Angels with Scaly Wings review for PS5/4, Xbox Series X/One, Switch

Even though Ratalaika has been publishing visual novels for well over a year now, their foray into the genre has been pretty hit or miss ? with much more misses than hits. At best, they?ve been responsible for giving decent visual novels a wider audience. At worst?well, whatever the highs, the lows have been much, much lower. And, of course, there?s been weirdness that defies description, that falls somewhere between the two extremes.

Given that Angels with Scaly Wings is a murder mystery/romance novel about a man sent to an alternate universe to live as humanity?s ambassador among dragons ? who dress like people, work human jobs, and generally behave like humans ? I?d say it falls squarely in that category of ?middle weirdness.” Is it good? Is it bad? How do you even judge something that?s so clearly aimed at a very specific niche/fetish?

As someone who doesn?t have that much interest in human-dragon relationships ? which is to say, I have none whatsoever ? Angels with Scaly Wings was kind of a lot. There?s a pretty sizeable cast of characters, all kinds of relationships, and more digressions than you can shake a stick at. If you want to see every ending the game has to offer, you need to play through the game at least six times ? and that?s not even counting the many side paths you can venture down just for the heck of it. Even if you were to start losing interest and fast-forwarding through some parts (just hypothetically, of course), it still takes well over an hour to reach all those endings. And if you commit to reading everything and trying out all those paths? You?re looking at a substantial time commitment.

But, I mean, the internet has shown us there?s an audience for everything. Even if Angels with Scaly Wings is fairly modest in what it actually shows, if you?ve ever wanted to read about giving a lady politician dragon a deep tissue massage right in the tail area, or watched as a dragon showers in front of you, or even given a few kisses to that dragon librarian, here?s your chance. It?s not my thing, but I assume it?s somebody?s. If you?re that somebody, you?d better be prepared to read a lot, and put up with a mystery that?s not all that interesting, but you?ll eventually get what you?re after.

And if you?re not into it (say, if you?re me), at the very least you?ve got to respect how much effort went into this game, and how much it asks of players. As I said up top, Ratalaika has been responsible for some of the laziest, low-effort visual novels imaginable. I?m not going to then complain when one of their visual novels swings hard in the exact opposite direction. There?s a tonne of content to be found here ? all Angels with Scaly Wings asks is that you just be super into reading about kissing dragons to get the most out of it.

Ratalaika Games provided us with an Angels with Scaly Wings PS4/PS5 code for review purposes.