Sp(L R)ite

Sp(L/R)ite was a game (VN?) I bought because I liked the publisher and the concept seemed interesting. Also it looked short. Very important. I’ve been enjoying quite a few short vns these past few days (q.u.q and Mahouteq being some other ones) and this one basically continued the trend.

Unfortunately, I feel that in some ways this one wasn’t exactly benefited from it, but it also wasn’t harmed by it either. Trying to think of a good way to put this…

It’s basically a relatively straightforward story. I try not to judge things by originality too much because I value execution more, but in this case I think because I could see the outline very early on some of the later parts didn’t feel as impactful.

That’s not to say it’s a bad story though. It’s a solid story, but I think if you’re familiar with these kinds of settings it won’t surprise you.

What I will give props for though off the bat is I think the presentation is quite nice. They did a good job with the 3d environments and I was especially surprised by the voice acting. It’s quite solid and one of the characters (Akrida) was pretty fun and I enjoyed their presence throughout. The TL was also solid for them, which arguably is quite impressive given they had to try to localize gyaru speech.

Now obligatory spoiler warnings because the real meat of the game and writing are the themes.

Like I mentioned before, the story is fairly straightforward. You play as a stray dog Pal, who befriends a girl (Jean) who’s being abused by her mom. She tries her best to stay on her mom’s good side, but ultimately is never rewarded for it and her mom eventually kills Pal, leading Jean to kill herself.

The part that did catch me a bit off guard is that it’s quite dark. There’s a pretty detailed picture of both a dead Pal and Jean hanging herself that I didn’t even realize at first because I didn’t think they’d do it.

Throughout the course of the game and as they remember, Jean regrets basically not being able to stand up for herself and that her inability to fight to protect what she treasures is what causes it to be lost.

There’s also another theme about how she has almost essentially blind faith in her mom, thinking that if she’s good, then her mom won’t abandon her.

In general, there’s a lot surrounding child abuse. I won’t ever claim to be an expert on the subject matter because I’m not, but I think it’s a difficult topic to tackle and while I think the game does a generally good job at handling it, I think one of the downsides of it being short is the resolution.

One aspect of the game that I thought wasn’t that great was that in order to see what is essentially the true ending, you had to play through the entire game again with some minor differences. This is where the game being short really helped.

In any case, in the true end and throughout the second playthrough, Jean comes to the realization that she needs to fight back. In the true end, she and Pal leave her mom and run away essentially.

I like the conclusion the game builds up to. Jean remembering how Pal is treated, and learning that doing nothing isn’t an answer, causes her to gain the courage to leave her mom. That part I liked.

But for lack of a better way to phrase it, I almost felt iffy on the conclusion and I think part of it is both a combination of how short the game is as a whole, but at the same time how much I had to spend repeating aspects (going through NG+) to come to that ending. This is sort of doubly so because one of the two normal ends, Jean is implied to have killed her mom anyways.

That being said, I appreciate that being the true end more than some reconciliation arc with her mom. There’s a pretty tragic/sad scene that I liked (because in some ways it hit close to home) where Jean talks about how all she ever really wanted was to be acknowledged. I always feel terrible for children being victims of abuse (and of course other victims) because children ultimately don’t know any better. Taking advantage of that to me is quite unforgiveable.

Anyways, that’s all to say that I liked the story. There were elements that I think could’ve been done better, but I enjoyed the presentation and ultimately don’t regret playing through it.