden comes to mind) as it breaks the players’ emersion. To add to that, the Japanese voices are simply subpar, a lot of the voices are bad even by dlsite/dmm doujin game standards, whilst this might be subjective, I invite the readers to look for youtube videos of the Japanese voices and judge for themselves. LD offers a save import function from Mask of Arcadius, similar to the way that Mass Effect handles save transfers, this is a really great idea, that is if it actually works, the save importer is unfortunately really bugged and a lot of people are unable to make the save importer work. Thankfully LD also offers decision choices for MoA when starting a new game similar to how Dragon Age 2 handled it. The UI within the VN portion of the game feels slick and modern, however, display bugs and slowdowns especially in the store page are pretty blatant, and this is again, clearly a product of using the Ren’Py engine. Story (Spoiler Free): Whilst people like to claim that stories could not be objectively bad, I have to disagree, without posting spoilers, I have to say that the single worst part about LD is the story despite the myriad of issues previously mentioned. Let’s get the elephant out of the room, LD contains an extremely linear storyline, there is a forced romance that feels extremely rushed and there are not choices at all, even the illusion of choice is lacking. To add on top of that, the storyline itself is objectively bad, I will explain below without spoilers. Whilst I do not feel like resorting to petty insults, I would like to respectfully remind the writers and developers that VNs are supposed to contain choices in them, otherwise, they are just dynamic novels, and those need actually really good writing, music, voice acting, and execution to pull off (planetarian comes to mind). In LD, the protagonist is the standard dumb MC that doesn’t know anything and frequently breaks character, he is literally no better than the generic harem MC in LD. This is very disappointing given that this was not the case in the previous games. In addition to the lackluster MC, the entire story makes the player feels like that they are just in for the ride, the MC does not have any impact on the storyline at all, it feels like the MC is just following everyone around, the player simply cannot make any meaningful choices and the MC himself did not make any meaningful choices, the MC just feels dead. The forced romance is very problematic, it is clear that the developers are favouring a certain character with reckless abandon due to personal preference, whilst I agree that developers maintaining their personal touch on a game is very important, I think that even the way that they handled the forced romance is bad, the entire thing feels very rushed, the MC and the romance partner were acting blatantly out of character and the worst part is, the romance simply does not seem to any anything of significance to the storyline, at that point, I have to wonder why don’t they just make the romance optional if they wish to really focus on that character and not do other romanceable characters. The basic concept of the entire storyline is quite intriguing, it shows a lot of potential, however, the execution done by LiS’s writers is unfortunately really bad, characters frequently act out of character, the plot turns into a jumbled mess towards the end starting from the middle of the story, and the writers wrote themselves into corners on several occasions only to perform arsepulls or deus ex machinas to get themselves out of the corner. There are more subjectively bad writing but that could not be discussed in depth without spoilers so I will refrain from doing that. Conclusion The unfortunate fact is, the awfully written (no other way to put it) storyline is the large, rusting, final nail on the coffin on top of the myriad of bugs, voice problems, engine problems for Liberation Day, as such, I simply cannot recommend Liberation Day to anyone for any price and the experience is genuinely not enjoyable and feels like a disservice to the franchise as a whole. I play the game and I see so much potential with the universe and the general plot themes, I want to like the game but I simply cannot.
• gamedeal user

  Mar 6, 2016

  The game was .... a disappointment. The only thing that improved in this game over the previous installement (Mask of Arcadius) were the visuals and voice actors. Everything else took a step back. The higher production values, rather than enhancing the game, did nothing but limit it. Having played through the entirety, I can't help but feel that what the devs did was create a game based on how much voice acting and animation they could afford. The final product was made to fit the packaging, which is a terrible way to design a game. As a result, we got something that was incredibly rushed and bland. There's been almost no improvement in gameplay. In fact, Liberation Day plays like a lightly modded version of the original. The mission count is low and unvaried. The original had a nicely fleshed out story that taught you a lot about the world and invested you in its characters. Liberation Day took all of that and turned it into a shiny, half-written screenplay with all your favorite characters shoehorned into whatever role the plot demanded. We learn absolutely nothing new about the world or its characters, who have become one dimensional tropes in service of a rushed game. MoA relied only on simple sprites and backgrounds and it really shined because of that. The devs created as much content as they felt would serve the gameplay experience and story and we got something that was not only special, but FREE. Liberation Day flipped that around and ironically, all the money that Patreon supporters and buyers of Sunrider Academy poured into the company has only ruined the next installment by making the studio believe it should try to crank out a AAA production level game.
• gamedeal user

