VisualNovel First Episode - Shows Potential
This was not bad for a first attempt. The people involved clearly worked very hard, and they managed to produce a professional piece of work. The music stands out as wonderful, perfectly matched to the scenes and their individual tones. The voice acting is great in some places, as with the narrator, but struggles a bit in other places, as with Karkat. This mainly has to do with the pauses and pace of the dialogue. This can be fixed with a little more attention paid to quality-checking all parts as they are assembled next time, rather than just focusing on getting everyone's piece in and put in place. If there was any one area where Featherbent was lacking, I would have to point to the dialogue and the textual narration. The dialogue was stilted in some places, and unnatural in others. The writer also had some interesting choices for conversation that did not lend terribly well to explaining the world that they were trying to establish. It also seemed sometimes like the textual narration was inserted into odd places, and went on for quite a while longer than one normally finds in a visual novel considering many such works place a stronger emphasis on being dialogue-driven.
As for actual content, I will say that I was a bit disappointed. That is just my personal take on the story, and there were many who have found it to be a roaring success, but I found the overall story to be rather wanting. I do not think it is without potential, that is for sure, but as the beginning to what promises to be a vast and lengthy visual novel series, it failed to pull me in and immerse me into the Featherbent world. Some world-building topics such as locations and the two types of inhabitants were barely touched on at all, mentioned briefly in opening narration but not explained further, to poor effect.
I make it habit not to overly critique artwork in such things, as appreciation of art is extremely subjective, but I will say that I found the backgrounds for the most part to be gorgeous. Character designs were interesting, though the artist's style could use work on further differentiation in facial structure (and hair). And I'm still not sure if these are people with bird wings, or personified birds. God help the first one that tries to fly with that wingspan as the God of Physics and Aerodynamics crushes his body into pulp, if it's the former.
All in all, C+.
VisualNovel First Chapter - Little Work Would Go a Long Way
There were a lot of things I really liked about the first chapter of Featherbent. The character art was consistent throughout. The backgrounds were lovely; detailed enough to stand on their own, but not at all taking away from the characters when they were on screen. The background music was also superb and the narrator was incredibly professional and enthralling.
There are only two places where Featherbent lacks for me, and both really come down to the writing/directing of the piece. It was quite obviously pushed for a release date it wasn't quite ready for. The errors in writing, dialogue, basic grammar and proper English are very noticeable. With a little more attention to detail and a real desire to release quality over deadline, I think Featherbent could have offered a lot more for its audience. Additionally, having someone involved that didn't already know the world would have been a lot more helpful as very little is explained to the reader, even in the most basic sense, leaving you feeling lost for much of the story.
However, the true failing I found was not with the visual novel itself, but with its creator and lead writer/director. I'm under no delusion that this is a truly professional piece of work. It's simply a group of friends working really hard on something. And that's a great place to start. But the care given to constructive criticism is down right shameful. Fivetail was overly defensive of nearly every point, downright aggressive at times and obviously insulting at others. After spending a very long time giving this project my honest and thought out critique, the response was nothing but a giant teal deer (TL;DR = Too Long; Didn't Read). It's juvenile, rude and more than a little condescending.
Now that I know that is the attitude and behavior of the lead on this little pet project, I find it incredibly hard to believe there is much hope of Featherbent getting any better over time. If Fivetail would care to get down off her high horse and deflate her ego there is a shot. But while she's under the impression she can do no wrong, there's no way for her or her work to improve.