I'm hoping that this is the last time I have to edit this review for the sake of getting a message clear to the developers, fans, critics, and customers of this game.

The whole drama surrounding this game's developement is ridiculous. Reviewers should not be getting harassed for expressing their opinions or explaining why they dislike the game or the developers behind it. They should not be extorted to go into further details because their reviews are "too vague" or "off topic".

Negative reviews have been falsely flagged, people with negative opinions have been banned from discussions, and the comment sections of the reviews have turned into massive flame wars.

If you want to make a game successful, you won't do so with a toxic development team.
Somebody (not sure if it was one of Klace's friends, or one of his fans) even stooped so low to expose my Facebook name, after which i have actually received a few nasty messages regarding my review's negative demeanor. Making fun of your reviewers or anybody who dislikes your game is very unprofesional and would not be accepted if it were seen by a more broad audience.

I still think the game is very bad, but I do believe that there is room for improvement. The main problem right now is the toxic behavior of the development team and the fans surrounding it. If you want to make you game successful, accept negative reviews as criticism and use it to improve your work. If you see any troll reviews or threats, simply report them and ignore them. Making drama about it over social media and telling your fans to attack people is immature and unprofessional.

TL;DR this game is absolute garbage, the developer and his fans are bullies, and the positive reviews are from ignorant furries who praise the game solely on the reason that "omg it has anthros in it it's so good"

The messages can be read at a link here:
http://i.imgur.com/u6K0mIL.png

My original review can be read here:
http://archive.is/GPJuK

Threads attempting to shut down negative reviewers:
http://archive.is/G9Jmw
http://archive.is/1g1D3
http://archive.is/xaj7z

Klace's whiteknight admitting to buying multiple copies of the game to maintain positive overall score:
http://imgur.com/ncize46

WARNING: Surprisingly enough, this is my opinion. Don't get your knickers in a twist.

I will not respond publicly to comments on this review, as I am done with making public statements on this game.

Since the game's release on Steam, I have gone through multiple revisions of this review:

• First Version
  
• Second Version
  
• Third Version

Despite all these changes, and despite having played Persona 4 in the meantime, I still do not recommend Major\Minor. Why?

Well, for one thing, Persona 4 had a hell of a lot more agency. In that game, you had plenty of choices within the game world besides advancing the main story, some of which are beneficial in their own right and tie into other aspects of the game. Here? You're shunted into a linear story path with little variation, or even alternative stories to try out for increased content. The extent of your interactivity is advancing in RPG Maker dialogue boxes. For the entire game, which basically nothing but the occasional minor choice to break it up. So not interactive that there's a pamphlet sized guide on all the choices within. This bare minimum interactivity gets very boring after a while, something especially funny considering that the player character is explicitly handed a reality warping power from the outset. It's both lazy writing to give an ultimate Deus ex Machina power to the main character, and ironic when framed in a visual novel that's not very interactive even by their standards. In fact, considering that it's made in RPG Maker in the first place, why the titular RPG aspects are never used at all in this game baffles me, and the developer has no ambition to ever use those. When others say "the game has potential", I agree, but the developer's clearly not using that potential.

The plot? It can be described as a Persona series plot with all the interesting bits cut out, so you are left with a skeleton version of the "Midnight Murders" plot in urban Japan. Actually, no, scratch that. It's urban Japan from the perspective of foreigner who got all their knowledge of Japan from other anime and visual novels without even bothering to research or make it seem vaguely accurate beyond this. As such, it feels like a theme park mish-mash of Japany things, with furs for basically no reason other than community appeal. It's clearly trying to mime Persona 4 with the basic setting, a magical another world, and a mysterious cataclysm that only you can stop, but completely misses out on the elements that makes that game good.

The art? Well, at first, I just wrote it off as decent-ish furry art with weird and rather fetishitic preferences. But that was when everyone in the game just had a single, rather smug grin. Now that multiple expressions are included, I agree that the art is freaky, it lands straight in the uncanny valley. If it was more realistic or more stylized, I would have appreciated it better, but here? It looks off and unsettling, like it should really be in a true horror game. There's really no rhyme or reason for why the characters are designed the way they are, and they clash somewhat with the stock image backgrounds used for the game.