  Mar 6, 2016

  As a former patreon backer (paid $10 for beta access) and longtime fan of the series, I really cannot reccomend this game, at all. The pretty production values and Japanese VA (what is wrong with English, I wonder? It's a beautiful language!) came at the expense of practically everything that made the previous Sunrider VNs (First Arrival and Mask of Arcadius) the gems they were. The story is gutted, and railroad-linear whereas the previous VNs had multiple choices. People have mentioned the unsatisfying ending, but they've neglected to mention that it's unsatisfying not because of itself, but because of the atrocious pacing, forced romance, and hamfisted characterization that preceded it. For around $10 (price in my region, might be higher in yours!), you get around 3 hours total of storyline content (as in VN sections as opposed to fights). That's pretty much inexcusable. As for the gameplay, it manages to be worse than previous iterations. QA apparently went out the window. Longtime fans know that the Ren'Py engine that Sunrider uses is pushed to its limits by the battle system, and so we can forgive the occasional slowdown. But Liberation Day was much worse than that in this department. Battles weren't just slow, they were basically slideshows. I have a 4th generation i5 on a kickass custom rig, by the way, so don't even start saying it could be my system. It isn't. These same molasses-slow battles were frequently interrupted by near-freezes and once even an outright crash. I cringed at that last bit, by the way, because it happened at the exact same spot (2nd or 3rd fight) it did for me in the beta version about a month ago. In conclusion: This game isn't worth the money. It's inferior in every way but production values to the previous Sunrider novels, and those things are not worth the problems they brought. Also, I'll repeat myself: Japanese VA. WHY? Half the draw of this series for me is that it's an original English VN, written competently in English. What did you accomplish kicking the previous girls to the curb and replacing them with Japanese VAs? Was the weeaboo fantasy of a fully voiced JP game worth gutting the game over? I'm just really disappointed. I expect better for the next installment of the series, but I'm afraid that LiS may have shot themselves in the foot here and won't be able to recover without ending up with some serious egg on their faces.
• gamedeal user

  Mar 7, 2016

  Oddly enough, this series show us clearly that "for free" doesn't mean "cheap stuff" and that "for a price" doesn't mean "quality stuff". Good luck to the developers about fixing this impression with the next chapter, but one thing is sure: this one didn't deserve the 20€ I immediatly spent to buy, after the previous very good experience; thus, I will not spend such an amount for the next release. PROs: - fight has improved, is now more balanced and smooth; - good acting for the voices! - globally good plot-twist; - a HELLA lot of tension; - a bit of character development, which is always appreciated; - good OST. CONs: - no more battle animation? Sad... - major events are actually rushed, the ending suffering it more than the rest; - your love route has been fixed and you're doomed to witness it wheter you like it or not; - a HELLA lot of cliché; - do our choices even matter in the end? Nope. Ah, wait, once you have the opportunity to introduce a new ship in the shop-list of the Miner Union and that's it; - the quality of writing tends to decay. tl;dr: wait for a huge discount.
• gamedeal user

  Dec 23, 2016

  Won't lie. I agonized with this choice for a long while, whether to give it a thumbs up or a thumbs down, but overall, I was a little let down by Liberation Day. It just...I just didn't really feel anything new from it. Granted, they recognized their fans' feelings this time and made edits to avoid the agonizing cliffhanger (to a degree), but, as usual, this has more of a kinetic novel feel than a visual novel. None of your choices really mean anything in the end. And I was horribly let down by the Captain's Addition alternate universe scenario, the ONLY time you get to choose your favorite heroine...well, you get to choose from four heroines. The answers were literally the same every time with (Insert Heroine Here). It all just feels futile after the first playthrough and there's no real reason to replay it except for the handful of battles in the main story. The main story was good, but it can only make you forgive so much before you're sick of it. If you're a "One and done" time of gamer, then go for it, but if you're the type of gamer who wants to try and do things differently each playthrough, everything always ends the same way so don't worry if you feel that sense of futility creeping up on you. It will vary from person to person. I won't discourage anyone from playing it, but I can't recommend it.
• gamedeal user

