"Exodus Guilty Vol.1 Present" is an "AnimePlay" DVD from Hirameki. As 
they advise, this can be played on a PC, but you may be better off 
with a DVD player (including game console like PS2 or Xbox) instead. 
This first volume has the secondary title of "Present" but it has 
scenes from all 3 time periods that the story is set in. Volume 2 is 
going to be "Past", and volume 3 will be "Future." I wonder if these 
will be all released in English, and how well they will both tie 
together and stand alone (for people that didn't buy them all).
I'll be abbreviating this game's name, "Exodus Guilty Vol.1 Present" 
to EG1 for the rest of this file.
The original Japanese property seems to be from Abel. Their website 
is at:
http://www.abel-jp.com/
The GameFAQs site has an entry for Exodux Guilty Neos, which was 
a Japanese release for Dreamcast in 2001. The Abel website shows what 
appears to be a lot more choices and steps necessary for a 
walkthrough of that product. There seems to have also been an "Exodus 
Guilty" for Playstation in Japan in 1998, but very little is shown for 
that, although the graphics look the same. That appears to be the 
original game, and either that or Exodus Guilty Neos was reworked into 
3 products for this re-release on DVD. So we English-speakers are 
again getting a dumbed-down version of a property that's 4 to 7 
years old from Japan. Why is this not surprising?

The large double box that EG1 is packaged in seems to be how 
Hirameki is handling all their recent products, e.g. Dragonia, 
Ever 17, Ai Yori Aoshi, etc. It makes them stand out as more 
professional and solid than a single DVD case. I didn't comment on 
it for Dragonia, as the second disc "Lovely Anime Girls" seemed to 
be a nice bonus even though the two discs had nothing to do with 
each other. However, with EG1 the second disc is an "AnimePlay 
Digital Catalog". This is pretty much the non-BBS portions of the 
Hirameki website from sometime in 2005. The good part about this is 
that two demo programs available at the Hirameki website are on this 
disc so you don't have to download them. Unfortunately, I had already 
downloaded them so all I gained was the ability to reclaim some 
megabytes on the computer hard drive. If you've thoroughly explored 
the Hirameki website, you've seen almost all this catalog has to 
offer. The only extra is the CD music tracks. There are 6 of them. 
The first one is from "Anima Mundi", second is from "Hourglass of 
Summer", third is from "Tea Society of a Witch" (these two are the 
same music as in the .avi trailers on the disc), and I'm not sure 
which games the fourth, fifth and sixth songs are from. One of the 
last three is probably from "Phantom of Inferno", if you go by the 
text on the back of the box, but none of those match what's in the 
.avi trailer for it. If I could request one piece of music though, it 
would be what's played at the title screen of the "Ever 17" demo.


Walkthrough:
Unlike Dragonia, you can easily jump to any portion of the story so 
you can see things in any order. However, the game will default to 
showing things in a linear order. Use the "Continue" option at 
the New Game / Continue screen, and you can choose (with the Next 
Page or Back Page) from any of 16 chapters. There are thumbnails 
for each chapter, so you have some idea of which portion of the 
story each is, especially if you've played through it before.
  Segment 1: No choices necessary in first portion set in the past, 
where Ales leaves his home town.
  Segment 2: Only one choice necessary in second portion set in the 
present, where Kasumi enters the ruin. When the "Item Mode" screen 
appears, choose "Hand Light" and "Use Item". That will move the story 
along. The other items (where's the boat?) do nothing except repeat 
the text about it being completely dark.
  Segment 3: Third portion is set in the future. One choice is 
necessary when you see a brown door that was under the table. Again, 
in "Item Mode" you can choose either of the two items available and 
"Use Item", but only the "Brown Dagger" will move the story along.
This one is a truly obvious giveaway once you select the item. A 
second choice occurs after reading the text in the Book of Wind; this 
one is between "Air", "Water" and "Spirit". Choose "Air" unless you 
want to be shown the text again and again until you get it right.
  Segment 4: In the present again, Kasumi eventually gets the choice 
between "Look for the Roaring Flame" and "Listen to the Motherly 
Spirit's prediction." As the Motherly Spirit has only been mentioned 
in the past, this one comes out of nowhere... But it so happens that 
this second choice is the best one to pick: you get some information 
that you can use when you select the first choice. That "Look for" 
choice will put you at a map screen where you finally get to choose 
between locations. In this case, the "Ruin" is the place to pick to 
move the story along; all the others just show you the place and 
play a short sound before putting you back at the map screen. On 
the Item Mode screen, choose "Through Found" to keep going. After 
quite a bit of story, there's another choice between "Move the 
piece" and "Listen to the Motherly Spirit's prediction". And like 
the previous one, the prediction tells you what to do when you pick 
the first choice. Well, sort of... With "Move the piece" you have 
to choose the locations of a white piece and black piece on the 
3 by 3 board. I got it to open by putting white on the upper left 
and black in the center. This actually shouldn't work, as "Ancient 
Hebrew" (modern Hebrew too) is read right to left, so the positions 
should really be upper right and center, but I do know that both 
pieces on middle right didn't work. Anyway, still in segment 4, you 
get another choice between the "Medallion" and "Parchment" items.
In this case, you'll actually get to see the information for both 
choices no matter what you pick, so it doesn't matter. I found 
that at the point where Kasumi sees Will standing near the 
mountain, the audio was from an earlier portion of the game when 
Kasumi first sees the ruin. But you can still read the subtitles, 
so don't get thrown off too much when you hear a PA announcement 
during that scene.
Anyway, quite a bit later you'll get to read a passage from the 
"Book of Flames", and then answer another 3-choice riddle like 
the one in the previous segment. This time, the correct answer is 
"Lava". Immediately after, you get an "Item Mode" screen and should 
choose "Night Vision" to avoid getting that annoying noise over and 
over while you repeat the situation up to the choices.
And that's it for the choices, such as they are, in EG1. There's a 
lot of story after that, with an obvious hook for the story to 
continue.
  Segment 5: This is just a quick trailer of action that occurs in 
the past, but it's nothing coherent just "in the next episode". EG2 
is apparently going to be "Past" and we should see a lot more of 
Ales, Will and at least one more girl in that.
  No omake such as bonus CG when you've completed this entire 
episode. Nothing extra on the DVD itself as far as I could tell.


Review:
There's more animation and a lot more varied graphics in this title 
than in Dragonia.
There are a few points where there is no Japanese voice, just 
English subtitles. And one portion where the wrong audio is played, 
but the subtitles are OK. The editing of the subtitles is pretty 
good, but there are some continuity and grammar glitches and a few 
typos. It's amusing to hear Reina Tachibana throwing English words 
and phrases into her speeches.
Although EG1 is only the early portion, I'm looking forward to 
seeing all of Exodus Guilty. We could certainly use an epic story, 
although so far I'm not so fond of most of the characters. Kasumi 
often talks as though everyone else around him is deaf and an idiot. 
Sui has occasional flashes of normal intelligence, but is clueless 
in general.
There's nothing hentai in this product, just two situations where 
somebody has sex off-camera and it's mentioned afterward, and 
numerous violent incidents where people are shot, beaten or killed 
(including one suicide). Other than that, just some female 
cleavage.
Certainly worth some hours of your time to get through it once, but 
with replay value only if you want to check details when the later 
episodes are available. An interactive novel only in the sense that 
you can pause and back up; no choices of any consequence.


If you have anything to add to this file, let me know.

Peter Karsanow - bishoujo.helper[AT}sbcglobal{DOT)net
http://www.geocities.com/hentaihelper/p_hgames.htm