Blood Midnight Blossom, developed by podval01, is a visual novel about a woman called Annihilation who has recently fallen into debt of one point nine billion (currency not specified) after her father left every single thing he owned to her – and this inheritance included his debt. Unfortunately for her, debt collectors are ready and on their way to make sure they get some form of payment before the time is up, leaving the MC with but a day to find the amount she owes and no immediate solution to find such a large amount. Catharsis, a vampire, then offers assistance with the debt by asking to have Annihilation’s soul for a week. This quite possibly may be her only way to escape her debt.
𓆩♡𓆪
Due to the fact that I did not finish BMB and every route it offered, I cannot tell you as much as I’d like on the topic of endings and choices. There did indeed seem to be a fair few options and several different endings, but the endings I did get were not very exciting. They were early/short ones, however, so I can understand it may be due to my lack of story knowledge.
Art-wise, the style was indeed consistent. All characters and pretty much every background continued to follow along with the design choice, yet I didn't feel especially drawn to any of the designs. The art is also AI-generated, with the store page saying the graphics are the result of strong processing of 3D models. I do not hate AI art entirely, and I believe it can be used correctly. However, this game was entirely AI art, and it was very noticeable at some points. This is reflected in how in some scenes the art will “animate” as expressions and eyes move, but it didn’t really look right. There were a few CGs I unlocked which also just didn't look right in the slightest. I’ll include a specific example after this paragraph. I know I am being very critical here, as visuals are very important for a visual novel, but I just didn’t like the art in BMB. On this topic, the music felt “simple”. Not good or bad, but it left me with a neutral feeling, as it was simply uninteresting. But I can credit that the music did indeed fit scene changes, becoming more intense or spooky at fitting moments.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3279792594
Unfortunately, I did not manage to get very far into BMB, as I didn’t really enjoy the writing. A lot of sentences were almost too wordy. For example, the following sentence was used to explain a kettle. “I was roused from this trance by the sound of a kettle boiling. It will soon report about water boiling.” The second half of the sentence, as we should all expect, is pretty irrelevant, and the word “report” doesn’t fit here at all. There are many sentences that feel very weird like this one, and it gives me the feeling that this game may have gone through a machine translation, as I could not see the average fluent English speaker speaking like this.
Don’t get me wrong, not every bad translation is world-ending for a game. I understand covering multiple languages is hard, especially when you’re a new developer and may not be able to afford something being proofread or the like. Yet even with this knowledge, I cannot recommend BMB from its writing since I feel there’s too much of it that doesn’t make sense, and the game also feels so bloated with irrelevant dialogue and randomly inserted lines that just weren’t clear at all. I also found the game confusing on many occasions, such as Annihilation randomly calling Catharsis their sister. I had absolutely no reason to believe they were actually siblings since Catharsis is meant to be a vampire that’s hundreds of years old, which leads me to believe this was yet another translation issue.
𓆩♡𓆪
Finally, I have my biggest complaint from Blood Midnight Blossom. This is a huge part of what leads me to believe this was machine translated. First off, there was the use of some very uncommon words. Guarantor and bequeath, for example. Granted, this is not terrible or game-ruining, but seeing the frequency of such words was just a bit distracting. I don’t understand at all why we wouldn’t use the more common/understood variation, but perhaps this is simply a pet peeve on show. In the end, what put me off of the game entirely was the fact that there were some very strange out-of-the-blue mentions that made me feel quite uncomfortable. Upon discussing giving Catharsis her soul, Annihilation asked her what she planned to do with it – coming up with some wild ideas such as asking if the catch is that she’s [spoiler]“going to be raped on the couch by five people all week,” [/spoiler] and asking what was going to drive her crazy. I don’t think a sentence could have put me off more at all.
At the end of the day, I personally did not enjoy Blood Midnight Blossom due to the translation, the sentences I read, and the entire use of AI. If you are fine with the use of AI art, there is a much higher chance you may like this game, as I understand I have a bias against it when used to entirely fill a game. However, the translation had me pulled out of any immersion I could have possibly had, and therefore I cannot give this game a recommendation. Some proofreading could honestly go a long way for this game’s English translation.
A copy was provided by podval01 to Otome Lovers for review purposes.
[quote]Please follow our curator page, [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/4680120/]Otome Lovers[/url], if you'd like to see more reviews like this one! [/quote]
