Отзывы

• gamedeal user

  Mar 3, 2022

  Honestly I'd be hard pressed recommending Chemically Bonded for a few reasons, it isn't necessarily bad by any means but compared to many other games in the genre I'd call it a little mediocre. Most of my issues with this title stem from the stilted and unnatural dialogue, very repetitive scenes describing the MC basking in the sunlight every like 10 minutes or hearing Kiyoko's and Naomi's backstory for the umpteenth time to the point I can barely take this game seriously. The rest of my issues mostly revolve around one of the lead romantic interests Kiyoko, I found her voice work to be super weird, I usually don't complain about this as English voiced VNs are my jam and if the voice work is a little rough around the edges I can handle it but for some reason the voice director told her to sound like a 7 year old or she just naturally sounds like that and paired with her lines (which really were not doing her any favours) it just felt really off putting to me, I wasn't a huge fan of her route overall tbh. There was however some stuff I actually did really like, such as Naomi's route. While I do believe Naomi was a little on the tropey side, I still found her a little endearing and I felt the story beats of her route were far more natural than Kiyoko's. I also found the art and music to be well above average, the sprites and backgrounds look great and the music does an excellent job setting the scene for many of the more tender moments. There were a few side characters that were fairly interesting such as Sae (who got her own mini route in an update to the extras menu) and they even added a cameo of Ceri from their previous game as a minor character in both main routes which was pretty neat. Overall I feel like if the writing was a little less repetitive, the dialogue a little more natural, and they added more depth to some of the characters this could've been a pretty good game, but as it stands its sort of mediocre, a decent effort and I do feel bad giving this a thumbs down but but it fell pretty shy of my expectations. I hope the next project "Thawing Feelings" doesn't fall into the same pitfalls this entry stumbled with.
• gamedeal user

  Jun 2, 2022

  Story is cute, but I had to turn off the voices because one of the girls sounds like she's voiced by a 5 y/o and it was extremely off putting. Other than that one glaring annoyance, the actual story was good. Update: turns out you can decide the volume for each individual character so if you turn her's off, it's great.
• gamedeal user

  Sep 18, 2022

  Chemically Bonded is a sweet BxG romance VN set a Japanese high school, where you ‘play’ as a generic male protagonist who finds himself caught up in the drama between two girls, Kiyoko and Naomi, whose friendship has fallen apart under mysterious circumstances. What caused the relationship between these two girls to deteriorate? That is something the main character spends the first half of the story trying to figure out, while simultaneously developing his bonds with both heroines. CB’s story itself is somewhat cliché (if I had a penny for every BxG romance VN set in high school that’s on Steam, I’d have enough to buy a sausage roll from Greggs), but it’s in the presentation of this fairly simple idea that CB really shines. CB’s art, if it isn’t apparent enough from the screenshots on the store page, is very pretty: especially the backgrounds. There are a lot of backgrounds in this VN, and while they’re mostly used to depict Yet Another Japanese High School, they have some absolutely gorgeous lighting effects on them: it all looks very aesthetic. Some of the backgrounds even have subtle animations on them, like the drifting dust particles in the chemistry classroom, or the neon lights in the arcade, which makes them even more immersive. The character art, too, is really nice. It’s in a traditional anime style, but the shading looks very soft, which complements the backgrounds and the slow-paced, dreamy prose (I’ll write more about that later). Though CB’s story is very ‘anime’ (and it’s self-aware of it, too: there’s a lot of jokes to be found therein about tsunderes, and fourth-wall-breaky ‘if I was a character in a VN, I bet this would totally happen lol’), the designs of the two love interests are very subdued, which I appreciated. I love rainbow-haired anime girls, but I don’t think that’d work here, given the ‘heart’ of CB’s story is actually quite down to Earth. The UI in CB is also incredibly polished throughout, with numerous styles of textbox (it becomes more unobtrusive when CGs are displayed, to better show off the pretty art), and an interactable phone that lets you text and call the two heroines are certain points in the story. The phone in particular was a nice touch, it reminded me a little of Steins;Gate. It’s obvious a huge amount of effort was put into the visual presentation of this VN, and it really paid off: it all looks very cohesive. CB is definitely one of the prettiest EVNs I’ve ever read, and I even think it stands on an even footing with a lot of JVNs. It’s incredibly gorgeous all around. As for the actual story, there isn’t that much too it. Naomi and Kiyoko’s falling-out is based on a pretty simple misunderstanding which, though the story beats around the bush a little before letting them talk things through, only takes about two minutes to hammer out. This might seem underwhelming, but given the characters are high school students, I think the initial drama is feasible enough: teenagers tend to be melodramatic, after all. The writing style itself, meanwhile, is a bit of a mixed bag. I think the dialogue is pretty fun and well-rendered on the whole (some reviewers mentioned they didn’t care for Naomi’s tsundereness, but I thought her constant ‘hpmh’ing and her snippy retorts were quite charming, really!), but the main character likes to monologue a lot: mostly about unimportant things, like how the clouds scud across the sky, or the way the heroines’ hair look when it flutters in the breeze. There is a point in the story, granted, where Naomi pokes fun at the MC for spacing out and staring at the sky so much when he’s supposed to be talking to her (which is why Naomi is, in fact, the best girl), so I think this is something the writer was aware of. The slow pace of the story seems (to me, at least) like a deliberate stylistic choice, which was used to highlight the beauty in ‘the mundance everyday’, and how easily it is to take your high school years for granted. From a purely technical standpoint, the prose in CB is fine. It’s all grammatically correct, the sentence structures and word choices are varied enough to remain interesting (apart from the constant references to Kiyoko’s hair and eyes looking like chocolate… Seriously, reading this VN started to make me feel hungry), and I only spotted a handful of typos. I’ve definitely read worse prose in VNs, both in EVNs and translated JVNs. I do think some of the MC’s internal narration could have been trimmed down, however, as it can start to feel superfluous in places. I confess, I started to skim the MC’s inner monologue, because it rarely felt like it added much to the story: I was more invested in seeing the characters interacting than I was in reading even more chocolate-adjacent similes. If you can look past the MC’s somewhat purplish inner monologue, however, CB is quite a sweet story. I think the two love interests are both likeable, even if they are a bit tropey, and the drama between them is believable enough. The visual presentation is the star of the show, though: it’s clear the VN was put together with a lot of love and passion, and I think that alone makes it well worth the asking price. I’d recommend CB to anybody who’s looking for a cute slice of life story which is, despite the odd few anime-isms, reasonably grounded. It’s not the most exciting story in the world, but I don’t think it’s trying to be. It’s short and sweet, and for what it is, it’s very well presented.
• gamedeal user

