Now, anyone who has seen pictures or videos from Hapymaher will have noticed the VN's resident loli, Maia.
For various reasons, Maia is easily the character who leaves the strongest impression in the VN, hands-down. She is the center of the VN's obvious conflict, and she easily has the greatest variety of character poses and non-H CGs. If there is drama of some sort throughout the common route, Saki's route, Keiko's route, or Yayoi's route, she is somehow involved or the cause of it. In a game that is focused around dreams, she is the devil's whisper, always giving people that last push they need to cross a line or jump off a cliff. If Tohru, the protagonist, is the picture of the human capacity for self-control, she is apparently a representative of the part of the human psyche that denies that same control.
However, that is only a small part of who she is. In fact, that surface appearance and her symbolic role are actually less important than what lies at the core... a person who's motivations are neither inscrutable or incomprehensible (though she lies like a rug when it suits her). In fact, she repeats her motivation verbally throughout the VN, mixed in with the lies and half-truths she tells habitually just to see the look on other people's faces. She hides nothing of her nature or personality, but she is quite capable of using that truth to deceive. In fact, in a regular chuunige, she really would be the ideal antagonist, as that combination of lies, half-truths, and truth that defines her makes for precisely the kind of antagonist chuunige-makers love.
Heck, just listen to her theme song.
That is precisely the kind of music they'd normally give to the last-boss type protagonist in another game...
Nonetheless, at the core of her is a deep and abiding love and devotion that surpasses all barriers, allows her to bear anything... except that emotion itself. To be honest, she even makes the yandere-ish Saki (she really seems like it sometimes) seem mild in terms of her degree of emotion. That love contains everything that love should contain, including the fundamental duality of human nature... what we want for ourselves and what we want for others (I'm not saying anymore on this, as going any farther would be a real spoiler).
Mayura is the second of the two secondary heroines... the protagonist's osananajimi who, predictably enough, has hidden her love for him since childhood (*pukes sand*). Anyway, having gotten my Minori complaints out of the way in previous posts, I won't bore you further with this. Mayura's route is your basic 'genki osananajimi' route combined with Minori's love of excessive drama. There are plenty of hard-hitting moments, that I'm sure that romance lovers will follow with excitement. The route itself is well-written (I'll give Minori this, for all their flaws, their writing is usually pretty good). If I have a complaint, it is that, once again, there is perhaps a bit too much focus on Touwa, though that is perhaps unavoidable, considering how much of the game is about her.
Mayura herself is a lively otaku with a particular fondness for 'sentai' (think Power Rangers) and heroism in general. Mayura is perhaps the best supporting character in the game, aside from being a heroine, so I did manage to enjoy her path, to some degree (it is unusual for me to enjoy two paths in a Minori VN, so this is an accomplishment).
Himeno Touwa
Touwa is the central heroine of the story, and she is the center of the common path, has strong influence on the other two heroine paths (which you have to play to get to hers), and is the main reason I didn't like the common path, in an indirect sort of fashion. It isn't that I disliked her, exactly... it is more that I disliked the way the protagonist reacted to her and the way the common route turned out because of it.
Her path... is about as intense as you would expect, after the previous two paths. It is definitely constructed as the climax of this VN, and there are things about it that are easier to understand if you played the other two paths (which is probably why they require you to play them). I really did like the way they played out the path, beyond the turning point before the climax... it was fairly hilarious (though really, most of Touwa's non-drama interactions with the protagonist are funny), and the drama was something romance fans will jump for joy over.
Overall
Overall, this is a VN that stops well short of kamige-level, but is definitely better than the average Minori game (ef), managing to at least be pleasing as a whole, even if it frequently angers or depresses in the particulars. It is important to understand that this is first and foremost, a romance, with a heavy fantasy element as an important plot tool. At times, it appeals too much to emotionalism (negative and positive both) to get you into the VN, and there is a distinct lack of appeals to intelligence. However, if you want something romantic and dramatic, this is a good choice... but don't expect a moege-type story out of it, lol
... 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.
