Pale Carnations

If you have ever been enrolled in higher education or happens to be close to someone that was. You’ll know that it’s all about balance. Sure, you want to let loose, discover yourself, open yourself up to new experiences and ultimately, get your dick wet. However, you also pay a lot of money for the pleasure and you also need to graduate and learn something along the way. Well, this is amplified by one-hundred for medical students as one rough night bar hopping and you could be putting someone’s life at risk. In Pale Carnations, it’s up to you to find this balance or face the consequences.

This game plays like other visual novels such as Depraved Awakening, City Of Broken Dreamers, Desert Stalker and Mist. This game aims to lead you down a dark and dirty path of debauchery. Can you resist the temptation or will you succumb to the vices of the big city? We find out in our review of Pale Carnations.

Bright Lights, Big City

Let’s begin with the story for this title. It would be very easy for this game to lean on its core premise to prop up the rest of the narrative experience. However, this is not the case and the game has quite a well written story with plenty of avenues for the player to walk down freely. You can choose the romantic interest which beat fits your preferred tastes. Then you’ll have to woo them in some sort of way to progress their personal story arc and this will be down to your natural charm if you can pull it off. However, all that flirting better not get in the way of your studying.

Aside from making choices in terms of dialogue, the game also uses a mechanic where you will have to exercise time management to stay in school but equally get your end away. In a way, it’s like a dirtier version of the Persona series. So picture more sex and less anthropomorphized dream monsters.

Then as for the visuals. We would have to say that this is where the game let’s the side down a touch. The visuals are clearly trying to depict a photo realism that the developer is simply not up to. So instead of a hyper-realistic 4K character roster, you get characters that are about as well rendered as a PS3 launch title. We are talking the original Mass Effect at their absolute peak, which in modern day eroge games, simply isn’t good enough to get fans excited and invested.

The Verdict

Overall, we have to say that Pale Carnations is a rather underwhelming and predictable visual novel in truth. The story has some high points for sure and the core concept certainly had legs. However, the end result isn’t anything to get excited about, the characters seem a little disingenuous and lifeless at times. The visuals are far from what they should be and there is a distinct lack of gameplay aside from time management.

Pros

• Story is good in parts
• Core concept is solid
• Fun time management mechanics.

Cons

• Visuals are behind the times
• The story as a whole fails to live up to it’s potential.