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auro-cyanide:

Thoughts on Amnesia: Memories

I recently fully completed Amnesia so I decided to write down some of my thoughts on the game. While a part of this is from the perspective of a consumer, a great deal of it is actually from the perspective of a developer that makes otome games. In that way this is more an analysis than a review or even a critique. I want to learn from this game, both what it does well and also it’s faults. I’m going to try and refrain from major spoilers, but in order to discuss this game I’m going to have to reveal some things, so if you wish to play the game in the future relatively blind I would advise reading no further!

I bought Amnesia both on Steam and on iOS. I couldn’t play on Steam since I own a Mac and I didn’t want to jump through hoops, so I played through exclusively on my phone. Generally I was playing blind, though I knew about the cage thing. You play as a nameable protagonist that ends up with Amnesia through fantastical means. You then get to chose one of several worlds to enter that you then have to navigate without your memories. There is a romanceable male in each world and he tends to be the cornerstone of whatever plot you land in. Overall I had a lot of fun playing the game and I don’t regret the money I spent. That said, I think it has a lot of wasted potential as well. It’s an adequate game where I really think it could have been amazing.

(It’s a little on the long side)

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Hi there !

This is a bit unusual but as Amnesia: Memories went out on sale a few weeks ago, I think it’d be interesting to share some thoughts on it.

Up there is a great article on what Auro-Cyanide thought of it, I’ll only be adding things to what she wrote since I agree on the most part with what she wrote. So I strongly advise you to read her article before reading down there.

I have to say first that I bought it on Steam and played on my computer, which has a very big big screen (27 inch or so).

This may be long…

(I’ll be translating this into french soon, both what Auro-Cyanide wrote and my own thoughts)

ART:

The backgrounds are really just functional, though sometimes I’d question their choice of colors and contrasts to make us feel “morning” (green/blue with high contrast seems weird to me, but at least the characters are saying that we’re in the morning, so whatev’) They were efficient enough and didn’t catch much of the attention, so we could focus on the sprites, that are really beautiful, with wonderful coloring skills!

As Auro-cyanide said, the art is beautiful, the CG are very dynamic and the choices of colors are very good. Overall it’s a wonder for the eyes (though you may have to pass the anatomy weirdness quite typical from otome-games/things targeted at girls).

Auro-cyanide also has pointed out that there were some unused potential for the sprites, be it in their clothing (so weird for the setting) or the spade/clover/heart/etc things that were in fact only used at the very beginning to choose the worlds. But I’ll come to this later, probably in “missed potentials” or in “overall”.

I also have to say that the quality of most of the art is satisfying on a very large screen, if we forget the transition with actual faces of the characters, which were really pixelated. Good job, Idea Factory, you got me! ;)

The transitions with sketches of situations with the characters were really cute and really helped to get into the game, there were more than welcomed and highly helped ellipsis to work well.

The GUI is simple, effective.

AND! Excellent idea to do “back sprites”, because it helps when there are some confrontations between characters to see them facing each other, it’s a good use of sprites to make the story even more immersive through the art.

Very good job, Idea Factory XD

CONTENT: as for the content, I mostly agree with what Auro-cyanide said.

On consent, I felt like there was a huge mistake from the writers on the “If we’re alone, I might do something to you. I won’t. But I could.” I’m not against such sentences occuring once in a while, but this clearly wasn’t needed in some routes (for instance Kent is really prone to respect the “basic steps” of a relationship being together è holding hands è kissing è more, so it was really weird to have him say something like this!). Moreover, I think it completely destroys any tries at making the MC and the love interest equal in the relationship. I’ll come to it later, but I often felt than the love interest had the upper hand in the relationship and when they say this it felt like they were stating how powerful they were, but please, thank them for being so magnanimous and not jumping on you right now! =______= “

Or was it that we’re supposed to feel flattered? (Sounds like “she asked for it” indeed -___-)

CHARACTERS:

Protagonist:

And here comes another blank-but-not-really slate character. As far as I’m concerned I was okay with her choices biasing the whole “completely blank main character” because I really think that if I had amnesia it wouldn’t change completely my personality, so I take it that the protagonist still had a sort of “basis of personality” that didn’t go away.

However her “blank-but-not-really slate” character soon became boring. I’m not fond of such characters.

She was actually much more interesting in the side stories, much more cynical, fun, and dynamic! It’s a shame they didn’t really give us such choices during the actual game because then maybe it’d have been more interesting and easier to self-insert!

