Vivi and the Magic Island ( ヴィヴィと魔法の島 )
Alps and the Dangerous Forest By X-Rabbit
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[Summary]
Vivi and co. went to investigate a beautiful aurora on a mysterious island.
The group gets separated as each of them discover the island's dark secrets...
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Review:
The people responsible to the classic hit of its time "Alps and the Dangerous Forest" have successfully rode on its coattails and got their latest release straight into the #1 top selling game across all categories in the past week.
The old-school fans did not forget the good 'ol days they had with Alps, and put their faith and money in our new heroine Vivi.
You know what? I can't blame them. I'd purchase ANY new Libra Heart game in a heartbeat, even if it sucks ass. (that would be nice too though..)
I've decided to make this a double review (maybe more of a 1.5), since well... the game has BOTH heroines, with the same familiar gameplay from the first installment, as Vivi's game more or less a straight sequel to Alp's.
⭐ So lets start with a brief introduction to the OG: Alps and the Dangerous Forest.
Back when almost every H game had standards, and this will also set a good example how H-gaming haven't really advanced throughout the years, but still manages to stay relevant thanks to the basic rule since the dawn of men: sex sells.
If you ever played LIMBO: y'know, that black and white semi-horror adventure with a kid who can't fight back, but must find solutions through basic movement and a single interaction button to get across all sort of dangers..
Alp's is basically it, but you fear for your hymen instead your life.
Granted, if both Alp's and LIMBO for that matter came out today, they wouldn't sell for shit.
Breaking out in any scene, platform, or genre, is all about innovation and originality. There's always a thirst for something different, kinda like how Vampire survivors looks worse than 50% of its clones, but sells ways better because it was the first of its kind.
That being said, there are still to this day no H puzzle platformers like Alp's that I can think of from the top of my head. What else, is that it is still a pretty decent porn game with great animations and scenes.
Now here's the interesting part - Alp's mechanics in Vivi's game share very similar gameplay, almost as if nothing changed since 2017, with a few tweaks.
Truth be told, most platformers ACT games never got rid of that "roughness" and jank that they're ever so familiar with.
And why should they? people play porn games for porn first, gaming second.
Mediocre gameplay can sell incredibly well with quality H, but mediocre H often struggles with competent gameplay, since usually the game itself isn't all that to compete with higher standard non-H titles.
⭐ This takes us to Vivi and the Magic Island:
Honest opinion? it's a good game that very likely sold as well as it did thanks to its predecessor's success.
🕹️ We start our journey after landing on an island with our group of friends.
After a short intro, an immediate tutorial facing a bunch of goblins initiates, explaining the mechanics: move, jump, slide, ground combo, aerial strike, shoot, reload, and vault over enemies.
The game is split into four level types:
- Transition stages from point A to point B: you can basically ignore all enemies and speedrun.
- Waves / Side-scroller waves: defeat all enemies in order to advance to the next stage / area.
- Alp: Blast from the past. Puzzle platform into the next objective with our past heroine.
- Boss fights.
The majority of the game is the first two types, with plenty of skippable cutscenes in-between.
Having multiple playstyles, along with Vivi's newly acquired abilities along the way, does in fact manage to keep the game fresh.
No matter how long a game is, the game loop is generally the same by the 20% mark until the end. But here I found myself constantly introduced with new ideas that kept me hooked for long enough to finish the game in one sitting.
And let me tell you that after 200 posts, that's quite an achievement for an H game nowadays.
💕 A major improvement in Vivi's sequel - Live 2D, which wasn't as developed back then.
In terms of H content, I'd say that you can expect the same format of CGs and animations as Alp's, but in better quality in terms of higher resolution and finer details.
So if you enjoyed Alp's content, you'll absolutely love Vivi's (and Alp again) as well.
That aside, now the full-screen animated defeat scenes have been upgraded with a modern Live2D technology, where we get less tweening, and more anime-like animation of our girls getting assaulted step by step.
A huge improvement, where the animations almost feel like stand-alone short videos.
Although to be fair both games CG animations are pretty hot regardless of how they were executed.
For some questionable reason you don't unlock all the scenes after beating the game.
Nobody likes forced defeats to unlock content, so thankfully the dev is well aware of that, and shared a cheat code where you can type "Vivi" at the gallery to fully unlock everything.
Honestly though, just beating the game should cut the chase.
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Many of the reviews on DLsite mention Alp or the studio before they even speak about Vivi's game.
It is quite clear how the game sold incredibly well, despite not greatly improving its predecessor's features.
That being said, Vivi and the Magic island is still a legit game that provides good entertainment in both gameplay and H content.
However, it is important to keep in mind that its huge success is heavily reflected from the studio's reputation, relative to other titles that also provide similar quality of entertainment.
I doubt there's anyone that looked at the screenshots and regretted their purchase, but on a personal level I did hope somewhere that the devs would attempt to elevate the gameplay to the next level, given the bag they made from their first title that is about 30% length of its sequel.
Either way, both Alp and Vivi's games are extremely solid picks when looking for classic H ACT doujin titles, and while you don't need to play the first to enjoy the second, I highly recommend playing both for the complete experience.
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👉 Alps and the Dangerous Forest & Vivi and the Magic Island are available on DLsite.
❤️ For relevant H content of these titles you may contact me in DM for referrals.
