レビュー

• gamedeal user

  Jun 21, 2019

  Play this game only after you've finished The Cradle of Ruin and Tsukimi Planet by Charon. The story comes full circle, featuring several characters from their previous works with a lot of references which may fly over your head if you're not familiar with the developer. I won't get into details of how good this game is, because I'm a fan of this circle and I'm biased AF, but it's safe to say it's on par with Vanilla Garden of Judgement in terms of quality of the story, art and music. Compared to earlier Charon games it might seem a bit more lighthearted and hopeful, but as I see it, it's the sign of author growing up. This game doesn't have much gore or "yandere for the sake of yandere", so some of the fans might not like it. I, on the other hand, highly recommend it, but only after reading previous works, so you can get this feeling of Charon universe coming full circle. The translation is very well done (compared to Engrish in The Cradle of Ruin), considering it's made by a single person, who's a fellow fan.
• gamedeal user

  Jun 24, 2019

  Kaleido Stella is the latest English translated game from Charon, an (in my opinion) extremely underappreciated developer of dialogue-heavy RPG Maker games and recently full-blown visual novels. Most commonly associated with their focus on popular yandere tropes, Charon games are known to feature emotional stories coupled with thought-provoking, not to mention cruel or even straight-up brutal choices inside of them. This one is no different. In this game, we play as Manako (to my surprise, there's not a -rou in the name), your average high school student spending his precious summer break cooped up inside his air conditioned house along with his little sister, Meme. Apparently, a UFO crashed into his quiet little town, causing a huge uproar in the small community, which prompted his younger sibling to drag him along in order to see spacecraft in its full glory. Although they ended up not being able to see it, they met 2 particular people on their way back. The tomboy Mira, who's apparently childhood friends with Manako, even thought he himself doesn't remember, and a mysterious young woman named Edea, who revealed herself as an alien whose purpose is to save Earth from its eventual destruction. Now branded a "Savior", the fate of Earth lies within Manako's feeble hands. As with other Charon games, the main selling point is the story. The change of medium from hybrid RPG Maker to a full VN comes with the price of being unable to freely roam around the environment, but is more than made up by beautifully animated backgrounds and stunning character designs. The music is decent, while the voice acting manages to convey the characters' emotions fine enough. All in all, I have absolutely zero complaints about those. Some complaints I do have about the game includes small typos, text showing inside the wrong text box, lagging character voices, music stopping suddenly only to resume soon after, and a bug where choices doesn't show after saving at certain points. In spite of those minor difficulties, I managed to enjoy one of the best story told by Charon yet. One that I wouldn't forget for quite a while. TL;DR: -If you already like Charon games (particularly Cradle of Ruin and Tsukimi Planet, whose characters appeared inside the story), go right ahead. -If you like VN with an amazing story, but never heard of Charon, this might be a nice place to start. Or test the waters with free, fan-translated game like Menherafflesia first and come back here if it suits your taste. -If you dislike dark themed stories, this might not be the best fit for you. -The game is somewhat buggy in my experience, so beware of that.
• gamedeal user

  Sep 8, 2019

  Before I get into why I love this VN I highly suggest anyone who is interested to play Cradle of Ruin and Tsukimi Planet by Charon first. While it isn't required to enjoy the story of this visual novel it will definitely provide some background information behind some of the characters that appear in this. First off, the story in this really caught my attention. Yes- The whole alien from space thing has been done many times before but you don't learn until the very end why this one is a unique experience. Without going into spoiler territory all I can say is while I usually can guess plot twists or unexpected events, this VN caught me completely off guard. Although, fair warning most endings are like previous Charon games. You got your dark bad ends, and your bittersweet good/true ends. The characters, music and overall design is enjoyable, I plan on dropping the cash to buy the soundtrack because I fell in love with the opening theme. My only issue is there are quite a few punctuation, capitalization, and formatting errors. I had multiple instances where random words were capitalized as well as names not being capitalized. But it definitely is a HUGE improvement from Cradle of Ruin.
• gamedeal user

