As I've been playing Floral Flowlove, I've been recalling my experiences with Saga Planets. This is one of a very small group of companies that has never produced a 'complete kusoge' in my experience, and they always manage to maintain a certain level of quality, though they do their best work in VNs with a strong protagonist.
Saga Planets is unusual amongst VN producers in that their games (at least in my experience) always maintain a certain baseline of quality... and in that they don't attempt to erase their protagonists' individuality. In my opinion, this company's two best games are Natsuyume Nagisa and Hatsuyuki Sakura... and these two share elements that are common to Saga Planets' best works. One is that they have stories with a certain 'ache of sorrow' to them. Another is that the moe-like surface hides a more sorrowful, sometimes bitter experience that is generally not found in most games with a moege art style. They follow a far older storytelling pattern, in that they don't try to eliminate bitter experiences and painful catharsis from the story, and this tends to benefit them immensely.
More recent works, like Hanasaki Work Spring and Karumaruka Circle, have been closer to what I call 'normal charage', save in that they have strong protagonists. I'm not saying they were 'weak' (in fact, by normal charage/moege standards, they leave a bit too strong of an impression as a whole), but they do suffer in comparison to the other works I listed above.
Now, coming back to the topic at hand... there is one other quality that the best Saga Planets games share... and that is there is always at least one (sometimes two or three) heroine paths that are... abortive or just immensely weak in comparison to the others. In Hatsuyuki, it was Shirokuma's path, and in Natsuyume Nagisa, it can be said that all paths other than the true one are abortions, considering the content of said path.
This is a nearly unavoidable aspect of what I sometimes refer to as a 'story-focused VN'. For better or worse, there is almost always a true/main heroine in these games, and it is hers and the protagonist's story that are most important. Other heroines are frequently given less of an impact or the true heroine has an immense impact even on other heroine paths, as she is just so central to the game as a whole. This can be somewhat frustrating if you happen to like/love the heroine in question, but it is just one of the prices of reading a great story, sometimes.
Edit: The above kind of ignores the 'side-trips' the company took into other genres early on, lol.
Edit2: As an example of a heroine that some of the people here might be familiar with whose impact on the other paths in the VN is pretty obvious, Kagome from Comyu is a rather obvious example, as is Suzu in Ayakashibito. To be blunt, there is not a single path in either game where either of those heroines is separated from the protagonist, making it rather obvious to anyone who played any of the paths in the game who they were 'supposed to' love the most, hahaha.
Now... I've been asked to play/replay several VNs and post on each by several people who read but don't post here, as well as several members. These will have to come after I finish Damekoi and after the VN of the Month (currently playing Floral Flowlove), but there is a distinct possibility I'll manage to play at least one more VN through before the release of Deus Ex later this month. I've also had requests to play and comment on more JRPGs, but I'll be honest when I say there aren't a ton of jrpgs coming up that I'm actually that interested in. I do plan to play FFXV, because a friend of mine asked me to go in for half of it (neither of us trusts SE enough to pay full price for one of their games), but I can't really say I'm looking forward to it.
The VNs I've been asked to replay include:
Hatsuyuki Sakura- To repeat one of my usual phrases, I'm going to be blunt with yall... this game is the last truly awesome game I played by Saga Planets (Hanasaki was good but not great). I am tempted to replay it now that I've had some people bug me to replay it... but I'll also be honest when I say that I remember the story a bit too well to really enjoy it the same way on a second playthrough.
Bradyon Veda- Mmm... I really don't know why they want me to replay and post on this one, since I'm pretty sure I already blog posted on it once. It is a kamige, so I don't have any objections to replaying it that I can think of off the top of my head, but I am also uncertain of whether I really want to go out of my way to replay it just yet.
Hoshi Ori Yume Mirai- The console version of this is coming out soon, so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised someone wanted me to replay this... and I actually don't have that much of an objection to doing so, as my bad mood the first time I played it ruined the experience for me.
Muramasa- Due to the recent release of a freeware side-story for this VN, I got twelve requests for me to replay and post on this VN. Considering that this is one of my favorites, I again have no objection to replaying it.
Mirai Nostalgia- This is the game that pushed Purple Software from a mediocre to a truly great VN-maker. I still remember being stunned at the massive gap in quality between this and their previous games, and it is the reason why I played Hapymaher immediately upon its release rather than waiting until after I played something else.
The Baldr Sky series- Since the possibility of this series coming over here got raised again, I've had forty-seven requests to go back and play this series again (almost all of them when I dropped into IRC for a few minutes on a whim). I honestly think it is a bit too soon for me to go back and replay this, though I might consider it after I've played Baldr Heart, which comes out next month (but I'm not really sure about).
... something to look forward to. Amatsutsumi is nothing like what I thought it would be, in a good way (at least from my point of view). Purple Soft really has been going off in weird directions with their last three non-FD titles... Hapymaher was a kamige, Chrono Clock was good... this one could go either way, but the beginning is pretty fascinating (in the way watching a car crash is fascinating from the outside).
Before I go into this VN, I should probably bring up a few facts I’ve noticed about Yuzusoft VNs in general. First, while most Yuzusoft VNs have a central story that is vital to the heroine paths as well as the common route, the degree to which that central plot effects the heroine paths varies pretty wildly. In some cases – such as with Nicola in Dracu-riot – the effects of the main plot are almost nonexistent, and in others – such as Miu’s from the same VN – the effects are dramatic and integral to the progression of the heroine’s own story. Another aspect is consistency… or rather, the degree to which heroine paths are consistent with one another. Generally speaking, Yuzusoft games don’t strive for absolute consistency. One reason is because most charage writers (and Yuzusoft writers are mostly charage writers) are not nearly as good at managing the numerous ‘threads’ of their stories as a chuunige writer has to be. To be blunt, Yuzusoft games tend to eliminate the need for consistency as much as possible, limiting ‘contact points’ between the heroine routes wherever they can. Unfortunately, there are always minor details that slip through the net, so you can’t really expect perfect consistency in any charage.
Another aspect of Yuzusoft VNs is that they still utilize the concept of ‘heroine salvation’. The idea that a heroine needs to be ‘saved’ by the protagonist on some level used to be integral to virtually all VNs that tried to charge the emotions of the reader, but it fell out of use over time as the emphasis shifted from story to characterization in most cases. Yuzusoft is somewhat ‘old-fashioned’ this way, as they focus strongly both on the actual ‘stories’ of the heroine paths as well as the characterization aspects. As a result, for those of us who get emotionally invested in the characters, the inability to ‘save’ the heroines you didn’t choose is always a bit… troubling, lol.
I know that sounds weird coming from a self-proclaimed pragmatist like me, but that is one of the few areas in which VNs are still mostly games, rather than just reading material. The act of ‘choosing’ a heroine inevitably invests you just a little bit emotionally in the heroines, barring a kusoge experience, lol.
Yet another thing to keep in mind about Yuzusoft games is that the company, even after all these years, is still experimenting with the ratio of ichaicha (lovey-dovey flirtation in the girlfriend/boyfriend part, such as dating, visiting one another’s houses, h-scenes, etc) to the actual story and character development. Most of their games tend to have long (in terms of text) dating/lovey-dovey/sex periods, which can be unbelievably annoying in a VN with a good story, lol.
Last of all, Yuzusoft games tend to have longer heroine routes on average than most moe-VNs. I’d say by about one and a half to two times, depending on the other developer.
Now, having gotten that over with, enjoy my comments on this VN, as I plan to go into more detail than usual.
PS: I don’t intend to bother with the two sub-heroines, Ruka and Koharu.
Common Route
The beginning of the VN is somewhat fantastical, and with a little effort, they could have easily turned this into a light chuunige (I’m actually wondering why they didn’t, considering how suited many members of the cast are for that type of VN). One of the most fortunate aspects of this game is the fact that very little time is spent dwelling on school life… in fact, it is probably the least relevant portion of the game, outside of the character setting of ‘gakusei’. In my experience, the more reliant a VN is on school life for character development and story progression, the less likely it is to be interesting from beginning to end.
The basic story is that the protagonist, having drawn the sword from the stone (lol) by breaking it off at the hilt (viva, self-repairing holy weapons! Haha), ends up engaged to and living with the himemiko, one Tomotake Yoshino. He’s also together with a bodiless loli who presents herself as the guardian of the sword calling him her master, and a ninja who does all the cooking and cleaning around the shrine. Apparently, in order to cleanse the taint left by an ancient curse on Yoshino’s family and prevent disaster, he has to help them fight dog-monsters in the mountains around the town, so that their taint doesn’t build up enough to cause natural disasters and other tragedies. The common route is consumed by the quest to free the Tomotake bloodline from the ancient curse and the characters’ travails in the process.
For better or worse, the central story of the VN is nearly completely resolved in the common route, leaving the heroine routes for those heroines’ personal issues. This does mean that the tie-in to the central background story in the heroine routes is weaker than in some of Yuzusoft’s other games, such as Dracu-riot. However, the common route itself is actually one of the better ones I’ve seen from this company, and I enjoyed the process immensely. The downside is that the transition feels a bit awkward, sadly.
Murasame
Murasame is the overseer of the holy sword Murasamemaru, and Senren Banka’s resident loli. In a lot of ways, she embodies the archetype of the ‘outsider/exile from life as we know it’ heroine archetype that has popped up occasionally in VNs like this one. Favorite, in particular, is a company that loves this heroine archetype, utilizing it for the true heroine of every one of their games, and a disproportionate number of the heroines of this archetype are lolis (somewhere around two-thirds, starting with Ilyasviel from FSN). This is probably because a childlike heroine who suffers from that kind of isolation is more likely to strike at our hearts. She started out as a common village girl, and when a sacrifice was needed to become the guardian of the sword, she gave up her humanity to stay with the blade (this isn’t really a spoiler, since they tell you this early on and it is in the character profile, lol).