First, I should probably address those who questioned why I never played this VN before... the answer is that I did try this VN 'way back when' and couldn't get past the prologue. To be frank, the prologue of this VN is pretty... unimpressive. However, once you get past that prologue, you are put into what probably amounts to the best nakige I've ever played.
This VN is a kinetic novel, with only a single ending. It combines elements of mythology, mystery, fantasy, and psychological horror (relatively mild) into a single whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. For those who love Araragi (to be honest, I think all of those who read this VN love Araragi) more than Hiyo... my condolences. There is only one path and it is Hiyo's.
The child-version of Hiyo in the pic above is part of one of my favorite early scenes in the VN and the scene that pretty much locked in my love of the characters as a whole. I'm a sucker for appeals to emotions like the ones in this VN, and there is very little in this VN that doesn't appeal to your emotions on some level. The warmth and kindness of the three girls closest to the protagonist and the dynamic between the four of them is central to most of the story. While Hiyo-love indeed has a big impact on the story, romance in this VN is ultimately merely one of many themes, ranging from the obvious 'love of art' and 'autumn', to 'the nature of kindness'.
For those who have seen the opening song on youtube... you should probably be aware that the entire OST for this VN is on that level or better. Like many of the best VNs out there, the musical direction and the choice of music in general is superb... a work of art. There are many Chinese-classical and hybrid Japanese-classical themes mixed in with various other types, and this adds to the atmosphere created by the 'old Japan' design of the school and dorms where all the events of the story take place. These aspects, combined with the plentiful expressions and poses given to the characters' tachie, are used effectively to create the 'personality' of the VN as a whole.
The most important way to evaluate VNs that fall into the 'nakige' category is how much they made you love the characters, thus giving you a reason to cry for them. In that sense, I can honestly say that it leaves almost every nakige I've played in the dust (including all of Key's). The lack of massive casts of heroines and multiple paths serves to make every occurrence in this VN feel 'real', adding more impact to the sorrow, joy, hope, and pride that continually break your heart. I can honestly say that I feel Propeller used the 'kinetic novel' format to its fullest, succeeding in creating a story with an impact far in excess of what it would have possessed if it had been a multi-path story.
Now... I feel it is about time I stopped praising this VN and spoke about the one issue that bothered me, even after I finished it...
... it truly amazed me how bad the VN is during the initial stages. It feels awkward and forced, and that sense of 'eh, what were they trying to do here?!' is so strong at first that it was enough to make me drop this five years ago without a second thought. Of course, back then I hadn't been as thoroughly 'trained' by years of playing moege that are far worse than this... but it is still a flaw in an otherwise awesome VN. That said, once it gets started, this VN is really, really hard to put down.
Overall, the only people I can't recommend this to are the extreme moe and dark fantasy fans. For all that the designs are most definitely moe, the degree to which the characters suffer in this VN will be a bit much for the soft-moe addicts. For the dark fantasy fans... you'll probably be a bit put off by a lack of action and murder. This VN has precisely one action scene that would interest that type... and it isn't that long (though it is important to the story in general). Everyone else? If you can make it past the prologue, I can guarantee you'll fall in love with the characters, even if other aspects bother you.
To be blunt, I might or might not continue playing this game, so I thought I'd go ahead and get my thoughts down now, after finishing one path. More and more these days, I only play one path of a game before moving on, after all.
Shinigami no Chou is Yuzusoft's latest release, and it is more along the lines of its more SOL-focused games like Sanoba Witch, as opposed to its more plot-focused ones like Dracu-riot or Senren Banka. As such, the ichaicha and H-scenes are a bit overly long and the common route drags out more than their more plot-focused games.
That said, this game is an example of what Yuzusoft does best... amusing characters, decent settings, reasonably good protagonists, and a fantasy edge to the whole thing. In this case, the protagonist turns out to have a 'large soul' that can cause miracles by interacting with the weaker wandering souls (in the form of mystic butterflies), and as a result, when he dies, his wish to live causes time to reverse itself. The shinigami Kanna, whose job is to guide souls to the afterlife, is essentially ordered by the divine brass to watch over the protagonist to make sure he doesn't harm reality further by creating more miracles, and the solution to the problem is for him to be satisfied with life (romance in other words).
