Day 26 
Read: 終遠のヴィルシュ -Error:salvation-
Time: about 3 hours
Finished: 1 ending
Fully finished 終ヴィル!!! This is by far the hardest thing I’ve read thus far. A lot of setting specific vocab, scientific vocab, really complex kanji that are hard to look up, and some difficult grammar. There’s probably some parts that I wasn’t able to completely understand. I originally wasn’t planning to buy this one because I thought it would definitely be too hard for me but I saw a review where someone recommended it and listed their main points as 絶望、絶望、絶望、which made me so curious I had to pick it up. Apparently this game normally has a play time of around 55 hours. It was worth the long time though I enjoyed this game a lot, and I think I learned quite a bit through playing it, including a bunch of different ways to say dead bodies.
Final game thoughts (spoiler free)
If I had to describe this game I’d call it a dark sci-fi fantasy. More specifically it’s described as 「バッドエンド、悲愛エンドがメイン、運命と絶望のダークファンタジー。」Which after playing it is definitely accurate. The setting is the island of アルペシェール, where everyone dies by the time they reach the age of 23. Due to this it came to be called the country possessed by the god of death. The full story description is here if anyone’s interested. I really enjoyed this game. I’d say it’s my second favorite game that was released last year, and pretty high up there in my general list of favorites, but it’s definitely on the dark side, and as expected from the description there’s a lot of death. I really liked the art, the mysteries, and just the general 雰囲気. This game is split into four routes, and then the 三幕. Out of these the 三幕 was my favorite, I guessed part of the mystery early on but that just made me more interested in finding the rest out. This route also made me cry for like an hour straight (which to be fair I cry relatively easily at stories, but usually only like slightly tearing up.) A part I didn’t like as much was sometimes the more sci-fi parts made me think “I really don’t think that’s how that works,” but I don’t really place that much value on scientific accuracy when I play otome games. This game has a really interesting required play order (not really a spoiler but blurred in case someone wants to figure it out themself). In this game you have to play the bad ends (絶望エンド）of the first four routes to unlock the 三幕. When you finish the 三幕, it unlocks the 救済 ends for the first four routes. So you have to play through each character’s bad endings in a row to progress the game, which did get kind of depressing. Overall I’d recommend this game to people who like dark settings, mysteries, and don’t mind bad ends or otome games that don’t focus as much on romance.
New Vocab
喪う （うしなう）to lose (a loved one); to be bereaved of (didn’t know this could be written with this kanji)
退く （ひく）to move back; to draw back; to recede (this is the third reading of this I’ve seen recently)
皆無 （かいむ）nonexistent; nil; none; nothing (at all); bugger-all
大半 （たいはん）majority; more than half; most (of)
謹んで （つつしんで）respectfully; humbly; reverently
停滞 （ていたい）stagnation; tie-up; standstill; congestion; delay; accumulation; falling into arrears
尽く （ことごとく）altogether; entirely
生贄 （いけにえ）(living) sacrifice
そぐう to be suitable; to be appropriate; to match
授ける （さずける）to grant; to give; to confer; to award
蠢く （うごめく）to wriggle; to squirm; to crawl like a worm
変異 （へんい）variation; rogue (something)
紅蓮 （ぐれん）bright red
亡骸 （なきがら）remains; corpse; (dead) body
因果関係 （いんがかんけい）consequence; causal relationship; nexus
死活問題 （しかつもんだい）matter of life or death; life-and-death problem