Category: Winter Wolves

Love and Order

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Dana Larose has just gotten a job at the Crown Attorney’s Defense Office in Montreal. While organizing her desk, she discovers an unsolved case that intrigues her inquisitive mind. Can she solve it while helping her co-workers with their various cases?

In the game, there are four datable characters: Ross, Pierre, Jonathan and Dorothy. The only one who actually has a character is the last one, the rest are just there. The only thing that really separates the male characters is how they look. One of the characters has an extra storyline you can unlock through the game, but that’s it. Look, I get that these people aren’t real, but if you treat your characters like that you end up with crap. Either that or the game’s true target audience is people with a preference for girls.

During the game, you get tasks at various locations in order to solve the main mystery. Be careful, you never know when one of your co-workers will approach you and bombard you with tons of tasks. Don’t try to tell any of them that you’re busy or their relationship bar goes down. Oh, and if something’s broken and you don’t have a close enough relationship with any of the co-workers, you’re screwed. It’s like actually having a job. Seriously, it’s bad enough that I have to avoid people so I don’t have to do a bunch of chores I have to do; I don’t want to spend an entire game doing the exact same thing. You’d think the fact that you get to unlock some extra footage in the gallery would be worth it, but it’s not.

This game is stressful and the characters have the personality of toothpicks. I give this game 1 out of 10, not worth spending your money on.

Spirited Heart

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In the land of Aravorn, there is a town called Triberg.  Pick your character, choose your background and fulfill your destiny.  Your destiny is all up to you.

When the game starts, you are given a choice of controlling an elf, a human, or a demon.  Then you get to choose where your character was raised, but it makes no impact on the game.  The elf is submissive, while the demon is arrogant and possibly sociopathic.  The human is somewhere in between.  My personal favorite is the demon character.  You’re also given twelve suitors (six boys and six girls).  Each gender has two human characters, two elf characters and two demon characters.  It kind of kills the point of demons being rare and not wanting to walk among other races.  Not to mention that the game says that Triberg has a prejudice towards demons, but we see no evidence of that.

After you finish character creation, you are given a variety of jobs.  Each one helps increase your skill, and if you’re tired, you can choose to take a vacation.  You can also use whatever money you earn to train yourself in a certain skill.  Every few weeks, you have to pay taxes, and the character mentions that she hates bureaucracy (something that plays no part in the game whatsoever).  There is a dice system in the game where you have to reach a certain number in order to do well with the job.  The number is completely random, but you can just save right before doing a job and keep loading the game until you get the perfect score.  It gets repetitive after a while, and chances are you’ll get bored with doing that over and over.  When your character turns twenty two, the goddess of the race you’re playing shows up and offers to grant one wish if you obtain the title she asks you to obtain before you turn thirty.  If you can’t do so, the game ends automatically.

As I said, you have a choice between six men and six women, but the men’s stories aren’t really that interesting.  All you really discover about them is that they like your character and are passionate about their jobs.  There’s only one exception, but I don’t want to give away anything.  There was more focus on the women’s stories, and even more romance there.  My favorite is Hade, the geeky demon with no social skills (she reminds me of Sheldon, except for not being asexual).  Sometimes you do have a rivalry with a potential suitor on the girl’s romance, but they’re all fat perverted men.  No wonder your female romance choices all prefer women.  Your character does interact with other people in the girl’s romances (something missing from the boy’s romances), but occasionally, the artist doesn’t bother to draw a picture of said person.  You’re also told that a character’s wearing a different outfit, but the artist didn’t bother to draw them in one.  Not to mention there are quite a few spelling errors in the game.  Apparently the writer doesn’t have spell check.

The game can be a little repetitive, and chances are you’ll give yourself carpal tunnel with all the clicking.  However, the game is still something to do when you’re bored.  I give this game 3 out of 10, it can be fun, but it gets boring really quickly, especially when you’ve already completed the romance endings and the three goddess endings.