3RRDC July

Recently I had come to the conclusion that I could now take the
Dreamcast down many paths. I could continue buying domestic games
and enhance my collection that way. Or, I could go and take my
Dreamcast online which I also did. Finally, I could bust on to the import
scene. So on one fateful night on ebay in late October I won my first
import auction. The game was called "July" and it even came with a
domestic keyboard. The winning bid was 6 cents. On November 3rd it
came in the mail. And that's where the story begins.

July was a launch title for the Japanese Dreamcast. The story follows
two young men, Makoto, and Joshua. You see there was this bus
accident, and I think it killed off Makoto's parents. There's a lot of
terrorism going down and the two guys try to get to the bottom of it all.
Well at the bottom of it all is NAX, a corporation who is connected with
the strange amusement park of "Ingot", which also appears to be a
cult. Makoto is aided by Eri-chan, his 16 year old sweet heart, and
Joshua is aided by Patti, a little girl. You see there's this hooded girl
who Ingot is using as some sort of puppet for the people. Add this with
the sexless humans being made, throw in some plot twists at the end,
and voila you got your self a pretty darn good story. That is if you can
read any of it.

Get ready for a lot of Kanji though. And make sure you can play
imports on your dc. I used a gameshark cdx to boot July and it worked
just fine. Whilst in the game, the main menus are all in English, so at
least saving is really easy. Also just incase you didn't know faithful
readers, you can save Japanese games on an American VMU. July
takes 4 blocks of memory to save.

You lead Joshua and Makoto all over the map screen to various lit up
squares. Click into them and go to that location. Then you meet people
there and you talk. At some points your character has to make a
choice on what to say. This affects the flow of the story and what/how
things happen. Be careful though, say the wrong thing and you're
dead, game over. So you talk and talk until you finish talking at that
place. Then you're back on the map and you choose where you want to
go next to talk. The game is set up in chapters. So once you trigger a
certain event, the chapter is over, and then you will take control of the
other character. You can also look in history to get information on all
the characters, and chapter specific characters.

Characters, lets talk about them. First there is Makoto a 19 year old
orphan from the terrorist bus bombing. You spend half of the game
playing as him trying to figure out what's going on. Be prepared to see
this guy without a shirt on all the time. Oddly enough when he is having
his monologues, the creators saw fit to have drawn him without a shirt.
Weird. He is guided by Eri chan a 16 year old school girl who is good
with computers. Pervert adventure game fans take note. Don't expect
any hentai scenes between the two. Although you can find some
provocative shots here and there (one in the intro but it's kinda
religious looking). I believe the game was ported from the PC, maybe
that has the hentai action you need. But the art ain't so great anyway
so I don't know why you would want it.

Joshua is an interesting character. He's 29 years old and sexless. Yep
sexless. So obviously he wants to find this NAX corporation and find
his creator. He is paired with 8 year old Patti who is also sexless. Their
story gets more into the secrets of NAX and all of the freaks being
produced there. Joshua also explores more of the seedy underworld of
the town and has connections at the bar with Mary, who he gets info
from. He has a hit list of people that are connected with the terrorism.
Who will be last on the list? Play and find out!

Hurray first generation Dreamcast game! Ok, so to be frank, the
graphics are nearly non-existent. You have (minimal)2D portraits on
(minimal) 3D backgrounds. The artwork is at best ok. It looks like a
bizarre cross between Shenmue and the anime movie Akira. Being an
adventure game, you hope for a lot of art, but that really wasn't the
case. I found that the same pictures were used constantly. If Joshua
and Makoto have over 10 pictures each for all the story branches in
the game, I would be surprised, that's how minimal it is. But there are a
ton of characters, so at least you get variety there. The backgrounds
are very, how we say, early. Just some streets, trees, desks, beds, not
much going on. Some cool spots to be, like the amusement park, and
the bars, but overall just meh. Every long once and a while, you are
treated to a short fmv cut scene. They don't last long and they are a
little grainy. Early stuff.

All this talking and only the cat gets to say anything. There are no
voices in July except for the cat who gets to meow. I believe that all
adventure games on Dreamcast now have voices. But this was early so
it didn't happen. The background music though, for the most part, was
enjoyable and interesting. Yes, Joshua's main theme was boring and
repetitive. But there were a lot of cool tracks. The coffee shop had a
good track. The bar had a cool track. Makoto had a good track. Expect
to hear a fusion of techno and jazz throughout the game sprinkled here
and there with creepiness. I enjoyed the music. It reminded me of a lot
of things. At times I felt Chrono Trigger. At other times Skies of Arcadia
and Shenmue. Or maybe my brain was just thinking of better games?

Does the thought of scrolling through oodles of Japanese text excite
you? If so, replay will be kind to you. Players could play through the
game again, make different choices, meet different people, and
advance the story differently. Or heck, get a different ending (I found
about 3 endings so far besides game overs). But if the initial idea of
reading all the Japanese text and looking at still pictures doesn't
excite you, then I would say that this game probably isn't for you. But if
you do enjoy this it is probable that you will want to play it twice to
make more sense of the story. Just keep a dictionary on hand. But
there are no galleries to see all the pics you've seen, no sound clips to
re listen to nothing. Bare bones.

So how hard is a game where you pick and choose what to say? Well
just make sure to save often. Sometimes Makoto and Joshua can get
into some hairy situations (at gunpoint!) and then you get two choices.
Pick the wrong one and it's game over! But you can save after any
location so do it often. I died a bunch of times but I trudged through.

Despite some pinches of blandness, I found July to be a very enjoyable
game that took nearly 8 hours to play through. It was frustrating when
at times I died and had to redo stuff, so again, save often. The story
was interesting, and for the most part, I felt the ending did a good job
of tying it up. All except the monkey, I didn't get his role. But anyways,
if you can find it cheap and you wanna try something new, try out July.
Horror fans take note, there aren't many scenes of gore. I can
remember a few though that stick out. Like when Joshua went to the
hotel. But remember Japanese horror isn't like that of the American
kind. So it's cool to see how different cultures take on different things.
It's also very fun to make up your own character voices and dialogue
for everyone. It's all about being different.

Review by: Orochi Sonic

Note: If you cannot read any Japanese at all, then obviously the entire
point of the game is gone. Therefore, if this is the case for you, then
take 20 points away from the overall score.