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GAYYYYY

  • Frogge
  • 04/15/2018 07:19 AM
  • 1094 views

Desperate Love Feast by Akira Takaba
Length: ~1 hour


Years ago, I came across a let's play for a little game called Desperate Love Feast. Years later, I'm finally playing said game myself, remembering nothing about it other than the fact that it was very gay, but you know me, that's more than enough of an intrigue for me.

I don't remember being SUPER fond of the game, to be honest. I don't remember particularly disliking it, but I don't really remember being a big fan either. There is quite a few things here to talk about though.

Starting off with the story, easily the most problematic part of the game for me. I had very mixed feelings about it. There were some cool stuff here and there. For example, they went into quite a bit of detail with the backstories. The main antagonist, Chihiro, while still a bit of a confusing character, still had some decent motives and I could at least somewhat understand him. At first I thought it was very weird that Chihiro just so happened to own this weird bunker-y building, but it got explained later on pretty well.

What I have an issue with is that it can get VERY cheesy. I will have to get into spoilers for that, though.

Firstly, the memory sections are stupid. Takuma does not suffer from amnesia, but they still wanted to throw in backstory, so basically they made it so that sometimes he ends up seeing Chihiro's memories. This was stupid because for most of said scenes, Takuma was also there, so the developer could have just shown us those memories and not have Takuma suddenly ''recall'' them. Does that make sense? Basically, I just don't think there would have been anything wrong with seeing backstory scenes without Takuma going ''Oh shit, just now, what was that??? A memory???'' afterwards.

Second of all, it was very stupid to me how most of the thing is basically a 'dream'. I guess you could argue that Chihiro possibly has access to Satan's powers thanks to the book, but it was always weird how he managed, especially in the early game, to interact with the environment without even being there, such as unlocking doors.

Lastly, you never do quite find out about the third mystery guy in the 'bunker'. He makes an apperance in the true ending's epilogue, but he never really helps drive the plot forward. I was expecting him to come save Takuma in the true ending and tie into the story somehow, but he didn't. He's just sort of there.


Another positive aspect of the story would be that some plot points are actually tied together very well. The sister-dog dynamic would be a great example, and I like how it all started because of a broken promise. The characters were fairly well written. I didn't really love any of them or anything, but I did enjoy Takuma's sarcastic comments on some things and Chihiro's cheesy stalker-iness. Takuma definetly did not feel like a ten year old, though. It's well paced, never really feeling too fast to understand, but also not feeling dreadfully slow.


My man Takuma hitting us up with that good sarcasm.


For the gameplay, there isn't much other than wandering around and solving puzzles. I did find it quite easy to get lost at times, so more directions would have been good, as well as making doors easier to distinguish from one another so you would know which key unlocks what. There are also multiple endings and it does add in a little bit of non linearity. My only real issue here is that getting them all is a bit of a pain, not because it's hard to get them all, but because you have to sit through a pretty lengthy cutscene every single time. A save before making any decisions would have honestly been great so that you wouldn't have to replay that same cutscene again and again. I did, however, enjoy that each ending was very different from the others, and that they didn't just last for two whole seconds unlike most bad endings or normal endings from most rpg horror games.

It's not the most visually pleasing game, but it does get the job done. It's mostly RTP, but the main problem is that the mapping can be not so great at times. There are quite a few good maps, but bland empty areas appear more often than not. The shrunk character sprites were also kind of blurry and to be fair, unnecessary. I get that they imply that the character is a young child, but I think it could've been handled better if they just handled children like the rtp does.

The art was actually pretty good though! There's only one CG in there, sadly, but the face graphics were actually pretty pleasant looking. The use of sound effects was also pretty good and helped bring most scenes to life really well.

It's also a really well polished game. I did not run into any bugs at all, and the cutscenes played out very smoothly with fades and character movements. The only thing I'd complain about here is the default RTP menu being used even though 99% of the things there are unnecessary.

So, was the game worth replaying? Ya! It's a pretty decent experience, granted with some major issues with the story, but an enjoyable game none the less. I give it three and a half dead dogs out of five.