Murasame comes across as your typical ‘loli who hates being treated like a child’ most of the time, but her speech and manner in more serious scenes shows at least some of her experience… and her path rakes her over the hot coals of her own personal darkness and insecurity. Hers is a path that is all about salvation through love, and it is one that can’t help but resonate with romantics in general. I should know… I cried several times in the course of this path.
I honestly felt that this path represents Yuzusoft at its best, and for this path alone I would have been willing to play the game… and I’m not even a lolicon.
Mako
Mako… is the descendent of a ninja family that serves Yoshino’s family (Yoshino being the white-haired hime+miko heroine). While she is deadly serious about her duty to protect and serve Yoshino, her personality is generally friendly, cheerful, and easygoing. She is also more than a little… motherly in the sense that she loves to take care of people. This tends to express itself in the common route through her devotion to never letting Yoshino or her father do anything around the house outside of their duties as a priest and miko at a Shinto shrine (and Yoshino’s duties as the sole descendent of her mother’s family line).
To be honest, her path is significantly more boring than Murasame’s, in that her personal worries are ‘classic’ worries from the archetypical ‘raised to serve’ heroine who is suddenly free to do what she wants, along with the fantasy worries unique to her path. It is still a good path, even touching at times. However, since they fell back on what amounts to a ‘normal’ love story with a half-humorous twist, things were significantly less interesting from my point of view.
That isn’t to say that it doesn’t have its high points… but most of those are toward the end or involve the fantasy elements. I’m sure the people who adore the junai (pure romance) that is the staple of most VNs will lap it up like their favorite flavor of ice cream, but for someone like me who has been fed that stuff until he feels like a foie gras goose…
Yoshino
The structure of Yoshino’s path is something of an exception, looking at charage with a serious element in general. Most of the time, the serious element is focused at the end of the path, with the ichaicha part making up the early parts of the path, during and immediately after the formation of the relationship. In this case, the dramatic part happens immediately after the formation of the relationship… and the rest is essentially endless ichaicha and sex. The path has impact, but I honestly thought that the latter part of the path dragged on. However, the ending is pretty touching, and I was honestly happy for them afterwards.
Overall
Yes, I have no plans to play Rena’s path immediately. To be honest, just two paths in this game takes up ten hours, and with the common route, this game could easily hit thirty hours if I played all the paths… and I don’t have the energy for dealing with an airhead heroine right now.
Overall, this VN is one of the better Yuzusoft games I’ve played (considering that I’ve yet to encounter a Yuzusoft game that wasn’t at least worth consideration for a VN of the Month, this is a definite compliment). It definitely beats out Sanoba Witch, both in terms of raw quality overall and in terms of the design of the setting in particular. While the game itself doesn’t escape a lot of the clichés of the fantasy charage with story sub-genre, it carries them out well enough that I didn’t find that irritating. The biggest downside of the game is the downside to just about all of Yuzusoft’s games… the ichaicha is far too extended and there is usually a lot of runaround before they get to the point.
PS: By far, Murasame's path is the best... which probably means I should have played it last. For better or worse, after seeing Murasame's path, it felt like a betrayal not to choose her over the others, simply because of her situation, lol.
This VN is based a few thousand years after Tou no Shita no Exercitus, and without the background knowledge of that VN, it is a bit hard to get into the details of this one. Unlike that game, this one has no gameplay and is instead a kinetic novel in the 'standard chuunige' style... which basically means that it isn't a high-detail wordsmith and CG artist's playground like the stuff by Light and Nitroplus. Sadly, since this VN's setting had some nice potential to make such a game in.
I'm going to be straight... this game isn't really that unique, and the actual flow of the story feels more than a little forced. The antagonists (save for the 'real' antagonist) aren't really... antagonistic, for the most part. A lot of that is because the protagonist and his group of friends were also friends and coworkers (most of them anyway) with most of the antagonists, so there is a lot of back-and-forth talking about memories of old times even as they fight.
This isn't a horrible game, though it is being given horrible ratings by some people. Unfortunately, it is undeniable that, rated as a chuunige, it falls below even stuff like ExE. It is just too predictable and obvious in all the wrong ways, when it comes right down to it. A part of this is that they didn't even try to make the motives of most of the antagonists' opaque at all, and practically nobody dies during the course of the story... a huge flaw for any chuunige. Disgusting as it might sound to anti-violence people, but violent deaths of bystanders are a must-have in any halfway-decent chuunige. Without that tragic element forcing the story into the realms of the emotional, a chuunige story won't even get off the ground.
The protagonist, Seigi, makes this worse in some ways. Normally, I'd love to have this guy as a protagonist... he is a hot-blooded martial artist who has had half his body replaced by mechanical parts. What could possibly go wrong? A lot, here. To be blunt, he is a 'punch them out and let someone else sort it out' type of fighter, and while he is an excellent teacher (as evidenced by Mai and Anzu), he can be surprisingly stupid sometimes about stuff even I could figure out just looking in from the outside, lol.
A final nail in the coffin of this VN is the dearth of action CGs. All of Seigi's battle CGs save the last one are color-switches of the original, and the same goes for most of the other characters (additions onto existing CGs and few of those too). The character that had the best CGs, Elza, isn't even the main heroine, lol.
That's another thing... this game commits the fatal sin for a chuunige with a harem setup... overfocus on the main heroine. While it can be made clear that one of the heroines is more important than the others, when you are creating a harem situation, she can't be too much more important than the other heroines (of which there are a total of five). Another huge problem is that personal scenes with the other heroines besides Ruru are restricted to ones viewed from the Extras section... and many of them occur in the middle of the story and would have served to enhance the experience at least somewhat (well, not the h-only ones, but the character-development ones would have done nicely) if they had been put into the main story in their proper chronology.
Overall, this was a game that had enormous potential that was brutally stunted by getting stingy on CGs and the decision to relegate important character and relationship development scenes to the extras section. I'm normally not a guy to bash a game based on artwork... but when your narration isn't up to the genre standard, art is usually where you are supposed to try to fill in the gap. I didn't have much hope for this game, but I did have some, so I'm pretty irritated right now.
Edit: Did I mention that one of the reasons I was pissed off was because the main heroine wasn't even a mimikko when there were all those mimikko (including a kitsune) to choose from? lol
It has been a while since I did a partial post on a VN, and most of the time I either do it out of enthusiasm or because I got a specific request for a path-by-path detailed report from a friend. In this case, it is because I ran out of time to finish Sekai de Ichiban Dame na Koi after I played through half the game and two of the paths. I ran out of time because my copy of Senren Banka, which I asked me friend to ship to me directly, arrived two days early. I wasn't expecting it until Tuesday at the earliest, and more likely I thought it would arrive on Friday, lol. I didn't have an excuse to keep playing Damekoi at that point, so I had to start on the VN of the Month.
Damekoi is a type of VN we almost never see today... in a number of ways. First is that the protagonist is a full adult, without the need for the usual 'all characters are over eighteen' BS. Second is that he is a semi-hetare (despite the tags, calling him a total hetare is inaccurate, as he is actually quite capable in his limited field of capabilities), which has pretty much gone extinct as a protagonist type save for in those shota reverse-rape monster girl VNs that have gotten so popular in the last four years or so, lol. The third way is that it is pretty much the only VN I've played that uses the G-senjou story-split structure without making it seem like the side-heroines were neglected or the main storyline was left in the dust.
Understand, I believe the G-senjou no Maou story structure is an integral flaw added to any VN that uses it. First, it is based off of there being a main storyline that is full canon. In the case of Aiyoku no Eustia it was Eustia's path, and everyone knows which one it was with G-senjou. That makes it an absolute necessity to maintain a certain consistency with the main storyline... but the fact is that most VN writers simply don't have the necessary multi-tasking capabilities to manage that many different threads in a consistent manner. As a result, you get massive inconsistency in the sub-heroine paths in most cases... and for someone like me, who demands consistency in heavy story VNs, this can go beyond annoyance to insane rage, regardless of how much I enjoyed things up to a point (it took me three years to forgive G-senjou, and I still haven't forgiven Eustia).
I honestly don't know how they intend to solve things in this case. I've been playing the side heroine paths as they come up, and so I can only give you my 'in-progress' views of this game, which is considered a classic by many and has been one of the few 'gold stars' in my backlog full of crap and moege.
To be blunt, this protagonist is a run-down salaryman in in his late twenties, who is kind-hearted but fundamentally unwise when it comes to preserving himself. He has an extremely low self-esteem despite being quite capable/talented, and he has the worst kind of bad luck. He, like more and more young people in this age in fully-industrialized nations, suffers from a sense of alienation from his fellow man, partially created by his alienation from his own family as a result of both of them constantly working and rarely coming home. This has resulted in a nice young man who nonetheless is utterly incapable of reading the people around him without as much as ten times more clues than anyone else would need, lol.
The heroines are... interesting. Universally, they are the type of women who are attracted to men that 'need taking care of'. Their varying personalities and viewpoints on life only serve to emphasize this common element, and it frequently leads to conflicts and tension between them. The main heroine, Mitoko, is the daughter of a woman who ran off with a man on a whim, leaving her to take care of an ancient apartment in one of the wealthiest parts of town. Now, anyone with a lick of common sense would instantly sell that prime real-estate at an inflated price and put up a newer apartment in a somewhat cheaper location. However, expecting that kind of common-sense attitude out of any of the heroines in this VN when it comes to their own affairs (as opposed to the protagonist's, lol) is somewhat... ridiculous.
Mitoko has that puppy-love thing going for the protagonist almost from the beginning, though she is the oldest type of tsundere (before the term was coined and Zero no Tsukaima patternized even the speech of the archetype) who beats up on the protagonist whenever he does something wrong but fundamentally is positive toward him. Unfortunately for Mitoko, Osamu isn't exactly perceptive when it comes to the emotions of others, so he takes her at face value most of the time, hahaha.
