Pact Between Us

Pact Between Us is the most "game" that Mystery Crown released so far (well for what concern their FMV division at least). I was surprise. It's a good game but my point is that you actually play this instead of having almost no gameplay or a very limited gameplay like some other title from Mystery Crown (even among some titles that I do like). The video quality is good, audio is ok (maybe a few line could have been better recorded but you might not even noticed that), editing is also good (for instance, in other games they have several scenes that cut abruptly but not here). The skip system is the same that they use in all their FMV games and while it's better than nothing, it is annoying and could be better but in Pact Between Us you can activate the fast mode after you finish the game for the first time, which really makes things better (this is on top of being able to skip a scene with the button); with that on, you can get all the achievements without making the game feeling too much repetitive. The translation is..understandable..is not perfect but there's way worst (and this is a problem among the majority of Chinese FMV) and in this case, honestly the not perfect translation created a scene that is hilarious to me. "The future is changed", i just love that (your little sister's name gets wrongfully translate as "future"). However as i said it is understandable and because you can change the future, I don't have any complains about the translation. Sadly there are no extras like videos, behinds the scenes or even pictures. Also, while there is a windowed mode, you can't resize it and it's basically the same resolution as a full screen. I could have used a resizable window mode while I farming for achievements after the first run but eh..is not a big deal. Keep in mind that is game is a managerial subgenre, very common in asia with some titles in the west as well, where you basically plan your activities, train, get resources and so on. I personally like this type of games and this is generally speaking a good game.

I wasn't sure what to expect, but honestly really like this game. Translation is kinda bad, but overall I really enjoyed this, and there's replayability. 8.5/10

Note: A tl;dr is included at the bottom of the review. I'd also recommend reading this review on its own page instead on the store page as it messes with the formatting that have been used in this review. You can access it by clicking on the "Not Recommended" or by going to this link. Pact Between Us is a perfect example of a heartwarmingly fun, cozy story with a seemingly unique gameplay concept that is unfortunately heavily crippled and held back by its repetitive gameplay alongside possessing bugs & issues up the wazoo. If the game is more polished then I'd say that the game is "palatable" in the way that the gameplay section would still be feeling repetitive, but at least it wouldn't be as jarring as it is now. The scenes, while nothing too amazing, can come off as being rather wholesome good in the way that they do cater to a niche of people who enjoy reading childcare stories, in which I'd say that the scenes are good, but not good enough to make it worth sitting through everything else. Just in case some people think that I’m overexaggerating, then below is a non-exhaustive list of bugs & issues that I’ve experienced: • Audio seemingly disappear and appear whenever they feel like it. It can be rather immersion-breaking, but worst of all it can come out during important scenes, so at times you’d have happy music & sad music playing at the same time during crucial heartbreaking moments in the game. • Characters spazzing out as if they have been possessed by Anabelle. • Inability to pause fmv during cutscenes which not only does not allow you to easily take screenshots but also means that you must commit to watching the cutscene since, again, you can’t pause them. • Memory (also known as replay) on the main menu allows you to rewatch scenes in the game, but not only does it not feature subtitles, but the main menu music is still there creating for a rather jarring watching experience. • Some repeat scenes (primarily vacations) aren’t skippable, resulting in a huge time waster on the player’s behalf due to having to constantly watch the same scenes over and over again. • Some scenes are improperly cut making transitions in-between shots to feel rather unnatural which breaks immersion. • Terrible English subtitles possibly due to the work of a very shoddy machine-translation work. I & You being used interchangeably and worst of all the little sister’s name (Weilai) is being translated to “Future”. • Texts on papers aren’t translated, meaning that without first reading through the game description or synopsis, then you would be bit confused as to the main drama of the story being that the brother is adopted, this information is crucial to the story, yet is hard to grasp until the very end of the story. • There are 3 kinds of audio in the game, voice, sound, and music. You can change increase and reduce the volumes, but by default not only is the music overly-loud making the vocals pretty much inaudible in most scenes, but sound seems to also be directly connected to voice in a way that if you have it lowered all the way down then some scenes that should have voice-over would be ended up being dead silence. Before going through with the conclusion, I’d like to briefly touch upon the endings first. Some of them feel like they ended rather abruptly, but this is mainly due to the work of the wacky machine translation. I say that the scenes and build-up of it all, while not really that rewarding, does give you bit of a punch to the heart(?) I believe that the rapid fast transition to the credit screen which changes the tune from sad song -> happy music really kills any sort of feeling that you might have prior to the experience, and without it + better translation then they their impact would have been felt a lot more. While I don’t fully agree with the whole message of "do whatever you want", I can still somewhat understand the goal of what they’re trying to say where instead of wasting time worrying about the future, you…