I’m a fan of MangaGamer’s games and have been for a while, therefore I jumped at getting the chance to experience Peace of Evil, one of their recently published titles. The artwork simply left me stunned and I couldn’t wait to get to know the girls better. While MangaGamer is well known for the high-quality games they usually publish, I have to say that Peace of Evil left me with a sour taste in my mouth as it didn’t live up to my expectations.
It’s important to note that Peace of Evil is currently incomplete and it’s not exactly clear whether the developer, Tamaya Kagiya, is intending to finish it in the near future. The full story can be read over on their Discord, but it appears it started life as a Kickstarter, which was fully funded, then someone left before it was finished and took the money. The remaining staff pieced together what they had completed to try and create a finished product, but it really isn’t. It has a very short playtime and some rather obvious omissions, clearly due to the premature ending of development.
That being said, I’ve played through the game, as it appears on Steam today, so I’ll provide a review based upon the current build, regardless of its rocky past and what’s happened.
The story takes place in a world full of so-called ‘hybrids’ which look like humans, but with animal ears and tails. The main character, Aeric, which is one of the hybrids, becomes the emperor of the city, Crance, after successfully raiding its previous one. Aeric tries his best to make the right decisions by not letting himself become influenced by outside factions – until his friend introduces three stunning foxes to him. After he starts to spend more time with them and gets to know the three girls a little better, he starts to unexpectedly lower his defences and show another side of himself to them.
The storyline starts off very cliche as my first impressions of Aeric was that he is your typical ‘cold guy’ who surprises you at times with his sweet side. Although I am sure we are all used to a love story like this, where the guy just starts off cold, the character development started off quite decent as even I was surprised to actually see him complimenting one of the girls. And most importantly, it all felt very genuine. That being said, it was actually quite heartwarming to see him slowly but surely opening up to others and being able to protect his girl – if he has to.
I absolutely fell in love with all of the girls within Peace of Evil. Every girl was very unique and different from one other, there will definitely be at least one girl you can’t help but adore, as I did. One of the foxes has a rather strong personality and refuses to lose against a male in any way, yet she is still cute in her own way. Alternatively, you could pick the intelligent girl or the outright cute one if they are more your preference over the strong-minded fox. I really enjoyed that even though every girl was so different personality-wise, they are all still extremely cute and have their own adorable scenes depending on the player’s choice.
Peace of Evil has two different choices within the game which will affect the scene afterwards and more importantly, which girl it will happen with. The description for the game, on the storefront, said there are multiple endings, which I could tell immediately was clearly the intention here. However, as aforementioned, the story is incomplete as of now – this is my biggest disappointment with the game. The ending we did get wasn’t done very well as it feels like the game got cut off all of a sudden and without any warning. When the credits started to roll, I was left really frustrated and confused.
Moreover, the story doesn’t even progress far enough for Aeric to be able to somewhat develop feelings for a specific girl, so it feels like this game is basically just an introduction to the characters.
While the art is really pretty, as well as the backgrounds, the game got quite confusing with its written text and scenes, as they simply didn’t match up at times. The lack of varieties of the sprites and backgrounds were a big problem here. When the text described Aeric as naked, his sprite was still fully clothed, but that’s not all, there are multiple scenes where the scene was ‘supposedly’ happening at night, yet daylight backgrounds were used instead. This could have been simply avoided by matching the text with its scene more appropriately.
When it comes to grammar, Peace of Evil sadly has quite a few conjugations and plural problems. I have to admit, I am usually not very picky about game translations, but I would expect a visual novel to get at least proofread so you are able to avoid simple grammar issues like these ones. With that being said, it doesn’t get to the point of not being able to understand what the writer wanted to say, but it gradually started to affect my immersion.
Official Trailer
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Final Conclusion
While Peace of Evil had an interesting premise and could have been a very sweet love story, it was already over before anything could develop at all. It’s such a shame that this game got dropped halfway, released in this incomplete state and, more importantly, it feels like Peace of Evil didn’t even get proofread properly. Although I really enjoyed reading through the interactions of its characters, even though it was only for a short while, I would recommend avoiding this game for now unless you don’t mind playing an incomplete game which might very likely never get completed.
If you’d like to know more about what happened to the production, if there are any further updates, or just to check out when the developer has moved on to now (they have supposedly moved onto another game), check out their Discord HERE.
A copy of the game was kindly provided for review purposes
Peace of Evil
£7.19
The Good:
- - Loveable characters
- - Pretty artwork
The Bad:
- - The game ends in the middle of nowhere
- - Romance couldn't develop yet
- - Description of the scene didn’t match at times
- - Grammar issues which could have been easily avoided
