Jisei ~ Demo Look and Review

In our continuing coverage of awesome-sauce visual novels, I would like to present a small review of sake visual’s newest goods, Jisei.

So for those who may or may not know, sake visual is a little indie VN company founded by the wonderful sake-bento, who is a regular on the Lemmasoft Forums. Some of us otome fans might recognize this name, because we all were fangirling over a certain game that came out in February.

:D

However!  Jisei is totally different.

Totally different.

For one thing, it’s not otome. (sorry girls.)And it’s tons darker than Re:Alistair ++. And you have to pay for the full version.

Yes, this is the very first thing you see in the entire game.

But don’t let that you scare you…from buying it. I mean. -shot- It’s actually really good.

But besides that…

*___* I don't even like coffee, but I'd come here!

Oh come on. The background for the coffee shop is really, really detailed. It looks like one of the ten starbucks in my city! Deji-chan did a really great job on the art in this game, whether it was the background or…

Welcome, and please drink your coffee.

The characters!

Oh yeah, you might want to know about them too, huh…

??? – ???-kun is the main character of the story. He doesn’t exactly have a name, though sake has said that his name will appear in the second part of this game. He has this ability to see the dying moments of corpses, which, frankly, kinda sucks. He’s cute though. Throughout the demo, he kinda has to keep himself not guilty looking because a certain PMS–I mean, a woman sees him touching the corpse that he wants to figure the death of. He likes coffee, like pretty much the majority of the adult population.

Chance Jackson – The girl who works in the coffee shop. I like the flower in her hair, don’t you? She wants to become a professional singer, though frankly she’d be better off training in a church choir or something, and if she’s not religious, maybe she should sing at the coffee shop … but I digress. She’s a sweet girl. If with some anger issues. But it was definitely justified. Oh, her name isn’t really Chance, by the way, it’s Bertha. …but Chance sounds a little like a dog’s name…

So unfortunately he stumbles to a corpse in the woman’s bathroom when he walks by  to use the men’s bathroom after not feeling so hot.

Because you really needed another body. Sucks to be ???

It is icky.

So PMS–er, I mean a woman sees him, crap happens, but it’s all right because we see the officer guy on break and he calms the situation down. Sorta.

I have a feeling he's taken already, but a girl can dream.

You’ve got my attention. -stares-

Detective Mikolaj Gurski – the really hot off-duty detective guy that happens to be in the coffee shop when the murder happens. He questions the crap out of everyone, and tells ???-kun to do the same to everyone else. Let’s just say that ??? doesn’t exactly start out right with this guy. Frankly, if he questioned me, I’d be fine. Did I mention he’s voiced by the guy who animated Leather Pants?

We’re also introduced to the two other possible suspects as well.

She comes here a lot. Too much coffee is not good for you, my dear.

Jennifer Bergstrom – The PMS Lady The obviously stressed out lady from her job in Human Resources. Or something. She saw ??? touch the body, so she’s pretty convinced that he did it, and so ??? must prove his innocence against her manicured pointy fingers.

He has glasses! -shot-

Kizaki Suitani- A guy. No seriously, this is a guy. Don’t look at me like that. When you hear his voice, it’s definitely a guy’s. Besides that, he’s a timid college kid (weird to say because I’m not even in college yet) who was chilling at his laptop when the murder was announced. Supposedly. He can apparently write in Japanese, though who knows if that’s true or not. He comes to the coffee shop because it’s a quiet place…which I think means that this coffee shop is about to go out of business or he’s lying, because coffee shops are not quiet.

The demo, if I’ve played it correctly, goes to about halfway of this story. Basically all you (???-kun) are doing are investigating, Phoenix Wright style. Sort of. I’m actually playing it again so I could screencap, and it’s interesting to pick a few choices I didn’t pick before… However, the way that sake wrote the story is pretty solid, since it’s not especially obvious who the killer is, and she makes it in a way that anyone could be the killer. Well, I think so. I also like the characters, and it’s rather obvious who I’m partial too, ehehe.

The music is fitting for the game. It’s creepy and it keeps you on edge. Seriously. I think my heart is pounding just listening to it. It is truly background music.

The interface is good too. I like all the customizations in it, like the window and the notes (coughtipscough) and it also fits with the mood of the VN.

Thankfully, you are the one writing it, and not some psycho witch lady.

Even comes with a coffee stain!

The one little bug that I had with Jisei is the resolution. Playing this on my MacBook, and being a bit ignorant since I just got it recently, there were times that I couldn’t touch any of the buttons because the dock was in the way. However, today I found out you could hide the dock … whoops. However, for other people who might be playing it on a Mac, you’re better off hiding off the dock (Command-Option-D) or playing it Fullscreen.

Overall, Jisei is a creepy little VN that I’m sure will entertain you. Especially when the disembodied voice arrives. It has a relationship with Kizaki. (Just kidding.) As a slightly faint-of-heart person, that corpse freaks the crap out of me, but I’m sure it’s perfectly fine for everyone else. I hope.

You can get Jisei here. The Jisei Homepage

Show your love for sake visual by commenting here, or making a fanart/Jisei review for sake ’til the 19th. (Discount coupon get!)

Here’s some more images for fun. >D Because you like it.

I see the truth!

-had a feeling this would happen-

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