Corpse Party Series

Man it's been so long since I've written on this blog! It's got to be like what, almost three years or more since I've last written. I've been so busy trying to finish college, begin my career, begin life as an adult. For this post I'm going to do something a little different. Instead of reviewing one game I'm going to review a series. I've been playing/looking at a particular visual novel/adventure interactive series for almost a year ever since I bought a copy of the series' games last October. My first exposure to the series I'm going to review was from watching an anime adaptation of the game and later a "Let's Play" of the first game by a YouTube gamer named Markiplier. After watching these and learning it's a game I bought the first game in the series, played it, and greatly enjoyed it. Corpse Party.


Without further adieu I'll begin diving into my review of the haunting, frightening, and tragic tale of

Spoilers alert but I'll try to not go into details so you can see for yourself if you ever play the games.

Satoshi Mochida: Somewhat un-elected leader of the group. Can be scared easily but is mature and able to face whatever comes his way.

Naomi Nakashima: The voice of reason of the group and also somewhat close with Satoshi at times.

Ayumi Shinozaki: The class representative and occult authority of the group. Insecure about herself and cares more about others than herself at times.

Yoshiki Kishinuma: A somewhat brash and headstrong boy. Despite his tough background he has a soft side and feelings for Ayumi.

Yuka Mochida: Satoshi's little sister. She looks up to her big brother.

There are others but I'll leave it up to you guys to know and learn who they are.

Gameplay: How you play it is very simple as there's a "bird's eye," view of your character with a 16-bit design. You move your character in which direction and navigate through a school building and the like. You can examine objects, writings, etc,. You also have the option to make choices which either add more dialogue or give you a good or bad ending. The good ending progresses the story while the bad endings describe your character's graphic and/or brutal death. In the later games they have a "point and click," style and revert back to the original "bird's eye," view but with 3D models instead of 16-bit models.

Story:

Corpse Party:

The five characters mentioned above-along with a few other students and a teacher-perform a supposedly harmless charm. The charm was introduced by Ayumi and was used to make the bond of friendship strong with her and company. Unfortunately the charm backfires and sends everyone to an alternate dimension where a half destroyed elementary school stands. This school-Heavenly Host Elementary School- was originally destroyed but somehow exists in this alternate dimension. Vengeful spirits, the curse of insanity, traps, and other horrors lurk in the halls of the school. Looking for a means of escape these students try to solve the mystery of what happened, why the school exists, who is responsible and why. In the end- the five characters I mentioned-learn grisly murders on children and a nurse occurred decades ago. The spirits of the deceased created the school in the alternate dimension and won't pass on until they're appeased. The five successfully solve the mystery, escape with their lives, and become traumatized from their experiences and losses.

Corpse Party Book of Shadows:

(A large chunk of this game has a lot of excess what-if scenarios that deviate from the main story. For the sake of the main story I won't go into them.)
It's been one week after the events of Corpse Party. Traumatized and grief stricken, Naomi and Ayumi learn that there's a chance to resurrect their deceased friends. The two need to locate the Book of Shadows and perform the "Resurrection Spell," to successfully resurrect their dead friends. Unfortunately the spell backfires resulting in Naomi and Ayumi almost being killed by the spell. Ayumi's older sister stops the spell, saves Ayumi, and dies instead of Ayumi and Naomi.

Corpse Party Blood Drive:

It's been two months after Ayumi and Naomi failed to perform the spell from the Book of Shadows. Ayumi fell into despair, guilt, and shock after losing her sister on top of her friends. Ayumi later receives tips from an intelligence agent and a member of a secret society about Heavenly Host not being destroyed, the Book of Shadows still existing, and another chance at resurrecting her deceased comrades. Ayumi takes it upon herself to fix everything with or without her friends but this leads to a cruel path of fate. Ayumi learns that the dimension housing elementary host was created from the Book of Shadows and that same dimension can bring about the end of the world. The only way to stop that dimension is to seal it away back in the book or seal it inside herself. Feeling she had no choice but to protect every one she seals the dimension inside herself but at the cost of her own existence. In the ending she is nothing more than a lifeless husk since she's locking the dimension inside herself at the cost of her existence. Yoshiki on the other hand-fueled by his love for Ayumi-has taken it upon himself to care for Ayumi no matter what.


(This is as simple as I can get without revealing too many details. Maybe this will encourage you to look into the games yourself.)


Future Direction of the series:

A sequel known as Corpse Party 2: Dead Patient, is in the works. It was first released on PC in Japan in 2013 while Book of Shadows and Blood Drive were released. There was underground work done and someone posted a fan English translation of Chapter 1 online. As far as development goes the game was overhauled until a new game engine could be used to address the glitches, technical errors, etc. So far that has happened and the game is being re-released this July. More details will become available as time progresses. There's also word of the game being released internationally once it's completed.

From my standpoint my head is reeling with several questions after hearing about Dead Patient. What direction can the story go?
What happened to the original characters and will they make a comeback?

Is there more information in Dead Patient that relates to Blood Drive?
Does Ayumi and Yoshiki have a part to play in Dead Patient? If yes, why and what will happen to those two?

My overall review of the series would have to be a solid four out of five stars. The story is definitely interesting and worth experiencing. The game play you will either hate or enjoy. Also it really depends on if you enjoy visual novel and/or adventure interactive games a lot. There were some technical errors with Blood Drive that affected gameplay but not so much the story thus leading to some negative reviews. Really the story is all that matters in this series and not so much as gameplay.

I don't own any images used and they were found on Google Images.
Comments and questions are appreciated!