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Tarareba


Clephas

1077 views

This is a moege (yes, a moege) and a nakige (think Key style, with less depth and more sex) by Aries, a company that makes 'themed' games (mostly).  In this case, the theme is 'what if?'  Basically, they set it up as a deliberate 'what if you changed these events?' scenario for the protagonist.  To be frank, Aries' games tend to rank from average down to somewhere below mediocre, outside of having some of the sexiest heroines I've seen outside of nukige and Semiramis no Tenbin, lol (this is setting aside the actual art style and focusing on how it is used). 

I'm going to be blunt... this VN's pacing is downright awful at first.  At least part of it is because it uses the 'map episode choice' system, where you literally choose what episodes of the VN's story to read from a map... about eighteen times.  It is more or less established fact, in my experience, that VNs with too many choices tend to have horrible pacing... and this doesn't break from that mold.  It is fine when those choices actually make an obvious difference to the story, but this is basically choosing what heroines you pay attention to, over and over until you get to the end of the 'common route'.  To be blunt, this system is as annoying as hell and breaks immersion to an immense degree, weakening the VN as a whole.

The biggest example, other than the choice system, of how the pacing is awful... is the actual progression to romance.  Basically this is an 'every love confession happens at approximately the same point' setup.  There is no buildup to the confession save for one brief scene, and that isn't nearly enough to aid the formation of the kind of mindlessly adoring deredere bacouple that gets formed in this VN.  For one thing, who has sex within an hour of a confession of love when neither side was really even aware of their own feelings up until that point?  lol  That seriously stretches suspension of disbelief.

On the upside, the heroine paths are pretty decent... emotional, with mild catharsis.  However, they are also exactly like a dozen other similar paths from VNs made in the nakige 'golden age' between 2000 and 2004.  Tia's path is probably the most emotional - for obvious reasons - but even it has such a cliche turn of events (think uguu~ ) that I just had to sight with exasperation at the end, after it was all over.

For better or worse, this is a VN that goes back to basics... in other words, a bare-bones old-style 'classic' nakige.  If you actually like that type of VN, it will be a nice appetizer... but if you are tired of the old styles, it has an immense potential for boredom.

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