I also have to say that I didn’t really get into the story, I was fairly exterior to everything in the game, not afraid during frightening moments, nope, nothing…

Orion:

Orion really needs his part. Okay, this may have been an interesting ideas: because the main character was blank-but-not-really slate, there was a character to make all the narration for her.

Let’s pay tribute to the Voice actor too, because he’s really good. But he couldn’t save the character.

At the beginning Orion is bearable, he’s weirdly cute and quite help to make some reasoning and giving us pros and cons of each choice. But honestly, after playing it for the 3^rd time I was like: “GIVE ME BACK MY MEMORIES SO THAT ORION WILL JUST SHUT UP!!!!”. He says everything, everything you can think off. Wanna talk about the weather? He will! Wonder if Rika really is a b*? He will say it aloud! He often says things really obvious, and started being really disturbing at the 3^rd playthrough, making me wonder if adding a button to turn off his voice would be a good idea…

However he’s fairly needed in the last route, Ukyo’s. Meh. Okay.

The Routes:

I played in this order: Shin -> Kent -> Ikki -> Tôma -> Ukyo, but by personal faves go like this: Kent>Ukyo>Shin>Ikki>Tôma.

Shin’s route was more focused on mystery-solving than sappy cheesy romance so it was fine. A bit boring because he did everything without telling you so it’s not like there’s an actual work of investigation, most of the time you just try and find some memories, obey him whenever he asks something and stay there. I got the good ending first (because I’m calculative enough), but the normal ending is much more interesting to my mind.

Ikki’s route was a bit boring, it was motivated by some random clichés that were hard to bear sometimes, with a strong tendency to romance and misunderstanding. The real motive of the whole story is you wondering “did I like him before because now I don’t know and I don’t understand him”, which is a bit light, but they managed to make it just dark enough so that it’d be interesting. I got the good ending first.

Kent was by far my favorite. His route is much lighter than the others, and mostly focus on romance, however his personality saves it all. The calm rational guy really is my fave, besides he seems to be the only character with sane reactions (although a bit clichés sometimes). Good ending playing naturally, and to me it’s probably one of the best routes and endings of the game.

Toma’s route was…fairly uninteresting. Again it’s slightly mystery but you’re not told anything, and Toma always overreacting and going overboard. And honestly, I hated the fact that in the good end, you forgive him and have no further explanations. Apart from that, meh.

Ukyo is more interesting in terms of plot. He unfolds everything and then you learn than even the random annoying talks about weather had some kind of importance. Apart from that, I completely agree with what Auro-Cyanide wrote about time-frame. They’ve been going out for 2 months but he was ready to throw everything away just to save her? However that’s one thing about otome-games: love is absolute (and corrupt absolutely…). I didn’t really like the fact that this route is implied as the “True Ending” of the game though, I’d rather have my fave ending as the true one XP

Overall:

Overall it’s clearly a good game, and I had fun while playing. It’s worth its price, and if I seem to be very critic of the game, it’s not because it’s not good (clearly), it’s because it could have been much better.

Potential:

Let me explain… The idea of parallel world has a huge potential. The designs had huge potential, they really set an entire atmosphere all alone. Some route really had potential, mystery, darkness, questioning communication in a couple, motivations, the right to do wrong things and atone for it, the characters also had a real potential, but overall it seems to have been forgotten often, and this high potential didn’t get used. The story could have been so much more effective! So much more immersive!

In fact I had to read the bonus stories (the ones from the guy point of view, not the useless memories ones that were too much, didn’t bring much more than the game did and spoiled some cute ellipsis) to get to like some characters! Once I read Ikki one, I replayed the game and it felt slightly better! Once I played Shin one, I could understand why he wouldn’t want to go back to being treated like a childhood friend! I even got to like Mine (until then I was completely indifferent to her character). The character development that should have been made ingame just wasn’t there, and the involvement ingame suffered from this (apart from Kent’s route that focused more on the characters).

Those extra stories also made me realize that the main character could have been interesting XD It’s a shame but I enjoyed the extra stories more than the real game sometimes!

TO CONCLUDE:

In the end, it’s a really good game as it is, worth its prize, with top-notch art and voice-acting. An excellent dark game with a high replay-value. If you don’t like game that only focus on cheesy pink romance and slice-of-life, go for it!

Even for developers it should be useful, there are many things to learn from (transitions, coloring, GUI, characterization, …)

~Didules