The first two heroines - and the ones whose paths I finished - are Kaya and Himeo. Kaya is a somewhat lazy office lady who is a bit younger than the protagonist. She falls head over heels for him after seeing him at work, and she is rather straightforward about her affections, actively trying to turn him into a freeloader she'll take care of for the rest of his life. Himeo is the daughter of the president of a major real-estate conglomerate with a penchant for charitable causes and an unreasonably intense affection for Mitoko that manifests itself in some seriously screwy ways, though it is sincere.
Both paths have to deal with Mitoko's jealousy, the fact that the protagonist's first priority is always going to be Mitoko, and the instabilities of the heroines involved. The protagonist's emotions toward Mitoko are definitely fatherly, and their intensity combines with his sense of duty to make it impossible for him to make them his first priority outside of certain moments.
I've honestly enjoyed this VN up until now, and I think it would be a good read for someone who is looking for something 'different'. I can also tell why this never solidified as a genre archetype, as most of the people reading VNs in Japan are the type of people who would hate using a Japanese salaryman as their perspective of the story, lol.
Yes, I went ahead and played this, having pre-ordered it on Steam. I've been pumping about three hours a day into it since it came out and my final level for my main party was 47 (which seems to be low, but that is apparently because people go for the 'beat the boss without weakening him first' trophy, pfft). This is a game designed to bring nostalgia to the minds of those who are fans of the SNES and PS1 eras, and in that sense, it definitely succeeds. It utilizes a battle system copied from one of the most famous kamige jrpgs of all time, Chrono Trigger... with a number of additions, both big and small. The world map is also reminiscent of that estimable game... but the resemblance pretty much stops there, save for a few other superficial elements.
First, I'll give you a basic rundown on the story concept. Endir, a mercenary swordsman, is sent to a certain island to assassinate a young girl, and it is there that he finds out that she is destined to die in any case, giving her life for the sake of the world, to appease the monsters. It really is, from the very beginning, a story of compassion, driven almost entirely by Setsuna herself, with Endir as a sounding board, more than anything else (your choices as Endir are fairly irrelevant).
It is easy to love Setsuna. She is kind-hearted and genuinely compassionate, as one would have to expect of someone who is going willingly to their death to save the world. As a character, she has, of course, been 'done before', but that isn't as problematic as you might think, considering how the entire VN is meant to stab you with nostalgia about as subtly as driving a nail into someone's forehead, lol.
The world map's design style is identical to Chrono Trigger's (albeit with modern graphics), and many of the skills are drawn straight from that game, name and all... though there are about five times as many skills total. All skills, save for a few found in chests and a few defaults, are obtained by selling items gotten from monsters to the Magic Associations, which gives you their 'Spritnite' if you sold them enough of the right item. There is no need for more than one of the 'command' type spritnite, as each character's techniques and magic are unique to them, so don't waste your 'budget' of sold items by getting more than one of any of them, lol. Support spritnite are another thing entirely... these give various effects, ranging from stat boosts to healing you when you kill enemies, and using them strategically can make the game immensely easier.
Most monster drops need you to meet certain conditions for them to be dropped, ranging from killing enemies with a specific element, killing them with damage close to their exact hp, or overkilling them (there are other conditions, but those are listed in the monster encyclopedia, so there is no need for me to go into detail here). This can be a bit of a pain when it comes to items from bosses, but you can re-fight bosses in certain dungeons opened up in the late game, so don't worry too much about it, lol.
One of the positives of this game is that there are multiple characters capable of healing... to be specific, both Setsuna and Endir can serve as healers, as well as damage dealers. Not being bound to keep any one character in your party just to survive can be immensely helpful... especially when their attack element is useless against the local enemies, hahaha.
The atmosphere of this game is not just shaped by the setting... but also by the music and the world itself. Piano music dominates this game, giving it a somewhat 'realer' feeling than a lot of the half-synthesized music that is common in mid to low budget jrpgs. However, while the tunes are just fine for activating your emotions, they tend to blend into one another after a while. The world... is defined by snow. Literally. Blizzards, your feet leaving a path through snow drifts, monsters rolling balls of snow both before and during battle... this game is based in winter, and it doesn't even try to be anything other than a world in winter, hahaha. Both aspects can leave you numb after a while... but the game is short enough that it isn't that noticeable if you play it in digestible bites of a few hours at a time.
Story-wise... I'd say that the writing/localization is several levels above what you used to see in the same era as Chrono Trigger (one aspect of that era that I am glad is gone is the weirdly inconsistent translations). The basic plot is classic jrpg, with endless excuses for taking the long route to get to the final destination, lol. The ending is... a bit of a letdown, from my point of view. I honestly don't see why they chose the classic 'dialog-free' ending type that used to be common in SNES era jrpgs, even if they were going for nostalgia, hahah.
Overall, this is a first-rate effort, for what amounts to a mid-budget VN directed at retro-gamers. It goes for the emotions, it ignores the intellect, and it breaks the fourth wall at times (you'll see what I mean if you go to a certain place once you get the airship). In other words, it is a classic 'save the world' style jrpg, and for those who like the older console-style jrpgs, it is pure crack, though it does leave you wanting more (I'm probably going to yank Xenogears out and play it again sometime soon, lol).
For better or worse, the VN localization industry in America and other Western nations is expanding rapidly, primarily due to the efforts of aggressive localization companies such as Mangagamer and Sekai Project, but also due to the increased interest on the part of at least some Japanese VN companies in making a few extra bucks through localization.
I say 'for better or worse' because the increase in localizations has actually begun to outline what some of the biggest problems with VNs are, for those living in the West. What I've put down below is basic guidance... not all of which I follow myself, but which is mostly common sense (which a surprising number of new Fuwans seem to be ignorant of).
Ethical/Legal problems
1. Piracy- To be blunt, prosecuting consumers of pirated games is a waste of time, and most companies are quite well aware of this. So, most of the fallout for this kind of thing is going to keep hitting the websites and individuals who promote the distribution end of things. A few examples will most likely be made of outspoken pirate consumers (the idiots, in other words), but the problem here is almost entirely ethical for most. Tell me, do you think it is right not to pay for content if you happen to have the money needed to pay for it?
2. Lolicon content- Seriously guys? When I saw that Maitetsu was getting a localization, even though it was an all-ages one, alarm bells went off in my head. Someone is inevitably going to put up an h-patch for the game, and that is going to cause a huge amount of controversy later on that could be a huge blow to the industry, in the short run. Loli content is one of the two nuclear bombs of Japanese eroge, and it is the one that honestly bothers me the most personally (not so much morally, as in a pragmatic sense).
3. Rapegames- I'm going to be blunt... considering the degree to which Western culture has come to consider rape a mortal sin, do you really think games focused around rape and extreme sexual situations (ie the entire Maggot Baits game) are safe for the industry to localize, if you consider their potential to backfire? There is no conceivable way that these games could be considered anything other than obscene by any reasonable critic (not a community one, in other words), and in the long run, games like these have an enormous potential to castrate the localization industry.
4. School-based games- Sadly, the excuse that 'all the heroines are over eighteen' is only going to take you so far in some countries... to be blunt, a judge is unlikely to listen to that kind of protestation if, for whatever insane reason, you end up dragged into court.
Common sense issues
1. I don't think anyone has any business telling us we can't import Japanese games, including VNs. However, as a matter of common sense, you should probably avoid importing anything with a lot of content linked to the numbers 2 and 3 in the section above. I don't mean to piss on your bonfire, but if you are going to buy something with that kind of material, at least have the sense to use digital download purchases and/or don't display the packages for that type of eroge where casual visitors can see them.
2. Figurines and other side-junk- Within reason, there is no reason why a fan of a particular bit of otaku media shouldn't order figurines, statuettes, oppai mousepads, etc to decorate their room or gaming space. However, keep it within reason... I've seen otaku friends of mine go insane and overpurchase, even going into debt, over buying swag. If you aren't rich, have the sense to focus on the main material first, then expand at a reasonable pace into the swag. To an extent, the same can be said of the games themselves, considering the costs of the actual purchases plus import costs.
3. Anonymity is your best friend. Don't pull stupid crap like linking your Facebook profile to your dlsite or getchu account... for that matter, don't link them to your Fuwanovel account, if you are a fan of 'deep' eroge content. Leaving that kind of data around for casual skimmers to find is just plain stupid.
4. If you are a fantranslator, number 3 applies emphatically unless you are about to go 'legit' by handing your translation to a localization company.
5. During scandal times (like when the media is making a big deal over an eroge-related issue such as during the infamous Rapelay incident) have the sense to take cover and avoid conversing on rapegames and lolige publicly.
6. Know the difference between being open about your libido and being excessive *remembers Steve*
A final comment
Needless to say, almost all the issues above revolve around controversial sexual content. Part of that is that many people, both inside and outside the VN fanbase, have trouble marking the difference between fiction and reality when it comes to otaku media (an insanity that I can understand but am long past). As a legal argument, it (as in the argument that figments of an artist's or writer's imagination, as opposed to real women, cannot be considered underaged and cannot be considered victims in any way, form, or fashion) actually has a lot of merit... but that doesn't mean that they'll rule in your favor, in the end, lol. The West is prudish, to the extreme. There is no telling when religious interests will slip a noose around our necks, and general moralists are just as bad. I'm not perfect about taking my own advice. I'm a VN junkie, and I really don't have any morals when it comes to my search for good VN stories. I might be disgusted by some content, but that won't prevent me from experiencing the story, lol. However, a lot of the people around me seem to be utterly unaware of the risks of being an eroge reader... and I felt I had to put this out there, for the 'public' good, even though I'm certain I've already pissed off the anti-censorship and pro-piracy parts of the community, lol.
The Kyonyuu Fantasy series is easily one of the weirdest series I’ve ever encountered. On one side, you have what is clearly nukige levels of sexual content, with some of the most absurd h-scenes I’ve ever encountered, taking male breast-obsessions to new levels. On the other side, you have startlingly detailed settings and interesting stories with protagonists who only seem weak on the surface.
