Game: Virche Evermore -EpiC: Lycoris-
Genre: Visual Novel, Otome
System: Nintendo Switch
Developers | Publishers: Idea Factory | Aksys Games
Age Rating: EU 12+ | US Teen
Price: US $49.99| UK £44.99 | EU € 49,99
Release Date: November 7th, 2024
A review code was used, with many thanks to Reef Entertainment.
❗️ A few minor spoilers will be hinted at in this review for Virche Evermore -EpiC: Lycoris-.
❗️ There are a lot of scenes and topics in this game that are gruesome and horror-themed. I would not recommend playing this game if you are not in a good mental state or are not a fan of these themes.
Five New Stories
Virche Evermore -EpiC: Lycoris- is a fan disk of the original Virche Evermore: ErroR Salvation. We revisit the strange country known as Arpéchéle, where its citizens only live to the age of twenty-three. After years of research, a new technology was developed that allowed humans to prolong their lives by becoming a Reliver. The story of our Maiden of Death, Ceres, continues as she has chosen to live her life with her suitors. We read about her salvation and despair.
Side Story -Interlude-
These are various stories from the original game, what-if stories, stories of the men’s pasts and untold stories.
Side End -Encore-
This play mode goes back to ErroR Salvation. It starts at about chapter three or four and from there, we get to read alternate storylines based on the original game.
Virche de la Coda -Émotion-
In the emotion story in we see what happens after the despair and the good endings of the original game. This was the main highlight of Virche Evermore -EpiC: Lycoris- for me.
Tradition -Drifter-
We finally get the story of the origins of the drifter. We read where he came from, how he survived and lived in and his meeting with Adolphe/Ankou.
Virche du Salut -Ankou-
A sort of Encore to Ankou’s story and the part he plays in Ceres’ future.
The Fated Suiters
Lucas
Encore: I had such high hopes that EpiC: Lycoris writers were going to give Lucas a better story in this alternate reality. Or just give him some sort of a happy ending. But those hopes were in vain. In some sense the story was better, it was less gruesome in some parts, but it was despair all the same.
Emotion: Of course, Lucas’ endings were very bleak in ErroR Salvation. In both the endings either Ceres or Lucas died which sent the other person in sort of a manic spiral. In the bad ending, Lucas killed Ceres in his brainwashed state and in doing so, got back to himself. After realising what he did, he fled to a cave where he awaited his death since the curse would kill him anyway.
In the “good” ending, Ceres kills Lucas and is executed herself for the crimes of Boureau. But not before she takes her own life. She plans on following Lucas to Hades and serving out their sentence.
Mathis
Encore: Wow, this route in Virche Evermore -EpiC: Lycoris- was rough. The writers seemed to think, how can we make this route as violent as possible and completely put Mathis in despair? I had so hoped that they would give Mathis a happier ending with the Alternate Ending, but that didn’t happen. It was just a rough play-through for me; I didn’t particularly enjoy it, and it took me a while to finish.
Emotion: The after La Salute ending was… better, I guess. In the good ending, Mathis can come back to his personality, and he and Ceres manage to escape Jean/Camille through an explosion in Camille’s lab that kills him. Ceres and Mathis live together in a new house and try to live out their days in peace while Mathis tries to write his first novel. Even in the ending, after the good ending, nothing is sunshine and rainbows for these characters.
Scien
Encore: Like with all the other characters the original story was better. It did have interesting elements to it like Scien knowing Dahut was behind it the whole time. But I feel we saw a lot less development in the relationship between Scien and Ceres. But this route was definitely better than Lucas’ or Mathis’.
Emotion: Scien went through a huge change after updating his memory bank. Now, he is able to feel a deep love and not have his relived body crash. This la salute was the kind of ending I was hoping for for every route. I flew through Scien’s route, and I loved every second of it. It was great to see a different side to Scien, one where he is totally obsessed with Ceres and wants to be near her at all times. This was by far my favourite route of the game.
Yves
Encore: Yves’ route was the one that stayed with me the most after playing ErroR Salvation. The ending kind of traumatised me and I still think about it a lot. So, I had high hopes for the encore that the route would have a happier ending. And while I can’t say too much about it, I will say that the good ending to this route had my heart, and both of the endings made me tear up a bit.
