To be honest, I generally dislike Giga's non-Baldr VNs, simply because the dip in quality (outside of visuals) is so sharp it isn't even funny. From dialogue and narration to voices and music, it is unbelievable how little comparative effort this company puts into its non-Baldr games.

That said, this is actually quite a decent charage... though I do have some serious complaints. I'll go ahead and get those complaints out of the way first.

Cons

First, for all that the sound effects are great and the actual slashing effects are good, that isn't a substitute for good combat narration. I found it really hard to get into the fights, simply because the writers quite obviously either didn't have the capability or the desire to add in the kind of detail that is exciting to fans of action stories. Making it worse was the degree to which several of the ending fights were anticlimactic or made deliberately comical. After all the buildup to those battles, I was hoping for something truly exciting... but what I got was an excuse for comic relief. Last of all, the endings... to be honest, they needed more after-story for Mei's and Masaki's routes...

Pros

First rate visuals, first rate characters, and first rate comedic character interactions. To be honest, the latter two are areas in which all Giga games excel to one extent or another... though some fail in that area anyway. The first is generally true, with some exceptions. I was actually surprised at the degree to which the character models were utilized as part of the plot in this story... the variety of expressions, the poses, actions, and even their atmosphere.

Overall

A few last comments... first, this game would have been a lot better if at least Hibana, Marisa, and Alice had routes of their own. The over-focus on the protagonist's fellow student council members spoke of a laziness in story-construction that made me cluck my tongue with disgust. Making the protagonist choose between Oubu (his school) and Akatsuki (the rival) would have made for some interesting twists. If they come out with a fandisc later and add in paths for those girls, they'll probably be half-assed and dissatisfying, so I can't say I'd be interested even if they did, at this point. The decision to split at three different points (choose one group of two heroines or the other, then another heroine later on) was a good one, adding a lot of content to the story. Unfortunately, the weakness of Alice as an antagonist and the somewhat disappointing fights on the Akatsuki-side route spoke of a weakness in scenario design that shouldn't have existed, considering how well the early stages are put together.

With all that said, though, this is still a high-ranking charage in my mind, easily pushing aside the common muck that I generally have to slog through... it is simply that they didn't go far enough or slipped humor or weak progression at a lot of the wrong points near the end. The relatively high combat to slice-of-life ratio for a charage is also a huge benefit. The fact that the combat is so... light is a bit of a flaw, unfortunately.