Visual novel spotlight - week 10

I remember that this was the most requested type along another thing like nanolife,so I decided this would make a good last episode. I hope you'll find it fun to read :)

Among all the free VNs made by amateurs I read here - excluding Phenomeno - Rising Angels: Reborn looks almost like it could be a commercial title.

I applaud to the artist who did character sprites - he or she had to work with the relatively big cast of nine characters and did a marvellous job. Each character identified by distinct silhouette using different body shapes, poses and features like ears, horns and wings. Sprites utilize poses and body language to convey information about the person, like Zuri is almost always shown in positions that imply motion or Stan often drawn covering his mouth with his hand in a gesture subconsciously associated with lying. I think wings were superfluous for character's design - they take too much screen space and people who have wings could be easily recognized without them - but it looks like each race appearances were already defined in earlier novel drawn by another artist and it's too late to change something now.

In contrast to character sprites backgrounds look nice and clean, but also grey and unimpressive and there is too few of them, but it's understandable because most of action happens on board of a small spaceship. Game could definitely use more CGs as well; few CGs present are somewhat bland and characters appear noticeably different from their usual sprites. With all respect to fanservice, I think sand piranhas attack scene deserved a CG image more than Zuri hugging Kika. Also, if story takes place on a spaceship, it's almost necessary to show how this ship looks from outside, but I guess nobody in development team couldn't do mechanical design.

Music clearly was professional - it sounded like something I could hear before in some games or movie trailers. Perhaps it was licensed from some recording studio. Any sound effects are sadly missing. Adding little sound: footsteps, gunshots, "woosh" of spaceship door would only help immersion.

The list of races itself is more what I expect to see in some Star Trek fanfic written by a schoolgirl, not standalone serious work of science fiction: generic fantasy races, angels and demons, furry people - all together in space. Just like in Star Trek, critically important ship personnel are sent with away teams to investigate dangerous planets, apparently unarmed. At least no officers were killed during planetary missions, despite all of them except one wearing red shirts.

However, even if Rising Angels started as mere fanfic, it came a long way. While The Red Rose doesn't look like something I will be interested in, I will definetly wait for Fates sequel and White Flames hentai spinoff.

I hope it lives up to your expectations.