Sweet Middleground 3 ~the lost keys~

Intro

"Sweet Middleground 3 ~the lost keys~" is a visual novel/puzzle game developed by Zorga using RPG Maker VX Ace that obviously serves as the third entry in his series Sweet Middleground. In this episode we get a bit of a mystery as we bare witness to more sugary sweetness as Antigone and Vincent dance around each other. Though, this one definitely includes one change I really don't care for.

Story
Summary

Antigone agrees to participate in expo showing off student creations. Though I'm guessing most of those creations are rather worthless like the dressing drawer that sorts itself. After all, this one doesn't exactly work properly and just tends to hurl clothes at high speeds. At any rate after the expo is over Vincent learns that his keys have gone missing. And this leads to a whole lot of mysterious trouble that requires two heads to get to the bottom of.

Comedy

Well the double entendres continue in this one. Though it does appear Zorga has been scaling them back a bit. Probably because some of the lines in this game are so horny it hurts.



After all, the only way to really interpret that last line is that Vincent is going to be jerking off to Antigone in her new midriff baring outfit all night long.

Spelling Errors

I did notice a couple of minor spelling errors over the course of the game as well as an oddly structured sentence or two. Though, I'm a bit to lazy to go digging through the roughly 90 minutes of footage I have for my Let's Play for this game to find every example of these issues.



In the above example it would probably make more sense for the line to begin with "It's" instead of "this is". It just has a better flow and sounds more natural.

Greatest Strength/Weakness

Obviously this game's greatest strength is it's characterization of Vincent and Antigone and show casing the changing dynamics of their relationship. And this is a good strength to have considering this series is more about the visual novel aspects while the puzzles are meant to add a bit of a breather between the long dialogue sequences. ON the negative side of the scale is the introduction of Antigone's fangirl. A character that seems to serve little person beyond annoying the player with how much they dote on Antigone and her clock.


Is she talking about Vincent's wood or the clock's wood? I'll leave it for you to decide since context is for the weak!

I suppose she's meant to serve as a suspect for the mystery but some of the later clues rule her out. So her inclusion in the lineup of character's important enough to have an actual face is a bit weird. I can only hope she's more relevant in episode 4 or 5. Otherwise her time in this story will just be meaningless padding.

Gameplay

Like the previous entries this game is largely composed of fetch quests but does toss in a few puzzles to help pad things out from figuring out how to get Antigone's clock out of her room and into the hallway to another puzzle about pushing people out of the way in the library. A puzzle that has me wondering how Vincent hasn't been banned from the library by now. After all, we've had to shove quite a few people in these game's already. You'd think that would be almost instant grounds for the ban hammer. At any rate outside of these aspects of gameplay we also have to gather clues by interacting with various objects in this game as well. Of course putting these various clues together to solve the mystery at the core of this game is the real trick. Of course even if you pick the wrong answers for the final big reveal. The game just has Antigone give you a clue and asks you the same question again until you get it right. So if your a crappy detective. Don't worry this game will hold your hand until you get it right.

Graphics

On the plus side the animated character's are still there during dialogue sequences which helps add a lot of emotional depth to the characters. On the negative side of the scale their sprites have been redesigned to look more three dimensional and I'm not a big fan of this change. After all, it makes Antigone look like some sort of self-moving bowling pin. Which is kind of creepy when you think about it.

Sound

On the sound side of things this game is up to par with previous entries. As such, I don't have a lot to say about it that I haven't said in reviews for the first and second games. Which is to say the soundtrack is rather forgettable in my opinion, but serves the needs of the game.

Conclusion

As an overall package I'd say this game is stronger than the second game. It also includes a nod to those that jump into the series with this game by pointing out the location of the map in Vincent's room. Though if you've played any of the previous entries this nod probably isn't needed since the basic layout of the city hasn't changed between the first three games. Though it definitely looks like Zorga tried to throw in a few seasonal changes to imply this game takes place several weeks after the last one.