I'm a car now too!

This was my third Nitro+Chiral game, and so far I have been pleasantly surprised at the quality of these games. Unfortunately, TnC didn't exactly live up to my expectations. That's not to say that I didn't enjoy most of this game, because I did, but I feel like the story lacks the same thought and care that was put into the other N+C games I've played (see entries below). The majority of the story was fine in my opinion, but nearly every ending feels rushed and unsatisfying in some regard. Even Nano's ending, the true ending, was no longer than the other routes and there was seemingly very little chemistry between him and Akira. I also didn't particularly enjoy the soundtrack of this game as much as the other N+C games either. There are some scenes towards the end of every route that are repeated near verbatim each time, which starts to get kind of annoying, too.

TnC takes place in a war-torn Japan following the events of the Third World War, where children once taken from their families and trained to become soldiers must learn to live a "normal" life after the war is over. Akira, our protagonist, is one of these former child soldiers. Trained to kill and destroy, but with no war to fight, they relieve their violent urges with the fighting tournament known as Bl@ster. Akira is a well-known fighter in Bl@ster, having rarely lost a fight. But his life changes when he's arrested for a murder he did not commit, and strikes a deal with two mysterious visitors for his freedom. As long as he infiltrates Toshima, formerly known as Tokyo, and kills the druglord Il Re, he'll be granted amnesty by the government. Disguised as an Igra player, a game much more violent than Bl@ster that requires participants to acquire the correct dog tags needed to challenge Il Re by stealing them from other players by any means necessary, he journeys to Toshima unknowingly followed by his childhood friend Keisuke.

My main issue with TnC is the quality of the endings. The only endings I can say I genuinely liked were Rin and Motomi's endings, mostly because they felt the most fleshed out compared to the other endings. (Rin was also my favorite character, so I am absolutely biased by the way.) I wish Rin and Motomi could have gotten multiple endings like Keisuke and Shiki, because Rin's unbridled hatred towards Akira would have made for an interesting alternate route to his good ending. It actually surprised me a little that Rin didn't have a bad ending considering it really seemed like he would never be able to put his feelings for Akira above his desire to kill Shiki. A hypothetical bad end could have been something like Rin not being able to allow his affection for Akira to coincide with his pursuit of Shiki, and instead letting his hatred overcome him as the thematic opposite to his good ending.

Speaking of Shiki... good ending my ass. What was that!? Shiki's "good ending" was definitely the worst ending in the whole game to me. Possibly in any N+C game. Even his bad endings somehow felt more hopeful. I've seen that his endng was changed for the better in the PSP port though, so I look forward to playing that someday. I wish the time that went into making Shiki's three endings could have gone into making bad endings for Rin and Motomi. Shiki's characterization tended to fall flat in his route as well. He was more interesting a character as the ellusive, all-powerful shadow looming over Rin's life than he was in his own route. TnC's endings tend to make large jumps between what happened pre- and post-time skip, which left me feeling a little unsatisfied with most of them. Shiki's ends and Keisuke's good end are particular offenders. How am I supposed to believe that a man like Shiki simply went brain-dead after defeating his nemesis because he no longer has a reason to live? It doesn't make sense. Does the Rein in his bloodstream in the bad endings make him forget Nano's death or something? Also, there was hardly any build-up to his hatred for Nano until the near end, unlike in Rin's route where his vendetta against Shiki has plenty of emotional build-up to make his actions completely believable. If Nano was so important to Shiki that finally defeating him left a void in his life so vast that he can't even get out of bed, then surely his relationship and history with Nano should have been explored more in his route. Shiki had so much potential as a character that I think was pretty much wasted. His cameos in Rin's route and the common route intrigued me, only for him to be an utterly boring character his whole route, up until the very end where he becomes a vegetable before he can get any actual character development in his own good ending.

