Early impression/hasn't-gotten-all-the-endings-yet review of Cinderella Phenomenon, a game by Dicesuki.
I was randomly browsing itch.io when I found Cinderella Phenomenon. On first look, it seems way too good for a free visual novel. The graphic is polished, the wordcount is worth five novels, and what did you just say, "opening video"? I painstakingly pore through the page, looking for any sign of "demo is free" or "Part 1 is now available" but, nope. Nope, it's entirely free and the game is complete.
Hell, I've got nothing better to do anyway. Lemme try it out.
I enjoy visual novel as a medium, about as much as I like any other nonstandard storytelling medium out there. But there is something about its anime-influenced eroge-infested culture that keeps me away from getting into the scene. Starting out Cinderella Phenomenon, I keep my standards low.
It's a free game, anyway. Never should have high standard for that, eh?
The result? The result is that I binge-play through an entire route in two sittings. Two long sitting. And I enjoyed all of it. This isn't a short story, and there's enough nuance and lore twists thrown in to keep you invested.
Cinderella Phenomenon takes place in a fantasy fairy-tale-inspired world, where classical fairy tales exists as classical fairy tales. However, the existence of these tales gives a bad rep to the witches, as they were always portrayed as the bad guys. Witches are good people, originally. They are just tasked to protecting the magical Gem of Darkness, which powers (and is powered by) less desirable traits like sadness and spite.
People start hunting witches down after those stories went viral. The witches fought back, and so war begun. The game starts after this war, when peace has returned. The witches' number was diminished, but there were still enough of them to occasionally curse some poor human soul. Apparently they have a sense of humour, because all these curses are somewhat related to or derived from a particular fairy tale.
Our protagonist is the spiteful, cold-hearted Princess Lucette, heir to the Kingdom of Angielle. She received the the Cinderella Curse which strips her of her title, forcing her to live as a commoner. Her curse is easily dispelled: she just have to do three good deeds, which is extremely hard for someone like her to do. That's right, in this game you get to play as a heartless, sociopathic, jerk.
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I want to gush about the font used here, but that probably should be saved for another time.[/caption]
I've always been averse to moody, melodramatic, teenage protagonists. It's been a while since I could read Young Adult novels, and I've failed multiple times to enjoy a Quality Japanese VN because of their characters. I have no idea why Cinderella Phenomenon works for me, but it does. Lucette is mean and selfish ("Why should I help them?"), but that's mostly just because of her extremely cynical viewpoint of the world ("People only help other people so they'll get something in return.") She's also hella strong-willed, the opposite of the usual damsel-in-distress fairy tale ladies, and breathtakingly honest in her cynicism.
Obviously, she gets better as the story progress, as she learns about kindness and eventually fulfilling her three good deeds (while also getting a guy, obviously, because this is an otome game too). There are so many ways that this could go wrong in the narrative, but I think the game handles it perfectly well here, or well enough, at least. You can get closer to the girl, you can see how she improves, and how she gets closer to her new friends. No part of it feels hamfisted to me, but there are a ton of lines here, so there might be broken parts that I breezed by.
Other characters are handled with just as much care. Lucette met plenty of other people with their own fairy tale curses, each with their own creative take on the fairy tale the curses are based on. They're an interesting bunch, with their own set of stories. The characterisation can be a bit thin on closer inspection, but that's perhaps because the setting demands some reliance on commonly-used tropes. In more relevant characters, I think it manages to twist those tropes into interesting shapes, at least.
The game is long; a novel-long, maybe. It also has five routes, depending on which boy you're going after. Each route focus on different character, with different dialogues and scenes for the majority of the game, and each has two endings. That's a heckton for a free game.
Two of the routes re only unlocked after you've reached two other routes. I've only gotten one, which I found satisfactory, but I can't say how effective having multiple routes is. Hopefully, it'll be better than the way Mystic Messenger handle it, which has similar "two routes are locked" but also has 50% of the story hidden in the After Ending scenes of one of the locked routes.
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Five boys, choose one, but not the two Important Boys with the lock, not yet.[/caption]
For me, the biggest problem to the game, perhaps thanks to its multi-route system, is that some twists come right out the blue. You're wondering why y happens and the next day a character shows up and just bluntly tell you that they find out x is [spoiler] which causes y without enough foreshadowing or build-up. Other routes might have better build-up, or it might be explored more deeply in the locked routes, but in any case, first-time players might feel a bit like they're just a sideline character, with things happening haphazardly around you.
Which is fine. Lucette might as well have Chosen One written all over her face, but, at least in the first routes, she is a sideline character to a bigger plot. And while only getting bits of information suddenly thrown in your face might be a annoying, it fits the narrative well enough.
Cinderella Phenomenon is a good visual novel. Not a masterpiece, sure, and it doesn't keep me guessing and thinking about its characters the way stories I love do, but it's a good one. And, after all, it's free. If you enjoy otome games, just give it a try already. You might love it whereas I simply nod along.
