Before I start this, I should probably explain the company known as AXL to the newbies. AXL, which is known for Shugotate, as well as a number of other high-quality VNs, is an 'old-hand' company that was started pretty soon after the turn of the century. They developed an extremely beautiful art style, as well as a penchant for high-quality fantasy and romance stories. The thing most people will notice upon playing any two AXL games is that the art-style is exactly the same... it still possesses somewhat thicker lines than is the norm for VNs nowadays, and the actual character faces and poses tend to be reused heavily between games. The saving grace of this is that the actual quality of the original art is so high that it still looks pretty today, so you find that you don't really mind, for the most part.

Common

The common route of this game is a lot closer to what you would have seen in their best games, in that it is heavy on the story and the character development. From the very beginning, you are encouraged to enjoy the protagonist breaking out of his shell and developing a relationship with the heroines, the youkai, and his new male friends. The youkai, looking like adorable stuffed toys for the most part, are mostly comedy elements, and the protagonist's relationship with the tanuki Shouji is perhaps one of the most consistently amusing aspects of it all.

There is a definite serious element to the story (AXL doesn't believe in completely drama-free main stories, apparently), but that makes for much better character development during the common route. It certainly made the heroine choice about something more than who had the biggest breasts or the cutest nose! lol (this was nice after the somewhat... disappointing heroines that resided in most of the VNs I've read so far from May)

Minagi

I'm regretting, in some ways, choosing Minagi first. Why? Because I can't imagine a better heroine to have picked for the main/true one, haha. Minagi is the VN's 'fushigi-chan', a girl who prefers the forest to school and who avoids others' company like the plague. However, underneath her lonely mask, there lies an incredibly adorable girl that is unbelievably easy to love.

Her actual route is actually one that would not have been out of place as a true one, in another VN. Right from the beginning, straight through the end, you are learning more and more about the setting, about Minagi, and about how she and the protagonist are related to it all. The drama that takes up the last part of her route is particularly fitting for a canon/true/main heroine, and I honestly think it was worth it to play this, even if just for this route. Most importantly, the ending/epilogue actually goes into detail about what happens to the heroine and protagonist afterward, concluding better than five years after the events in the main story.

If I had to classify this game so far, I'd have to put it in the 'nakige' category, simply because of how deeply emotional it gets at vital moments and the fact that I spent most of the ending and epilogue crying (in a good way).