A little bit more on TnC's endings making huge plot leaps in the time skips and feeling underdeveloped... Keisuke's good ending was also kind of janky in my opinion. I really wish they could have touched more on what happened when he was on Rein. It's hard to believe that he and Akira just waltzed off towards the sunset together after all of that. Even just a short discussion between them pre- or post-time skip could have added a lot of much needed emotional depth to Keisuke's good ending and make it feel more complete.

Overall, I definitely enjoyed this game, but it left something to be desired.

I really thought I was going to hate this game, or at least laugh uncontrollably the entire I was playing it, but N+C strikes once again. Sweet Pool actually ended up being the N+C game I like the most so far. I had no real intentions of playing SP because I didn't think I'd be able to get past what constitutes the main premise of the story, which for all intents and purposes, is mpreg. Sort of. I just didn't think I'd be able to take the story seriously enough to actually enjoy it. I wasn't expecting the actually meaningful allegory for adolescence, I thought I was just about to read some bonkers porn, but I absolutely loved this story. There may have been tears rolling down my cheeks during the ending. Also, all the ending songs are bangers, The Hunger is my favorite.

Youji is a high school student at Komanami Private Academy, a Catholic school. Although he's not religious, his sister is a graduate of the academy and pays for his tuition after they lost their parents in a car accident. Youji and his older sister frequented hospitals throughout their childhoods due to them both taking after their mother's sickly consitution, which caused him to be held back a year in school. His reclusive nature keeps him from making many friends, besides his only friend Makoto, and prefers the company of his pet fish instead. Youji's return school is going smoothly until he catches the attention of Zenya, an eccentric upperclassman, and Tetsuo, his stone-faced classmate. His misery is further exacerbated as he begins having gory hallucinations of bloodly lumps of flesh exiting his body.

One thing I thought was really cool about SP is the way the choices system works. Instead of choosing dialog options or actions that cause the story to branch off, you have the same two choices each time, "Reason" or "Instinct". This two-choice system starts to make more sense once you finish a route, as each character corresponds to one or the other, besides Tetsuo, who's somewhere in the middle. Makoto's ending, The Hunger, is achieved by making all Reason choices. Zenya's ending, VLG, is all Instinct choices. Tetsuo has three endings depending on what mixture of Instinct and Reason choices the player makes. In N+C fashion, the true ending, Miracles May in this case, can only be reached by playing all the other endings first. I've enjoyed this mechanic in all of the N+C games I've played. I think it's neat you can only make the right choices after seeing the outcomes of making other choices and "learning" from your mistakes, in a way.

Makoto's ending was definitely my favorite, and he was my favorite character as well. All the characters in SP are victims of circumstance to some extent, but Makoto is just particularly pitiful to me. His ending was so heartbreakingly tragic, and I'll always have a soft-spot for cannibal characters haha. There weren't any endings in this game that I really disliked to be honest. Zenya's ending made me squeamish of course, but that's kind of the point. I was little confused when I finished the true ending and saw that it was called Miracles May, as Tetsuo and Youji losing their memories of each other didn't seem like much of a miracle to me. But the more I mulled it over, I think that the "miracle" in this ending is Kitani managing to shoot Tetsuo and Youji in the exact spot the parasites inhabited their bodies, thereby freeing them from The Liberated and their own deaths in the Red Road ending. Kitani's bullets really were a miracle considering how he managed to shoot only the parasites, and ironically, saved their lives. Miracles May is also a beautiful ending because of how it gives Tetsuo and Youji the freedom to live their own lives without the influence of The Liberated or the parasites. Even if they don't end up together, it's still a good ending because they can finally be free. But if they do find each other again someday, it's because they truly chose each other and not because it's what was ordered of them.

SP does not hold back on the gross-out scenes, and as a horror fan I mean this in a good way of course. There were many scenes where my jaw hit the floor because I couldn't believe what was on my computer screen. If you're a fan of erotic-horror or body-horror, I'd definitely give Sweet Pool a try.