Emotion: Well, I would have thought that this emotion route was going to be very short. But that was not the case. The last time we saw them, Yves proposed with a black lycoris bouquet in the burning field of lycorises. We find out Yves has been adding lycoris flowers to his diet, so he has developed a reasonable amount of antibodies to combat the toxins. He and Ceres escape the fire and go to a nearby cave to hide out from the world. This is where they both plan to die after Yves slowly perishes from the toxins. But the gods of Arpéchéle and Ankou have a different plan.
I loved to see this fan disk route, Yves is such a kind soul and deserves the world. And I was just so happy that they finally got a real happy ending.
Adolphe
Encore: I will keep this very short; this encore was not it. In the original game, this route was the route that explained everything and where all the stories connected. But this encore took a different turn. The original was just better.
Emotion: It had been five years since the great tragedy in Arpéchéle. The borders opened up, the toxins from the lycoris flowers are gone and the age cycle is now the same as every other country. Ceres also finally recovered from Dahuts experiment, physically. But mentally she and Adolphe have a lot to recover from.
This was great. It had all the elements that I would want from a lovey-dovey fan disk. A simple plot, romance and some character development along the way. Even a great final CG.
Ankou
Ankou had his own story that only unlocked after playing the drifter. This route is essentially Ankou’s Encore route, where the beginning of the story is the same, and then the story shifts to an alternate reality where Ankou doesn’t want Ceres to investigate the strange deaths on her own. So he decides to keep her with him in his cave and investigate the murders together. But during their time, they find a third drifter…
This route was good, it introduced a new interesting character and from that point on I got into it. There were a lot of parts that we already played at some point in the original game even in Epic Lycoris, but that was fine for me.
Emotion: I felt the same about this route as I did with Mathis. They do have happy endings where they live happy lives as a family, and I am so happy that Ankou has his wish. But the ending had a sad note to it, which I can’t reveal. It seems that some characters just aren’t able to get the full, happy ending experience.
The Drifter
The drifter story in Virche Evermore -EpiC: Lycoris- is, of course, about the original drifter. We read about his origins, how he got to Archépéle, his discovery of people’s short lifecycle and how he managed to survive on his own there. We even see the drifters meeting with the second drifter, Adolphe/Ankou. This story was so good! I really liked reading the story of who the drifter was and how he survived in Archépéle. This was a different side to the history of Virche Evermore that we had yet to see, and I flew through it.
Visuals and sound
I was surprised at the visuals of this game. The first game had stunning visuals and was one of the best I had seen that year. It was announced that it had the same artist, which was Yomi. But I don’t know what happened with Virche Evermore -EpiC: Lycoris-; some visuals were great and fulfilled my otome needs. However, a lot of visuals were severely lacking in a lot of places. The colours and compositions were meh and the faces looked weird. But most of all, the visuals had such weird angles! It wasn’t pleasing or satisfying to look at. I am wondering who okayed some of these visuals because some weird choices were made.
The BGM was kind of the same, except for some newer songs to fit the Emotion routes. One song in particular I LOVED, it is called Lycoris. So beautiful and it helped me get emotional in some scenes. But nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoy the Virche Evermore BGM at whatever time, because it fits the story amazingly well.
The OP is called Wandering Flower. This is a great song, it somehow communicates all the hope and despair of the game all in one song. There are two EDs, one for the good end and one for the bad end.
Overall thoughts
Virche Evermore -EpiC: Lycoris- is overall a good follow-up of ErroR Salvation. In a lot of stories, I finally got the ending I was hoping for and washed away some of the gruesome and heartbreaking endings of the original game. But Lucas and (kind of) Mathis’ routes were a little disappointing. I don’t know if the game writers have a special hate for these two, but they just couldn’t catch a break, even in their supposedly happy ending.
I don’t understand why they added the Encore story. It was just more of the same misery that all the previous routes had, minus some slightly better endings for some characters. What I would’ve hoped was that they made happy endings for everyone, but that is, as I said, not the case.
I will give a heads-up if anyone is thinking of picking this game up. DO play the original game right before this one. I hadn’t played ErroR Salvation in over a year, and I had forgotten a lot about the stories and the endings. And this game didn’t really provide the necessary summaries at times.
Conclusion for Virche Evermore -EpiC: Lycoris-
To keep it short, I liked Virche Evermore -EpiC: Lycoris-. They added a lot of extra content to make the game pretty long, so game-time-wise, you’re good. Not everyone had the ending I was hoping for, but maybe that is just the story the writers were going with. But in a lot of ways, the characters did get a happy ending in their way.
Final verdict: I Like It
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