Divi-Dead

The Good
Well I must admit, this has got too be my first hentai game that actually has graphics worth looking at. Unfortunately, most of those graphics are usually the background (no funny ideas, mate) not the hentai girls. If you see the screenshots, you'll see what I mean; very smooth, not rough like other hentai games. Although I couldn't say much for the characters you talk to, to a certain extent ruin the beautiful background.

I must admit I was quite shocked at some of the pictures in this game. Beautiful graphics is one thing, totally gross is another. I honestly was not prepared for some of the graphics that reflect the "horror" side of the story. Don't get me wrong, they were excellent (in a gross way), I just didn't expect it to be so...straight forward and blunt. Good thing no one put the "dead dog" screenshot here, kids might have nightmares looking at it. A little creepy for my tastes, I would expect it from a horror movie, but this would be a first for a computer game. Those graphics make Resident Evil look like playground.

The music is quite nice, fits in with the background pictures and overall plot which is quite semi-horror, but nothing extraordinary though, unfortunately.

Well, that's the good part. Graphics and music. Sigh.

The Bad
It may be the most beautiful hentai game I've played (or in this case, clicked - you don't "play" most hentai games, you just click), but it sure hell must be the most weirdest one I've played. I don't know about you, but even after I finished the game I doubt I understand the whole story. Honestly, if someone asked me what the plot was about, my sure answer will be "uh...” I must say that the storytelling is terrible. Mystery and imagination is one thing, but as went along playing the game, my brain (what's left of it) had a lot of trouble comprehending what the story was about. I still have trouble understanding who the good guys and the bad guys are. Never mind.

But, what do you expect? Another boring hentai game which progress only depends on the skillful ability of your finger(s) to press the mouse button or the enter button. It kinda reminds me of an old sports computer game, decathlon I think, where when you run a 100m dash, your speed is judged by how fast and frequent you press the keyboard keys. Not much has changed since then it seems.

I really hate the fact that you have to click on every area on the map each time in order for the game to go forward. Well, not every place on the map, but you have to find one particular place where there's a new event occurring, of which the game almost never tells you where to go next. This game should go in the Guinness Book of Records in the category of "Most Useless Mouse Clicks for a Game".

I really miss Cobra Mission. Those were the days...

The Bottom Line
Isn't worth the play, isn't worth the buy. Even for a hentai game. Brain activity used to play this game = 1,5%

The Good
It had a nicely creepy storyline that slowly revealed itself. Several times I found myself going, "A-ha!" as a some bit of information clarified something that had puzzled me earlier in the game.

The Bad
It's not a game. It's a sometimes frustratingly slow story. There's no way without a walkthrough to tell what ending you are going to get. Most of the key 'decisions' are where you want to go at any particular point in time. And you spend a LOT of time going back and forth to the same areas until you've triggered enough of them to advance the story.

The Bottom Line
An excellent example of a story enhanced with graphics, but not much of a game. The H aspects border between the typical (for the genre) and the creepy... without even using any tentacles! =)

The Good
Unlike the bulk of hentai anime games, Divi-dead has a well thought-out and captivating storyline. Like a good novel, this game is difficult to quit once you start playing -- I pulled an all nighter the first time I played through. The interface is very simplistic - merely consisting of choosing a course of action from a pre-defined list. For this reason I would consider Divi-dead more of an interactive novel than a game, but the complexity of the story made up for the lack of control. There are at least three different scenarios to play through, each one taking somewhere around 6-10 hours of gameplay.

The Bad
Through much of the game, it isn't exactly made clear to you where you're supposed to be going. Consequently, you'll spend quite a bit of time wandering around trying to find various situations to advance the gameplay. This didn't personally bother me too much, but today's genre of action gamers may find it a bit fustrating.

The Bottom Line
I highly recommend this game to those who enjoy thriller/mystery novels. This game can probably be purchased on ebay, though one might find it through a P2P network as well.

The Good
Well, from the sole start the story just drags you into unknown and leaves you there entirely on your own... with some nice friendly characters around, though. It builds pretty fast its mystery, and soon you start asking yourself questions if this really is the world as you know it. Seems like being on these killing grounds is a very possible way to loose your life, hardly going to cheat the death. However, this game does not give you ways of dying every now and then, no, you cannot die in the game (well actually, the story doesn't let you), except in the ending, but that's completely irrelevant to the topic.

You start as Ranmaru, a transfer student to the school you're in and that's that. It's a private school and one to grants many priviledges (no, I didn't mean sex with other girls around), such as free schoolarship for one thing. But you know what they say, every good deed is guarded by the veil of darkness, and the fact is that you basically didn't come here to be just another ordinary student (though I didn't notice ordinary students here, anyway), but since your uncle owns this school, that's how you gained easy access in here, however, only to serve as some sorta spy for him. But with a good cause, too, as there seems to be lots of strange things happening around, him included, ditto.

The thing is that everyone around started having certain seizures, how or why, the reason's unknown, all you know is that you lost quite of your life due to similar if not the same occurences in the past, but that still didn't make you immune. What lies beyond that disease, and is it a disease, that's for you to uncover.

The graphic in the game is pretty sweet (aww, c'mon guys, I mean it in a technical way, don't get any funny ideas already), and for 1998 using 16bit color mode is something new, hehe, especially 'cos many newer hentai games used 16 or 256 colors only. Still, shots are really nice, both backgrounds and places, and characters. Most of music, which are all midi by the way, are very nice for the background, though some may start being annoying (especially the time of getting seizures, it's not a music that's present then, it's a torment for everyone with good hearing).

