Serenes Forest's Teehee Thread

[Saint Rubenio]

2 hours ago, BrightBow said:

Side note, I love Dawn of Sorrow game's cover art. With Yoko and Hammer doing action poses as if the game would have them actually do anything. I guess every anime about an "ordinary high school student" needs a wacky supporting cast, even if there is nothing for them to actually do.

The middle's fine. Soma in the center, Mina and Arikado to his sides representing his "light and darkness", as it were, and the villains looming from above. I do feel that Dmitrii looks shockingly bad here, though. Somehow his haircut looks a lot less dumb in his ingame sprites, and his jaw is too square. He looks like a grandma there lmao

...Then there's Julius posing off to the side like they forgot to add him until it was already done.

Eclesia's cover hits some nice gothic depression tones but in its attempt at minimalism it ended up missing the most pivotal character. Let me see if I can fix that.

Edited 3 hours ago by Saint Rubenio

[Interdimensional Observer]

Paradiso Guardian- Review and Final Thoughts:

Spoiler

Paradiso Guardian can be summarized as two things.:

• A Metroidvania (An RPG elements-heavier Igavania specifically, Metroid having practically none of those.)
• An NSFW yaoi game.

 

I’ll begin with the Metroidvania aspect.:

• First, the Steam page for Paradiso Guardian outright states it was inspired by Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, the game that popularized the Metroidvania genre.
  • “Inspired” might be putting things mildly for Paradiso Guardian.😜
  • A magic castle as the setting, breakable candles that contain MP restoration, enemies that look very similar to monsters from Castlevania, the protagonist can acquire a teleport & triple-fireball attack.
  • If you’re looking for gameplay originality within the Metroidvania genre, PG doesn’t have it.😛
• As for the execution of all these borrowings, Paradiso Guardian sticks the landing well enough, though not marvelously so.
  • The formula works, you explore the big factually-linear castle, you find stuff and level-up, you fight many minions and a few bosses along the way.
  • Typical of the Igavanias, minions are easy, though the bosses can sometimes put a challenge in PG. Bosses are practically exclusively humanoid in PG, which limits their variety, but the fights aren’t half-bad.
  • One thing that Paradiso has that Igavania didn’t, is Holy Flare, a version of the popular “dodge to temporarily slow time” (and rapidly regenerate MP in this case) mechanic. It was a nice little addition.
• My greatest issue with Paradiso Guardian as a Metroidvania, is length. You could easily reach the final boss in five hours. The castle needed to be bigger, the game could’ve been twice as long and more satisfying.🙁
• To slip in some miscellany here.:
  • Although the Metroidvania genre is often thin on plot, I still think Paradiso Guardian could’ve used more.
  • The 2D spritework is satisfactory.
  • The music is adequate for the ingame circumstances, though nothing memorable.
  • On translation, there are one too many typos, usually small, yet certainly noticeable. Both in dialogue and in menu text. It’s glaring, though you can understand what is being said just fine.
• Solely as a Metroidvania, I do not recommend Paradiso Guardian. There is a sea of these out nowadays there if you start digging. While you could do worse, for $30 USD, PG just isn’t worth it.
• As I have low standards 😅, and I like Igavanias, I showed no dislike for PG’s gameplay. It was low-key enjoyable for me, a familiar snack.

 

Turning from Ares to Adonis, the yaoi half of the equation.:

• As a disclaimer, Boys’ Love is a super-niche gaming genre which I have very little familiarity with, as I've never played a yaoi visual novel). So my abilities to judge here are somewhat-limited.

Whilst it begins inconspicuous enough, within perhaps an hour, Paradiso Guardian, one comes to realize, is a very gay video game.😄

