Milky Way Prince – The Vampire Star Review for Steam

Milky Way Prince – The Vampire Star is a visual novel that will be released today onto the Steam platform. It was developed by Eyeguys and Lorenzo Redaelli and published by Santa Ragione. In its Steam description, the game is described as “a visual novel about an abusive relationship, idealization, and intimacy.” This description gives some clarity to the purpose of the story line, but, unfortunately, the visual novel itself struggles to represent the seriousness of its own themes and falls short of displaying these serious themes in an authentic manner.

While I understand what the creator set out to do from reading the description of the game, when I played the demo, there were some parts of the story that I would like to discuss that suggest that, instead, the story may function to send the opposite message to the creator’s intentions because of how infrequent your opportunities to help change the relationship come about.

Milky Way Prince – The Vampire Star is meant to serve as a sort of cautionary tale about the danger of a romantic relationship between two individuals who are not in the correct state of mind to sustain a healthy relationship with one another, with a slightly supernatural twist involving astronomy. The main character, Nuki, is battling feelings of loneliness and lacks a sense of self worth. He bases his hopes for love strongly on a children’s fairy tale book about a boy who meets another boy from the stars called the Milky Way Prince and ascends into space with him. Enter Sune, our other main character, who just so happens to be a star from the Milky Way just like the guy in Nuki’s story. The two like each other instantly, and Nuki soon becomes unhealthily attached to Sune, summing up pretty much the entirety of his self worth to how Sune feels about him. Sune, on the other hand, is a star, making him inherently unstable. As a star, he becomes dangerous when under pressure, making him prone to sudden outbursts or “explosions” in intimate relationships, mirroring a real mental health issue that can be found in people, while using an astronomical element that makes it easier to understand. I find the premise of the visual novel to be exciting and an interesting way to display the problems of a toxic relationship, but the execution is not good.

Like many a romantic visual novel before it, Milky Way Prince – The Vampire Star struggles to draw a line between showing audiences mental health issues and romanticizing them. Though it’s clear the creator tried, there is a lack of meaningful scenes in between sex scenes that would help us better understand our characters and their problems. It feels like most of the story is just our two main characters meeting for sex and an extra story line about the fact that Sune is a dangerous star that is never fully fleshed out and is simply used to accompany his lashing out at Nuki. I understand that the point of this may be to show the lack of depth to Sune and Nuki’s idealized relationship, but it also keeps readers from seeing character depth, which is needed when including mental health issues in characterization.

I am still not clear on whether Sune exploding is inevitable or not or how the transfers work. I also didn’t feel like the J.A.D.E. stone concept was necessary. At some points I felt like Sune’s self loathing was used as a tool in sex scenes to add edge, or at least the writer was getting dangerously close to that being the case. Even the part of the novel’s Steam description that invites audiences to “live a summer of dysfunctional love” seems to be worded in a romanticized manner.

Dialogue and action decisions in the game supposedly make a difference to the story, but I felt like there weren’t enough dissenting decisions or different dialogue options to show fully the contrasting bad and healthy options for Nuki and show the impact of his changes best. I played twice to get alternative endings. The first ending I got felt inconclusive because it did not add anything in terms of the main conflict of the story. It did not resolve the conflict, which is fine, but it also didn’t do the work that it needed to that would exemplify the problem with Nuki’s final decision on his and Sune’s relationship. To be more specific, the fact that it is a bad ending is not emphasized enough.

The second time, I got a much better ending that actually does what the author was going for. However, the means to reaching alternative endings was the part that felt undone to me. The ending you get depends on your ability to navigate in a relationship of this nature. While I was bothered by the fact that there were some things I could not avoid doing or saying, at some point players do have the chance to help their character.

6/10

Check Out the Milky Way Prince – The Vampire Star Steam Trailer:

Milky Way Prince – The Vampire Star releases today for Windows PC and Mac via Steam.

For more information, please visit: http://www.milkywayprince.com/

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