Love Potion Publisher: C's Ware Cost: $35.00 Technical: Minimal. Graphics: Average. Music/Sound: Good. NPCs: Good. Writing: Good. Plot: Good. Interface: Good. Sex: Decent. Kinkyness: Bondage, S/M, lesbianism. Also involves use of aphrodesiacs, both consensual and forced. Overall: Suffers from being in Divi-Dead's shadow, but still a solid mystery game. There are two ways to evaluate Love Potion: As a game in and of itself, and as a polar opposite to it's nearest relative, Divi-Dead. I shall attempt to do both. The protagonist of Love Potion is an agent for JES, a semi-secret organisation which investigates criminal activities in the Japanese private school system. They send agent Megumi Saski to an all-girl school to investigate a rash of dissappearances, but Megumi instead gets added to the list of missing persons. The protagonist is sent to find Megumi and uncover the reasons behind the dissappearances. As you might guess from the title, the aforementioned reasons involve those strange white pills in the nurse's office. So what can be said for Love Potion? Well, not much, actually. By itself, the game is solid but unspectacular. Nothing much is wrong with it, but nothing much is right with it either. Your standard case of "worth playing if your interested in the genre, no major flaws." However, put side-by-side with Divi-Dead, all sorts of interesting things pop up. That's because each has flaws that the other addresses. They both work from the same basic concept: A small, tightly-knit school society, with secrets buried just below the surface, where the player is a newcomer looking to solve a mystery. But from that concept, the games diverge radically in design. Love Potion has several strengths that Divi-Dead lacked, including: -Compactness. Divi-Dead was a LONG mother of a game. Five days, each of which took about 75 minutes of playtime- more when you had no idea what to do next, which was often. Love Potion consists of only three 60-minute areas. This means that the plot moves faster and doesn't bog down as much. -Ease of Advancement. In Divi-Dead, you basically had to wander around the campus until something important advanced the plot. In Love Potion, you have a "base location," the faculty room, where you can usually get a sbutle hint on what to do next. Even if it does come down to wandering the campus, you can cover the whole school in about a minute. Which brings up point number three... -Scale. Divi-Dead had twenty-four major locations, all of which were accessable at basically any time. That's WAY too much terrain to canvas, especially when canvassing it is exactly what you'll be doing for most of the game. Add descriptions which change every time you revisit the same place, and it adds up to tedium. You just spend too much time wandering aimlessly. Love Potion has five locations to start, with three more revealed as the game goes on. -Interface. Divi-Dead's sole means of player input was the movement engine. Movement remains the primary means of input in Love Potion, but you also have the ability to look around or talk to people. Most of the options are dummied, true, but it still lends to the idea of being there. But despite these strengths and others, Love Potion doesn't have the grip and allure of Divi-Dead. The thing is, Divi-Dead had only two major things going for it, but they were enough. First was the graphics, which were anime but gave the impression of realism. The backgrounds were full color, and melded with the character drawings seemlessly. The second, and more important, is atmosphere. Divi-Dead did an incredible job of immersing the player in it's gloom and suspense. Love Potion doesn't cultivate such levels of mimesis. -Craxton