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Yakusoku no Natsu, Mahoroba no Yume


Clephas

1081 views

I'll say this first off... this game actually needed locked paths or a true ending.  Like most Windmill games, the character interactions are pretty heavily reliant on easygoing manzai humor and running character personality and behavior jokes (in fact, most VN humor is based on that).   This game has a cast of four writers (one amateur, one h-scene specialist, and two established names), including Imashina Rio (Gin'iro Haruka and Hoshi Ori Yume Mirai) and Kagami Yuu (ef, Eden*, and Mirai Nostalgia).  Unfortunately, the styles of the two main writers are extremely different, and it is rather blatant when things shift... sometimes in the middle of scenes (this can be jarring and disturbs the flow at times).

Understand, I started out liking this game... I like non-city settings (for some reason, city locales always end up being multi-date ichaicha fests even for heroines who wouldn't be interested in that kind of thing), and the interactions with the heroines and side-characters were amusing.  I even still liked how things were going early in my first heroine path (Serina), but after I headed into a second path, it became apparent they were abusing the 'osananajimi is scared of friend group falling apart' trope.  Oh, the way they abused it is different in each path, but the abuse is so rampant that I had to wince.

Worse, the characters have these pretty much useless powers that only work on each other.  All the paths have the powers as part of the central conflict, but, considering how little the characters seemed to care about their powers in the common route (one way or the other) it felt unnatural how they became central in the actual heroine routes.

Understand, I'm a fantasy freak, so characters having powers is (of course) fine with me... what bothered me was the artificial-feeling limitations and the way the characters so blithely accepted a revelation midway through the path that would have turned most games a bit gloomy.  Again, what's worse is that this was seemingly only utilized conveniently to explain why the other girls (all of whom are latently in love with the protagonist) stop pursuing him once you get on a particular heroine path.  I will say the way they did it was mildly funny (the pseudo-yuri in Himari's path was lol-worthy for instance), but it felt very, very forced to me.

Another issue is that Rinka is rather blatantly the main heroine (the scene I mentioned above makes that very clear).  As a result, all the other paths proceed without resolving the issue of just why that certain event and the issues it brought to the surface came into being.  Of course, as a result, Rinka's path is a very obvious 'true path' and blows away all the others in terms of quality (and length), drawing on elements from the other paths that hinted around the edges about what is revealed in Rinka's path. 

Anyone who plays this game should either only play Rinka's path or play the other paths first (like I did).  While the paths other than Rinka's have some serious issues (the biggest one being choppy pacing and poor use of the setting elements and plot devices), Rinka's path and the common route are definitely worth playing.  Sadly, I can't recommend this one for VN of the Month, but if you want a mildly funny plot-centric charage (yes, they coexist at times), this is a decent choice. 

 

 

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