#(them = technically MC but i'm referring to the translation choice)

[vynegar]

lol not them calling his parents Mr. and Mrs. Pearce when chinese women don’t change their name after marriage and in luke’s 3rd bday card, she’s definitely not named pearce/xia

[hestzhyen]

!!CW: DESCRIPTIONS OF VIOLENCE/SA (and spoilers, obviously)!!

Highlights from my Paradise playthrough. Shout out to my saint of a partner for letting me spam him with my bullshit.

I use generic names for my partner's benefit (they're a sane person with no interest in BL VNs), so MC-kun is Azuma, Fluffy-kun is Takara, Asshole-kun is Mitsugi, and Reliable-kun is Madara. Let's begin!

Paradise is the 20th VN I've played and I think it's the first one to have this option. Overall I really liked the technical presentation.

I generally avoid checking spoiler tags when going in so at this point all I had was my experience with other BL games and a few hints about this game's brutality. Overall the content itself is in line with things I've seen before, but hoo boy did some of Azuma's inner dialogue hit hard. That poor guy.

As an aside: I always approach a VN blind until I get an ending. After that I choose who to target and get all their bad ends first, then the good before moving on to the next LI. This approach was perfect for Paradise since the bad ends gave you the context needed to fully understand the good endings and greater mystery in the narrative. Mitsugi > Madara > Takara is definitely the best experience.

(This is subtle foreshadowing of me using up the nation's entire copium supply a few days later)

(And this is subtle foreshadowing of my choice for Best Boy)

The translation for this game was pretty good until the last arc. Mitsugi and Madara's routes all felt natural. I'm not the kind of person who wants everything to be literal, so it was nice to see a real effort put towards localizing their routes. I think the only line I raised an eyebrow at was the Scooby Doo reference (which I'm assuming is localizing an extremely Japanese joke/reference). Sadly this didn't hold up in Takara's route. Suddenly it felt like a very unpolished machine TL- stilted phrasing and sudden tense switching pulled me out of some big moments. Inconsistent terms were suddenly an issue too; namely, the literal transliteration "log house" being used instead of the localized "cabin" in a few places. Lastly, the many instances of "we're" instead of "were" in the script. C'mon! I've read fan TLs with more polished writing and editing y'know? Was it due to a deadline crunch? Careless oversight? Don't know, but I do care.

My heart broke for Azuma over and over again. Just, all the time. At this point I knew the game was an utsuge so I just sat back and let my feelings get trampled as intended.

Classic BL problems.

Classic BL "solutions".

Go ahead and laugh at past me. I am so disappointed in him.

I can't tell you why I like having my heart crushed, spit on, set on fire, and launched into the sun. But at least I know what I like.

I have mixed feelings for the story itself but the characters are above par for a BL VN. Faint praise? Maybe. But I get the sense that the happy ends are supposed to make you feel despair too despite the upbeat music and framing. It's not a good thing that MC-kun comes to accept the guys who have fucked him up. It's uncomfortably true to life how he makes excuses for their abuse just because they showed him some kindness, and it leaves me feeling hollow to watch him disappear into the sunset with them. Yes even Mitsugi. He doesn't get a pass just because he sticks to verbal abuse in the same story as a violent sadist and a murderous cannibal.

Case in point about the "good endings still feel bad".

I was down so, so bad. Good job Paradise you successfully got me to pin all my hopes on this little fucker.

I'll spare y'all the long barganing phase I went through but it ran the gamut from "maybe he's possessed" to "split personality" to "unholy experiment gone wrong". By his first bad end the scales had started to fall, though. I hit rock bottom at last in the second bad end.

I generally limit the title of Best Boy to a LI, even if it's closer in spirit to "Guy I Hated the Least". The only VN I've changed that for is Tokyo Onmyouji because none of those men deserved Tengenjibashi. It wasn't even a fucking contest. Here? Well...

Badly stilted TL in a crucial emotionally heavy scene. This is just the worst example I snipped while playing but man, did anyone look at the script for this route after the machine TL spat it out?

I learned nothing.

And here is where all of my negative feelings about Paradise stem from...

I understand that writers need to rein in the story at some point. You don't have infinite budgets for VAs and all. But the janky, sudden skip to the reveals being recited right away followed by the drive off into the sunset soured the whole experience for me. I wasted hours of my life trying to figure it out when the writers just said shit we gotta go here's the Cliff's Notes see you never. I bought in and was rewarded with the most underwhelming delivery I've seen this side of Phantom Thief Jade. The payoff is the second most important part of a mystery story guys! You gotta take the time to pace the Big Reveal and let the player chew a bit before taking the plate away! It's such a shame that they went through so much effort to layer and misdirect only to give up right at the finish line.

Despite that, I still had enough fun that I consider Paradise a worthwhile investment. I hope the fan disk can be brought over too someday.

Never mind- burn it all down. No survivors.