I'm going to come right out and say it... Sca-ji slipped up a bit when he designed the true path.  Oh, I could understand the big turning point event being as it is, but its effect on certain characters - Rin for instance - doesn't make nearly as much sense as he wants you to think.  Rin's change is the most dramatic (for all that happens during the true path, the protagonist is pretty much rock solid, even if he wavers).  It is also the most odd, even with the knowledge about her that Sca-ji has been pounding into you from the start (with his usual heavy-handedness). 

Ai can be considered the true path heroine... except that there isn't one.  There is a side-ending for Ai that basically could be considered a normal ending, where the protagonist becomes completely dependent on her in most ways... and it feels almost like a bad ending, despite the easy atmosphere.  She does play a role in the main part of the true path after the turning point, but that role is mostly unseen.

Sca-ji's choice of turning points in the true path would have been - in many ways - better carried out as an unmovable point of all the heroine paths.  My own feeling was that he wasted a perfect way to create an even stronger dramatic escalation for Makoto's, Shizuku's, and Rin's paths by choosing to structure the game the way he did, making you feel too much like the heroine paths were just a foil for what he really wanted to write... the true path.  Considering that I actually enjoyed Rin's, Rina's, and Makoto's paths more than I did the true one, I honestly feel that he failed in that respect, actually weakening the VN as a whole by going that way.  To be blunt, the turning point of the true path is pretty much the only incident that completely and utterly strips the protagonist of his armor of nonchalance, and seeing how each heroine would have dealt with it would have in and of itself provided a lot of enjoyment and added a lot more depth to the experience.   As it is, the true path is actually more of a drag on the VN as a whole, rather than a good center.

PS: Yes, I'm aware that, for everyone that agrees with that assessment, there will be a half dozen others who disagree, but that is how I experienced it.  I'm biased against Sca-ji's style, and I honestly think he let his bad habits get out of control in the true path.

October VN of the Month Announcement

This was actually a harder month to judge than any of the last three or four months, because there were multiple VN of the Month candidates that actually made it to a level where I thought them worth considering.  Primal Hearts 2, Kyuuketsu Hime no Libra, and Sakura no Uta were all worthy of a VN of the Month, and it is typical of my experiences with the Japanese VN industry that all of them should be released at the same time.  Libra is an excellent light chuunige/slice-of-life/comedy hybrid that has its flaws but overall manages to be more than it seems from the outside.  Primal Hearts 2 was a sequel that easily surpasses the original in most ways, taking many of the best elements and discarding some of the worst ones of the original.  Sakura no Uta, despite being a deeply flawed work, is nonetheless one that has a lot of artistic (not making a joke, no) value, even if Sca-ji's inability to restrain his love of pompousness and laying down the endless layers of foreshadowing tended to weaken the experience as a whole at times (as well as his tendency to go off on tangents to over-reinforce points he already made). 

As such, I had to go back and honestly consider each on its own merits... if one ignores its flaws, Sakura no Uta is the obvious forerunner.  If one goes for completion as a single work within its genre, I'd have to point to Primal Hearts 2.  Last of all, if I had to point to a work that took a lot of different elements from various VN genres to create something interesting within a somewhat stagnated hybrid genre, I would go for Libra. 

However, the point I made above stands... Sakura no Uta really is the obvious forerunner, based on pure writing quality and the existence of three excellent heroine paths.  I honestly haven't encountered any better individual heroine paths than those in a long time, and it proves that Sca-ji is capable of doing that kind of work, if he really puts his mind to it... and though I still have reservations about making this announcement, Sakura no Uta is my VN of the Month for October.