INDIE GAME SPOTLIGHT: Resident Evil 4 Otome Edition

I've been meaning to review this for a while.  Who could pass up a remake of Resident Evil 4 from the point of view of Ashley Graham, the President's daughter ... AS A VISUAL NOVEL!!!!  

Well I couldn't, so lets dig through this game like Ashley has to dig through trash.

Straight off the bat, I want to explain that I 100% recommend playing this.  Which is important to get out of the way, because the rest of the review will reflect the game.  Namely, it's going to get really weird and the humour is going to be sarcastic and occasionally very dry.

Unlike Ashley, who sees what most of the players see:  Leon is hot.  Similar to almost every character she interacts with, much to her personal joy and our amusement.  Whilst not strictly a romance vn, Otome Edition borrows HEAVILY from them for Ashley's behaviour, and developer Shimmersoft has taken pains to have this reflected visually in-game.  There is something bizarre yet hugely entertaining about Ashley wondering why the hell she's being ordered into a dumpster, and that resulting in a very romance novel-style daydream sequence, all as she's surrounded by the screams of locals as Leon heads off on one of his charming murder sprees.

So we have intentional use of ludonarrative dissonance played as a feature, rather than as a bug.  It fits.  It fits with this version of Ashley Graham, a young woman, riddled with hormones and with all the life skills of a dead fish.  She comes from privilege, lives in a gated community, has bodyguards and a driver.  Ashley's gone from a sweet young girl and victim of her father's political success, who follows Leon around in order to survive, to a sweet young woman with a slight narcissist streak, determined to survive, angry at being used as a maguffin and with a knife-edge sarcasm that often gets the better of her.  Still a victim in all of this but certainly more proactive.  She still follows Leon around to survive - but also for his back muscles and juicy, juicy butt.  

As much as Ashley "Micro-Aggression" Graham can come across as a useless and annoying character I found her to be my favourite iteration.  Her anger and behaviour is far more understandable in a fan game than it is in the main games.  She tries to be a good person, even if it's a struggle against her upbringing and nature.  Using Ashley as a player character helped me be more sympathetic to her situation and is something that Shimmersoft uses to great effect.  You get invested in Ashley as a person and it's great fun to pick different options, questions and routes just to see what she'll say or do.  If anything, I'd say it's more akin to a choose-your-own-adventure novel where you're actively fighting against the story.  Sound bad?  It really isn't!  You may get dragged back to Resident Evil 4's dubious idea of sanity but Ashley gets dragged back too and she is typically rather cross about the whole thing.

So, I liked the story.  I enjoyed all of the characters.  What about the gameplay in this game?  Otome Edition mostly uses a rather standard visual novel interface.  If you've played a RenPy visual novel you will have zero problems finding items and menus.  Even if you haven't, this could be the game to get you into them as it's clean, simple and clearly labelled.  Character names are often changed to reflect how Ashley views them and the image next to the text box changes a lot.  They're static but these changes really improve the feel of the game and give all of the characters an extra, yet subtle, layer of feeling.  The design is pulled together to fit the Resident Evil 4 aesthetic and works incredibly well - obvious but without unneccessary intrusion.

And finally, I really didn't expect this level of work and professionalism in a fan project!  The scenes are a mash-up of static pictures, in-game video from Resident Evil 4 itself and some fun modelled gif-like images scattered throughout.  It's not boring to look at or interact with.  One slightly bad point is that it can be lacking in sound, especially music.  That's a shame but you're unlikely to notice it as there's no real let-up in the action, which is a sentence I never expected to write about a visual novel.