Unjou no Fairy Tale is the second game by Cosmic Cute in the series/setting that began with Sora no Tsukurikata.  It is based around eighteen to twenty years after the original game in the city of Kaguya, a lawless city with many different races floating in the sky far above.  It is ruled by the invincible Mayor (with thirty-seven terms under her belt) Azumaza, frequently troubled the antics of the great (and in the eyes of ground dwellers, insane) alchemist Nemo, and plagued with more criminal organizations than anyone can count.

In that place, there is a neutral ground, the cafe Amelia, run by the protagonist Tsukasa, with the wannabe Great Witch Natsu as a waitress, frequented by the diva Dahlia, and visited regularly by the elven swordmistress and antique/art seller Makoto.  One day, a girl in a beautiful dress comes running down the street chased by thugs and is rescued by Makoto and Natsu... only to find out that she is not only a princess but that she is Tsukasa's younger sister.

Thus begins the story of the city of Kaguya and the Pay Back thieving gang.

Now, before I go any further, it needs to be said that, like Sora no Tsukurikata, this game uses the 'ladder-style' story structure, meaning that heroine paths other than the true one split off at the end of arcs featuring primarily the heroine in question.  This story structure does not do the heroines other than the true one justice.  In most cases (such as G-senjou or Eustia), it becomes an excuse for neglecting the heroines or making internally inconsistent heroine routes.  For that reason, I consider the very existence of this story structure in any VN to be a reason to automatically subtract 1.5 points off the maximum rating I give it on vndb.  In other words... the story just has to be awesome for me to consider overturning my dislike of this structure.

The common route of this game does an excellent job of introducing the characters and giving you a good idea of the internal dynamics of the city of Kaguya.  Kaguya... is the kind of city no sane person would want to live in.  The protagonist routinely sleeps through gunshots and explosions (they are so used to it that it doesn't even disturb their slumber), and the Mayor (who is over 2500 years old) seems to take great pleasure in both keeping the chaos from settling and keeping it from overflowing beyond all forms of control.  I spent most of the common route smiling or laughing, similar to Soratsuku, which is a definite good thing.

Now, I'll introduce the heroines...

The first heroine is Dahlia... and she is already my favorite.  She is a singer at a high-class nightclub, a fox-girl with the ability to control others with her singing.  In the thieving group she serves as the driver and occasionally uses her voice to control pursuers or guards.  She is the second oldest of the heroines, in her mid-twenties, and she has an inordinate fondness for heavy drink and teasing those she likes. 

The second heroine is Makoto, known as the greatest swordswoman in Kaguya, as well as being Tsukasa's first friend in the city.  She is the oldest of the heroines, being an elf (there are hints that she is at least fifty years old early on), and she works most of the time as a dealer in antiques and art.  She has a reserved personality, and she is often misunderstood, due to her tendency to talk to her sword (yes, she talks to her sword).  However, she is also cute... in that she does things like making lists of things she wants to do with her friends and rehearsing potential conversational scenarios well in advance of even the most normal, everyday events. 

The third heroine is the protagonist's younger sister, Yuki.  Yuki is...  a strong-willed, pure-hearted princess who came to Kaguya to find her long-lost oniisama... only to find that he had become a thief and manager of a cafe in one of the most crime-ridden cities in existence.  While she is generally forgiving by nature, once you manage to anger her... she is easily the scariest of the four heroines.

Natsu is a wannabe witch

I honestly hate the fact that she is the main heroine, because that is two games in a row that go to unreasonably naive, kind-hearted witches who frequently mess up on a grand scale.  This is a mistake frequently made with ladder-style structure games, but it is usually the case that the weakest heroine in the group ends up as the main/true heroine for games using this structure.  She, like Hal/Haru in the previous game, is a sugar-addict with a rather unpredictable magical ability.  There isn't a drop of malice in her personality, but...

Dahlia path

Dahlia, as I said above, is my favorite heroine in this game, so I was more than a little angry to see that yet another great mimikko heroine was being condemned to 'lowest-ranked heroine Hell'.  However, as I played the path, I stopped caring about that BS.  Dahlia and Tsukasa's romance creates one of those rare situations where I actually have to take a step back and wipe the tears away... solely because of the romance.  Since I'm not a fan of romance for its own sake, that pretty much says it all about that.  This path has some excellent feels and is about as long as the mimikko from Soratsuku's path.  I spent a great deal of the last part of the path just laughing hysterically at the antics of the characters as they strove for Dahlia and Tsukasa's sakes, and I wept at the climax.  Definitely worth reading, though this definitely has my mimikko-love bias interfering with my judgment.  The ending after story is very heart-warming, and it takes you to a point three years after the end, which was nice.