• Traversing this fortress between Heaven and Hell, you’ll see plenty of classically-nude statues in the background. Likewise, you’ll see some humanoid monsters who happen to be naked, which again is normal for an Igavania. The thing about Paradiso Guardian, is that all these monsters and statues are male -a few sculptures even with appendages if you squint- there is not a single trace of the female form in the entire game. It extolls the male body thoroughly throughout.
• Of course, this too applies to the small cast of characters whom the game is about. Every dude -and only dudes- in Paradiso Guardian is immaculately sculpted.😋 All muscle, not a trace of fat, body hair minimal. Not a game for those who like burly bears, softer physiques, or absolutely normal guys. I was fine with the choice. I didn’t have any major qualms with how the figures were drawn.
• The titular Paradiso Guardian in this game is the protagonist Lenga. Personality-wise, an average-ish, decent-looking young man, self-confident and pretty carefree. Lenga’s most noticeable personality trait is that he has lots of hots for other men. He’s officially a “Battle Angel", but he has the libido of an incubus.
• The four beefcakes who join Lenga on the key art for this game are his four lovers. Each is distinctly different in what they are in this high fantasy world,  the same regarding their exact relation to Lenga, their personalities are solid. The grammar-problematic translation doesn’t ruin their characterizations at all. Personally, Shutendoji ended up being my favorite for sure.👹😘
• Although I haven’t played a single BL visual novel, I know they could do better than this game did at writing characters. Not to say the cast is bad, it isn’t, but that the amount of writing in this game can’t compare to how much a VN would have. While the plot is thin, the game does throw a relatively surprising amount of world-building into it (perhaps because as a fantasy world, it needs some). My main point is that, although you can visit the guys in their bedrooms and talk to them, any dating sim aspect here is quite thin. Gifting the men foods they like is unnecessary, as you can quickly max their affection via fighting.
• Where yaoi-meets-Metroidvania, is in the Bond Skills. Lenga can summon one of his buddies to perform an attack against enemies.
  • You can only equip one Bond Skill total at any time, though each companion has three (the latter two unlockable) to choose from. These skills run an MP-free cooldown of at least eight seconds and freeze time while being used.
  • Bond Skills are pretty strong, too powerful so I’d say. Alternative playable characters would’ve been ideal, but Bond Skills were a thoughtful way of marrying the BL to the Igavania.⚔️x❤️
  • Acquiring the Bond Skills requires individually fighting the lovers, and later rematches. Though one of those rematches is exactly the same as the first fight, and the second is harder but almost the same. In an ideal world with a bigger team/budget, shaking things up more for the refights would’ve happened.
• …Not to beat around the bush any more, the NSFW. This game has 18 “Bond Memories”, which are a euphemism for what euphemisms often refer to. (And there are 4 additional NSFW CGs of other BL people’s Original Characters that the dev of Paradiso Guardian got the rights to include as optional bosses.)
  • However, these Bond Memories are practically optional. If you set the Naughty Angel option to “Off” (by default, it’s “On”), the scenes that would show up as you progress the story will be skipped (they’re not integral to the plot). The optional remaining scenes you are given the option of viewing right away, or you can skip doing so and just watch it in the Gallery later. It is entirely possible to get through Paradiso Guardian without seeing a man-jam.🙈 Yet as I said before, PG is not worth buying solely on Metroidvania grounds. A consumer who wants to be satisfied, need be a consumer who likes fellas really really liking fellas.
  • I won’t go into lurid detail of what happens during the Bond Memories. They each consist of one still CG, going through multiple variations as the event progresses. These events are fully voiced in Japanese. As one would expect from smut, the dialogue is often cliched and very very cheesy. There was some effort at variation in the acts.
    • The quality of these cutscenes is in ways cheap. The forgettable backdrops don’t blend in if you happen to notice them. At times, I felt like they should’ve added an additional still frame or two to a given scene to better represent what the dialogue was describing.🤨 This is my first hentai game of any kind, but I presume one could do better here.
  • Do the h-scenes help with the characters?🤔 Well they do show off their individual personalities, yes. But these aren’t the most tender, emotional, poignant things in the world either; it’s fluffy physical fandangoes. I appreciated them not so much for whatever steaminess they had (raw titillation isn’t a surefire trick on me 😝), but as part of the greater package -a point I’ll get back to later.
  • On content, the Bond Memories were all consensual. …With 2 or maybe 3 cases where things began with one man yanked into things by the horny other.😐 Yet even in those cases, by the end, the initially-wary partner was very much enjoying themselves. Non-con is a no-go for me, consent is the true sexy. I made sure to check before buying that Paradiso Guardian had nothing objectionable, and with only slight blemish, that was true indeed.

