Corpse Party: Sweet Sachiko’s Hysteric Birthday Bash is a Visual Novel taking place around the events of the first and second Corpse Party titles. With such a vast cast of characters and in-depth lore, it is immediately intimating for those that haven’t played any other games in the franchise. In the Bonus section of the starting menu, you can find helpful things, including a family tree, timeline of events, and script of everything that happened within their previous titles. It is certainly enough to refresh your memory if you haven’t played them in a while, though for newcomers it may prove a bit of a hurdle to read and piece together all of this.
Upon starting the story, most every character in the series suddenly find themselves inside of a previously unseen school auditorium. Understandably confused, it isn’t long before they hear an invisible entity talking to them. Well, as it turns out, it was their evil seven-year-old captor Sachiko who was standing behind the tall podium entirely out of view. Calling in her maniacal, hammer loving zombie to lift her up, she announces something very important. That today is her birthday, and they are going to party it up.
This obviously did not help clear up any confusion to the room full of people that have experienced nothing but horror and death in her realm. Most of which were already dead themselves. However, with the promise that no one will be killed in celebration of that day, they decide to just go along and hopefully gain her favor to finally quite possibly escape. That kicks off the plethora of events she has planned involving such fun things as making a home movie, hosting a quiz show, and starring in a harem comedy to entertain Sachiko.
Being the main antagonist in a series called Corpse Party, it is little surprise that these seemingly wholesome things can quickly become twisted affairs and people can indeed die in them. However, compared to what all these students go through in this realm, it is quite tame all things considered. This is primarily a comedy, and it does a rather good job on that front. All the banter is very entertaining, with every character having their own distinct qualities to them, even the protagonist Satoshi who constantly gets mocked for how bland he is. With how each of the eight chapters focuses on only a small handful of them, it is easy to become acquainted with their personality and remember each, despite how large the cast is.
New players jumping straight into this shouldn’t have much trouble finding some enjoyment due to this title being mainly focused on character development. Even if they decide to forgo reading all of the provided in-game lore, that knowledge is not vital to the comedic narrative here. At most, you will miss out on some callbacks, such as someone loving to take pictures of dead bodies or other jokes referencing past events. For all the jokes and typically calm atmosphere, things can take a turn for the dark real quick. You never know when Sachiko will suddenly get bored and break her promise of not killing anyone. On top of that, she has many powers at her disposal to make people suffer immensely without actually offing them. Throwing a fun party for a psychopathic, evil seven-year-old deity has got to be one of the oddest setups I’ve experienced.
Once the Stockholm syndrome kicks in, Sachiko becomes a really fun character thanks to her unpredictable nature and unsettling adorableness. Every character is well voice acted, but the sweet-sounding Sachiko who can abruptly switch to a threatening low growl if tempted truly steals the show. All of the eight different chapters are written by different people, with only the first and last being connected in any meaningful way. The rest of them play like stand-alone skits that typically don’t even reference one another and use a different combination of characters. It is a mostly disjointed narrative focused on the journey rather than creating an overarching plot. This means that you could have played most any chapter in any order without missing out on anything of importance if doing so was an option, which some may consider boring or difficult for long play sessions.
With the fact that each chapter doesn’t have to acknowledge any of the prior events or dialogue, this really let all of the writers go wild. This chaotic nature of everyone pulling at different directions suited the wacky theme and the actual lore perfectly, but more importantly, it gave all of it a genuine sense that the writers were having fun and allow them to get creative. You never quite know what is going to happen next and with the great amount of choices you will have to make all throughout, it gets rather intense as you hope you pick the right one to keep you from being murdered. There are 27 wrong ends, each containing their own CGs. Most of the deaths are goofy in nature, and those that are not won’t be as extreme as previous entries.
The difficulty of each chapter varies wildly due to having different writers. On some, you will have to go out of your way to get a wrong end, while on others you will have to do everything perfectly. The fourth chapter that has you take part in a quiz show is by far the most unfair. Not only will you have to answer everything perfectly, but a certain scene will lock you out of choices necessary to win if you pick them in the wrong order. With you needing to clear a chapter to get to the next one, you’ll be replaying this one a couple of times before getting it right. That is not unusual for a regular title in the series, yet in Birthday Bash, it does catch you off guard with its sudden harshness which never occurred before or after.
This doesn’t mean you won’t be dying/losing an awful lot, however. With the various unusual scenarios you will find yourself in, it becomes a tricky thing to wrap your head around what in the world is happening, much less how you should react to it. It is a great deal of fun, and with how most choices have an immediate effect, you can simply reload to a save that the game generously makes before every decision. In total, this title lasted me a good 22 hours and I did not get all the bad endings for all the extra CGs. Beating the game nets you a few character dossiers, which really should have been unlocked from the start to help new players associate a character’s name with their appearance. It offers a surface-level, spoiler-free description of them as well, making it that much more bizarre that it is a reward for after you finish it.
Once you finish the title, you will also get a new EX chapter that goes into the background of the new characters Ran and Azusa, as well as how they met everyone else. This is a chapter focused solely on horror. It is quick to toss aside all of the prior cheekiness and force one to remember how messed up things actually are in that realm. I really enjoyed their humor, though it is in horror that this series truly excels at. It is a great way to send off this title as things once again return to “normal”, leaving a bittersweet memory of the past day.
All of the music is stellar and can be unlocked for later listening by clearing chapters. It was particularly interesting to hear old tracks that have been remixed to sound more cheerful. Some songs start off with a creepy vibe, goes full-blown kawaii, then somber again. They fit the theme of Sachiko’s now seemingly bi-polar nature, where one moment she may seem like an innocent child having fun, only to then threaten to kill someone. The backgrounds accomplish much of the same. There is just something inherently funny to having slapstick humor and scenarios in the dark, blood-filled rooms that make up her realm. The saying that tragedy breeds comedy is rather apt in this case.
Corpse Party: Birthday Bash was an ingenious idea and whoever came up with it deserves an applause. I can’t say I’ve ever played anything quite like this. Throwing a birthday party for your murderous captor was a unique experience that I had no idea could be so much fun. It barely had any form of story or consistency between its chapters, yet it remained highly entertaining all throughout. For fans of the series, purchasing this is a no brainer, unless you really dislike its new Visual Novel gameplay. On the flip side, Visual Novel fans that have never played a Corpse Party game may want to check this out if you are on the lookout for something containing dark humor. It is truly a party you won’t soon forget in either case.
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