QUALIA ~Yakusoku no Kiseki~ (QUALIA ～約束の軌跡～) Review

Feeling empty, lonely, and a bit chilly lately, I decided I needed something “short and sweet,” “gets to the point fast,” “heroine’s got big tits,” “preferably that kind of plot” — in short, the “you know what I mean” kind of game. Which is how I ended up with QUALIA Yakusoku no Kiseki.

The premise is about as obvious as it gets: the protagonist is a scientist, he builds a big-titted robot girl, and then there’s that soulful look in her eyes. Sure, this year is drowning in shitty “AI robot romance” galgames, but this one clearly isn’t like those dime-a-dozen ones. What kind of game this is — you get it, right?

Let’s go! My guy!

So I downloaded it and started playing right away. I figured this would take about two hours, the same way nobody spends a full 45 minutes watching a Saeko Matsushita film — who the hell actually watches that stuff seriously? It’s all the same thing anyway.

Then I actually played it, and something felt off. Why does this game talk so goddamn much? Why are there so few CGs? Why are the protagonist and the robot girl falling in love? Why is the heroine suddenly debating philosophical questions about “what is love”?

What is love? Nobody knows what love is without getting down to it!

And then, as the plot rolled on, our protagonist fucking died.

Holy shit. I held out all this time, didn’t even get one lewd image, and now the protagonist gets killed in a car crash??

Then the game shifts into full insanity mode.

So our protagonist, a scientist, built the robot girl Machina. She’s got AI, but when it comes to “love” and “emotions” she’s an artificial idiot. The protagonist tries to cultivate her feelings. There’s progress, but before he succeeds, he drives to the lab one rainy night and dies in a car crash.

Machina, the robot he left behind, is heartbroken. While sorting through his belongings, she discovers he’d been researching something like “parallel worlds” and “time machines.” So she picks up his research and, as a robot, starts studying this field herself. After fifteen years of struggle, she finally cracks it! Machina uses the tech to travel through time — she crosses into the “dream” of the protagonist in another parallel world, where he’s still young and hasn’t started robot research yet. But after crossing over, Machina starts guiding that protagonist in his dreams, teaching him how to build robots. The protagonist, like he’s been handed a walkthrough, starts developing robots, and quickly builds an identical model to Machina — same everything except eye color. Same VA, same CGs, even.

And in this worldline, thanks to the other-worldline Machina’s help, the robot he builds performs better, and she quickly learns “what love is” — and then starts putting “what love is” into practice.

But who the hell is watching this serious plot? I just want to know what happened to “the Machina in the worldline where the protagonist died”!

But the game flat-out refuses to say! It only mentions that this worldline’s protagonist will also face “the car crash death problem,” but thanks to Machina Unit 02’s premonition, the tragedy is avoided.

Finally, the game reveals that the original-worldline Machina, through time travel, meets this worldline’s protagonist in a dreamlike virtual reality, and the story just fucking ends.

Some things, after everything’s gone to shit, make us forget why we even set out in the first place.

Some games, after one twist too many, make me forget why I even started playing them.

QUALIA Yakusoku no Kiseki is one of those games. It looks like a low-priced nukige, but it’s actually a story-driven work — and the plot twists are genuinely unexpected. But the biggest problem with this game isn’t the plot…

It’s the budget!

This has to be the poorest game I’ve ever seen. There are maybe five BGM tracks looping throughout the whole thing. The CGs are well-drawn, but mostly just the HCGs. The character sprites and backgrounds are cut-rate to the extreme — plenty of plain black backgrounds get used as-is. The story covers events “fifteen years later,” yet everyone looks exactly the same, nothing’s changed! There’s a scene where the protagonist dies in a car crash, but the game doesn’t even bother with a “screen flashes red” effect — he just dies, light as a feather, with less impact than squashing an ant. All of this screams that the game is broke and couldn’t afford details. The biggest draw is probably the heroine’s VA, Ono Ryoko — did they blow the entire budget on her?

QUALIA Yakusoku no Kiseki is supposedly being released in volumes, but I can’t figure out what there even is to split. Volume one already crosses into parallel worlds — what the hell is left for the rest?

Oh right, the foreshadowing was actually in the official promo art from the start: our heroine Machina’s eyes are one blue, one red in the promo art, corresponding to the two parallel-world Machinas. That’s a neat little trick, I’ll give it that.

I just think that if there’s a next volume, maybe spend some more money. These days, making games without money — or without the willingness to spend it — really gets you nowhere, my guy!