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Reviews VisualNovel / Featherbent

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BearExplosion Since: Apr, 2013
04/17/2013 14:35:27
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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+.


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