Seikishi Melty Lovers
To be honest, after the moe-moe disaster of Juukishi, I wasn't really interested in this VN... and while the VN was much more interesting than that lump of adorable pink crap, it had the down-side of being utterly predictable... to me.
Now, I don't know how many of you are familiar with a particular VN fad that several major companies bought into about five years ago, where they did partial 'slice-of-life' VNs in faux-medieval settings. This fad resulted in some good VNs, lots of mediocre ones, and a few truly horrible ones. This falls somewhere in between the good and the mediocre, in the sense that it hits all the points such VNs were 'expected' to hit (princess heroines, action scenes - though not necessarily good ones - and lots of slice-of-life). Seikishi has the benefit of a decent set of heroines... but their roles are so archetypical for this type of VN that I had to shake my head in exasperation. The only one that wasn't completely cookie-cutter was Rill, and she had her own issues.
I'll be perfectly honest with you... I'm downright pissed off that Akabeisoft3 wasted my time with this VN. The Juukishi team seems to be incapable of escaping their roots, and the results were a VN that was disappointingly predictable in overall structure, right down the obstacles in each heroine's path. This isn't a horrible VN... but considering that Akabeisoft3 has access to many teams that actually write good VNs, I was more than a little miffed that they wasted funding on a moe-bait medieval slice-of-life with an excessive amount of H-scenes.
Why am I being so overboard with the bashing here? It is mostly because I started getting tired about halfway through this VN. Flay's path was decent, as was Sefui's... but I really did feel like I was retreading old ground from beginning to end. While I don't generally expect brilliance from a team that specializes in moe-variants, it was still a frustrating experience to have it so completely fail to differ from my expectations in any way. I almost would have enjoyed this more if it had been a Walkure Romance-type battle sport VN, as several of the characters felt like they'd been extracted directly from that VN, with slightly different roles. Like most VNs with a partial action focus, the protagonist is generally the deciding factor for me on whether the VN is actually worth the effort... and unfortunately, the protagonist feels too much like a non-entity from beginning to end for me to actually believe he is attracting a set of such pretty and capable females.
Edit: Almost forgot... basically, this VN is suitable for people who like a fusion between moe-elements, mild action, and faux-medieval settings. While this VN isn't one I'd personally want to go back to, it is nonetheless one of the better ones of the type.
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