The Divine Speaker BL game review!
Recently I "attended" the digital free fujin convention fujocon for the third time. As always, I had a great time there both chatting with fellow "attendees" in the official discord server and with the many fun games, trivias, panels, etc that were on offer. This blog post is not about the con however. It is about the prize I won for participating in battleships , one of the BL-themed games that was on offer. Though I am ashamed to admit I got last place (though to be honest I also had a pretty impossible ship I was given to defend, and people DID still like the ship name I came up with and my defense XD), everyone who took part still got a prize. I expected something small because I didn't actually win the game, but I was very pleasantly surprised to see the price was an entire 30 dollar 18+ BL visual novel/game called The Divine Speaker , normally on sale over at steam and made by Two and a Half Studios . I hadn't seen their panel at the con itself, but the game immediately looked interesting to me, so I added it to my steam account and started playing it almost right away. And I can safely say I am very glad I did, since it's a great visual novel! Today, I wanted to spend some time discussing my thoughts on it/giving a review, and gushing about how/why I like it so much like the fanboy trash I am! ;)
Introduction
The Divine Speaker is, as said, a BL visual novel/game by Two and a Half Studios . It is available for 30 USD on steam, which is a very reasonable price given the significant length of the game and it's qualities, which we will discuss in the rest of this review. I will try to keep this review spoiler-free so as not to ruin anyone's future playthrough, except for very general information like names of the main characters and such that one would normally expect to find in a review of this kind anyway. Talking about main characters, our MC is called Raen. At the very start of the game, just after coming of age, he is tricked into doing something strictly forbidden and exiled from his home, after which he discovers that the whole spiel about it being the only inhabited place in the world surrounded by an endless forest is a lie. From there he embarks on a massive quest throughout the whole wide world, meeting many interesting characters along the way (and f*cking some of them depending on the players choices, ofcourse!). On that latter note, this is definitely very much an 18+ game. While there is no non-con or other elements that would normally fall under "trigger warning content", there is definitely some explicit smut and as such it is most certainly not a game that is suitable for anyone illegal. Having said that, I want to make it very clear that the focus off the game is very much on the story, characters, world, etc, and NOT on the smut. It's there, it's delicious, but don't make it the reason for playing the game or think that you won't get a story as well. This is definitely a case of "plot with porn", not "porn without plot". The game is available for windows, linux, and (cr)apple, and as with most visual novels, will run on pretty much a toaster in terms of (lack of) system requirements. If it has a screen and a processor, it will run it, basically :)
Cast
The game has a diverse cast of characters, both romanceable and not. I think the romanceable characters (I don´t want to spoil who they are exactly), provide a nice spread of personalities and body types to choose from. One is a cute, shy, small, kind of feminine soft boy, one is a red haired, muscled strong kind of tsundere type, one is kinky and playfull and loves sex, etc. I think all but the most demanding of people will enjoy this game if they come for the romance. However, as I said before, this is very much a game that does NOT revolve around it's ¨sexy times content¨. Be prepared to wait for a long time before getting to the smut, and also keep in mind that at least some of the potential partners like to take it slow in building things up - in my playthrough the first two "bed scenes" didn´t give any actual sweet yaoi action at all T_T. The game does certainly include some juicy content for those who are patient enough though!
