Major\Minor Review Part One

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Though I walk through the val­ley of the shad­ow of death I shall fear no evil.” Psalm 23.

Major\Minor re­cent­ly came out on Steam for $9.99, and against my bet­ter judg­ment I bought it dur­ing a sale. The game is made by Klace, and I’m led to be­lieve that this was most­ly a one man job. Our editor-in-chief, Josh Bray, jok­ing­ly sug­gest­ed the ti­tle for re­view. But I’m a glut­ton for pain, so here we are. I will be re­view­ing the game as a se­ries since new chap­ters are com­ing out every month. Needless to say there will be un­marked spoil­ers, which I don’t be­lieve will both­er anyone.

The sto­ry cen­ters around you as the pro­tag­o­nist tra­vers­ing a fur­ry filled world that is not all it seems. Your gen­der is left am­bigu­ous (which I like, ac­tu­al­ly) and you also get to pick the name of your furry-self. Please ex­cuse the names I chose that you may see in the screenshots.

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*Ahem* Anyway…

You are haunt­ed by weird vi­sions of an­oth­er world that you try to for­get as you make your way through Japan to meet your fa­vorite pop star Klace (I see you over there game dev, you ego­tis­ti­cal lit­tle bug­ger you). You and one oth­er con­tes­tant re­cent­ly won a con­test to spend a year with Klace and tour with him. The game­play was some­what of a let down. You sit and watch fur­ries talk while you wait for your turn to fi­nal­ly be able to say or do some­thing. The mu­sic was sur­pris­ing­ly very nice in spots, and this made it the most bear­able part of this game to be quite hon­est. The set­tings are fine, all that jazz can be fid­dled with at the be­gin­ning of the game. The first thing you may want to do is turn down the mu­sic, though, as it’s very loud when you start.

As men­tioned above, the sto­ry cen­ters around two con­tes­tants — you be­ing one of them — trav­el­ling to Japan to spend a year on tour with your fa­vorite self-insert dev/musician, Klace. It’s pret­ty straight­for­ward af­ter you get through the char­ac­ter nam­ing por­tion where you’re “in be­tween worlds” talk­ing to a mys­te­ri­ous un­named char­ac­ter. After that you’re zapped back into your body back in the bul­let train you’re rid­ing. You meet some­one named Kila, the only oth­er English speak­er on the en­tire train.

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What’s wrong with your faaaace?

That blue… uh… squir­rel thing? That is Kila. You think to your­self, “Oh, I won­der if he’s gonna be im­por­tant lat­er,” while you’re also wait­ing to get off the train and meet up with Rook. He is con­nect­ed to Klace, though you don’t know how, so this could all be a clever ruse and you’re on Punk’d or some shit (or maybe I am for play­ing this game? I can’t tell yet).

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I hate you both. Please burn.

You then meet up with Rook and the oth­er con­tes­tant. And I won­der who that is? Oh well, of fuck­ing course it was Kila, you stu­pid piece of shit! Who did you ex­pect, the pope?!  Were you ex­pect­ing any sort of sur­pris­es in this game? What were you think­ing, you moron?!

Klace is stuck deal­ing with some­thing, so for now you, Rook — who is a to­tal flat and dis­tant ass­hole — and Kila — who is also pret­ty flat as a char­ac­ter — go out and have a fun day out on the town. Depending on which choice you picked ear­li­er when talk­ing to Kila on the train that one time, you can ei­ther go to a Maid Cafe or some­where Rook choos­es which turns out to be an awe­some, gi­ant ar­cade. I chose the Maid Cafe, and I’m sure glad I chose that route be­cause it was a gold mine. You’ll see why.

Rook thinks you’re lame for want­i­ng to go, but still takes you to the cafe. You hop into a limo with this grif­fin limo dri­ver woman thing, and Rook light­ens the mood by telling you about The Midnight Deaths where peo­ple ei­ther kill oth­er peo­ple and/or them­selves. After thor­ough­ly scar­ing his new friends, Rook dumps you off on the street and stays away from the cafe. Here the grif­fin woman, Jade, gets out with you.

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And then Kila, who is ap­par­ent­ly some Maid Cafe con­nois­seur, says this:

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What? How do you know tha… Whatever. Let’s move on.

Inside you meet Eclair, the woman who runs the joint.

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She’s a nice lady who comes to serve you and plays a lit­tle triv­ia game (where, sur­prise, you get no choic­es) with you and Kila. You find out she was close with Rook at one point, and he was even a host with her. After telling you all this she gets up­set and leaves. You can ei­ther go af­ter her to help, or leave with Kila. When you leave, Kila yells at Rook for be­ing cold and mis­treat­ing the two of you as you go to your ho­tel. Otherwise, if you go af­ter Eclair she’s off cry­ing at her desk.

This is my fa­vorite part, actually.