  Oct 12, 2019

  It's good, but REALLY weird. I'm not really the type of person that likes abstract and weird stories, but I can pretty much say I thought I'd seen everything of that genre from Charon (after god damn Cradle of Ruin). Even so, I personally think KaleidoStella is by far the most abstract game of the company. I world personally recomend if you really like Charon's works or weird and philosophical visual novels in general. SPOILER PART Tsukimi being in the game was a little weird at first, but turned out to be my favorite aspect of the entire game. Tsukimi's route's bad end was absolutely incredible, just the perfect level of fan service. My reaction after seeing the game's intro: "What the actual freak Demonica and Angelica are doing there?" My reaction after playing Mahori's route: "What THE ACTUAL FREAK Demonica and Angelica are doing there? Not complaining, pretty freaking cool route." I'm not personally fond of the ending. The amount of plot holes (in both abstract and meaningful parts of the story) really bothered me, but I still found out really cool how they treated the "WTF why would I even do that?" ending the most correct one. But yeah, I'm dumb, so I can't say for sure what was going on.
• gamedeal user

  Dec 19, 2020

  If their was a neutral option Id put it down for this game, however since the game has great artwork and a lot of effort put into it Ill leave it as a positive. spoilers ahead. Really Kaleido Stella feels like a worse Vanilla Garden of Judgement for me in several ways as the games are very similar in themes. Both games feature a dominantly female cast in which everything isnt what it seems at an eyes glance. The protag has to interact with several people while growing themself in order to complete an objective often personal growth. In the process losing everything in their starting situation. While Vanilla focused on atonement and acceptance from a spirtual pov which was captivating, the message of Stella seems to mirror that but falters. It does this thing where "space" has to be forcefully injected into most conversations making it sound deep but in reality sounds completely nonsensical by the end of it. To make it easier let me bullet point some points of contention/pros I had with Stella. /Manako as a protagonist has a lot of potential however he is squandered as his growth is very inconsistent if not present at all. Despite wanting the world to end and having nothing to do with it, he attempts to save the world out of obligation and up until the end he seems like the same character as when he started. Which im all for static characters however the game makes it seem like hes grown when he still complains about the same shit from the start. Also if I hear him complain about him not being able to do his schoolwork one more fucking time I will snap /Mira's motivations dont make sense for a multitude of reasons. I dont see why she'd help Manako if her intent was to save Mars, a more fitting role would be to mislead Manako or confirming his insecurities in order to make him either fail or give up saving the world. Instead she only has one instance of this happening and it seems unintentional. /Meme: Actually one story beat I find to resonate with, I think this is the best part of the game for me which compliments Manako a lot (aside from the bath scene). Manako having to move past the fact he contributed to his sisters death and was very resentful of her was deeply touching, they also make use of a mechanic in Stella explained by Gaea which was clever given Meme comments on it just meeting them. Only real flaw is for some reason MIra somehow remembers despite acting like they cant at the start which she never talks to Manako about substantially. /References to old stories: While for long time Charon supporters seeing old figures come back for this entry would have been amazing to see... however for me that wasnt the case. Games like Tsukimi Planet and Cradle of Ruin had their stories concluded perfectly, so to give them a reboot to continue with this game just felt like manipulation of what came before. While I admit Kujirata's character was fantastic and greatly written, the implementation of Kaguya with Tsukimi planet in mind is just something I cant justify. /Mahori: God, this characters execution was just fucking awful from start to finish which is a honest shame. This ties in with my previous bullet but in summary the way they deal with this character feels insulting to say the least. Wouldnt killing Mahori result in the cult's resolve being strengthened 100%, because they did not tackle the root of the problem at all? Which was the fact that the world is so fucked that restarting it would be the only logical thing to do. Seeing Mahori die the way she did would 100% boost the resolve of the cult thus leading to calamity regardless. A personal way id like to see this play out is since Mahori is a near perfect representation of Manako's desires realized, have Manako persuade Mahori into believing otherwise. Instead she gets killed and is proven to be right by the end of it because Manako's and everyones fucked up life is still worse for bare along with mars getting yeeted. Edit:Another insult to injury is this is the only character where the best option is to just beat the shit out of them. Instead of an option to improve their mindset they get shafted. It rubs me the wrong way hard. Main complaint and summary: Really the liberties taken with the story can be excused up to a certain point, however this game fails with its message. Manako despite "overcoming" his hardships, at the end of the day would have benefitted from the meteor destroying the planet. He lost Meme, Mira, and is left wondering what else is their to do. Since he didnt sacrifice himself to take Gaea's place the world will one day reach its end so its just delayed. A good post I saw from someones youtube channel narrating it is that this game is too long, which it is. If Charon got someone to review the script, remove space from every other dialogue and shortened the games length it would have been a good game. As of now this is the only Charon game that Ill forget, which is a shame since that it has a higher quality production but worse story.