With the visual novel genre expanding rapidly, we’re getting a wide variety of content faster and faster. It’s hard to keep up with all the variations, styles, and qualities of visual novels these days. Studios like Mages are putting out AAA quality titles, tiny indie companies like Radi Art are putting out deep and interesting yuri games, and the genre is simply booming. The downside of this is that it’s awfully hard to pick what to play next and decide what’s worth your time. Crimson Spires from Woody Studio and publisher Eastasiasoft is one of the latest supernatural visual novels to drop into this flooded market. As you might guess, this is a vampire visual novel, but it’s atypical in several ways. There’s a strong science fiction and horror feel to the game at first, and it feels somewhat unique if low-budget. There’s also a low-poly 3D gameplay element where you explore crime scenes integrated into gameplay, something that’s not common for games of this style.
You play Erika, an FBI agent who ends up trapped in the small mining town of Bataille, Missouri, along with the townsfolk and a suspected serial killer. Things get progressively stranger from there and it’s obvious not everything is as it seems in this sleepy small town. Crimson Spires is what one might generously call a slow burn, drip feeding you information that’s just interesting enough to keep you playing over the first couple chapters but you’ll definitely have more questions than answers. Unlike Cross the Moon, another vampire visual novel we recently reviewed here, Crimson Spires allows for a variety of dialogue options as you play, with a noticeable branching narrative. These choices feed into the game slowly forming the basis for the other main part of the game, the otome. That’s right, this is also a romance game and you have to choose a suitable suitor from amongst the men and monsters trapped with you, and the options are definitely unique.
Suffice it to say that over 10 chapters, there are a quite a few surprises in Crimson Spires and you might end up somewhere you didn’t expect based on your choices. While the writing is generally decent, sometimes the dialogue can bog down a bit as a character slips a bit more into a typecast role. It’s odd because plenty of other players have found the pacing brisk and interesting but during this playthrough it felt anything but. Overall though, the plot and dialogue feel quite natural and believable, though Erika definitely does not feel like an authentic FBI agent and her reactions are sometimes odd. August on the other hand is easily the most fun character in the game, and it’s a shame the dynamic is dependent on your choices because some players might miss out on his antics and witty repartee in a single playthrough. However, this isn’t a game for everyone and sexy vampires and serial killers aren’t universally appealing, even if they are interestingly written.
There are some great visual choices in Crimson Spires and the game is definitely not afraid to show a little gore, a nice change from similar titles. The art style is interesting as well, and very Westernized with decent color selections and good design work overall. However, the low-poly sequences look terrible and have limited interactivity, so it’s a bit weird to have them included. The soundtrack for Crimson Spires is similar to the graphics, decent but intermittent with some tracks hitting well and others fading into the background. On the upside, there’s a fair amount of voice acting and some of it is very good (especially August)! Sadly, the entire game is not voiced, only key moments. The rest of the time, you just hear characters stating catch phrases over and over again ad nauseum.
The real issue with Crimson Spires though, aside from overall pacing, is the conversion to the Switch. Unfortunately, the game does not appear to be optimized well and there are plenty of irritating load times between short story sequences. There are some weird transitions as well, stuff that looks like it’s out of the portfolio of a game design student rather than a finished product and it’s hard to understand why they’re included. Even worse is that when you resume game from sleep mode, there’s a noticeable lag before the game will accept input of any kind, usually at least 30 seconds. During that time, you’ll just be hitting the button, waiting for the game to buffer back to play again, a brutal programming issue that should never have happened. But the most unforgiveable problem is an entirely broken save system which only allows for autosaves. There’s a manual save function built into Crimson Spires, but it simply doesn’t work. Instead it deletes your autosaves and then leaves you with nothing, forcing you to start the game over again. The only way past this is to use the autosave system and select autosave from the menu when there’s a transition. Otherwise, chances are good you’ll simply start over with rage-inducing frequency on the Switch; definitely the wrong kind of loop for a visual novel.
Crimson Spires does some great stuff. It merges horror and otome fairly successfully, and the overall themes of the game are excellent. However, the pacing could be better, the 3D sections are a bit tedious, and the load times are frequent and long. Most importantly though, the save system is an absolute disaster on the Switch and there is simply no excuse for it. Hopefully a patch will be forthcoming that addresses this, as it makes players paranoid to hit the wrong button and lose their game. Mechanically, Crimson Spires is a disaster and that’s unfortunate, as a decent visual novel with some unique ideas and flair is hiding beneath that mess of an interface! Check it out if it goes on sale or wait and see if a patch comes out, but you might want to wait a bit on this one!
This review is based on a digital copy of Crimson Spires provided by the publisher. It was played on a Nintendo Switch in both docked and undocked modes and played equally on both. Crimson Spires is also available on Playstation 4, Xbox One, and for PC on Steam.