Dialogues seems much more peculiar and interesting than in some ordinary hentai games, and most of time when you'll be expecting what you're thoughts are telling you to expect, you'll end up without it, for many times I asked myself if this game has any hentai elements at all. The answer is yes, of course, but somehow the more you shorten your distance to the end, the more you get to see them. Well, they somehow seemed more as a part of the overall atmosphere then just cheap sex as we can get it from some typical big-eyes anime hentai games, and keep in mind that this game was the first one to try going into the territory of not only being suspenseful but having a horrifying scenes and/or atmosphere. Well, of course, they obviously didn't count that we've seen quite worse scenes in many other games, but still, the atmosphere is well made, if this would be some sort of 3rd-person point-and-click adventure, it'd probably be amongst my favorites, but still, they just don't do such games as typical adventures, do they? Is it just me, or are you all at least a bit sorry for lack of such stuff in classical adventures? ;)

One of probably the greatest things in this game is speech. I expected some english voice-acting, especially since I believe I saw on a few places people ranting that japanese voice-acting is great, but english is really horrible. Well, lucky me, but I had a japanese voice-acting with english text (subtitles), and I must say, voice-acting is superb, and a nice touch for a hentai game, from dialogues to moaning :)

The Bad
Well, ending really... ruined it all. I mean, it's less than a simple conclusion. Multiple endings they said, huh? Well, I've seen two of them, and I can't say anything but it's a deceit. It shouldn't even be allowed to be called an ending.

Also, they really overdid with using that music (it's midi file, but really sounds more like scratching the metal multiply to get ten times worse) whenever your character is having so-called seizures.

The Bottom Line
Well, the second one I played from the genre, thus second one I own from such genre, and I must say it really is a great game. I don't find it a waste of money though. But still, it is clearly a hentai game, but twisted and turned to get so many other elements that the hentai genre somehow gets lost in all the myst.

The Good
Divi-Dead is a hentai horror adventure dealing with blackmagic in your typical Japanese high-school enviroment, obviously influenced by the horror masterpiece "Suspiria" by Dario Argento which has spawned many Japanese "homages" including other Hentai games like Bible Black (which is also available as a series of animé OVAs). Unlike Bible Black however, which used those elements merely as a backdrop for an all-out sex-fest, Divi-Dead falls more in line with Suspiria and is a haunting horror thriller which just so happens to have hentai situations in it.

Starring as Ranmaru, a highschool student who suffers from a strange disease that causes him to have hallucinatory seizures, you arrive at your uncle's prestigious private school as a transfer student. Obviously as this is a horror game there's more than meets the eye in the school, and eventually you'll discover a plot rife with strange deaths, ghosts and other supernatural elements behind which lies a black magic cult which may or may not be connected to the school.

The game's intrincate story is it's strongest point, progressing by unveiling layer after layer of the apparent sanity and calm which surrounds the school, and revealing the many true natures (often pretty disturbing) of the large cast of characters that is composed of fellow students and teachers. Since it's really all a big game of smoke and mirrors with the additional bonus of supernatural hauntings and dashes of insanity, the storyline is understandably complex and messes with your head considerably, and that's without adding the overcomplicated Japanese narrative which has turned such games like Silent Hill into a gigantic "..Uh??" as the poor gamer tries to gather the pieces of an inmense puzzle with missing information, plot holes, contradictory situations and general insanity. I won't say Divi Dead's storyline is coherent or what one would traditionally consider as engaging, but there's no denying it's one interesting piece of work and certainly more memorable than the half-assed excuses most western games slap into their game as a "story", specially once you consider the many effective twists the game takes into horror territory, which includes downright disturbing character development, haunting hallucinations, and bitchingly gory "fangoria moments" for shock effect.

These gory elements take me to the care and attention placed in the game's artwork, which would have understandably dulled such shocking moments had they not been up to the task. Fortunately they do, and are in fact amongst the very best ones to grace a game of this type, with beautifully haunting painted backgrounds and striking character art that keeps the tone of the game coupled with magnificent voice acting and music.

The sexual situations while pretty explicit as one might expect, are kept pretty moderate as far as Hentai games go, and for once they are kept in the context of the story, which is always cause for celebration. As for extra features, the game thankfully comes with included CG galleries, music/sfx tests and bonus artwork when completing the game, which allows you to see the great artwork as much as you'd like together with the H-scenes and concept art should you want to. The interface is carefully developed and follows the game's theme, including an area map for easy navigation in the same way as "Nocturnal Illusion".

The Bad
It's amongst the most horribly non-interactive Hentai games ever, with the entire game being just a glorified interactive novel with you simply going from area to area, talking and examining everything and everyone while the story just "happens" around you. A shame really, as this could have been a major release had the creative content been submitted to a more interactive game design.

Furthermore, the different endings and their contributions to the story are handled in the worst possible way, seeing as how the game has only 2 or 3 moments were you actually have to make a decision, the rest of the flags that need to be set for the endings to be revealed are triggered by merely being at the right place in the right moment. A pretty shitty an illogical way of handling things, which basically mean that there's no way you can find your way through all the endings without a walkthrough, as there's no logical way of knowing that being in the upper corridor and seeing a black cat pass by sets you on the track for an ending and being on the roof collecting leaves instead sets you up for another one.

The Bottom Line
One of the most promising and interesting Hentai games, essentially Suspiria with the additional insanity courtesy of Japanese narrative and a penchant for sexual situations. Unfortunately for as good as that sounds Divi-Dead is relegated to the same void as most products of it's kind due to sub-par interactivity (even by Hentai standards) and illogical game progression. Truly sad as it's one of the most interesting horror games to come from Japan.

Worth it for the experience, mostly if you are a fan of non-interactive "games" like these and you don't care much about gameplay