Makoto path

One thing that absolutely needs to be said about Makoto's and Dahlia's paths, but is a major SPOILER:

I'm going to be blunt... this path is simply weaker than Dahlia's.  Part of this is because Makoto's personality is so reserved and the romance is so charage-ish.  Another part is that there really isn't that much in the way of deep feels or good action/comedy in this path, outside of the usual with Yuki losing her temper.  While I like the ending, I have to say that I felt a bit cheated, because they didn't go into detail on the past that lies between Tsukasa and Makoto, despite them being one another's oldest friends.

Yuki Path

The Yuki path feels a lot like a true path.   The simple reason is that, despite its seemingly innocent (and hilarious) beginnings, in the end it pretty much reveals everything there is to know about Kaguya and Azumaza's past, as well as the reasons why Tsukasa ended up in Kaguya.  Honestly, as I finish this path, I think that it is possible that it was the true path, rather than Natsu's, and that is my hope as I go into Natsu's path (I'm writing down my opinions on the paths as I finish them).  The ending is really touching, and I had to cry at some of the revelations that get put in here...  Incidentally, by the time her path comes around, Yuki has been thoroughly poisoned by Kaguya's anarchist atmosphere, and this has some rather hilarious results in the fourth arc that leads to the final path split.

Natsu path

Aaah... I don't mean to be cruel... but they got seriously lazy in Natsu's path.  I mean, it feels very much like an echo/rehash of something I've seen a dozen times before (you'll see what I mean if you play it, but I won't spoil it).  Understand, Hal is my least favorite heroine from Soratsuku and Natsu is my least favorite heroine from this game (The order goes Dahlia>Yuki>Makoto>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Natsu).  Like her mother, she is a clumsy doofus with a ridiculous amount of poorly-utilized magical talent.  Every single element of her path past the end of the last common route arc (Arc 5) is ridiculously predictable and holds no surprises, down to the last detail.  I haven't been this irritated at a 'true' path in years.  If I were to just judge this game on the three previous paths, I would give it an 8.5 on vndb, but, due to this path, I have to give it an 8.  Sadly, this is one of those cases where the main heroine and the final path are a hindrance, rather than closing out the story on a good note.

Edit: This is just a minor addendum of some thoughts I had in retrospect or forgot to include in the main text. 

I honestly like characters like Yuki, who, while functionally innocent of the details of normal life, nonetheless possess an iron will.  I also love it how everyone is afraid of her despite the fact that she is the weakest character combat-wise.  In addition, the way hardened criminals are obviously terrified of her makes it even better.

Dahlia is very similar - in background, personality, and (to some degree) relationship to the protagonist - to Yurika Vistvolg from Soratsuku.  As such, even if I hadn't guessed that she was not the main by the walkthrough, I would have figured it out anyway.  This writer has a definite preference for characters with an element of 'innocence' as  main heroines (note that a total of two of the heroines in both the games he has written are not innocents on some level), despite the dystopian settings he creates. 

If we were to eliminate my personal tastes completely from the equation, Makoto is probably the weakest heroine, in terms of character development.  For some reason, almost all the elements of her character that could have been used to make her route more dramatic (her sentient sword, her longer lifespan, etc) never once became an issue in the game.  This is a huge red mark in my personal book regarding this writer, as I absolutely loathe failures to utilize fundamental aspects of a character's design.

It has to be said that this game relied a lot more heavily on the immortal characters for humor than Soratsuku.  Asumaza, Nemo, and Simone are so far 'out there' as characters that their actions can be considered an unavoidable natural disaster, so they make wonderful pillars for the game's situational comedy (similar to the vampire lord in Soratsuku and her love of junk food and torturing people who use guns).  However, it also needs to be said that Simone, at the very least, should have been a heroine.  That type tends to have a great dere if handled properly.  It is pure negligence on the writer's part that she isn't a heroine (though she has an h-scene in the append disc).