Kyonyuu Fantasy 3 is no exception to my experiences with the series. When I started it, I was returned mentally to my first experience with the series, in the form of the massive omnibus edition of the original and its side and after-stories, the Digitalized Novel version. I’m going to be blunt, this series’ protagonists are universally the same type of person… loving, wide-hearted, and extreme nymphomaniacs with a breast obsession. The one in this one is the god of paizuri (if you don’t know what this is, ask one of the h-addicts around here), Yuranis.
The era is something like twelve to fourteen hundred years before the original, when an alternate Rome (where Caesar was never assassinated) ruled much of the Western world. The protagonist gets thrust into the human world, and he makes his way with the usual casual competence and lack of tension that is pretty much inbred into the series.
I should say that this Rome shares all of the Empire's many flaws and virtues, from systematic slavery and the difficulty of obtaining the status of citizen, to the formal and orderly lawmaking and engineering that defined the Empire at its best.
I’ll be honest, I absolutely love the way they put together the settings in these games… there is enough detail to satisfy people like me, and the tons of erotic content makes me rofl, since it is so… random most of the time. I’m serious and I’m laughing… and I honestly just can sit back and enjoy games in this series without taking them overly seriously. It is pretty rare for me to just sit back and enjoy something with this much h-content, but the Kyonyuu Fantasy series is a definite rare exception.
The endings other than the true one are actually pretty detailed, and I was mostly satisfied with them… though it is pretty blatant that they intend to put out yet another series of fandiscs for this one later on, lol.
Knonyuu Fantasy 2if is a remake of the original Kyonyuu Fantasy 2, with an apparently expanded narrative. Having played the Digitalized Novel version of the original Kyonyuu Fantasy, which I loved, I found Kyonyuu Fantasy 2if to be very… familiar.
To be blunt, everything in this VN is exactly like the first few chapters of that estimable game, with the easygoing, unambitious protagonist gaining political power and rising to the top over the course of the game… while having sex constantly with a rather large cast of heroines with massive breasts.
Now, at first glance, this series seems to be a bunch of nukige… and that impression isn’t entirely wrong. There is a lot of sex in all the VNs in this series. However, the writing, storytelling, and world-building in these games really is impressive… so impressive that I have been reduced to exasperation each time I played one of these games.
How could I not be exasperated? Most of the time, a writer of this level of quality would be working on major-name low-ero VNs, not something that verges on being a complete nukige. Yes, there are exceptions, such as the writer of Erect… but they are just that… exceptions.
Kyonyuu Fantasy 2if is based a century and a half before the original game, in Hillsland (the country visited as part of one of the Gaidens), where the king is dying of a curse and is looking to choose his successor from amongst the skilled youth of his kingdom. Predictably for a protagonist of the Kyonyuu Fantasy series, he doesn’t start as one of those candidates… rather, he gets sent away to serve as a captain of the guard of a small castle on the edges of the kingdom.
Generally speaking, this follows an eerily identical path to Lute’s rise to power in the original, probably because that particular plot was so well-loved by the fans of the original. That said, the protagonist is an administrator rather than a knight, and that shows in the true path, where he climbs the ranks (after his unusual start) of the bureaucratic hierarchy rather quickly. This VN is slightly longer than the whole Digitalized Novel version of the original and its gaiden stories, and it also has numerous endings besides the true one.
Overall, this VN will be instantly loved by anyone who loved Kyonyuu Fantasy. If there is a disadvantage to this VN, it is that it doesn’t have as much of an extended story as the original ended up with.
Some people here already know that I hurt my knee falling down the stairs a while ago... what most of you don't know is that the stuff they have me on (non-narcotic pain drugs, sleep pills, and antibiotics) in combination make me a zombie for most of the day... I sleep around twelve hours a day, am fuzzy for two to three hours more, have to do rehab exercises for another two hours, and I spend around four hours of what is remaining working.
Needless to say, this doesn't leave much time for anything else... which is why VN of the Month is so far behind. Normally, by this point I would have played through at least four or five of the month's VNs, and I would probably be considering which one - if any - was worth the VN of the month rating... as it is, it has taken me a little over seventeen days to finish just two VNs from April's releases.
I'm basically venting my frustration right now... since I lose money with every day I can't work at full capacity and I go a little more stir crazy with every day I can't go out and get some fresh air without using crutches. For the first time in almost nine years, I actually had to use up my entire pay for a month for bills and food (the medical bills being the highest, obviously).
Needless to say, I'm in a sour mood.
If I seem harsh toward the remaining VNs this month, please forgive me. It is really, really hard to concentrate outside of work right now... and I'm actually having to reconsider a lot of my plans for the rest of the year based on the costs I project for the rest of the next few months. Nothing pisses me off more than being unable to rectify everyday money problems (which is why I work so much normally)....
Anyway, that's enough moaning from me for now. The two key points are that the above are the reasons VN of the Month is so far behind and I so rarely post, despite the fact that I'm technically 'online' (I rarely if ever shut down the fuwanovel tab, lol) all the time. If I'm slow to respond, it is because I'm not myself, not because I'm not interested in doing so.
.... I finally finished this one. It has been installed on my computer for the better part of three years, with me only going back to play it occasionally... This VN/srpg hybrid is by Circus, the same company that did Suika and the Da Capo series... so obviously, this kind of VN is completely out of character for them, lol.
I'm going to be blunt... this VN pales in comparison to just about every decent hybrid I've played, both storywise and gameplay wise. The best thing I can say for the gameplay is that it is easy and there are enough ways to make things easier for yourself along the way (grinding is possible in optional dungeons, for instance). Unfortunately, it follows one of the standing bad habits of the Japanese-style srpg genre... individual experience. I hate to say it, but in srpgs where characters gain experience based on how many enemies they killed in the battle, it is inevitable that the weaker characters get left behind. You pretty much have to go out of your way to level characters that arrive later, and by the time you get to the latter part of the game, it feels like a waste of time. Another problem is that the levels in the late game are just too large... and thus it takes a ridiculous amount of time and effort to finish most of the late game maps (which is the reason why I kept dropping this game). The levels are designed haphazardly, obviously making things worse from the player's point of view.
Story-wise... there is technically a story, but it is supremely hard to get emotionally involved with most of the characters. Sadly, character development in this VN is fairly limited, and the one-on-one scenes with the heroines are all repeated h-scenes from the sex ritual gameplay. Moreover, it isn't like there is a variety of h-scenes, so it is monotonous even to skip them, lol. The fact that you have no choice but to sit through h-scenes repeatedly to power-up your heroines' skills and make them like you enough to choose their path at the end of the game makes it even worse. Kirie, who is essentially the main heroine of the piece, isn't even available until the second playthrough (which is supremely miserable, since I was already sick of it after finishing the game the first time), which is as annoying as hell. Worse, the endings are so... typical for this kind of story that I recall feeling immensely exasperated after the end of my first playthrough a year ago... and that feeling was repeated when I finished the Kirie ending earlier.
Is there anything good about this VN? Hard to say... this VN had the potential to be good, but Circus's mediocre producers/writers made a real hash of a setting with at least some potential for interesting storytelling. For some reason, it gets a lot of high votes on vndb, but the flat characters (the protagonist being the flattest of them all) make even the Da Capo series seem lively and fun in comparison, lol.
Edit: Also, for readers familiar with the works of the now-deceased David Eddings, the writer was obviously a fan, since the Aphrael/Eleria goddess archetype is present in the form of the one the protagonist worships, lol.
Edit2: I do like the visual style of the VN parts, mostly... unfortunately, the lack of depth to the game was fatal.
... exactly how many times have I mentioned that I'm busy lately...? Seriously. I'm in the middle of VN withdrawal for the first time in over three years... and I'm realizing how addicted I am. I'd be perfectly happy to play a kusoge for the second time, at the moment... if I had the time. The best I can do these days is drop in for a few minutes and maybe a quick post or two.
Considering that I originally started this style of work because it made me enough money in a short enough period of time to both support me and my habits (gaming, anime, books, and importing VNs) while leaving me time to actually enjoy them... Unfortunately, my choice seems to be backfiring for the second time in five years. If anything, this time is worse, because I actually failed to deliver for the first time in the last decade.
Anyway, enough complaints...
While I have the time, I'm going to list up the VNs I plan to read from July's releases, when they are released:
Tsumikui (maybe, and only maybe because it is an otomege, and good otomege are rarer than kamige charage)
Ojousama no Hanbun wa Ren'ai de Dekiteimasu
Senren Banka (obviously)
Muramasa: Shokuzai Hen (new Muramasa content? Whoohoo!)
Aristear Remain
Floral Flowlove (Saga Planets' games since Hatsuyuki Sakura have been much weaker... but I'll probably still give it a chance)
Amatsutsumi (Purple Software has been on a roll with most of their releases in recent years... so I'm definitely playing this one)
Kimi to Yumemishi (new company... hopefully it will be interesting)
OK, first I am going to avoid spoilers throughout this review, so I would like those who want to comment to avoid the same, even in spoiler boxes. This is one of those games that is going to be harder to enjoy if you spoil it for those who come after, so I will personally eat anyone who spoils it. This VN is by the same writer who did Sumaga (blech), Gekkou no Carnevale (yay), and Totono (a VN a lot of people here liked). However, the style of story is much closer to that of Gekkou no Carnevale than to Sumaga, thankfully. So, those of you who have heard me bitching about Sumaga need not worry that this is going to turn into a long rant on how horrible anything by this writer is. First, I am going to give you an idea of the basic setting.