The characters? A good majority of them are self inserts. The developer qualifies, inserting himself as Klace, the in-universe famous pop star who somehow gets away wearing this fetishistic mishmash of an outfit in public. Yes, this is how he looks like in the actual game. He dies early on, but that doesn't really take away the sting of this being published fanfiction. As for the others, a good portion of the characters are self representations of various individuals in the community, mostly friendly with the developer in one way or another. Rook, Acheron, Inumi, and even the mystery husky character fall under this in one way or another. In fact, both Rook and Acheron have chosen to make positive reviews for the game even though their representation and involvement in the game would cause a conflict of interest. Even the characters original to this game tend to fall under carboard stereotypes with little room for true development.

In essence, this is an uninspired visual novel that isn't good at what visual novels should be good at. It could have been released for free and be ultimately inoffensive, but for $10, are you freaking kidding me? Not even worth it as a joke gift, and once you get over the furry parts, it's not even that good even as a joke. Let's not forget that the developer chose to flag this review and another highly helpful negative review for superficial reasons in an attempt to get Valve to remove them, and tried to cultivate a criticism-free echo chamber where he could pass off negative reviews as being made by internet trolls and have people believe him. And even after he apologized, the developer chose to passive aggressively insult me behind my back on his Facebook after I made a truce with him. All that and more are recorded in this document.

To conclude, this is a terrible game with a terrible developer. It looks good if you are casually observing it, but look any deeper and the cracks show. At least the next game which the developer is publishing looks like an actual game, but since this has been a major stain on his reputation... will it really fare that well?

ADDENDUM 1 (04/10):

On further inspection of the characters in the game, it turns out that every single male character in this game and the heavily featured yellow/purple female wolf, Daz, is someone else's fursona. Yes, seriously. Of the 24 characters planned for or appearing in the game, only 4 - Eclair, Trish, Max, and Jade - are actually original to the game. This may explain their bizarre lack of design unity, seemingly ill-fitting traits (such as Kila's blue fur or Rook's inexplicable green augmentations/patterns), or how some seem to have characteristics unfitting of their backstories or role in game. They made sense for the fursona, but the developer couldn't figure out how to have them make sense in the game world.

Seriously, if you search for a randomly selected character's name on FurAffinity, you will find at least something either related or unrelated to the game that depicts the character and links to the person that owns said character. The few that I couldn't find there have their own accounts on Facebook depicting their characters in some manner. The only purpose of this game, from what I have seen, is to be a vehicle for these self-inserts and the developer's wallet.

Despite this, I do not condone harassment of those whose characters are involved in the game. I will not publicly link the accounts of those involved.

ADDENDUM 2 (04/10):

I found the game's writing to be very bad and very boring, but this takes the cake:

There is a particular scene in Chapter 4 where one of the main characters, Singe, is holding a press conference to reassure safety after Klace's own mysterious death, stipulating that nobody should leave, and promising that he's using hired guards alongside equipment from the Armstrong security corporation to ensure safety. This provokes the hired guard in question, Acheron, to chew Singe out for lining the building with explosives from said security corporation in order to defend the building. Yes, a character who is not supposed to be a villain, deliberately lined the building, filled with many innocent people, with extremely destructive explosives. That is just shameful writing.

When I think of Major\Minor, I now think of defensive explosions.

I am going to be as spoiler-less as I can be.

The first chapter is short, I got through it in one playthrough in roughly 40 minutes. This game is not very well written. The two characters you interact with the most are insufferable ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥s (whether knowingly or not), and the way the protagonist responds to them are entirely unbelievable. The amount of chill the protagonist has is ridiculous. Not only does Kila sell you out as soon as he can, but you're also blamed for an event that is 100% out of your control (a train being delayed); when the train was delayed you could respond to a text sent to you from a person you're supposed to meet at the station, asking when you will arrive. Since the train was delayed, I decided to be honest. The protagonist figuratively nods and says he will explain what happened face-to-face and sends back "I don't know". He never does, and instead just lets him-/her-self get walked all over by these two "potential friends". The amount of ♥♥♥♥ the protagonist is willing to take from people whom he doesn't even know is staggering, especially when the game keeps hammering in that you're supposed to befriend these people.

