Right from the very beginning of Intruder on the Bridge, the level of quality with this visual novel becomes immediately apparent. With most visual novel titles, you are given mostly still images exclusively, but we are treated to some scenes that are fully animated in this game.
Taking off from the start with quite a bang, our opening scene is of two twin brothers in a fairly heated conversation that swiftly turns to trouble. Afterwards, we are faced with a very hard situation where we have to shift into being someone we aren’t to dig our way through this story of vengeance and justice.
Along the way, our protagonist comes across many different exotic races of alien and just as interestingly, various types of personalities that collectively create a lot of unique situations and characters to keep the game fresh. Each section of the story is separated by chapters to separate certain intersections of the story to keep us aware of potential new opportunities to revisit familiar areas. Navigating the game is done in a new and fresh way. Typical of visual novels, the game will simply move from scene to scene with a choice here and there, however freedom to explore each chapter through a menu is present. Familiar format typical of visual novels is still present with us cycling through dialog to get to options, but after each encounter we come back to the menu to make a new choice where we want to go next.
Writing is well done, but sometimes we may find ourselves caught up in conversations where things don’t make a lot of sense due to references to aliens, races or places we have never explored, so the reference is lost. The intention here was to create a sense of history and world, which is fine, but these situations can be confusing at times.
Much like the writing, story and environments being very well done, come the actual characters. Eye candy in this title is spectacularly done presenting us with very high quality models and even animations that really impress. Not only are we blessed with full animation and beautiful quality, but the voice acting is very well done. Scenes in this game of adult nature are of some of the higher qualities I have seen in these type of games.
Not only do we get the quality mentioned up to this point, but the developers even went a step further by adding a points system for extra depth to our choices and mini-games. We have combat mini-games that act similarly to typical turn based RPGs, but that’s not all. We even get a mini-game that is a bottom up shooter of the likes of old school arcade shooters. The shooter mini-game is not perfect, but there is a lot of charm here still. You get the typical patterned flight patterns of enemies, who some shoot at you and upgrades to your ship to keep it interesting. These mini-games do impact the game, so don’t skip them despite that being an option.
Although, Intruder on the Bridge is not the cheapest of the visual novels, it is by no means a price-tag that is higher than what it provides. Coming in at this price is very much worth what you get, so this is yet another novel worth investing in.