 

Conclusion:

• The Metroidvania component is only adequate, the Boys’ Love portion isn’t the greatest either. Then, what to make of Paradiso Guardian? 
• The answer- that Paradiso Guardian is both novel and more than the sum of its parts. -To me at least.
• Boys’ Love, as I understand it, is almost always relegated to the genre of Visual Novels. I don’t read VNs, they’re a genre I’m unfamiliar with (and I don’t care for any twisted darkness they may contain). I’ve been enjoyably devouring Metroidvanias since Dawn of Sorrow back when the NDS was new.
  • If it wasn’t for Paradiso Guardian being a BL game in Metroidvania form, or a Metroidvania with BL, I would’ve been much less likely to play it. The familiar gameplay Alucard pioneered, served as a bridge into the yaoi unknown.
• The fusion of Igavania with Boy’s Love is what makes Paradiso Guardian a unique and good game, for me. The overwhelming majority of mainstream(-ish) video games are outright and or subtly heteronormative, and always have been. Paradiso Guardian takes the seven Igavanias + Bloodstained, perfectly normal games that fit the above sentence, and changes the script.
  • Nude and feminine Frozen Shades monsters are replaced by nude and masculine Frozen Shadows. Alucard’s Soul Steal is renamed “Essence Seize” yes, that essence. Save Rooms in several Igavanias had a goddess/maiden statue defining it; in PG, it’s a shower/bath where Lenga strips and takes a quick bath when saving.
  • As you run along through the corridors of this demon-infested fortress, coldly focused on fighting your way to end, you can’t ever escape the queer male eye. This is a Gay Igavania, the two halves are inseparable.😊
  • Presently, there aren’t many games like Paradiso Guardian. A gayme with an anime aesthetic, belonging firmly to an established, mainstream genre of video game. It shows me, physical proof, what a more gay version of some other genre or franchise that I like, could be like.😃 (If perhaps not so extremely gay.😆 I’m fine with settling for inclusive games that everyone cis & straight and LBGTQ+ can find their particular identity-related joy in.😀
• Getting back to it as I promised, the sex scenes are just an over-the-top way (derived from VNs) of hammering home the gayness of Paradiso Guardian. I wouldn’t say they were unnecessary, because queers should live proud & loud, but they weren’t an independent major reason for my enjoyment of the game. The NSFW smut worked as a cog in a magnificently manly machine.
  • Some Bond Skills being on the broken side might’ve been a gameplay criticism, but to say it again- they were gameplay-BL integration. Each time Lenga summoned the shirtless Floody swinging a boomerang axe, it was an attack that quietly roared with male homosexuality.😤
• (Owing to BL being super-niche, on the margins of the gaming world, it’s no surprise that this isn’t the greatest game in the world. Sometimes you get single-person developers or small teams that suddenly manifest and absolutely own the gaming landscape (e.g. Stardew Valley, Undertale). The odds of being that miraculously good are low, so I can accept a small developer’s averageness and associated limitations on quality.🙂)

There. That’s all I think I want to say?🤣

Would I rate this game? As I’ve said before, I’m not big on numerical rankings. And as I concluded, while there are many Metroidvanias and many yaoi games, Paradiso Guardian has a monopoly on yaoi Metroidvanias. It’s first-in-class …because it’s the only thing in its class.😆

T’was good, light, silly fun.😁 Entertainment that I’ll have a difficult time finding exactly more of in the future.😝

Edited 2 hours ago by Interdimensional Observer

[BrightBow]

If certain souls have to be a hard requirement to beat Dawn of Sorrow, would it have killed Iga to at least make them common drops? I suppose the Axe Armor is a common drop, but the other two souls aren't.
At least in Aria there was some kind of logic to the souls required. Here there isn't. Here it's just 3 identical looking stonewalls with monsters depicted on them blocking a random hallway.

Symphony of the Night didn't tie game progression to random drops. At least I think it didn't.
Admittedly my knowledge of Symphony is limited to the video on the unreleased GameCom port by Stop Skeletons From Fighting.
Probably not the version most people played.
 

32 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said:

Eclesia's cover hits some nice gothic depression tones but in its attempt at minimalism it ended up missing the most pivotal character. Let me see if I can fix that.

That should do it. Perfect.

[Sidereal Wraith]

2 hours ago, Saint Rubenio said:

 

 

[Codename Shrimp]

🤡🤡🤡