This is a review for SLG Remix, available on Steam.

After doing a little research I've discovered that SLG is Sacred Line Genesis, a homebrew Sega Genesis game created in 2015. This game has a bunch of spin-offs, including several Steam games including The Last Dogma and several others, all of which are unpopular. This review is for SLG Remix, a short visual novel related to the franchise. I know nothing about the other items, so this is purely a confused reaction to the standalone visual novel.

I'll begin by remarking that this is a very peculiar game with some big problems, but overall I liked it.

The first issue is the resolution problem: you can't make the tiny 640x480 window bigger, and full screen is not an option. As such I had to dial my monitor res down to 800x600, and then play in windowed mode; it was fine after that, but this issue should have been addressed. The other problem I have is the story itself: the story is very erratic and it doesn't make sense, it doesn't have any characters, depth, meaning or themes. It reads like a story written by a 7 year old, jumping from topic-to-topic without any planning or sense. The protagonist moves through these strange places then teleports to another place, then another, then another. The protagonist will jump down into a sewer or continue on through gross/dangerous locations without hesitating, clearly this has the narrative aim of pushing the story forward but it doesn't make any sense; in reality no one would jump down into a blood sewer without a reason. If the story had a character or character motivations it would make more sense, but instead the protagonist is a faceless being without personality or backstory.

And yet I still enjoyed the game. This is for a couple reasons. Firstly, I acquired the game for less than $1 and I feel like I got at least a couple dollars of entertainment. For all the weaknesses of this VN, I do applaud it for doing some original things. This idea of combining classic Myst-style adventure/puzzle games with a VN is quite revolutionary, I think it's ingenious and could be taken further. I think it would work brilliantly if it was expanded upon. Despite the poor writing, I still enjoyed seeing and exploring these peculiar environments, each of which was beautifully rendered in classic low-poly 90's 3D. It has a lot of style, reminiscent of old computer games. Especially because it has silly things like skeletons, dungeons, creepy cabins, giant eyeballs; the art is very beautiful. And though the writing is poor, that in itself was something that I took some delight in. It was reminiscent of my youth, of writing bad stories and awful poetry, stories without sense or reason involving skeletons and eyeballs. Whether intentional or not, it fit together well with the clumsy CG, making for an overall powerful representation of youth in the 90's. And, digging deeper, even the act of reducing my resolution to 800x600 in itself was like a peculiar feature, a blast from the past external to the game itself. It's a beautiful disaster, and I'd like to see someone expand on this rough formula.