(Caution: This review may contain minor spoilers. This review was written for the demo released as @ 23/12/2014.)

Introduction
Graceless Reminisce - Will of Rebellion is a demo created by VVBlastFuryVV that clocks in at about half an hour. It explores the familiar well-trodden trope of two guys and one girl that join the army but resent the company that they are placed in. You might get vibes of Attack on Titan when playing. The storytelling is very plainly anime-influenced, with sorrowful flashbacks, and voice-overs about the plight of man and how, due to lack of power, the little trio of kids are unable to fight and save their people. Like Attack on Titan, the strength of their power lies in their ability to control the height of their morale. Expect to hear many statements like "I... couldn't... save them...", or "We... never were strong enough.... to defeat the enemy. They... led us into... a trap". (These aren't actual lines that are in the game, but they could have been.)

Story
Graceless Reminisce excels in visual polish and pacing of its scenes. It knows how to build tension and progress conversations with the right kind of emotion it wants to invoke. However, those who are more hardened to the type of over-the-top cynicism and angst of "war is hell" might want to look away. It's a trope that seems to prevail here.

The game opens with a metaphor of two swans swimming next to each other for several years. This seems to represents a male and his lover, probably. Either that or a couple of best friends. But then one of the pair gains enough strength to fly away, while the other one is left behind. I'm not sure whether this was supposed to represent the death of one of two lovers, or the fact that one got so strong emotionally that they could live without the other, and the one without "wings" was left to be lonely on the ground. More will probably become clear in further installments (this is just the prologue).

Commander Gerasim commands what is left of His military - 60 people. They are fighting 500,000 people. Think about it. 60 people vs. 500,000 people. I mean, I know some commanders thrust their soldiers into losing battles, but this is just ridiculous. Any general in his right mind wouldn't let that kind of thing slide, even if he was ordered to. That is, unless his military are some kind of super trained soldiers with crazy powers - oh no wait, they're just the leftovers of the last battle they had, so these are the rejects. And you never really see them again... or are they the guys that are in puddles of blood everywhere? I wasn't really sure, since you don't really see anyone else fighting besides the main party in the game... nor do you hear the sounds of fighting in the distance. If there was a battle, it was rather silent.

Characters
The main characters are a trio of what I assume to be teenage soldiers: Yevan, the main protagonist with a sense of justice; Lyron, the badass "above it all" cynical hardened friend who apparently *understands* the troubles of war more than the others; and Leiza, the gal who tries to act as a peacemaker between the two. Lyron's the type of guy who tends to storm off in the rain by his own because he thinks no-one else knows things as much as he does. There are some gory scenes of post-war bodies, people dying and having their last wishes (un)fulfilled, and the general sense of dread that comes from these sort of "horrors of war" stories. Yevan recognizes the man called Mark dying on the pavement, who he recalls having told Yevan that the Empire is strangling its own citizens of their freedom. Yevan seems to agree, and since he's the main protagonist, it's probably true.

Plot beats are introduced competently and, even though the viewpoint on war has a kind of child-like naivety about it, it still is rather entertaining viewing. There is a dynamic that is explored between Lyron and Yevan, whose personalities seem in diametric opposition to each other. Lyron is the rough-and-tumble cynic who believes that no citizen can be saved, whereas Yevan is the sensitive with his heart on his sleeve, wanting to relieve everyone of their plight but being frustrated about his inability to do so.

Gameplay
The game's flaws are easy to ignore, only because fighting through it is a breeze. Enemies are easy to kill, and if you happen to die, there is no great penalty for doing so. Being confused at first as to why the save function was not available, I realized soon why - there was no need for it. Being able to "reawaken" back to your previous position meant that nothing was hugely consequential, and that strategy was very rarely required. The lack of variety of enemies makes things rather dull, but battles are so easily avoidable that it becomes hardly a problem. I think that, for a prologue, the lack of actual gameplay in this game serves it quite well. However, in future installments, a ramping up of the difficulty and using more smart design decisions in terms of gameplay will be needed in order to make it a captivating experience.

There are some other tiny flaws that I thought could be improved. Guards are so easy to dodge, and if they spot you, they will only pursue you for a couple of yards and then become disinterested. If I was a guard, I would chase after the enemy until they are killed, instead of running after them for a fraction of a second, and then forgetting why I was doing that in the first place, despite them still being clearly in my vision. So the idea of stealth mechanics in this game needs to be improved, if that is to be the reason for on-screen enemies.

The fact that most doors are locked and some aren't means that it is a lottery to find the one that actually contains an interior. It's good to be consistent when you're doing things like this, for example, having a visual indicator on top of a door that you can enter would stop you from having to check every single one before you found out which were able to be opened.

Conclusion
All in all, Graceless Reminisce is a prologue with a lot of promise. It is for those who get excited by the style of anime TV shows, flashbacks, grey and grey morality, and tales about the horrors of war.

I give the current version of Graceless Reminisce 3.5 stars out of 5. I have given it a N/A rating because it is a short demo that I would not like to assign a star rating to just yet.

(If the developer would like me to review a more recent version of the demo, PM me if necessary.)