Little Busters! Review/thoughts thread

[Guest]

So this is my first attempt at making this kind of thread.

First I would like to say that this review is based on my personal opinion.

It is not perfect, I am no journalist and am new to writing long texts in English.

Feel free to post your thoughts about the game or make a review of your own if you feel that you have other reasons than mine to recommend the game or not, or if you think mine is lacking.

No need for the posts to be 1000 pages long but it would be nice if anwsers were a little more than just "the game was fun"

So let the experiment begin.

My first approach with be without spoilers

Little Busters

Game info: Fuwanovel

Intro

I had a really hard time even considering playing another Key Visual Novel after reading the masterpiece named Clannad. I was afraid of either it being an emotional bomb or a big deception.

Little Busters was a popular and pretty well rated game overall, often stated as a “must play”, so I have to give it a try..

Gathering up courage, and full of expectations, I lanched the game.

Review

You incarnate Riki Naoe, a young boy who lost his parents as a kid and suffering from narcolepsy, which is a disease that causes him to randomly fall asleep. He is the fifth member of the little busters, a group of childhood friends well known for causing trouble and playing extravagant games.

After his parents' death he was invited to join by Kyousuke Natsume, the leader of the Little Busters and around whom the group revolves.

The other members are :

Kengo Miyazawa, a kendo fighter with a very calm personality. He always wears his blue kimono and is very popular among girls.

Masato Inohara, he's Riki's roomate. Often stated as an idiot and finding fulfilment only in his muscle training, he is nevertheless very considerate towards his friends.

Rin Natsume is the main female protagonist and Kyousuke's sister. She is very shy which causes her to have a hard time making friends but is very lively when it comes to Little Busters.

The game begins as every standard Visual Novel introducing slowly but carefully the characters and progressively the different girls you will get and have to date.

Your choices will guide you to one of the following girl's route :

Haruka, Kud, Mio, Komari, Kurugaya, and finally Rin.

Each heroine as her own concerns, her own problems and Riki's role will throughout the game be as you may guess to heal each of their wounds.

Every one of them has a distinguished personality, and Key succesfully managed something that unfortunately does not happen often which is balancing the different characters.

What I mean is that all of the girls' character designs seem to have been perfected with the same care, not letting one of them fall behind, and that is quite the achievement I must say.

The game is sprinkled with comedy, and the atmosphere which the game drew me into felt warm and cozy. Dialogues fit the mindset of a teenage group, not to sophisticated but mature enough to go beyond appearances.

A slow pace

You will sail on this ocean of peacefulness in the beginning of the story.

Therein lies the first big issue.

The game starts on the 13^th?of may.

Absolutely nothing will happen and no clue that anything actually will happen, will be given to the player before the 24^th?IF you are lucky and get on a route that starts early.

Well that wouldn't be a problem if 1 day didn't amount to at least 1 hour of reading.

I was unlucky and got Rin's first route in my initial playthrough which amounted to 17h of Riki's joyful everyday school life. Well written or not this is way too much and quickly becomes boring.

Thank the Lord! Little Busters! has a functional skip button and that the baseball minigame, the rankings, the optional fight scenes can be avoided.

I'm going to give my opinion on the scenario now.

Key's speciality is Drama. They love it and are known for their tearjerking games.

But this time, it felt that rather than creating a good story from scratch, they created their story knowing that they wanted it to be drama.

Let me explain what that means and why it had a rather bad involvement on the scenario.

It is really easy to make drama, take a young girl whose family was killed before her eyes, was treated like a slave, beaten up, lived in the streets, is bullied and has to listen to a Taylor Swift CD all day long and you just created a terrible story with a really pitiful girl.

This story is bad for a simple reason : it makes no sense. If you put a female character in such a situation just for the sake of making her past sad enough to make you cry (with violins and stuff), you are not making a good plot and it's even worse when it's not justified properly.

This is how Haruka's route and part of Kud's felt.

And that really upset me.

The other routes were good enough. Each of them had something to offer and were linked somehow to what we learn in the last route.

Once you finish all the 6 girls' path, you can access Refrain which is the really interesting segment of the game. This is what would make this game recommendable so I would advise sticking to the game until it comes.

Music and Design

The art is good over all in this very Key-ish style.

How to describe it … I think an example would explain better than words

Some of the graphics are powerfull, even more in context.

It really depends on the player's tastes and most of the CGs are good (some are really good but some are lacking, so it is fine)

But the main reason I kept playing the game was for the tremendous, gorgeous, brilliant OST.

Even though the story didn't captivate me that much and wasn't the drama VN I was waiting for, make me listen to "Song for friends ~instrumental~" while watching Masato do push ups and I'll cry like a baby. (Overstatement)

There are a few musical jewels in this game and that alone made me glad I played it.

So and overall good game which was worth playing for its artistic input and Refrain

But when only half of the girls have and interesting route, I guess I can't call this a Masterpiece.

Personal rating : 7/10

Feel free to state your own opinion if you want to.

If you want talk about something that might spoil the game please don't forget to use the

code

Edit: Thanks to Flutterz for helping me check the spelling/grammar

Edited December 17, 2014 by Guest

[Flutterz]

Well, since this is kind of a serious post and because I have absolutely nothing else to do, here's a bit of spell checking~

 

 

So this is my first attempt at making this kind of thread.

First i I would like to say that this review is based on my personnal personal opinion.

It is not perfect, I am no journalist and am only beginning in new to writing long texts in english English.

Feel free to post your thoughts about the game or make a review of your own if you feel that you have other reasons than mine to recommend the game or not, or if you think mine is lacking.