It is 2199 and the world has plunged into a new ice age (this is actually one of the hypothetical results of global warming irl, if the Greenland glacier slides into the ocean early enough). Up until a decade before the story, humanity was fighting over the warmest areas of the world, putting all their power into a war that was becoming increasingly meaningless. In that war, there were many scientific advances... but the two that are most relevant to the story are Necromancy and the zombie-killing techniques developed by the protagonists' fathers. Necromancy is undertaken by injecting a special type of nanomachines into the human brain after death, turning the individual in question into one of the Living Dead and the person who did the injecting into a Necromancer, capable of moving the undead results at will. The zombie-killing techniques central to the story are the use of one vs many weapon techniques (the basic one is two pistols with muzzle spikes, which the male protagonist uses, though the female protagonist's basic fighting style is based off of the same) in combination with the EX-Brain, an analytical computer that fits onto a person's head and allows them to notice things their subconscious recognizes but their conscious mind doesn't (details the conscious mind filters out), thus allowing the person in question to fight more effectively. Tokyo of the future is a dystopian hell, where refugees from all over the world have gathered, necromancers roam the streets with their armies of the living dead, and bounty hunters (like the protagonists) hunt them for their daily bread. The city itself is kept alive by geothermal heat spread throughout the city by water-filled 'hot pipes' passed through the hot spot underground and circulated throughout the city.
Main Characters (protagonists, heroines, and main antagonist)
Nagaoka Souun
Souun is the son of a hero of the American-Chinese War, who was killed some years ago. On the surface he doesn't show much in the way of emotion, and his fighting style is one where he uses the dual-pistols in combination with his EX-Brain to fight in the most efficient way possible, obeying the suggestions of his own subconscious like a machine. Indeed, he himself isn't really sure he has emotion, and that is one of his major internal conflicts throughout the story as he deals with his personal issues. He is a badass, to put it bluntly... the kind of guy who can re-kill thirty zombies in under a minute without taking a single scratch. His body has been trained using both conventional methods and tailor-made nano-drugs to turn it into a weapon capable of perfectly obeying the EX-Brain's suggestions.
Kibanohara Echika
Echika is in just about every way Souun's opposite. She is a rebel, preferring to use a chainsaw and shotgun and frequently ignoring her EX-Brain's suggestions in favor of her own impulses. She believes emotions should be immediately be shown on the surface and indulged, and she is more than a little hedonistic by nature. She is also a straight-out lesbian who has no hesitation going after pretty girls. Her outright hatred for her father is the most obvious cause for her rebellious nature and her unwillingness to use her EX-Brain (the horns, as opposed to the full helmet Souun version Souun uses).
Hougyou Iria
Iria is the main heroine of the story and the focus for most of the events in it. She has extreme synesthesia (look it up), though she is quite functional despite that. Her initial setting, amnesia, is one of the most obvious tropes out there, but it isn't the focus of most of the story. In a world where people are rapidly losing their emotions, both positive and negative, she is a bright, cheerful young woman whose very presence makes people feel hopeful and light-hearted. She is also an otaku.
Kijou Mitsumi
Kijou Mitsumi is Souun's 'other' potential heroine. She is, like him, a hunter of the undead. However, she uses a katana and muscle-enhancing suit, along with her talent for mapping out the actions of enemies on the battlefield, rather than the style used by Souun and partially rejected by Echika. To be honest, this is one girl who has a singular talent for getting herself into trouble... and a lot of it is caused by her somewhat single-minded personality. She is very devoted to any cause or person she latches onto, but that also means she tends to become dependent on those she attaches herself to, which is the cause of her personal conflict.
Aso Kiriri
Echika's adoptive older sister. She is the most 'normal' person amongst the main characters, ironically, despite the fact that she is a high-ranking member of the Military Police under Echika's father. She is kind-hearted and constantly worries about the broken relationship between Echika and her father, as she loves them both. She also is very idealistic, believing that her duty as an officer of the law is the protection of Tokyo's people above all other things (an idealism almost unheard of in the somewhat tyrannical Military Police organization).
Kon Su
Kon Su... is probably the straight-out weirdest character in the VN. She is a hard M (with bold and italics for emphasis), and she has casual sexual relations with both protagonists. She is a professional hacker, information broker, undead analyzer (dissects and analyzes undead bodies and brains to discover the individual styles of necromancers... sort of like forensics), and she is also one of Souun's and Echika's supporters. Unfortunately, explaining her weirdness is not really possible without spoiling the VN, so I'm just going to drop it. Incidentally, her path isn't really a straight-out heroine path, for reasons that will be obvious to anyone who completes one of the paths.
Milgram
Milgram is the charismatic leader of the Researchers, an organization of Necromancers that believe the only hope for humanity is to escape from emotion through death (extinction). He isn't your standard nihilist, but the philosophy he espouses is. This guy... is the single most powerful Necromancer in existence, which means he is also an extremely emotional person (emotion and artistic sensitivity being requirements for creating the best undead). This guy is flat-out scary, eerie, and freaky. However, in many ways he is a representative of one of the major aspects of the world the characters are living in.
The Story
For better or worse, this story has a ton of guro and is basically an action-horror story. If you can't deal with heroine deaths, torture, zombification, and occasional rape, this definitely will be hard on you. A lot of effort goes into portraying the most gruesome parts of the story in a way that will be as horrifying as possible, and the heroines don't always escape this particular treatment, so it is best to prepare yourself before jumping in. The lighter points - mostly centered around Iria - actually only serve to enhance the sheer horror and bleakness of the setting, which is basically an extension and enhancement of what this writer did in Gekkou no Carnevale.
By nature, any story as full of zombies like this one is going to be dark, and this one really does go to the extremes of the dark end at times. It is really hard to talk about this story without spoiling some of the primary elements (and because I figured out those elements too early due to certain hints, my own reactions were more ones of 'expected horror/sadness', so I'd prefer not to do that to you all). To be honest, emotionally connecting with this story was hard at some points, but as I got deeper into the characters - usually near the ends of the paths - it became a lot easier. In terms of action, this VN is full of it, but it is most emotional toward the end of the paths and in the true route.
Kon Su's route serves a purpose different from the other routes, revealing elements of her past that are important to the story as a whole while showing the steel that lies beneath the stuttering, drooling do-M surface of that character. Whereas the other routes have some element of romance, Kon Su's lacks that, and I honestly thought that was for the best (I honestly couldn't imagine any ending where she was romantically involved with either of the protagonists, as opposed to just sexually involved). Ironically, if I were to say which of the routes (other than the true one) touched me in the most positive manner, it would be this one.
I really suggest anyone avoid playing Iria's route until you've played all the other heroine routes. It feels a lot more natural if you go into the true route straight after finishing her route, as the true route is in many ways wrapped up the most intimately with hers. The other routes can probably be played in any order without a problem, but I do advise you take my suggestion above seriously.
Visuals
Normally, I don't talk about a VN's visuals that much, but because of the styles used here, it needs to be mentioned. First, I should mention the action-scene styles. The action-scenes are defined by a type of cell-shaded animation that is very similar to SMT: Digital Devil Saga on the PS2. Literally, the action scenes are animated and combined with highly-detailed battle descriptions to give a degree of depth that is pretty rare even in action VNs. I was doubtful at first, but this VN definitely benefited from using this particular technology (though it probably detonated a nuclear bomb under the budget).
The regular visuals, as seen above, are more 'classic-style' Nitroplus, so if you've played a Nitroplus game made since Muramasa, you probably noticed that it is in the same general style. As a result, there is no real need for me to discuss them... except that the way the designers used them was pretty amazing. The dystopian feel of the pipe-wrapped city of Tokyo in 2199 is pretty eerie-feeling and definitely adds to the general atmosphere of the story. The tendency to dress most of the characters in dark or harsh colors (except Iria) was probably intentional, to further add to this atmosphere. This is one of the few times in the last year when I've actually felt that a company went above and beyond when designing every visual aspect of a VN.
Audio
Musically, this game isn't really unique. The BGMs all feel 'familiar', though they are used effectively to enhance the mood, so I give this VN high ratings for its BGM use, if not for the songs themselves. Nitroplus's use of music shows a tendency to prefer unobtrusiveness and 'enhancement' as opposed to the use of music to 'define' the mood seen in a lot of other VNs (Hapymaher being one of the most extreme examples of the latter).
What really struck me is the wide variety of sound-effects, such as gunfire, cutting sounds, etc, and the use of those sound effects. To be honest, the sound of zombies being blown apart by bullets in this VN is going to linger in my ears for quite a while, as is the sound of Echika's 'Rabbit Punch' chainsaw.
Overall
Overall, this VN is pretty impressive. I can honestly recommend this... though not to just anyone. To be honest, the 'average' VN-reader who prefers moege-variants will probably not be able to stand the darkness of this game. If you don't have a reasonably high tolerance for guro and dark atmospheres, this is going to be a hard VN for you to enjoy. Zombie-lovers will probably flock to this VN by the thousands if it ever gets translated, because it really does draw in a lot of what people like about the 'zombie apocalypse' style movies and TV shows, while giving it a uniquely Japanese/otaku media flavor. However, this VN is emotionally draining, so I do recommend taking it in smaller doses than I did (every minute I wasn't working for the past four days). In my opinion, this VN can be considered a straight-out kamige, but it is also a VN that picks its readers... simply because it is so high-stress.
First, let me say this outright... I have absolutely no problem whatsoever with the romanticization of war in fiction. I love bloody epic war stories even more than I love sushi and ice cream. However, one thing I've noticed as I've read various historical fiction and fantasy is that the bloodier and more horrid a war is, the more it gets romanticized.
Western Examples
The Hundred Years War- The Hundred Years War is perhaps the most obvious example of a war being romanticized in the Christian West. Joan of Arc, the Black Prince... and dozens of other villains and heroes who have made their way from history into fiction and legend from that era. However, the introduction of massive mercenary armies of this era scarred the continent for centuries to come, and millions died during this era from the war and diseases that spread as a result of the war. It was also a period of the rise of French and English nationalism and the creation of professional standing armies, both of which are mixed blessings at best.
