Foreword: I was quite intrigued by original Gram Cats concept - mutated humans fight with aliens and ordinary schoolgirl gets an ability to transform into cat and thus becomes a great spy. But the eternal maze of corridors prevented me from finishing that game. So I thought I'd have more luck with the second part to get acquainted with this SF setting.
Title: Gram Cats 2
Developer: Dott Kikaku
Date: 1993-01-08
VNDB link: https://vndb.org/v8889
Length: 4 hours.
Game type: Command selection ADV + RPG
Youtube walkthrough: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=655prv-IBI8
Difficulty: It's not difficult, but very repetitive. Till you trigger some flag, the rest of events would repeat over and over again. And the second RPG part has one huge pitch moment - I had to restart that whole RPG part for 4 times to find the solution. So upon entering the 2nd floor if you move forward there's a triggered scene where Sayaka falls down - you get to find Sayaka, but upon returning to 2nd floor there is new cutscene that takes away Marine from the party and you need to get to boss door alone. The problem is that from both sides of the door there are the toughest enemies that can only be taken down with two characters in party. You can turn into cat form and slip through the enemies, but to open the door you need to be human and you can't get to human form unless you attack that tough enemy and thus suffer a retaliation hit. And if you enter the boss room without the full hp - he's impossible to beat. So I've tried a lot of different approaches in cat form and running away in human form, but all of them did not work. So on my 4th try upon entering the second floor I did not step forward but turned left and killed the tough enemies while still having two characters in the party and then triggered the two cut-scenes - that finally made my day. But just imagine - the main feature of the game of heroine turning into cat turned totally useless here.
Synopsis: Marine and Sayaka arrive to the Scherer Island which is known as a luxury resort with a great hotel and famous nudist beach. Their goal is to investigate island secretly for the traces of an alien base.
Structure: None.
Character Design rating: 3/10
Protagonist rating: 3/10
Story rating: 2/10
Game quality: 4/10
Overall rating: 3/10
Rating comments: I'm very pissed with this game for stealing four hours of my life. So I thought I would waste an hour more to write a review. My greatest disappointment is that the synopsis is conveyed during the opening sequence that takes around three minutes. It stops at the moment when the girls dive into the ocean and find some structure underwater. And for the first two hours of adventure mode we actually just getting to this structure from the point of arriving to the island. That's just stupid - why showing it in the opening at all then. Heroines don't have individuality so I did even need to know who of them was Marine (red head) and who was Sayaka (blue head) till the point when they separated. I can't say that game is of low quality - graphics are nice, music is solid and there is animation at time. But combine poor characters, absence of story, repetitivity (and reusing of the same resources), abuse of eroticism, weak RPG part and this stupid pitch moment right at the boss and you get exactly a score "3".
Protagonist: Sayaka and Marine are poor protagonists. Their main difference is that Marine (red hair) is more shy and defensive type and Sayaka (blue hair) is kind of loose and for that she's the main heroine of the most voluntary H events - Marine gets coerced in her events. Sayaka was the heroine of the prequel, so it's natural.
Characters: The only side-characters here are girls that get involved into H events and one local salesman who turns out to be something more than a side-character... Apart of that, there's noone of notice.
Story: I've already mentioned that there's no story besides the synopsis. So let's at least mention the main steps till reaching the underwater base. Each day we need to go to the pool to develop diving skills. After that there's couple days of diving in the real ocean practice. At the same time there seems to be another goal - getting into the nudist beach! Marine does not have the courage, but after a few encounters in the hotel with other girls she gets able to relax a bit. There's also Marine kidnapping happens. That's it! And the rest of two hours adventure mode is visiting the same places over and over again hoping for some new event to trigger.
CG: CG are few or I'd rather say non-HCG are few. And because Sayaka transformation suit kind of is not supposed to cover nipples I can't even show those transformed mode nice CG.
Sound: Well, this time I found two BGM annoying. Had to even turn volume down. So not the best sound support.
Overall comments: I expected at least somewhat interesting SF story with superhero transformation mode. What I actually got was a yuri game with no story at all. The whole "gram cat" feature is only flashed at the very end and does not bear much meaning - that could be a game of any other franchise without any problem. Oh, well, at least there is one obscure game less now.
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