Thank you Tagetes Team for sending this game to us for review via our Steam Curator!

After recently reviewing JUSFASLEX, we were offered another visual novel from the same developer and publisher, Argumentum ad culpam. Like that game, this one also features Ukrainian voice acting, and has a dark setting and plot. Rather than being about a god, this time you play as Luftschlösser, a wizard who received his power from a demon he made a pact with. He noticed that his magical powers are waning, and looking over his demonic pact realized that the only way this could be happening is if his demon lord, Luthedor, was somehow dying. He transports himself to the demon realm to find out what's going on.

He soon discovers that Luthedor, the demon of guilt, is near death's door, and that his transcendental fragments, Aurus, Candide, and Leon, are engaged in a resurrection ritual to determine what form this resurrection will take. Will one of the fragments have influence in what happens to Luthedor? Will he be resurrected at all? What role will Luftschlösser play in that process? The player gets to see how this all plays out, and makes choices to that effect, in Argumentum ad culpam.

The title translates to 'An argument for guilt', and that is quite an appropriate title for this story. Luthedor is the demon of guilt, and much of the story revolves around who is at fault for various things. The first story deals with Luftschlösser's very process of becoming a wizard. You quickly learn that he was asked, as a part of sealing his pact, to shoot and kill someone who was about to commit suicide after a terrible murder spree. Is this really what happened? Were Luftschlösser's actions based on the information he was given justified? Was Luthedor's tale about the supposed murderer true in the first place? These questions, and more, are explored in this story.

In the rules of this world, each round has a couple of combatants, trying to use the power of statements, called dogma, to rhetorically defeat their opponents. If done correctly, their opponent will die. The process of rhetorical combat is fairly interactive, as Luftschlösser has to make judgments based on who he thinks is right, or even make choices on directions for his own arguments. The decision tree is quite extensive, and I was surprised to see that even if another branch of the story seemingly has a similar conflict from another branch, the answers needed to proceed are not necessarily the same. There are also thirteen possible endings, so there are a lot of choices to explore.

When you make it to your first proper ending, the game's major events tree becomes available, making exploring new routes much easier. I'm very grateful for this, along with the skip text button, as it makes the other endings more reasonable to find. I do wish that there was a skip unread only option, as I had to skip past some text that I thought I had already read only to have to go back and re-read when I skipped too far. Whatever the case, I was able to navigate all of the routes to see all endings in around seven hours via plenty of aggressive text skipping.

The concept of the game isn't bad, and the way the routes were implemented is pretty decent, though I will say that some of the dialogue can get pretty tedious after a while. Given they are rhetorical battles, I suppose that's expected, but don't be surprised if some of the blabbing can get tiring. The good thing is that it's mostly voice acted in Ukrainian, and it sounds good for probably 80% of the story. There are parts where I feel that the volume of certain characters' voices are a bit quieter than they should be; hopefully this can be resolved in a patch. The music is all piano, and generally fairly simple, but it does set the mood okay. The style is largely similar to what I noted about JUSFASLEX, the other visual novel from many of the same team members.

As for in-game bugs, I noticed that near the end of certain routes, a few characters' names were not translated into English. I don't recall if there were any untranslated lines, or at least I don't think so, but a few of the minor characters had untranslated names. Most of the localization seemed decent otherwise, though not amazing. Technically, the only issue I had was some wonkiness with Steam Cloud not syncing right; I'm not sure how much of this is the developer's fault vs. Steam's, but it was something I ran into. I will say that if you plan on syncing between a Windows machine and a Linux one like the Steam Deck or even desktop Linux, make sure that you play the Windows version via forcing use of Proton if you want Steam Cloud to work. I love that there is a native Linux version, but Steam Cloud save syncing doesn't work right between the two platforms. I also had an issue with an achievement until I sped through the game again on another PC that was stuck with an older save (thanks Steam Cloud!).

Morally, there is a lot to note. As mentioned, making a pact with a demon is of course a major part of the plot. <spoilers>Your main character can choose to become a demon himself.</spoilers> Using or even sacrificing others for your benefit is one of many options available to you. Blood and gore are not severe, but you will likely see at least one heavily bleeding demon in a playthrough. The story talks about murder through various means. Deceit, witchcraft, and other sinful behaviors are present as well.

The amount of curse words and other language is fairly minor, until it isn't. There is a fair amount of talk about hell, which makes sense since much of it takes place there. It is also used as a curse word, though rarely. 'F*ck' is used once, which was a surprise since few other curse words are used. There is no sexual content to speak of, except there is one male character who is drawn with about one quarter of his body vertically (from head to toe) without clothes. He's one of many oddly-drawn creatures.

Speaking of which, everything is drawn using a really odd art style that I really can't describe well in words. The wizard Luftschlösser is wearing clothes that somewhat resemble robes, and the craziest hat - but you don't see his actual body at all. The demons and transcendentals look remarkable as well as incredibly different from each other. The backgrounds look pretty good, and are also quite varied. All I can say is that the art style is quite unique, and memorable, if a little unusual.

Argumentum ad culpam is a bit of an odd duck, but not a terrible one. The pacing is a bit of a mixed bag, and some of those rhetorical arguments can drag on a bit too long at times, but I found the different possible endings to be interesting enough that I wanted to see them all. I don't think I'll be adding this one to my best visual novels list, but it's not bad. The moral issues are many, so I can't recommend it on that level. Despite that, if the story, despite its quite dark themes seems interesting to you, the price is right for what you get, so it might be worth a look.