Name: Nova (50.00% in 3 votes)
Type: ADV
Platform: PC-98
Company: Panda House
Release date: 1994
Reviewed by: Toshi
Overview:
In a gigantic spaceship 'Parcing' a system failure wakes you up from a long cold-sleep. You recall nothing about yourself but your own name, and find yourself left with five girls, a man of your age, the captain of the ship and the mother computer 'Wise' which dictates the destination of Parcing and of its crews...
Story: 40%
This game is a kind of omnibus AVG with three different episodes, yet sharing among them the same characters and settings. The first story deals with a hackneyed Sci-Fi theme of a rebirth of mankind. You attempt discovering the secrets behind your existence in the ship, the intentions of the computer Wise and the true purpose of her mission. A (disproportionately) big plot, precipitately leading to an easy and disappointing end. In the second story you feature as a refugee from a planet wasted by an unknown disaster, encountering on you way a bunch of space rangers, a female scientist, your sister and, yes here you are, a tentacled monster (^^). The last one, with no story line and no command options to choose, just gets you make love with all the five girls - should be interpreted favourably as a bonus episode, perhaps.
H Content: 62%
In the first introductory episode you only end up with one particular girl whatever courses you take (it seems). Never mind, you'll see anyway the same pics again in the last episode, and more. The second story features those familar Inju-style 'tentacle' plays. With the third story comes all the fun with the girls, if nothing else...and yes, with an additional bonus of ropes extraneously brought in too. Yet the three stories share more or less the same H-pictures, and all the H-scenes are short and linear - but so is the entire game after all. On the whole you get all you could from an H-game of this size (2M+) including ropes and tentacles, I'd have thought.
Graphics: 66%
Like those of other games from Panda House the game screen is somewhat dark, but like those of the others the graphics aren't bad at all. It's true that the colours of the Windows version do not look particularly spectacular, and it's probably identical with the 16-colour PC-98 version (haven't played the latter). But the mechanical characters - the spaceship, android 'guardinans' etc. - and the monster itself are pretty well designed and drawn in detail, and the girls are, well, cute enough. Yet ironically, the best part of the game seems to be the graphics of the ending sequence...
System/Setup: 40%
There is no special installer for the game. But the main programme, when activated for the first time, automatically creates its own subdirectory for saved games under 'Program Files' folder on your boot drive. A good point is that the game does not mess up your system registry too much (except for adding a few keys), and you can save as many files as you like at any time. But an apparent shortcoming is the size of each saved data: 300k+ - which means if you create seven saved files they are already larger than the game itself!
Gameplay: 30%
When a story is cleared a path opens to the next story. The game menu includes an option to skip all the messages and stop only at multiple choices. You may spend a full day following all the possible scenarios, but you can also finish the game in half an hour if you choose to do so (two hours in my case). Sadly that would make very little difference to your enjoyment, since only the second episode has real multiple endings.
Extras: 50%
A menu for a photoshop and a music room is turned on once all the episodes are cleared. The photoshop has three different modes: 'manual playback', 'automatic playback (fast)' and 'automatic playback (normal)'. I'm not sure of what use the last two options are for all the practical purposes of a photoshop, though.
Total Points: 49%
The game starts off pretty promisingly, with lots of puzzles around and different paths to take. Oh, there's going to be far more fun than I expected from this little game, you'd think. By the time the first episode comes to a tacky end you'll see your initial expectations start evaporating. But wait, here is another scenario popping up on the menu! Getting your hopes up again you start playing the second episode, only to see nasty tentacles dash the girls and your hopes into pieces and vanish into the eternal vacuum. When you're done with the out-and-out orgy of the third story, you come to realise: oh well, this was what I had expected from this little game after all.
|
|
[ Demo Music ]
N/A
[ Screen Shots ]
[ Voting ]
|
