REVIEW : Class of ’09 (PC)
Class of ’09 is developed and published by SBN3. The Class of ’09 follows sixteen-year-old Nicole, who lives a tough life, moves the country, transfers every few months, and is the focus of many messy divorces. All of this makes her a cynical, exhausted, cold, and tough young woman and has enough problems and luggage to sell her easily for her working adults. But instead of using it as a starting point for investigating abused people, Class of ’09 is a comedy after Nicole spent the last two years of her high school. She graduates, is banished, kills herself, and ridicules, manipulates, and rolls her life until her dream of a necrophilia pedophile comes true.
From the beginning, the game doesn’t have much of a comprehensive plot or purpose, but mainly the background of the various scenes where Nicole and many of her supporting characters are supposed to be placed in certain situations for comedic effect. Functions as. Players go through about four isolated routes and 15 different endings. This is annoying for those who prefer a more focused story in VN, but it’s not a problem in the Class of ’09. The main reason is that the subplot focuses on delivering story beats and making each scene unique and interesting.
It’s certainly edgy, but unlike the edgy ones, it’s a kind of smart, edgy one. The game is a devastating satire of high school life; tension is for purpose, not just because it is such an anti-PC or stupid crap. See, full disclosure, the game made me make social stimuli suitable for sociopaths. But what I didn’t expect was the basic political philosophy behind the madness. It was to find out. This is a satire to some extent. Nowadays, screaming satire is a tragic rarity that is just a way to become an outright fanatic and overcome it. Voice actors, especially Jecca and Nicole’s VA, are great.
I played for about 2 hours and got multiple endings, so it’s a bit short. It would be expensive if this were a bigger studio, but this is a clear, very passionate project.
The writing style is snappy, aggressive, unrestrained, full of teenage anxiety, and generally interesting. The jokes come fast and are hit hard. A simple prototype is used to maximize the number of jokes per minute. The game will dramatically benefit from the choice to utter every line of dialogue. This is rarely seen, especially in OELVN (Original English Language Visual Novel), and is almost inaudible. But given the people behind it, that’s not surprising.
His best performance (public) video is a voice actor tutorial. In addition, Class of ’09 is a showcase with excellent ability to develop and nurture talent. The actor brings her to live with his character. Audio production here is more like a radio play than video games, partly because it’s mostly radio play from a technical point of view.
Like most visual novels, gameplay involves making decisions that affect the plot and observing the plot. The back button is always convenient, so there are no difficult choices, but it is often difficult to determine which option is interesting and gives interesting results. The
script is excellent. Consistently cheerful and sometimes deeply moved. The latter is a nice surprise. This is also recognized by voice actors who provide consistent and solid performance. Auto-progress puts it all together and gives dialogue a natural, comedy flow that many games will benefit from, whether visual novels. Unfortunately, even AAA gaming companies can fail to make their dialogue so human.
Instead of mixing the game with audio lines, music, and sound effects, most of the audio comes from premixed MP3s and WebM. Both have been heavily edited to produce the best sound, contain a lot of ambient noise that brings the environment to life, and carefully mix the music as needed. When you hear this, you may be wondering how the game synchronizes the sound as the player clicks on each line of the dialog to advance the game. Since “Class 09” is a visual novel, where is the auto-read mode? The only mode. This is a clever way to minimize the workload and improve the overall sound. The incredible effort has been put into the forefront of
audio, but unfortunately, the visual representation is fairly simple. Character sprites prioritize costumes over facial expressions and pose. Much of the game is spent watching the character slide from one end of the screen to the other on the ice lolly conveyor. This, coupled with the decision to use a blurry photo over an illustrated or rendered background, makes the Class of ’09 look cheap at first glance but still provides an important place.
The character’s costumes have been specially selected for the times and are quite stylish overall. The presentation goes beyond the rooftop sequence, and unfortunately, all the end CGs that are only available as part of the end video file are excellent. There was certainly room to take the presentation to the next level, but I suspect that all of the budgets were spent talking rather than doing more detailed character animations, lip flaps, etc. This is a more pedantic review, but it’s one of the many reviews I happened to find during the five hours of playing the game. Fields range from using two points on an ellipse instead of three to navigation and more.
The aesthetics of the game are limited to just practical prototypes. However, it works. There is little music outside the menu and opening sequence, but constant dialogue prevents the dead air. Animations and changes in facial expressions are used sparingly but appropriately. Flashy effects and great soundtracks can risk distracting your character, but some details make many scenes worthwhile rather than fast-forwarding them. My major criticism of this game is its difference from marketing.
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