  Mar 14, 2016

  This review is based upon the 2.0 version of the game. I have not played the 1.0 version. So we return to the surprisingly competent space drama with crazy anime girls. How is the third installment? (Sunrider the free game is actually two games, not one). Well, I got to import my save Mass Effect style, for one, and it seemed to have roughly the same impact as the ME import from ME1 to ME2 did (I never played ME3. Fuck EA). Namely that there are numerous mentions of your past actions and perhaps some influence on the events of the plot, but essentially the core of the story is the same. Arguably the most important imported choice comes in the form of what you decided in the big final decision of MoA, which determines one of your anime girls appearance for the entire game, and perhaps what sort of emotional baggage lies under the surface for that character. Anyway, Liberation Day (LD) is a noticeable step up from the previous games in terms of budget, with Japanese VA's, prettier art, and updates to the interface and combat system to make it look better. I did have 2 crashes, but that's probably just bugs that need fixing from a game that only recently came out. Good thing this game autosaves constantly. Ok, enough dodging. Time to talk about the story that got this game so many negative reviews. Again, i'll state I played 2.0, not 1.0. I don't know when the game originally ended, but considering the Japanese voices stop after a certain point, it is pretty easy for me to guess when. And yes, that is kind of a shit ending since so much is left unanswered in preparation for the sequel. The stuff that comes after that point does much to clear things up, as well as providing setup for what is to come next. So as for how it ended, i'd say the update which the devs speedily released as fast as they could once word of how mad people were about the 1.0 ending almost certainly helped. As for the rest of the plot? A mix of predictable plot points that center heavily on jealousy and suspicion thanks to how the last game ended. There are still plenty of silly moments, but the plot is primarily serious and high-stakes as you prepare for, and then fight, the battle to liberate Cera. I'm not a fan of the forced romance with Chigara, especially since she isn't one of my favorites, but i'll forgive it (somewhat) thanks to LD's final act when everything gets turned upside down and predictability goes out the window. I was playing a silly anime girl game with some heavy plot elements when suddenly I found myself in something more like what GRRM would have done (though not as deep or well-written, obviously). Good thing i've gotten used to that sort of thing. XD Still not on board with Claude or where the plot takes her, though the scene with Ava going through the Medical Clinic later in the game was hilarious. So, how is LD? It's alright. Is it overpriced for it's length? Yes. Did the devs perhaps spend too much time on boosting the budget with VA's and better art when they should have spent more time making game content? Probably. Is it a bad game? I don't think so. Most importantly, do I want to know what happens next in the Sunrider series? Yes. The preview for the next game (whenever that shows up) sounds like things are about to get even more insane as new players enter the fray that could change everything. Things to come certainly are looking interesting, :o Until next time! EDIT: Just played the 3.0 Update that adds the [RE]turn storyline to the game. No battles to fight, but a good VN experience where the choices you make can lead to happiness... or dying horribly. Also it lets you follow story routes for most of the rest of the crew (Asaga, Ava, Sola, Icari, and a secret Claude ending). It's more good stuff. Best of all, it was a free DLC. It's addition not only lets you play a new story after you finish Liberation Day, but makes an already decent game even better. :D
• gamedeal user