Beside the potential romance partners there are also many other characters. They are almost all males, but I guess that is to be expected in this genre of games, haha. And good news for all the thirsty fangirls and fanboys and fanthems out there: they uniformly consist of delicious eye candy. If they were real, I´d want all of them in my bed (one by one, to savour every single one of them to the fullest... okay, maybe two at a time at most. One in the front, one in the back, and then switch it up... would make me a happy uke ). I am a little sad that not all of these hotties can be f*cked, but as I said before, what is on offer is enough. And all the characters are fun and get plenty of attention. And they all feel like real people. The only character I would like to be fleshed out a bit more maybe is, ironically, our MC, Raen. He is a nice guy, if maybe a bit too easy to trust everyone he meets right away even in the most suspicious of situations, but he kinda feels like a character you are supposed to self insert yourself into as opposed to a character in a story you're reading *about*. I don´t mind this though, for two reasons. Firstly, I feel that this just "comes with the territory" - in a well-written, exciting, engrossing visual novel like this I think lead characters will necessarily feel like this, especially if they are written in the first person like this game is. Secondly, I am not ashamed to say imagining myself as him was very fun - especially during the delectable f*ck-scenes, off course. As I said before I´d love to have some fun with the entire male cast if I could (maybe I should try to make some friends cosplay them? :yum:), so being able to fantasize about this more strongly because of the MC being so easy to project myself unto felt like a bonus for me, especially during those sexy scenes XD All in all, I am happy with the large, interesting, diverse cast of characters/personalities.
Art and sound
I quite like the art style in this game. While I said I would try to avoid spoilers, I will give some screenshots here to help give an impression of the game:
As can be seen in the screenshots above, the colors in this game are quite vibrant, and overall I feel that it has a soft, warm, inviting art style. Despite this, it never felt
cartoonish or inappropiate for the many serious or dark themes/contant in this game. The art made the game feel more unique for me, I can´t immediately think of any other game I
have played that it ¨feels like". Considering it still looks very good, I consider this to be quite an achievement with the massive amount of visual novels that have come out over
the years, and it also made the experience more refreshing and interesting to me. I think that in a say a year from now, this will be a game that I will still distinctly remember
playing, and will be able to recall the artstyle off. And as I said before there is some of that delicious smut, even though it's not the primary focus of the game (that's the story).
As for the sound, there isn't very much of it in terms of sound effects. The music is great, there is enough variety in the soundtrack that it stays fresh and doesn't become annoying, and most of the songs are really pretty! They also usually fit the mood of the scene they are paired with quite well. Finally, there is the voice acting. When I played the game not all voice acting was released yet, but I was lucky enough to happen to play the route that did have it. I didn't do so on purpose - it just so happened that the one I chose anyway was the one that was already fully voiced. The voice acting is mostly quite good, and literally the day I finished my playthrough of the game there was a major update over steam that introduced voice acting for the second of the three routes, with the developers promising the final voicepack will be added soon, so even for people who want to play one of the other routes it shouldn't take much longer before they'll be able to enjoy a fully voice acted experience, as well.
Story
The final part of the game I want to talk about before getting to the conclusion is the plot. Obviously I don't want to spoil anything, so I won't go into details. The story quikcly hooked me in and at first I wanted to keep playing more and more to see what the next twist or surprise would be. I do have to say that the game was just a bit too long for my taste, the final few hours I mostly wanted it to be over just to know how it ended and get on with night/shade: you're the drug, which I had bought in a steam sale and looked very enticing sitting in my library. Part of this is also that the story at time felt a bit slow for me, like I would have preferred at times if the plot was moved along a bit faster. But overall, the story is interesting, with many twists and turns and a diverse cast of interesting characters and support characters. There is also a nice variety in settings in which the game takes place. And in between all of the dark and gritty themes/subjects that the game often has, there is also space for some humour and some more light-hearted elements/moments, which greatly added to my enjoyment of the game. I liked the dark etc themes, but it was fun to also have "nicer" moments in between sometimes.
Conclusion
Overall, despite my feeling that it could have been a bit less drawn-out towards the end, I really enjoyed this game. The art, music, characters, smut, and story are all quite good, and you can really see the developers really saw this as their passion project and tried to make the best game they possibly could. And by and large, they succeeded! Overall, I would rate The Divine Speaker an 8/10, and I recommend anyone who is into BL games to play it, especially if you're also into fantasy stories. It's available on steam for not that-much-money and runs even on linux, so go try it out!
That's it for today! I hope you enjoyed reading it and I will write another page sometime depending on how busy I am with life and when I think of another fun subject to write about! Let's hope it doesn't take another year this time! XD Till then! ;)