Psychedelica of the Ashen Hawk

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Psychedelica of the Ashen Hawk

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30-40+ hours to complete, Psychedelia of the Ashen Hawk is an otome visual novel with four romance routes, full voice acting, and a flowchart that makes backtracking and keeping the game to a single save file a breeze. A sequel to Psychedelia of the Black Butterfly with reoccurring characters, so it’s essential to read Black Butterfly first to avoid significant story spoilers. Overall, Ashen Hawk is well-written with exceptionally gorgeous artwork but with significant flaws – it’s boring as hell. If you are playing on auto-read to enjoy the voice acting, it will take nearly twenty hours to start interacting with the plot, which is unacceptable. The game is completely bloated with required side stories to read involving conversations with random townspeople and it’s a ridiculous slog to read them all so you can get points and unlock endings.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3420715253
The female lead is an idiot. The only possible reason she could have made it to adulthood must have been divine intervention, as she actively makes harmful choices to herself throughout the entire novel and only seeks short-term solutions to long-term problems. She has no critical thinking or survival skills to speak of despite being a handyman other than basic cooking. She has a sword and cannot use it. She is a witch and has no magic. Everyone in town, who I’m convinced is a cult, is looking to kill her to stop a curse and she chooses to tell other people she’s a witch when actual innocent people are being murdered just for being suspected of one. She doesn’t like keeping secrets, even when that secret is the only reason she’s alive.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3420714553
The worst thing about this novel is that despite the story being centered around the female lead, she often feels like a passive observer. While she is present during events, she rarely participates in them. She mainly serves as a stand-in for the player, receiving most of the key information from other NPCs. Instead of uncovering the mysteries of the town herself, the answers are simply handed to you, leaving no room to come to your own conclusions and nothing to investigate. All of the NPCs, except one, can be taken at face value and it’s almost distressingly boring. None of the romance was convincing and after reading every ending, I genuinely got the impression that the only good ending was the true ending where ironically, you avoid all the male lead routes to get to.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3420714092

OKAY, took me a long while to write this review. But that's mostly because words cannot describe how much i fell in love with this game.
I expected yet another otome game with pretty basic story line and the fact that we can romance somebody, but i tried it anyway because of the artstyle. The art is truly gorgeous, but its not the best thing in this game.

The story is very entertaining with a good mystery behind it all and crazy twists!! Once i got to a certain twist about the rumored killer, I pulled an all-nighter, just to finish the game, because i just NEEDED to know what's going to happen next.

Besides the amazing art. THE VOICE ACTING?? It has a lot of well known VA's, which really suprised me. I am a VA entusiast, so I kept on recognizing voices or checking them every time someone new appeared!
Most noticable ones:
- Namikawa Daisuke (va of Choso, Hisoka, Takeru Sasazuka from CollarxMailce
- Hino Satoshi (Rengoku, Daichi, Toma from Amnesia)
- Hirakawa Daisuke (Sampo, Laito Sakamaki, Lucien from Mr.Love)

The romance aspect is not that present as in other otomes, the routes being just short endings or what-ifs. Beside that, it's one long common route. EXCEPT one character.
You see, the true ending is a very bittersweet one. Once you know the truth behind the town, all of the other endings just... don't feel right. They all feel like a bad ending tbh. But because of that, the true ending is the best one. It is what SHOULD happen. Its most realistic, no "it all magically fixed and they lived a happy ever after". but it FEELS right. Even if I don't like it. It is hinted in the heroine ending that the story is leaned towards one character though. You can tell who the authors liked lol. (luckly for me he is my fav one)

TLDR: Loved the game. 10/10 amazing art, beautiful story, bittersweet ending

No bugs for me unlike Black Butterfly!!
Really fun story that I binged. All the LIs are precious and likable. Although the ending qualities do vary quite a bit. Overall still highly recommend if you like plot heavy games.

First of all, I'd like to clarify two important things: 1) I haven't played Black Butterfly psychedelics; 2) I play visual novels quite often, especially otome games.

Advantage:
1) Atypical mechanics of movement and narration. The game is divided into "main plot", "short episodes" (you interact with a random character) and "super-short episodes" (in interview format, you can ask one question and get a very short answer). No "doki-doki" points at all. You can skip most part besides main plot if you want;
2) Quite useful interface that allow to check plot progress;
3) A twisted story without Scooby-doo-style ending. There are no ultimate baddes or good guys. The characters are presented from different angles. There is also a system of "notes" that allows you to watch some events on behalf of other characters (besides heroine);
4) A heroine without amnesia and Mary-Sue-char. The heroine has her own will (although in some of the endings her character suffers greatly) and her own aspirations. I didn't really like her sacrifice, which is too similar to self harm for me, but mostly she's wonderful;
5) Pretty cute and unusual character design, as well as wonderful music and art.

Disadvantage:
1) Few endings. I'm used to best\good\bad ending system. There's either an some-ending or there isn't one. Almost all endings (except Levi and maybe Lavan) leave a bittersweet aftertaste. The only "happy for all" ending sounds too unrealistic, but it refers, as I know, to another game in this series;
2) A small variety of music. The soundtrack varies greatly in quality. It often turns out that an inappropriate soundtrack is chosen for an event (especially often in short episodes)

This VN is really well done for the best experience playing Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly first before this one allows you to catch the references from the first game. Not required because they are technically different stories but I really enjoyed the universe dynamics. I loved both games and hope another game comes out within the same universe!!! <3

Beautiful story, gorgeous illustrations.

It's rather hard for me to recommend this game, since it didn't meet my expectations at all. I got neither a coherent story nor compelling love interests, and romances weren't convincing or fulfilling.
But still, the game has a lot of fortes. The art and character design is beautiful, voice acting impeccable, music tender (composition The Heart is amazing). The heroine is both cute and admirable, such a kind, strong, bright and honest person. The story is dark and intriguing and keeps you hooked.
Overall it's a solid game, even though not quite what I was hoping for.

made my cry

the art is great but OMG is boring, so much pointless text..i just couldnt keep playing it, I felt myself falling asleep at some point and just alt+f4

I cannot emphasize how much i love the heroine of this game. Strong willed and has a 3D character. I love her. Such a lovely story filled with plot twists. the characters are so nicely written and it's a genuinely interesting story. would definitely recommend. a breath of fresh air. Made me plan to play PoBB now.

so hear me out








i simp for myself

Do not skip the side stories!! They contain CGs and add a lot of character development. It's essential to the mainline sometimes. If it's locked, then it's for second playthrough. Regardless, the common route is very long. Some chapters are lighthearted with the heroine assisting kids or baby rabbit. Overall, it sets a tone in between the romance so it feels wholesome as well. Highly recommended, tags would be gender-bender, homophobia, ancient folkare, political factions, etc. If you've enjoyed Even If Tempest, you'll enjoy this game.