The Revolutionary War (US)- Now, I'm American... so naturally I instinctively take pride in our nation's war for independence... but as an amateur student of history, I am quite well-aware that the Revolutionary War was not a clear-cut conflict of freedom-seekers versus monarchists. To be honest, just reading the original, pre-US constitution tells me everything I need to know about the motivations behind the delegates at the convention. The self-interest, prejudice, and greed inscribed between the lines is fairly disgusting, considering the bluster that ended up in the papers at the time.
The Trojan War- This is a genocidal war that started because a married princess took a liking to a foreign prince, had sex with him, then ran away with him. An entire civilization vanished because of this... a fact that I find unbelievably disgusting, looking at it from an objective point of view.
World War II- I'm frequently fascinated by the degree to which this era is romanticized, despite the fact that there are still living witnesses to it. It is the deadliest war in recorded history, but memories of the reality are already fading in some parts of the world less than a hundred years later.
Eastern Examples
The Fall of the Han and the Three Kingdoms Era- This era is frequently portrayed as an era of military and civic heroes that eventually led to the rise of a great dynasty... but it was also a period that killed countless millions from famine, bandit raids, military plundering, and battles as massive as any seen in WWII. In the last census taken before the fall of the Later Han Dynasty, there were over fifty-six million citizens of the empire... and in the first census after the rise of the Jin Dynasty, there were only slightly more than sixteen million. This is perhaps the most romanticized conflict in history, and yet it is also the second-deadliest recorded war in human history as well (WWII being the deadliest).
The Sengoku Jidai- I've mentioned that this period of civil war in Japan is highly romanticized over there... and that is actually an understatement, when it comes down to it. It was a period where power and influence were in a constant state of flux, with the Ashikaga Shogunate proven incompetent to rule and various warlords seeking to carve out their own pieces of the pie both for Clan and individual gain. However, very few of the 'heroes' of the age are seen as 'evil'. Nobunaga, while he was a social progressive, was also known for his ruthlessness and cruelty, as well as disregard for traditions and religion. Tokugawa, while he was a repressive social conservative, was also a builder of cities and a brilliant administrator. Hideyoshi, while he was a brutal conqueror, was also an example of a man clawing his way up from the cesspool to the heavens. Similar contradictions defined most of the great warlords of the era, with the Imagawa being both military expansionists and great cultural patrons, and the Hojo being great architects and engineers as well as highly ambitious nepotists. This is an era that has so many highly colorful characters whose actions were recorded in detail that it couldn't help but be romanticized... but the reality of it was that it was an era of starvation, desperate poverty, and immense uncertainty.
The Bakumatsu/Meiji Restoration- I don't think I need to go into the degree to which this era romanticized the samurai culture and fed Japanese nationalism, because its result was Japan's policies leading up to and during WWII. This was essentially a large and brutal civil war between two factions (further split into many smaller factions) within Japan that disagreed violently over how to deal with foreign influence in the face of Ming China's rape-by-colonization on the mainland. Assassinations, political terrorism, and brutal oppression defined this period. In the end, what you got was a country who presented a strong face to the world but was still unable to come to terms with what it wanted to do at home.
As a conclusion
Human beings have a fascination with war that leads to its romanticization, and I honestly am no exception to that rule. I enjoy war period historical fiction immensely, and I have absolutely no objection to fantastical speculation on the capabilities and personality of individuals living in those eras. However, the immense cost - both economic and human - of war is almost always forgotten afterwards... and I intensely dislike it when someone chooses to forget just what those costs are. Fiction is harmless, but ignoring the lessons of history isn't.
... wow, it has been a while since I've come across a VN where I can't use meta terms to explain everything.
If I had to put a genre type to this, it would be 'random/comedy/ecchi'. There are a few really unique elements to this VN that I should probably explain before I go any further. First, narration in this VN is almost nonexistent... roughly 98% of the game's text is dialogue, though the h-scenes are narrated. Second, this VN makes no attempt whatsoever to be serious at any point. I'm not kidding. There are literally no serious points in this VN (I at first disliked it, then when a stuffed penguin appeared with the same brand of beer my father drinks in hand, I completely lost control and started rofling).
... which is its attraction. This VN feels a lot like an eroge-version of an American cartoon of the same type as the Simpsons or Family Guy, right down to the movie references and low humor (repeated jokes, sex humor situational comedy, and jokes related to defecation and other weirdness). There are also a huge number of old American movie references (mostly 1980's to the turn of the century) and a few references to TV shows that were old when I was born, such as the Lone Ranger. To be honest, this VN is all over the place...
This VN is immensely fun if you are fine with the kind of insensitive, low humor that is common in the American cartoons I mentioned above, as well as Japanese humor. However, if you don't like that kind of thing, this will probably be pure torture.
PS: All the heroines are bisexual.
Hajime is your ultimate lady's valet (not a butler, as he says repeatedly), serving as Naname Nanami's bodyguard, tutor, and general servant. He and his sister, Hana were brought to the Naname Manor as children after their parents' death to live as servants by the head of the Yuuzenji Family at the time (the Yuuzenji are one of seven cadet branches of the Naname Family). He earned Nanami's trust and became her ultimate ally, protecting her from attempts to forcefully betroth her to members of the cadet families through an antiquated duel system, where he essentially beat the crap out of the suitors in question. Unfortunately, in the process he also indebted himself to Tsurumi, which is one of the causes of the mess you see unfolding from the very beginning of the story.
He is capable, both in scholarly pursuits and martial arts, as well as in terms of etiquette and service. He is also well-educated in financial pursuits, as he was intended from the very beginning to double as Nanami's aide when she took over the Naname Conglomerate.
Unfortunately, as a result of his need to protect Nanami from Tsurumi as well as from various other elements both in and outside the family, he has developed a somewhat narrow view of the world... essentially, the people that he loves are all that matter to him, and he would gladly toss the rest of the world (including himself) into a bonfire if that would keep them safe. This results in him fundamentally misunderstanding the people he loves on several levels and biting off more than he can chew on more than one occasion.
He has a potential for ruthlessness that almost equals that of Tsurumi, and he is the type that honestly doesn't care if his soul is stained black if that is what it takes to save Nanami and his sister Hana.
Well, this is the first June's releases I've dug into, and it was an... interesting experience.
This VN is a thematic trap protagonist VN that is fully voiced. I say it is 'thematic' because all the heroines share the same general quality/direction... to be specific, they are all from the 'ponkotsu ojousama' sub-archetype. Rich girls who are cute and generally nice to look at... and have an overwhelmingly high number of seeming irredeemable flaws.
Kazari, the VN's main heroine, is perhaps the most obvious of the three... from the very first. For about ninety-percent of the people who play this VN, the first scene of this will decide whether you immediately drop the VN or continue on. In fact, Kazari is the reason why I think the ratings on vndb tend to be either near the top or the bottom of the scale. While the protagonist resigns himself to her... eccentricities, I seriously considered dropping this VN during the first scene of the game.
Yuzu... is a more classic type. She looks like a yamato nadeshiko (ideal of the Japanese woman leftover from the pre-war era) on the surface, but underneath she is a glutton with an inordinate fondness for the smelliest foods on the planet who will eat just about anything (in massive amounts).
Hinata is a straight-out chuunibyou heroine. The only difference between her and the other chuunibyou heroines who have been produced en masse in the last few years is that she is also an ojousama, lol.
The protagonist in this VN is the best type of trap protagonist... the one who can do just about anything and everything better than everyone else around him. The fact that he settles into the role of taking care of the three girls like a sharp-tongued mother figure who nonetheless spoils them rotten is the biggest ongoing joke of the game in my mind. That he is fully-voiced means that this is one of those rare VNs where you have that element of characterization to add to the protagonist. Otherwise, he is your classic trap protagonist, who is girlier than the heroines but wants to think he is manly, lol.
This VN's paths aren't terribly unique... except in the case of Kazari, where the actual path to her and the protagonist becoming lovers takes some really queer turns. However, taken for what they are, they are definitely at the higher levels for their types. This is your classic charage setup, where all drama is relatively minor and resolved in a way that doesn't leave a bad aftertaste behind. It is executed well enough that it doesn't feel like the writers wasted my time, but not so well that this will be one of the VNs I remember permanently, lol.
Overall, when it comes down to it, this is just a thematic charage with some added elements (such as a fully-voiced protagonist and some weird heroines) that make it rise above the other ones like it out there. However, it is amusing and generally enjoyable... if you can get past Kazari's personal habits.
I'll say it straight out... in my mind, Draculius is one of the top two vampire VNs in existence... with the other one being Vermilion by Light. Meromero Cute was a company that had a tendency toward making... eccentric works. Mahou Shoujo no Taisetsu na koto is particularly memorable for the cross-dressing protagonist who spends a ridiculous amount of time being reverse-raped in a magical girl costume... It used the fact that nobody expects mahou shoujo stories and settings to be consistent to go a bit crazy...
Draculius is a bit different... the protagonist, Jun, is the kind of guy who would be a hero in an otome game. While he isn't voiced (a mistake in my mind, but one that is common) his narration and lines have so much personality that you never see him as a 'standard' protagonist. There are precisely two paths in this VN... a 'joke' path where Jun doesn't make the full transition to a vampire during the story (focused on Rian and Zeno), and a true path, where Jun confronts the people hiding behind the curtains in the course of building his vampiric harem of a trigger-happy tsundere vampire-hunting nun, an ancient vampire who was once his father's vassal and lover, a vampire 'ojousama' whom everyone takes joy in teasing, and a loyal werewolf maid who makes a hobby out of tricking her mistress into making a fool of herself.
The action in this VN is actually a bit above the standard for chuunige of the era, though it doesn't match works by Light. At times there are battles of wits, and there is enough comedy to make a lot of modern charage seem boring. To this day, I've never met a loli in a VN that matches Belche for characterization (yes, I include stuff by Favorite). The multitude of roles she takes on and the layers to her personality and viewpoint on life make her one of the few 'ancient heroines' who doesn't seem in the least bit fake.
