Random VN: Shinsei ni Shite Okasubekarazu
First, this VN was written during Pulltop's brief 'golden age', by the writer of the Kamikaze Explorer, Dracu-riot, Noble Works, and Amairo Islenauts, as well as the writer of the original LoveKami. As such, it can be said that they had something of a dream team put together for this game... since two of the four writers were skilled moege-with-story writers. I pulled this game out of my 'treasure box' so I would have something to revive me from my fugue state, and it actually turned out quite well in the end (I still have about a half-dozen highly-ranked VNs I have refrained from reading and am keeping for emergencies).
This game centers around a young man living as the 'honorary citizen' of a 'kingdom' in the middle of a small Japanese town and the little queen who rules it. Hayato is your typical charage/moege protagonist, in that he is kind, dense, and of average everything except for his extreme skills at mundane tasks like cooking cleaning, repairing the roof, and tending the household garden. He devotedly serves Ruha, the young queen and descendant of a line of Germanic (in the larger sense) exiled when they refused to surrender their titles to the empire that conquered them a little over a century before. Ruha is beloved by the local community (for the obvious reasons like cuteness and her sincere manner, as well as less obvious ones like tradition and her deceased mother's reputation for philanthropy), but her 'kingdom' is extremely poor due to her mother having blown the fortune on a combination of daily expenses and her mother's local philanthropy.
Kunitomo Miori, one of the other heroines, is from a local wealthy family that has always resented Ruha's family, seeing them as flies in the ointment. She has extremely low communication skills and is fatally shy, while seeming cool and composed on the surface. Nozomi is the granddaughter of the head of a major corporation. She is gentle-mannered and graceful, but she has an inordinate fondness for arthropods in general and spiders in particular. Misao is the childhood friend of Miori, the protagonist, and Ruha, the daughter of the local baker, a slightly airheaded but kind-hearted girl. I was particularly fond of Nozomi and Miori for their... rather unique characterizations. It showed me how even just a few years passage was enough to stagnate the medium, since I haven't run across any identical heroines in years.
Now, down to business... is this game good? The short answer is, yes. Is it a kamige? No. It has enough small flaws and lacks the impact necessary for me to call it a kamige. Nonetheless it was an enjoyable VN, with a depth that most modern charage companies deliberately avoid putting into their stories, lol. In addition, the game has wonderful epilogues and after-stories, which was a nice change from the shitty ones you see in most VNs of the type. Obviously, Ruha's path is the cherry on this particular sundae (following the rule of five years ago that 'all true paths must be for loli heroines', lol). It deals with the setting elements most central to the game in a way the other paths don't, and it was rather obvious Ruha was the main heroine from the beginning, though the others weren't neglected in their own paths ( I could have done without Misao being a heroine though, since I don't like air-headed osananajimi heroines).
The biggest negative points of this VN were the protagonist's density about love and romance, and how slow he is on the uptake at certain important times.
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