  Mar 6, 2016

  Loved Sunrider: Mask of Arcadius? Loved Sunrider Academy? Love RPG-style visual novels in general? Well move along, because this game isn't what you're looking for. There are only 2 or 3 choices throughout the game and, when you do make them, all your choices (from MoA, as well, which is a small plus) just provide flavor text without affecting anything in the story. You don't even get a ship screen like you did in MoA. You're forced into a romance with one of the more boring girls, [spoiler] just so her betrayal (via Alice) and death affect the protag more, though most players probably would've felt the shock and horror regardless [/spoiler], while Claude, Krysta, and Icari (best waifu) are all pushed to the wayside, and all interactions with Asaga and Ava are only there to provide jealousy. [spoiler] Did you end up capturing Cosette? Well you never get to talk to her or try to persuade her to join you (though she'd obviously stab you in the back), as both her and L7NN are forgotten about fairly quickly. [/spoiler] Oh, and remember how in MoA you say a bunch of nice things to Sola and she starts falling for you? Well forget about that, now she's an emotionless drone who does nothing but observe Asaga. Aside from a few marked improvements in gameplay and art style which have been mentioned in other reviews, Sunrider: Liberation Day is just lazy and seems to only exist to put money into the pocket of the developer. For the most part, it's a copy-paste of MoA with a few new units, and an altered (not upgraded) store/research system. I honestly feel bad for those who supported this game on Patreon, because it feels like the developer just took all that Patreon money so he could take a trip to Japan and justify it with unneeded Japanese voice-acting. I've seen a lot of backers leave since the release of this game, which I'm assuming are due to the fact that next to none of the expectations were met, so the next installment (oh yeah, it ends with a "to be continued") will probably be worse than Liberation Day if it even gets made. So to take away from this and other reviews, unless the game is heavily discounted or you can burn money, just wait for someone to do a "Let's Play" of it, because it'll be pretty much the same experience.
• gamedeal user

  Mar 21, 2016

  Updated review based off from 3.01 and Ava story line. And yes, it is SPOILER FREE. I got to say, wow. They manage to get their fans back for there disaster and still able to continue their story."redeem themself" what they called. Anyways, you can romance anyone now like the same path as acdamy except Krista since she is with Irca. The story it takes place 3 days (72 hours) before the final battle with full knowledge of your past. Your job is to fix your mistakes and rewrite history. Or let it happen. This is a great new start of the sunrider series and hope we could see more of it. Pros: Romance! Choices does matter! Improve story Different story route Different endings Bugs fixes Cons: No battles No VOs, but doesn't really matters to me Somewhat short. (3 hours in Ava story) The new free dlc is 9/10 for me and definitely saved the game series. Still kinda pricey, but less then $15 is a real steal. (Old)(Outdated) SPOILER FREE. YOU WILL NOT BE SPOILED WHEN READING THIS REVIEW. At first, I would say not recommended at version 1.0 due to lack what the first and second sunrider had, freedom of choice, and the story was not impressive as the other two. Lack of orginal voice cast, and the worst part, you cannot chose what battle to fight, it all liner. which leading to a refund. But after the 2.0 update, they added back the ship map, to add more to be part of the crew, and the galaxy map, to chose what battle to fight, the orginal VOs. And they also added extra scenes in the end that leads to the next Sunrider trilogy. Pros Still Xcom with anime characters. Your choices carry over. The story (that used to be horrible) is great and almost even better. The combat is even better and as been improved so it should run faster then MoA. The art style as been improve a whole lot. The mission length in captain mode is much longer and intense than MoA or FA had. (about 40-120 minutes in for each battle) The music is even better. The patch is free for all you perverts. Now to the Cons. Not much mass effect choices compare to the first 2 orginal sunrider games. (Less choice opinions) Kinda buggy and crashes sometimes, so save offten. Still forced romance. Kinda short compare to FA and MoA. (15 hrs here while FA is 12 hrs and MoA is 15 more hrs on capt mode. 27 hrs in total.) The Price is kinda pricey at this stage. Less missions than FA (First Arrival) or MoA.(There are 8 battles in LD) Your stats does not carry over. You will have to wait 2 more years for the next Sunrider series. Overall I say 6/10 for me, was kinda worth a price, but yet the same time not due to force romance. But hell these Devs are much better and deserve more reapect. They make very good quality games much better than some AAA. If you're a new to the sunrider series, then I highly recommend you to play Sunrider: [strike] First Arrival [/strike] Mask of Arcadius first since it is free and carry off instantly in the battle. If you are a fan to the sunrider series, then I highly recommend to get it under $20 since you will not be disappointed in everything. The combat, story, music, artwork, and even the background.