One of the things that is most important in a vampire story of any type is the perspective... to be blunt, a vampire setting where the vampires don't drink blood or are fundamentally harmless is... boring, to say the least. Vampires in Draculius are nothing of the sort... in particular 'Seconds', vampires made from humans, can only turn humans into zombie-like Roams (and can potentially do so just by biting someone), so vampirism is actually a legitimate threat. Firsts, like the protagonist and Rian (also called Shiso, like the True Ancestors in the Tsukihime world), don't have any of the vulnerabilities of their servant vampires... and they can make vampires that are sane. However, most Firsts perspectives are... warped, to say the least. There is nothing worse than a justified sense of superiority to make people insanely arrogant, lol.
The actual story of this tilts back and forth between the more absurd slice-of-life and the more serious parts, but this is one of those rare VNs that manages the balance nearly perfectly. People die, the protagonist kills, and the enemy is ruthless (as is Belche, lol). However, the slice of life in this VN tends to serve as a bright and amusing contrast to the darker elements, keeping it from becoming a purely serious VN.
Overall, replaying this VN has confirmed to me something that I had more or less guessed over the last few years... they don't make ones like this one anymore, lol.
Edit: The pic is Belche just after she became a vampire.
Edit2: ... for those who wonder, the h-scenes in this VN... are pretty unique. Most of them switch between Jun's and the girls' perspectives...
I have to apologize for being unable to deliver on one of my promises... to be specific, it doesn't look like I'm going to have time to finish Seiken Tsukai no Proposition this week... although, I could already tell it wasn't going to be a solid VN of the Month candidate.
Unusually, there were actually two solid candidates for May's victor... Sakura no Mori Dreamers and and Soshite Hatsukoi ga Imouto ni Naru. It really could have gone either way... both VNs are memorable and interesting, with solid stories and great characters... but in the end it was Soshite Hatsukoi ga Imouto ni Naru that won out. Why? There are a number of reasons... the biggest of which being the somewhat abrupt switches between the slice of life portions and the heavier plot portions in Sakura no Mori. It isn't a really startling problem, but it was still a bit awkward. Both stories were extremely emotional, but in the end, Hatsuimouto was just better technically.
Edit: I really, really wish my bosses would stop dumping extra work on me... every time I think I'm done I check my email and find more for me to do.
... for the first time in years, I just went through an entire week without finishing a VN...
Why?
The reason is fairly simple... real life. I'm having to clean up all the work left over from the time I spent essentially mentally handicapped that I didn't subcontract to someone else. That is on top of the work I would have received anyway...
In any case, I'm slowly making progress on Seiken Tsukai, and I can tell you that it is a VN that will definitely pick its readers. The strange mix of an idiot-arrogant protagonist, a cast of heroines who are mostly just window dressing (the story is supposedly over before you pick one), and a rather pathetic lack of proper information flow (by now, they should have covered the protagonist's immediate past, if only to get it out of the way...)... I can so far say that it isn't precisely an inspiring work. It isn't horrible (it is good enough that I actually want to finish it), but too much effort has been put into the character side of things (despite the low relevance of romantic elements) as opposed to story progression.
Edit: Actually, this is the first time since 2013 that I haven't spent more than seven hours in a single week on VNs... and I'm suffering from withdrawal. I get the urge to switch PCs in the middle of work constantly, and the voice in the back of my skull keeps saying 'just a few minutes, just a few minutes'.
Now... I know you've heard me bash charage/moege before. That isn't the purpose here, though. I've played plenty of VNs of the type over the years, and a decent number of them have actually managed to make it pretty high on my list of recommendations, despite the genres' flaws. I've also mentioned before that VN quality has fallen drastically in the past two years... and I still think that, despite a few seriously stand-out works this year in general and this month in particular.
The reason why I'm focusing on charage/moege right now is because I just played one great one, one average-quality one, and now I'm playing a mediocre (but pretty-looking) one. Having seen, just in the last few weeks, the variance in the genre in detail... I've had it thrust in my face that my conclusions, which were previously just instinctive (thus I thought it was at least in part because I was tired of the genre/s in general) and thus had the possibility of not being entirely justified, were not entirely off the mark.
To be specific, I'm somewhat bemused at the degree to which people have been pushing/hyping the one I'm playing right now, considering how pathetic this writer is at using the tools available to him.
It isn't the first time where I've encountered a mediocre VN with great visuals that gets pushed by the Western community (mostly by people who haven't played it but voted on it anyway... or ones who just extracted the CGs or used a save file to read the h-scenes) like crazy. However, it is the most egregious example of this particular social pattern I've seen recently.
Now, leaving aside my outrage at completely unjustified hype and recommendations... I have to ask, why is this VN, which probably never would have made it to production three years ago, is still somewhat better than the baseline of what I've experienced in the last two years?
Thinking about it, the answer came to me startlingly quickly... it is because it satisfies people's nether-regions and their desire for idealized slice-of-life with a few quirks without actually having a personality. The very reason I hate it is the reason it has caught the interest of some in our community, and I find myself smiling wryly as I realize that most of the people who play it are only interested in fapping to archetypical moe-heroines.
Understand, I actually don't have any objections to non-extreme fap material or moe fap material. I don't have problems with others' sexuality in general (as long as they don't inflict it on me or create victims along the way). However, I do have to wonder why these same people don't hit up one of the dozens of moe-nukige that get released every year instead, lol.
Obliterating all twists and scent of personality from a VN story is reemerging as a habit in VN makers, after a very very brief hiatus, and it is coming back even worse than before. On the bright side, it makes the gems stand out more... but it also means that I have to listen to people fawning over mindless drivel that isn't even good by genre standards.
I actually should have seen the signs long ago... considering Sougeki no Jaeger (Propeller's last VN) and the sudden reappearance of the previously endangered beast known as the 'pure moege' in the last two years (though only a few of them, thank god). The problem now, as it was thirteen years ago, is that the market is saturated with VNs in general and charage/moege in particular. Because of this - the Japanese being the most conservative businessmen on the planet - the various VN companies have started to 'go back to basics', trying again the sort of tactics that succeeded before. The fact that the average otaku ero-gamer in Japan is perfectly willing to shell out $120 for a crappy game that happens to have a cute (and preferably half-nude) dakimakura attached actually makes this trend worse, as it is creating an artificial (and very temporary) inflation of a stagnant market (and not for the first, second, or even third time). It is almost like the real estate market here in 2007... everybody knew the bottom was going to fall out eventually, but people kept putting their bets on making a few more bucks before it did.
Worse, even if the market does collapse, it is unlikely to result in better VNs, lol.
How many of you started reading VNs, manga, or watching anime solely because the girls were so adorable? I wasn't one of those (I began with Record of Lodoss War, lol), but Ai Yori Aoshi and Love Hina introduced me to the concept of the 'moe-heroine'. Whether it was their way of speaking, their looks, or their attitude, moe heroines became an integral part of the otaku experience at some point (well, the male-oriented one anyway), and I actually don't have any problems with that. I have lots of fond memories of moe-heroines (since almost all VN heroines and anime heroines nowadays are done like this, to one degree or another).
However, as I've dug deeper and deeper into the VN universe (I realized this with anime long ago) I came to realize... all the heroines were beginning to melt together into one big moe blob inside my back-brain. This is because very few heroines stand out enough to remain distinct in my mind from all the other, similar heroines inside my brain.
Understand, I never really experienced the 'blob of moe heroines' phenomenon until the last five years or so... first with anime, then (two years ago) with VNs. As a result, it is harder and harder to find 'standard' heroines interesting in and of themselves... their situation and setting have to be interesting enough to keep me from abandoning them emotionally.
Do you want to know how many heroines remain distinct in my brain from the last three years of playing VNs? Just thirty-three... and that is from well over seven hundred heroines whose routes I've completed in that time. Frankly, even if I find an archetypical heroine interesting for a single playthrough, it is a rare heroine who makes an impression strong enough to retain her individuality in the collective VN memory of my under-psyche.
I once mentioned this to a newbie VN-player (naturally a moe-gamer) and he essentially blasted me about how I was a blasphemer against the pure love of 2D...
My response was, quite naturally, explosive laughter which I didn't bother to put into text.
How many people do you actually remember in real life as a distinct human being without meeting them every day (or at least with some frequency)? Even if you see 2D as a real world, do you seriously think someone who has gone so far down the road of the VN otaku as I and some others in the community have to remember every single heroine they've encountered?
I'm fortunate. I have a natural gift for storing episode memory, so if I start replaying a VN, I generally remember the heroines and their paths almost immediately. However, expecting me to remember yet another tsundere osananajimi amongst hundreds of others off the top of my head after a year is fundamentally ridiculous, in my opinion (real example... also one of the two most common archetypes, along with the deredere osananajimi).
This doesn't necessarily mean the VN in question is bad... it just means the heroine is one I've seen dozens of times before, placed in different situations with a different appearance. Some of the heroines I forget until I'm reminded about are from truly wonderful VNs... but that has absolutely no effect on whether I can remember them without some serious effort, lol.
For my fellow vets... are you any different?
First, I'll give you a quick run-down on this game... it is a game by 3rd Eye, a company known mostly for producing chuunige that are more moe-influenced than is the norm. This game is actually more of a mystery/chuuni/action/conspiracy type than a 'pure' chuunige. The world in which it is based is a future where, ten years before the story began, magic appeared on the scene. Large numbers of people became capable of using magic, and a new branch of science was built up solely for the purpose of utilizing magic as new energy source. The result of this is a society that is somewhat divided between the magical 'haves' and 'have-nots', though that isn't the focus of the story, despite what you might otherwise anticipate.
The protagonists
Senri
Senri is your classic 'bad-ass antihero protagonist'. He is clever, intelligent, and overall highly capable, with a razor-sharp mind and battle instincts that would put a Navy Seal to shame and make Golgo 13 look incompetent. His cold-blooded pursuit of his own interests, which are very opaque through most of the VN, is his primary defining feature... Oh, and he lies... a lot. He makes the protagonist of Sharin no Kuni seem honest.
