Death Match Love Comedy!

When I was offered the chance to review Death Match Love Comedy!, I found myself unable to resist. You see, I’ve covered several RPGs published by Kemco as a Steam curator and to describe their general quality as subpar is, in my opinion, rather generous. However, these games are only published by Kemco, not developed in-house. The last Kemco-developed game I’m aware of prior to this one is Raging Loop, a visual novel that is actually rather well-received. Given that, I’m curious to see if Death Match Love Comedy! manages to impress me or if it will join the pile of other Kemco titles that I’ve found painful to endure.

Kei Yagi, a brand new high school student, is approached by a girl called Rumiko Tsuno, a girl who is described as being a “top-class beauty”. She asks him out to the courtyard for a private discussion but, before he can leave, a girl called Otoba Shirotsume similarly asks him to come to the courtyard. Turns out that they’re both confessing to him but, once they’ve done that, he explodes. Literally, not figuratively. However, a moment later, it’s like the explosion never happened despite several people witnessing it. As it turns out, a floating grenade cat was watching and tells him that the trial is over and that the next time he gets confessed to “Y’all explode and die fer real”.

To call the beginning cringeworthy is an understatement. Besides the opening explosion, we are immediately thrust into a conversation between two boys, later dragging in another boy and two girls, arguing about women’s body parts, their chest specifically, and whether they’re “Team Bomb” or “Team Fruit”. This is exactly the kind of scenario that I could imagine someone writing as a parody of anime tropes and to see it used as a sincere attempt to inspire camaraderie was painful.

Death Match Love Comedy! is described as being “a high-intensity occult/comedy visual novel” and it’s clear that the plot is trying to juggle two elements; one being the comedy of the absurd situation and interactions and the other being the mystery of why this is happening in the first place. This, I feel, is a relatively common formula for visual novels but an effective one. Danganronpa, Zero Escape and, to a degree, Ace Attorney all follow this concept and successfully balance mystery with humour. However, I feel like Death Match Love Comedy! struggles to execute this due to pacing, characterisation and writing.

The game starts out too slow, likely as an attempt to develop the characters before introducing more complex elements. However, the poor writing, the game’s obsession with breasts, the bathroom and friends physically attacking each other don’t help, resulting in this section becoming a slog. The characters themselves are uninspired archetypes for the most part. Kei Yagi, along with some other characters, is keen to point out how normal and everyday he is. I’ve never been a fan of having the lead be so bland and this game does nothing to change this. The game’s portrayal of violence really bothered me in particular. There are times where friends get physical with each other in real-life but the degree to which this is taken is excessive in Death Match Love Comedy! There are even a few implications that the main character is physically beaten to death. It’s unpleasant and, more importantly, not funny.

Speaking of the humour, it shouldn’t surprise you to hear that I didn’t derive much, if any, enjoyment from it. I had hoped that the various bad endings you can get, more on that when we get to gameplay, would provide the comedy I was searching for but the scenario does prove to be too restrictive, mostly showing the same screen of an explosion as that is how Kei typically dies. There are a few endings that are different but even these didn’t prove to be that comedic. It’s a shame because I do enjoy dark comedy and a scenario like this is filled with potential for it but the execution is lacking.

That’s not to say that there isn’t anything good about the story. A couple of cool concepts are touched upon later, mainly to do with quantum mechanics and mysticism, but these elements feel bogged down by the inane dialogue as well as the poor pacing. One interesting scene will be surrounded by mind-numbing prattle, lacklustre comedy and, later on, paragraphs of exposition. These few moments did make me sad as I could see the potential of the plot but it’s ultimately a joyless experience.

With regards to the gameplay, Death Match Love Comedy! is a mostly standard visual novel with a few minor twists. As expected, you’ll be clicking through text with the occasional choice to make. One gimmick is that you have these four heart marks in the lower-left corner which fill up based on how close you are to getting confessed to and blowing up. Essentially, it’s a radar and, conceptually, this is quite funny. The comparison that came to mind is the classic film Aliens but, instead of monsters that want to rip you apart, it’s girls wanting to confess to you. It is a bizarre concept and I do think there’s some potential here but how helpful it can be is questionable.

Some choices make sense. Your radar is acting up so you say no to whatever is about to happen but this doesn’t always work. Sometimes, you’ll click a choice to actively wade into what is triggering the heart marks only for it to turn out for it to be correct. Avoiding the situation might result in you walking into another situation where you just blow up with no way to respond. Now, it’s fair to say that the game encourages you to get these bad endings in more ways than one but it does mean that the heart marks are not very helpful or consistent as indicators.

To assist with this, the game uses a flow chart that is similar to the one used in the Zero Escape games. It’s a more simplified version in comparison, with the chart broken up into days, but it does use a similar lock/unlock mechanic. Basically, certain choices don’t have an immediate consequence, instead triggering later on. These are represented by a power symbol coloured either blue or red at the moment of your choice, reappearing in the chart when they trigger. It’s not as interesting an execution as seen in other games but it does give your actions a smidge more variety as the result isn’t always immediate.

With regards to the graphics, it’s not that they’re bad. There’s a decent level of detail provided in both character design and backgrounds and the UI itself is clean. However, the visual presentation just didn’t gel with me. Admittedly, I had to spend some time pondering ‘why’ that was the case but I think it mainly comes down to colour palette and character expressions. The colours, particularly ones that feel unnatural like green or purple hair, look washed-out and dull while the expressions themselves feel stiff. In a story that is meant to be high-energy and comedic, I feel this style ends up taking away from the experience. There are some splash screens that look and feel a little more energetic but these are infrequent enough that they don’t leave much impact.

Death Match Love Comedy! has been available for years in Japanese and Simplified Chinese but this new release, available on the 19th of February, includes an English translation for the first time. As for the quality of that translation, I’m unable to comment too much since I’m not sure how literal or adaptive it is. However, I did note that typos and grammatical mistakes weren’t uncommon although it’s worth noting that I was playing a beta release and these may be corrected by the time of release or soon afterwards.

In terms of sound, there is no voice acting of any kind in the game. I also struggle to remember how any of the music sounds, which is remarkable given that the limited number of tracks mean they’re played repeatedly, save for one that played during the Kabaddi scene. I wouldn’t say it’s bad but it was very forgettable.

Technical options are also rather limited although they do manage to cover the basics such as text speed, dialogue box opacity, fullscreen/windowed among others. There are also two options called “Data Initialization” and “Force Unlock”. Considering the warning beside them, I didn’t activate these although I’d assume that “Force Unlock” has something to do with the locks in the flowchart.

Death Match Love Comedy! is not the worst Kemco game I’ve played, it’s not anywhere close honestly, but it does feel a little sadder in a way because I could feel that they put more effort into this than the ones previously and it’s still not very good. Some of the concepts work and the structure has potential but it really suffers from the awful dialogue, characterisation and pacing which makes it a chore to get through. If the premise is enough to intrigue you then maybe you’ll get something out of this game but I think there are better visual novels to try beforehand.