Corpse Party: It's good! Unfortunately the DL decided to eat my comments about it. Pretty rare nowadays that the back button won't recover text, but it managed it here.
So, see the review in the 2014 games thread, no longer write-up I suppose. Basically RPGMaker sprite games are better scares for me than stuff like Resident Evil it seems. Jump scares & weird mutated horrors are a dime a dozen; slowly dying of thirst is worse. The game has very well designed scenarios for the most part about setting up something scary to happen, but making you push into it anyway. (Even if it also has a weird bathroom obsession sometimes in its scenario design.) Also music & sound effects hype goes here, too.
Spoilery comments more for my own good (that I happened to have backed up) that Andrew or Nitori can chime in on if they want, or not:
* Not really a question, but I'm totally with the Corpse Party LP on Yoshiki & Ayumi actually getting work done and being the real main characters, while Mochida mopes around trying to rescue damsels in distress. Helps they actually have character.
* So why did Yoshie attack Naomi in the Infirmary in C1? She just gone crazy?
* At the end of C2, Yoshikazu ganks Yoshiki, but not really. Fine, he's actually kind and checking his blows because he was cursed, I get it. Except... he straight-up kills Yuuya & the cameraman's assisstant later on. What was the difference? Yoshiki just get lucky after all?
* At the end of C3, does Naho send Mochida over to Naomi really just because mwahaha I want to see you suffer by arriving too late? Or was it actually trying to help? Huh.
* In C5, Sachiko helps save Yuka, and then she & Yuka have a little chat that ends with Sachiko threatening her. When next we see Yuka, she's in the annex with a tape player, and she says nothing of the incident. WTF happened here? (Considering that the game was actually good about explaining what happened during a certain other blackout period...)
* I wish the game went into a little more detail about why exactly Naho posted an intentionally screwed up charm online. Ayumi accuses her of trying to get "customers" for Kibiki or something, but she denies this, but claims she'll do anything for Kibiki. I'm not sure how seriously we can take anything darkening-Naho says, but it was normal Naho who posted the charm… okay, so Naho comes home from school, finds a note that Kibiki has gone to Heavenly Host, posts the wrong charm details online, then travels to Heavenly Host herself. So was this something to make Kibiki's story better after all? A bizarre way of mounting a rescue mission to Kibiki? A monument to him after she realized he wasn't coming back? Anyway, this is arguably the most evil thing anyone does in the game - at least Sachiko & the ghost children can say they were influenced by the dark spirit or curse or whatever, while this was perfectly normal Naho who got everyone else sent there.
* Morishige & Ms. Shishido have rather anti-climatic endings. Morishige gets his epic freak-out, which was pretty cool, although the lines about "oh mayu you were what was keeping me alive (in high school)" seemed overkill from the writers. Anyway, I'd have tried to keep him around in a crazed state of despair, but fine, the curse, I can see committing suicide. (Although why isn't his cell phone ever useful for the pics later?! Alas.) Ms. Shishido, however, ugh. It'd have been perfectly fine to kill her in C2, but if they're going to have her survive, I'd like it if she mattered in some way - bring a clue or an item to Our Heros. The way she dies is very random - I don't normally think of demon summoning circle as "giant trapdoor to the abyss." It's especially weird when right next door is an incinerator with an apparent trap door into the basement & pool, and Our Heros fall into that without incident! Basically they create a not-that-deadly threat and have her immediately sacrifice herself to it. Wish they'd figured out something better here. (At least the EXChap confirms she survives for a very short time afterward in the pit?!)
* In the end: Wait, ghost girl Yuki becomes a new Sachiko, wtf? What does that even mean? I guess this is sequel-bait, but darn it, I came here to make a crazed girl repent, let me have my victory darn it. I guess the darkness animating the place doesn't need the original Sachiko or something and will take any ol' ghost and convince them they're Sachiko.
* Hmm, nobody ever comments on how Ayumi Shinozaki has the same last name as Sachiko Shinozaki. I guess the extended family are all spirit mediums, which is why Yoshie & Sachiko & Naho continued on after death. Still weird that nobody comments on this in-game.
* The bit about "and nobody even remembered their existence" was your average OH SNAP extra plot twist, but, uh, doesn't make tons of sense. It clearly wasn't true for everyone - Ayumi knows who Naho is, and she got swallowed by the school - and same with the deaths in the 70's and the mysterious disappearances then. Oh well. This is me being a nitpicker I guess, just let their tragic disappearances be noticed darn it.
* Yeah, yeah, psychic powers, etc., but.. was Sachiko really a student at Heavenly Host in 1973? How come the principal didn't notice? If she wasn't a student, shouldn't this have been noted in the newspaper articles, that she was just a random mysterious girl? (Yes, Kibiki's research does show she disappeared later, but I'm talking even before later, like "oh you must be so scared, who's your mommy & daddy so we can take you home.")
Perhaps some of this will be answered in Book of Shadows.