Haruto
Haruto is a somewhat less beloved type of protagonist in chuunige... basically a 'justice freak' combined with being 'a young man driven against his will by the tides of fate'. He is a natural optimist and a believer in fairness above all. Unfortunately, he also has that bad habit a lot of similar chuunige protagonists have... of sticking his nose into situations he doesn't really need to get involved in. He grows a great deal during the course of the VN (as is typical of this type, if the writers don't suck), and by the end his viewpoint on the world has... been sharpened a great deal by experience. He is more likeable than a lot of similar protagonists, but it still isn't a type I prefer.
The Heroines
Fiona
Fiona, at first glance, seems to be your classic clutzy/innocent nun-type heroine. She works as a nun at a run-down church in the city's... less reputable area and is well-loved by the delinquents who frequent the church. However, she, like most of the characters in this game, is hiding a lot of secrets... She is one of Senri's two heroines.
Noa
An innocent, pure-hearted girl who is seen mostly as a ghost throughout the first part of the game. She has a really unique way of speaking, born partially from Senri's half-hearted efforts at education (mostly through handing her magazines and letting her watch AVs). To be honest, in the reading of this VN, interpreting her weird speech patterns was a bit difficult at first (she cuts apart words and puts them together in weird ways). She is the second of Senri's two heroines.
Asahi
Asahi is... a bit weird. Her personality itself is quite straightforward and honest, and she hates lies and general dishonesty with a passion. However, she is also compassionate to a fault and unwavering in the pursuit of her goals. Unfortunately - at least so it seems at first - there are a few loose screws rolling around in that head of hers. Even more so than Haruto, she is an eternal an unrepentant optimist and probably the single most trustworthy individual in the entire VN.
Riku
Riku is, throughout the VN, perhaps the least expressive individual other than Senri himself. She almost never displays her emotions on her face, and she has an almost unnatural tendency to think objectively about anything and everything, including herself. That the writer managed to grant her so much depth without making her a protagonist was an impressive feat in and of itself... and one of the reasons why her interactions with Haruto and Asahi are so amusing. She really is almost as detached as she seems most of the time, which is one of the reasons it hits so hard when she does become emotional.
The VN
Sorcery Jokers is definitely VN of the Month material. I'll say that right off the bat. The depth of the story and characters is incomparable with previous games by this company, and while it falls slightly short of a kamige, it is nonetheless something worth taking note of. Normally, I can't stand dual protagonists, as many have heard me mention. I hated Subahibi for that, amongst a number of other sins, and one of the biggest reasons it took me so long to play I/O was because I don't like going into VNs with multiple protags.
Fortunately, I managed to get past that, simply because the differing approaches to the story were the only thing that made it possible to grasp something even approaching the whole of the story as it happened. A single perspective wouldn't have done a bit of good as an approach to this VN's story, simply because there are too many things happening at too many different points for a single perspective to handle.
The VN's structure is basically that of a kinetic novel, with the illusion of choice through a flow chart (for the first chapter, at least) where you pick and choose which events you want to see next (though you have to see them all anyway). To be honest, I could have done without the flow chart entirely... flow charts in general are an irritation more than a help, especially if they are made a central part of progressing the story. That said, as the actual switching around mostly ends after the first chapter, it isn't really a big deal (though it does make me wonder why they had a flow chart at all).
The story's mystery and conspiracy elements feel a lot like peeling an onion, as there are layers within layers within layers. What you thought was the root of things turns out to be just another layer, more than once. As things come together near the end, the knowledge you've gained through the character perspectives deepens the experience nicely, making this one of the few part-mystery VNs I've played in recent years that I didn't immediately have 'read' relatively early on.
That isn't to say there aren't points where the VN stumbles. Haruto, because of his role as the 'kid chuunige protag', is the game's Achilles Heel, as all protagonists of the type with his kind of temperament tend to be. However, his growth is enough to offset the cookie-cutter aspects of his character enough that I approved of his role... in the end. Asahi also threatens to tilt the balance of the VN into the realm of the silly a lot early on, simply because of her 'weirdness'. However, because that silliness is a vital ingredient in her growth as a character, it can't really said to be a true weakness, though it can be irritating at times.
The endings are all branches off of the true end, one for each heroine (Noa or Fiona with Senri, and Asahi or Riku with Haruto). I had no problems with the epilogues for Noa or Fiona... but I thought that Haruto had devolved a lot in his heroine epilogues, which kind of brought me back to why I didn't like him in the first place.
Overall, I felt that this VN is one of the more solid chuunige made in the last few years, especially in the sense of 'balance'. Silverio Vendetta, while it is a lot more exhilarating, also had the difficulty of disproportionately focusing the writer's attention on Vendetta, which weakened the other two paths greatly. Bansenjin suffers from reusing an uninspiring cast and being relatively boring throughout most of its length. In terms of a constant sense of tension and in terms of pacing of events, this VN definitely is the winner of Chuunige VN of the Year so far, though it isn't chuuni-crack in the sense that Silverio was. I'm actually quite proud of the fact that this company has evolved so much since its somewhat... unimpressive beginnings (Bloody Rondo), and I'm glad I stuck with the company. It is always nice to be surprised pleasantly by a VN.
To be honest, despite how much some people recommended this VN to me (or hyped it without playing it *smiles dryly*) this VN didn't seem even the least bit exciting to me.
This didn't change significantly even after I started playing it, and it never really felt like it got off the ground. First of all, they plopped down a bunch of wastefully (and I do mean that as it sounds) colorful characters into a setting that felt kind of forcibly glued together. Second, the story itself is brutally truncated, both in the sense of the heroines' personal stories - which feel weak and tacked on forcefully (except for Kuon's) - and in the sense of the protagonist's own personal story, which is as weak (closer to nonexistent) as he is as a character.
The common route is a pretty terrible offender on this front... understand, I do like the cast of characters in this VN. The heroines are adorable, and giving them an alternate personality in the virtual world really had the potential to enhance the experience. Unfortunately, there is a definite sense, at least to me, that the writers were deliberately hurrying on a common route that hadn't quite gone where it was meant to. The protagonist's personal ambitions are fairly weak, and his single specialty is an area where he is left in the dust by one of the heroines. To be honest, the rather blatant effort to strip the protagonist of what little stand-out quality he had was more than a little irritating.
Nagi Kisara's route, which was the first heroine route I played, had different issues. To be blunt, way too much time is spent on the falling in love portion without making it seem like a real experience. Ironically, the Kisara avatar's personality is far more interesting than Kisara's own... and I came to realize early on that this game's biggest weakness when it comes to characterization is the fact that the avatars are more stand-out than the heroines themselves. The protagonist's own sense of rivalry toward Kisara is never brought to a real conclusion (unless you call that pathetically random fight a conclusion), thus basically cutting off any chance of a more complex development of Kisara and the protagonist as characters, beyond the hurried events at the end of the path. Finally, the complete lack of an epilogue (as opposed to a short epilogue, as is common in charage) left me feeling betrayed, especially after the rushed events leading up to the end after they began going out with one another seriously.
Kotone's route was a marginally better experience, including Rai (her avatar) as an integral part of her personal story... unfortunately, the explanation for Rai is a bit forced (especially if you have even a surface knowledge of psychology). It also actually has an epilogue... but considering that Kotone's basic personality, even with Rai added onto it, isn't the type that would seek that type of ending, it felt odd. At its best, the route was 'cute', but at its worst it felt rough and unpolished... and not in a good (creative) way.
... seriously, I want to scream now that I've finished Kuon's path. Of the three paths I've played so far, this one is incomparably better in writing, design, and pacing... so why the heck didn't they do this for Kisara's or Kotone's paths? Of course, Kuon's face is on the game icon, and she is an osananajimi heroine+ojousama+student council member+tsundere, so it was rather blatantly obvious she was intended as the VN's main heroine. However, considering that there is no route lock function in this VN, it is a bit ridiculous to create such a difference.
Mostly because it is pretty rare to have an actual adult heroine in a VN, I'd absolutely love to praise Hearts for adding in Kanae's path. Unfortunately, that would be like praising a restaurant for giving you a cheap peace of cheesecake as an apology for feeding you an expensive but sub-standard meal. To be blunt, this path is as badly truncated as Kisara's was (considering that Kisara was the heroine with the most immediate impact, that still pisses me off), and the only real advantage to it is the dating moments, which are fairly cute.
... I'm going to be honest, I can't bring myself to continue this VN. Rin is probably one of the most fade-into-the-background imoutos I've encountered in a charage, and I honestly don't feel any desire to see the path my brain is predicting for her. For better or worse, her character is set up so that the path they'll take to her ending is blatantly obvious, and after three sub-standard routes and one decent one, all I can think about is uninstalling this VN and ignoring the inevitable talk of a fandisc (which is obviously coming, lol).
Strictly speaking, this isn't a horrible VN... but it both had immense potential in the setting and characters and utterly failed to realize that potential, for better or worse. Kuon is the only heroine whose path feels 'fully realized' of the four I played, which is just sad, considering how standout some of the heroines in this VN had the potential to be. My conclusion is that this VN is one of those cases where all the elements for a great charage were dumped in, but the VN itself never fulfilled the implied promise of all that material.
Who would like this VN? Ichaicha lovers, pretty much. The game's concept is heavily focused on dating (this is one of its weaknesses for people like me), and people who like the interminable dating scenes that are standard with numerous VNs of the type will probably get a kick of this, at least to an extent. There are some downsides... such as the fact that there isn't a clear partition between 'dating' and 'lovers' in most of the paths I played (actual confessions of love aren't always present), and so it feels a lot less serious than it might have. This VN also had an immense potential to attract the near-future sci-fi crowd, but the choice to use the ND tech almost solely as a gaming and romance-related tool hurt the VN there, too.
