Gin'iro, Haruka Part 2: Yuzuki
I'm going to be blunt... I can only take Tone Works games in small doses (one path at a time), so I'll be setting Gin'iro Haruka aside now, though I am interested in two of the remaining three heroines (despite Hinata's horrible VA).
Yuzuki's path actually starts out fairly similar to how you would imagine the classic 'imouto' path would if it was done by Tone Works... the slow growth into full sibling-hood, the slipping into habits that go a bit too far for teenaged siblings, then the realization of love... and that's the first part. I'll be honest when I say that I fell asleep on three occasions during this path. It wasn't so much a problem with the path itself as the simple fact that I went into slice-of-life overload after a while. Bethly's path alone had enough slice-of-life and heart-warming 'lovers being lovers' scenes to fill out an entire charage. When I added Yuzuki's on top of that, I just shut down after a while and couldn't go any farther.
As such, Yuzuki's path was an experience in suffering for me, despite its quality.
From this, I have to recommend that Tone Works games are done in pieces, paced out over the course of several months to retain your sanity. As it is, I know I won't be able to go back to this any time in the next thirty days.
Edit: It is a lot like the feeling I get after finishing an entire medium-sized bag of M&Ms (which I don't do anymore, for obvious reasons)... that sense of utter exhaustion combined with blood rushing to my head and my eyelids growing heavy, lol.
Edit2: To further clarify my thoughts about this path, all Tone Works paths follow a similar pattern, in my experience... the 'youthful years' making up the first arc, with semi-adult and adult years making up the second half. In most charage, you cut out when they are just starting to get into their dreams, but in a Tone Works game, you get to see them fulfill their dreams, step by step, with at least some of their travails portrayed as a spice to the sweetness. In Bethly's path, the best part would probably be the college years or possibly the time after, which makes it kind of a striking contrast to the average young romance you see in most VNs, where you stop while they are still in their teens, save for maybe a small cameo of them as an adult. Yuzuki's path follows a similar pattern, where the semi-child to late teen romance is trumped by the time they are together as an adult.
Edit3: I decided to play something violent and gory, as devoid of slice-of-life as possible, for a day until I have the wherewithal to continue. I don't intend to bother with Momiji's path, regardless, though. Her character might grow on me in time, but it didn't during the common route. As a side-note, one of the things I've noticed is that they go out of the way to portray how the girls' lives change by getting into a relationship with Yukito, giving his participation in their lives a relevance that isn't always present in other VNS.
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