She was cry­ing with bed­room eyes, and the plates and shit still in her hands. Eclair dear, I don’t be­lieve you were cry­ing one bit. Now who’s un­der that desk?

After she talks about her weird al­most ro­mance thing she had with Rook, you ex­change phone num­bers and leave. You head out to the ho­tel where you will be stay­ing, and sit around with Kila in your room and turn on the TV where a re­porter is talk­ing about an­oth­er Midnight Death. Wanna know who died?

And this is the first real sur­prise in this en­tire af­fair. I want to give the dev cred­it for not let­ting his own char­ac­ter live long, but you know this shit is go­ing to put him on a pedestal and we’ll nev­er stop hear­ing about the amaz­ing de­ceased star dead be­fore his time, fur­ther fluff­ing Klace’s ego. Like we didn’t do that enough by shelling mon­ey out for this thing.

MajorMinor plays just fine for a vi­su­al nov­el. Although — and I hate to say this — Depression Quest had more mean­ing­ful choic­es than this ti­tle did. It’s a “hor­ror” vi­su­al nov­el, but I wasn’t very scared. Maybe it’ll get bet­ter with time as the new chap­ters come out. We can only hope. You can eas­i­ly just hold down your space­bar, and that’s all you re­al­ly need to do when it comes to controls.

If you want to get the thing over with as soon as pos­si­ble, it re­al­ly does add to the ex­pe­ri­ence to see that pre­ten­tious and use­less di­a­logue just fly by.

The fram­er­ate is fine be­ing that it is a vi­su­al nov­el (for the love of God, if any VN messed this up I do not want to know) and the re­quire­ments are very ba­sic. Here’s a screen­shot for you nerds that like sys­tem requirements.

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Ok. I ad­mit, that is pret­ty amusing.

Now let’s take a look at the art. I want to be­lieve Klace drew these char­ac­ters on his own, but some­thing tells me he didn’t. He doesn’t seem to cred­it any­one, or any­thing, and claims you’ll see the cred­its at the end of the last chap­ter of the game which could take months at least to find out who did his art or mu­sic (Klace does seem to be ad­dress­ing this, some­what, via text file cred­its in re­cent patch­es). His web­site list­ed on the Steam page isn’t help­ful ei­ther, be­cause it’s his Patreon.

I’m sus­pi­cious as to who re­al­ly did the art, see­ing as the char­ac­ters don’t ever change to emote. At all. You saw Eclair’s face ear­li­er when she was crying/giving an un­seen per­son a BJ. They all have one emo­tion; which is some­thing that bugs me.

Not to men­tion the art is just off altogether.

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The pro­por­tions are off. Just look at them; look back at oth­er screen­shots. I have to say my least fa­vorite part is Kila. His neck looks like it was made of Play-Doh, and some­one smushed it in. All their col­lar bones also make no sense.

Not to men­tion the con­stant­ly blur­ry back­grounds no mat­ter what you’re do­ing, or where you are at. There was a point where the blur was hurt­ing my eyes so much I had to stop playing.

Oh! I al­most for­got. Look close­ly for what’s wrong here in the phone’s crop­ping. I’ll let you fig­ure it out.

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Oh lord. Furizon.

The mu­sic is good, I en­joyed most of it. It was cer­tain­ly the most bear­able part of this ex­pe­ri­ence. Although I can­not find out who did the mu­sic. Come on, Klace, tell us al­ready! I found one song on his YouTube ac­count that was com­posed by some­one else, but he wrote the lyrics for it. That’s it. Not to men­tion the tracks re­mind me of Chrono Trigger. Most of the mu­sic sounds a lot like Chrono Trigger in fact, and I’m not sure if that’s a good thing. I kind of don’t want to re­mem­ber one of my fa­vorite games while play­ing this.

So far MajorMinor is an an­thro­po­mor­phic Hell that I sin­cere­ly hope gets bet­ter by the next few chap­ters. I wouldn’t rec­om­mend get­ting this, but it’s your mon­ey and I’m not your mom.

This game is on­go­ing, so I’ll be re­view­ing sub­se­quent chap­ters as more comes out. I went in this op­ti­mistic that this would be bet­ter than I ex­pect­ed, but I was dead wrong so far. I ac­tu­al­ly thought that this was some 16 year old’s first game, and I want­ed to go easy on him. But then I found out Klace was 25 and still added him­self as a ma­jor­ly im­por­tant char­ac­ter and the game is wrote in a way that was so cringey and il­log­i­cal. Honestly, look at it.

There’s also some­thing dubbed Klacegate that I’d rather not get into here, but de­cid­ed it would be worth men­tion­ing so any­one who ac­tu­al­ly still want­ed to buy this game by now is forewarned.

Stay tuned for far­ther parts of this re­view as more chap­ters of this fur­ry train­wreck come out! I pray my san­i­ty lasts.

 

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The old­est 12 year old. Also buy my mix­tape at http://supernerdland.tumblr.com/

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