 

No need for the posts to be 1000 pages long but it would be nice if awnsers answers were a little more than just "the game was fun"

 

So let the experiment begin.

My first approach with be without spoilers

 

Little Busters

 

 

 

Game info:  Fuwanovel

 

Intro

 

I had a really hard time even considering playing another Key Visual Novel after reading the master piece masterpiece named Clannad. I was afraid of either it being and an emotionnal emotional bomb or a big deception.

Little Busters was a popular and pretty well rated game overall, often stated as a “must play”, so I have to give it a try..

Gathering up courage, and full of expectations, I lanched launched the game.

 

Review

 

You incarnate Riki Naoe, a young boy who lost his parents as a kid and suffering from narcolepsy, which is a disease that causes him to randomly fall alseep asleep. He is the fifth member of the little busters, a group of childhood friends well known for causing trouble and playing extravagant games.

He was invited after his parents' death by Kyousuke Natsume After his parents' death, he was invited to join by Kyousuke Natsume, the leader of the Little Busters and around whom the group revolves.

The other members are :

Kengo Miyazawa, a kendo fighter with a very calm personnality personality. He always wears his blue kimono and is very popular among girls.

Masato Inohara, he's Riki's roomate. Often stated as an idiot and finding fulfilement fulfilment only in his muscle training, he is nevertheless is very considerate towards his friends.

Rin Natsume is the main female protagonist and Kyousuke's sister. She is very shy which causes her to have a hard time making friends but is very lively when it comes to Little Busters.

 

The game begins as every standard Visual Novel introducing slowly but carefully the characters and prograssively progressively the different girls you will get and have to date.

Your choices will guide you to one of the following girl's route routes :

Haruka, Kud, Mio, Komari, Kurugaya, and finally Rin.

 

 

Each heroin heroine as her own concerns, her own problems and Riki's role will throughout the game be, as you may guess, to heal each of their wounds.

Every one of them has a distinguished personality, and Key succesfully successfully managed something that unfortunately does not happen often which is balancing the different characters.

What I mean is that all of the girls girls' character design designs seem to have been perfect perfected with the same care, not letting one of them fall behind, and that is quite the achievement I must say.

 

The game is sprinkled with comedy, and the atmosphere in which the game drew me into felt warm and cozy. Dialogues fit the mindset of a teenage group, not to too sophisticated but mature enough to go beyond appearences appearances.

 

A slow pace

 

You will sail on this ocean of peacefullness peacefulness in the beginning of the story.

There kicks Therein lies the first big issue.

The game starts on the 13^th of may.

Absolutely nothing will happen and no clue that anything actually will happen will be given to the player before the 24^th IF you are lucky and get on a route that starts early.

Well that wouldn't be a problem if 1 day didn't amount to at least 1 hour of reading.

I was unlucky and got Rin's first route in my initial walkthrough playthrough which amounted to 17h of Riki's joyful everyday school life. Well written or not this is way too much and quickly becomes boring.

 

Thank the Lord that Little Busters! has a functionnal functional skip button and that the baseball minigame, the rankings, the optionnal optional fight scenes can be avoided to.

 

I'm going to give my opinion on the scenario now.

Key's speciality is Drama. They love it and are known for their tearjerking games.

But this time, it felt that rather than creating a good story from scratch, they created their story knowing that they wanted it to be drama.

Let me explain what that means and why it had a rather bad involvment involvement on the scenario.

It is really easy to make drama, take a young girl whose familly family was killed before her eyes, was treated like a slave, beaten up, lived in the streets, is bullied and has to listen to a Taylor Swift CD all day long and you just created a terrible story with a really pitiful girl.

This story is bad for a simple reason : it makes no sense. If you put a female character in such a situation just for the sake of making her past sad enough to make you cry (with violins and stuff), you are not making a good plot and it's even worse when it's not justified properly.

This is how Haruka's route and part of Kud's felt.

And that really upset me.

 

The other routes were good enough. Each of them had something to offer and were linked somehow to what we learn in the last route.

 

Once you finish all the 6 girls path girls' paths, you can access Refrain which is the really interesting segment of the game. This is what would make this game recommendable so I would advise sticking to the game until it comes.

 

Music and Design

 

The art is good over all in this very Key-ish style.

How to describe it … I think an example would explain better than words

Some of the graphics are powerfull powerful, even more in context.

 

It really depends on the player's tastes and most of the CG's CGs are good (some are really good but some are lacking, so it is fine)

 

But the main reason I kept playing the game was for the troumendous, gorgious, brillant tremendous, gorgeous, brilliant OST.

Even though the story didn't captivate me that much and wasn't the drama VN I was waiting for, make me listen to "Song for friends ~instrumental~" while watching Masato do push ups and I'll cry like a baby. (Overstatement)

There are a few musical jewels in this game and that alone made me glad I played it.

 

So and overall good game which was worth playing for it's its artistic input and Refrain

But when only half of the girls have and intersting interesting route, I guess I can't call this a Master piece masterpiece.

Personnal Personal rating : 7.5/10

 

Feel free to state your own opinion if you want to.

If you want talk about something that might spoil the game please don't forget to use the [ spoiler ] code

 

[OriginalRen]

Not bad man, but can you send me this review in French? Could go for a nice read.

[solidbatman]

 

Absolutely nothing will happen 

 

There. That's my review of Little Busters so far

[shcboomer]

There. That's my review of Little Busters so far

You're the best solidbatman. Looking forward to a review.