  Dec 2, 2019

  I remember waiting for this game and I was glad to see it finally released, and playing it turned out to be just as good as I had expected. It's not a perfect game by any means but simply put I really enjoyed it. At first I thought I would be going with Kiyoko but I ended up being more interested in Naomi which surprised me as well. I played this game through one route but I do believe other routes would be just as interesting. It had a great art style and good music. However I didn't really enjoy how many times the past between Kiyoko and Naomi was brought up, it's not like I'm going to need to hear it for the fifth time! Also meeting [spoiler] Ceri [/spoiler] was a nice thought, too bad it was spoiled in the settings menu though... I've added a Google Doc file into the following link that I'll be updating when I find new bugs, hope this helps the developers! This may not be the best visual novel out there, but if you're new to these kind of games, I would highly recommend giving this a try! (Update (4.4.2021): I've removed the google doc file, since the developers have done an admirable job at fixing the issues I had listed and there was no longer need for a list)
• gamedeal user

  Dec 6, 2019

  Beautiful story, good and hard answers, and had a great time. Pulls at your heart strings, and keeps up the humor... also, check PERVERT in your encyclopedia when you can... You will not regret it
• gamedeal user

  Dec 20, 2019

  Super cute girls and really pleasing art-style. Very nice VN.
• gamedeal user

  Dec 31, 2019

  Such a great story. The voice acting is truly wonderful!
• gamedeal user

  Jan 2, 2020

  Pretty good game ngl. Naomi's ending is the best story wise don't @ me.
• gamedeal user

  Jan 20, 2020

  Sometimes atoms are attracted one to each other, that's how physics works ... Well, science can't explain everything right ? After all, we're all a bunch of atoms and sometimes we BLEND INTO EACH OTHER FOREVER Great game ! Looking forevard to more games by this editor !
• gamedeal user

  Mar 15, 2020

  Several people are saying this is a "brilliant" visual novel with a "great story", but I simply can't agree. Yes, it sounds compelling on paper (the synopsis on the Steam page was what initially caught my attention), but in reality, it ended up being one of the most boring VNs I've ever read. (Sidenote: Don't be fooled by my playtime. It isn't nearly as long as that; I just had a really hard time keeping my interest/motivation up, so I took a lot of breaks while the game was on in the background.) The story revolves around a friendship that has crumbled, and you, as the protagonist, get involved to try to make them reconcile. Mending a broken relationship seems like a promising premise, but it turned out to all be caused by a dumb misunderstanding that took like 10 seconds to clear up once they finally got around to doing it. Everything leading up to that point was basically just a lot of beating around the bush, repeating similar scenes and dialogue over and over again with little to no actual development in the story. The same goes for afterwards. It felt like they were just going through motions and doing this and that as filler to extend the playtime. I would much rather have had a more focused story that ended in 2-3 hours. In addition, there's the issue of one of the girls, who's also a love interest for the protagonist, being utterly unlikable. She's supposed to be a tsundere, but she's leaning so heavily towards the tsun (bad) side, constantly berating and throwing completely uncalled for verbal abuse at the protagonist, that it's impossible for me to find her endearing on the few occasions she starts acting dere (good). The fact that they're repeatedly referring to Naomi as a "tsundere" even in the narration makes it really obvious that the developer was going for that specifically, and that also solidifies her status as just a fictional stereotype rather than give her actual depth and resemblance to a real person. The same goes for the protagonist, who has one of the most hollow personalities I've ever seen in a visual novel. We know next to nothing about him (I mean, he doesn't even have a name); he's basically just an empty shell with the sole purpose of acting as some kind of middleman in Naomi's and Kiyoko's relationship. The only character that can be considered somewhat normal is Kiyoko, but she becomes more or less irrelevant due to how the other two are. A story about a relationship between three people can't work out when two of those three seem like artificial constructs. As for other complaints, there's English voice acting, but it's mediocre at best and the voices don't suit the characters very well. Also, the sound quality is noticeably worse than that of the music, with interference caused by what I can only assume is a lack of pop filter on the microphone during recording. Furthermore, the characters keep stuttering all the time, and the voice actors articulate every stutter, making the dialogue sound forced and unnatural. In conclusion, Chemically Bonded is a combination of badly written characters and a shallow, repetitive story. If you're looking for a visual novel with a realistic depiction of human relationships, I suggest you look elsewhere.