Kila portrayed as a dopey idiot who can't keep things to himself, getting you in trouble on more than one occasion. Rook is just a jerk. All he does is complain and treat both you and Kila like ♥♥♥♥. Jade seems to be a somewhat reasonable person, although she has trouble acting like a person (you'll see what I mean by that if you do buy this game). Inumi has one line of dialogue. Eclaire, so far, is the only person who seems like an actual person. A person hopped up on coke, or has bipolar disorder, but a person nonetheless.

If I had to describe the writing style of this game, then it would be.. Fanfiction as written by a person whose idea of a personality is taking articles from TVTropes and plastering them all over a character. I sort of doubt we will be seeing any development in terms of character in these upcoming chapters.

It gets worse as you progress through the "story". I suppose I should be thankful that chapter 1 is so short. But speaking of the story, there is none. You arrive in Tokyo, you speak to a grand total of 5 people and then the game is over. 42 minutes. The game wants you to keep loading up saves and trying out different choices, but I honestly wasn't too interested in that. If I wanted to hang out with ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥s and probe them in various ways to see how they will demean my pushover of a character next, I'd hang out with my ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ friends in real life thankyouverymuch.

Another complaint I have is the fact that there is just one static sprite for each character. You meet 5 characters during your playthrough (Kila, Rook, Jade, Inumi, and Eclaire) and each of them has one, and only one, portrait. Unchanging, each forever staring off to one side. That said, the portraits are very nicely drawn. There are some very minor issues, like the level of detail kind of fades along the edges of the characters, but other than that I have no actual complaints about the quality.

I feel sorry for the author and developer of this game. I think that the idea is solid, but the writing is not there yet and the game itself is entirely unfinished. $9 for 42 minutes of gameplay where most of it is spent being talked down to and backstabbed? Eh. I'm not going to presume to tell these people what to do, but this game is clearly not finished. The least they could have done is put it on Early Access or something.

EDIT: If you do decide to check the game out anyway, I think you should. $9 is not that steep of a price, and since the game is ridiculously short (averaging between 30 and 80 minutes for one playthrough from what I can see from other reviews) you can easily ask for a refund after.

I bought this game because I saw a furry visual novel on steam and couldn't contain myself. I really wanted to like it, but I just can't.

Most of the character designs are bad, I felt like I was browsing people's OC's on FurAffinity. From the blue furred rodent with the purple triangles under his eyes for some reason to the guy with the glowy neon tattoos and thousand yard stare, it's hard to take them seriously. This is made worse by the fact that there seems to only be one sprite for each character, so they are always talking to you with the same facial expression.

The writting's not great either. Right off the bat, the game treats you to a weird monlogue about forging your own destiny through your choices, then asks you the hard hitting question of "Do you want to go to the maid cafe?". The game is framed very dramatically but the actual choices and setting feel mundane (Admittedly, they could take a more dramatic route in later episodes). There's also the issue of Klace. Everybody loves the great and amazing Klace upon whom the plot hinges. It's hard to look past this obvious self insert character.


I hesitate to label the characters shallow having only played the first in a series of chapters. I will say that they didn't really capture my interest. It's possible that this opinion is colored by my dislike of their design, however, so take that as you will.

Not much to say about the music, other than it's super generic. I didn't hate it, but I'm not chomping at the bit to buy the soundtrack.


The game is episodic, so maybe later episodes will prove me wrong and this will turn out to be a great game. I honestly hope it does. If it goes on the way this first episode did, though, I don't see that happening.

It's like reading a bad fanfiction of someone's random OCs you have no background on. Then the game ends.

2/10 finished in <30 minutes, seriously. If you want a game like this, go read a fanfiction. It's free and will probably be longer.

UPDATE: Chapter 2 came out.

So, chapter 2 was certainly alot more fun than the first, still a lack of emotion on the characters, but I'm okay with that. The story really picks up here and now I'd give it a 5/10, still not worth $10 but at this rate, will be in 2 or 3 chapters. The game in it's current state is still- just not worth it.

UPDATE 2:

Apparently, soon 'multiple expressions' will be added for each character, plus there will be a 'talking' animation aswell! I'm actually pretty happy with this, it's a good step in the right direction.

UPDATE 3:

Okay, so now Klace (the Dev) is rewriting the first chapter to make it fit in with the story better- and to make it MUCH less boring to read through endless lines of overly-detailed basic actions. Almost worth buying even... almost.