Dreams of Desire [v1.0 Definitive Edition Elite] is a visual novel with good renders and animations: Brought down with flat writing, bland characters, and choices that rarely matter.
Looking at the gallery on the main page will show you the level of quality we’re talking about. This quality is maintained or even improved as you progress through the story and the animations which accompany it are also excellent. So why then was I left with disappointment?
Well, the writing is… Inconsistent. This would be fine if the build up and pay off was good but – it’s not. Take the bitchy older sister cliché for example. In the first chapter, she hates you. The next chapter she’s sucking your dick. Apply this to each character cliché and you are left with shells of characters whose scenes do not feel ‘earned’. Dreams of Desire holds your hand the entire time and this brings me to my next criticism.
Choices rarely matter. Despite every chapter having many ‘choices’, you are forced into ‘choosing’ all of them or the story won’t progress. So why give me the choice in the first place? But don’t fret, some choices do matter! And the game will place big warnings telling you choice A or B will matter. Unless of course it’s a game over choice, in which case they happen sporadically.
At the start of the game, I was considering the choices and reading the dialogue to better understand the characters. Eventually I was mindlessly skipping dialogue because I was bored.
Looking at the gallery on the main page will show you the level of quality we’re talking about. This quality is maintained or even improved as you progress through the story and the animations which accompany it are also excellent. So why then was I left with disappointment?
Well, the writing is… Inconsistent. This would be fine if the build up and pay off was good but – it’s not. Take the bitchy older sister cliché for example. In the first chapter, she hates you. The next chapter she’s sucking your dick. Apply this to each character cliché and you are left with shells of characters whose scenes do not feel ‘earned’. Dreams of Desire holds your hand the entire time and this brings me to my next criticism.
Choices rarely matter. Despite every chapter having many ‘choices’, you are forced into ‘choosing’ all of them or the story won’t progress. So why give me the choice in the first place? But don’t fret, some choices do matter! And the game will place big warnings telling you choice A or B will matter. Unless of course it’s a game over choice, in which case they happen sporadically.
At the start of the game, I was considering the choices and reading the dialogue to better understand the characters. Eventually I was mindlessly skipping dialogue because I was bored.