Toukyo Necro impression

When I first try this VN, I wasn't expecting anything. It was so N+ -ish the first time I read it, and the presentation made me feel weird. But as I progressed, this VN successfully hooked me up again and again. And it turned out to be a really good VN.

My first strong impression that come from this VN are its atmosphere. The ambience and strong cyberpunk feel, combined with detailed prose that depict the city's condition, really made me feel immersed.

As a Sci-fi, the story start with a pretty generic premise and a concept that the general idea you might heard from other Sci-Fi works. But as the story progress and the plot get complicated, it started to show its charm. The concept are becoming more unique and fascinating, and the story are getting wilder as the plot thicken and the characters getting more development. From that, it's a nice ride till the end.

As I'm getting used with the presentation, I found it to be unique and really impressive, especially for VN. This VN present you with normal ADV ala typical VN, but also present you with a fully 3D animated battle scene and pseudo-FPS view. And, the narration prose are still being presented even during the fully animated scene. The UI system is also unique and fresh, that I think no other VN has this kind of UI system. It is however can be very annoying. The time required to start up the game and the time required to save a game is uncessarily long. It's quite also heavy, that I had several crash with the game. More plus with this UI system though, is the encylopedia system that you can access, which is very useful to dwell more into the worldbuilding ,and it also allow you to access music player from the same menu. I think that this VN is the best example of the implementation of fully 3D animated scenes and high amount of special effect usage in a VN while still being a VN in all its senses, all thanks to its high production value and clever presentation. If there's any evolution to the concept of VN and its presentation mechanism while still being a VN, then Toukyo Necro is the answer. Though TN will be more perfect as example if the 3D were better rendered and much smoother.

I'd say that the writing in this VN is quite unique. As I have said, the narration are still present during the fully animated scene. Which supposed to be uncessary since everything is already translated into visual. But in this cases, it work very well. It enhance the reader experience during the battle, and also allow the reader to be more immersed with the character as we can still know what the character are thinking and feel inside their head through the narration. Making the battle much more epic, emotional, and immersive. I think the writers should've keep only the narration that depict character's mind during the fully animated scene, because the narration depicting the action are largely unecessary, though it's still enhance the experience in some way. The overall prose quality are pretty good, though I feel that the pacing can be a bit messy in some scenes with over-exposition that basically only being infodump.

And another things that make this VN really good, the characters. All the main characters (Protags, heroines, and supportings) are well explored and got a good portion of screen time. Though varied by their role in the story, all characters have a depth. They all have their own uniqueness. The way character are interacting with each other is also fun, particularly Ethica's part. The chemistry for Souun and Ethica to another character also deepen the emotional relationship between those characters, making you much more care for the characters. The protags and some characters (mainly the heroines) also grow really well in their character development as the story progress, albeit most of it are not so much. It's also interesting that some characters have the exact opposite or even unpredicted role in other route, which made some route wilder. In conclusion, they are really fascinating and definitely memorable.

This VN have a high production value. As I have described, it's the only VN (I know) that can implement a fully animated scene and high amount of special effect while still being VN in all its sense. Fully 3D animated battle scene, clever usage of tachie, and gorgeous art. The things that amaze me is that almost every single unimportant chara that only appear once or twice (mostly to be crushed and killed) have their own fully-detailed tachie, heck some of those chara even have a very nice character design. And, I like the character design. The CG are also really good, the detail and colouring are insane. Some scene are really gorgeous. Again, thanks to its high production value.

The music is awesome. The OP and all insert song are really amazing. The insert songs also play in the right scenes, which made those scenes so emotional and memorable. The BGM is also really nice, and every one of them play in the right scene and moment. All thanks to the high production value this VN has.

Overall, It's a great VN. I enjoyed this VN so much. Though the story in overall are not that epic, the characters and certain moment in those VN are really made this VN memorable.