This game's concept is a bit closer to a nakige than most of their previous games, which tended to be either primarily humorous love-comedies or story-focused with some action (with some exceptions). The common route supplies some decent cheap catharsis at a few points without going overboard, and Kanna's route, which is the route I chose to do, has some really nice cathartic points in the classic nakige sense (almost Key-style).
I will say that my primary complaint is that the clothes the characters end up wearing for the larger part of the game (the waitress uniforms) are actually some of the ugliest clothes I've seen in a moe-influenced VN in some time. I know that is a weird complaint coming from me, but it seriously bothered me that the girls were calling those uniforms 'cute'. I won't go so far as to say they were repulsive, but they were of a style that lost my interest instantly, lol.
One element that many who are tired of the usual tropes will be happy with is that the protagonist is actually in his third year of college when the story begins, and school is definitely not the focal setting of the game. The greatest amount of time is spent in the cafe where he ends up working, and, unlike many games where a cafe is the focal setting, it actually manages to be interesting (most 'cafe setting' VNs are either nukige or extremely boring moege with sugary sweet heroines that seem like you might be able to see the sun shining from their eyes due to the hole in the back of their heads).
Kanna's route is an excellent example of the best way to handle a story of a soul searching for happiness, and I absolutely loved the way the ending was handled, with the relatively extensive epilogue that followed the protagonist and Kanna for at least half a decade after the climax of the path. That said, since she is the obvious main heroine, it strikes me as unlikely the other paths will reach the same level, lol.
Suisei Ginka is the latest VN made by Akatsuki Works, the makers of such classic VNs as Ruitomo, Comyu, and Devils Devel Concept. This was written by Morisaki Ryoto, the writer of multiple kamige including Hapymaher, Komorebi no Nostalgica (as an assistant writer), and Re:Birth Colony. He is one of the most flexible and skilled writers out there, and I've yet to fail to enjoy a VN he's had a hand in.
This VN is based in a port city half-owned by a company that caused a disastrous chemical spill there ten years ago. It begins with the reunion of Izana, a young woman with a rather unusual attitude toward life, and Tetsuo, a straightforward young man with an utter disregard for his own safety and survival. Naturally, this being an Akatsuki Works game, this is the beginning of numerous troubles and tribulations.
Structurally, this VN is pretty 'to the point', in that the story uses the bare minimum of slice-of-life to give life to the characters and setting, while constantly keeping a laser focus on what is moving in the shadows... and the disastrous potential it holds.
Maria
Looking at it in retrospect, I probably should have done this path second or third. However, I followed my instincts on the game's first major story choice, and as a result I got into this path. Maria's path is focused on the company that caused everything to go so horribly wrong, so it reveals details of some factors that spoil the other paths a little bit.
Maria herself is a classic 'expressionless loli' of the type that is common to a lot of chuunige that have loli heroines. Normally expressionless and nearly emotionless, she is very much like a cat, acting sweet to those few people she cares about and disregarding just about everyone else based on their use or lack of to her. Edit: That isn't to say she's completely devoid of emotion... but with the guy who acts as her guardian being the kind of guy he is... she's naturally a little warped.
This path has a lot of violence to it, primarily because of what the characters face in it. It is a solid path though... it is just one that I really should have waited on.
Seika
Seika is Izana's best female friend and more than a little bit prickly toward anyone who approaches her with ulterior motives (and because of Izana's easy manner and physical beauty, that is pretty common). She was raised by a strict asshole father who sees her only as a convenient object to augment his own ambitions for the family line, which is a lot of the reason why she is so prickly in general. Her sole point of softness is Izana, whom she would probably do anything for.
Seika's path is wrapped up in dealing with the plot element that drives most of the protagonist-side characters, in a very intimate manner. It's a fairly standard path for a game like this, serving as a fitting intro to the ins and outs of the story while setting the stage for elaborations in future paths. I liked how it turned out, though a lot of people might find it an odd ending. It is more solid than say... Benio's path in Comyu, which was fundamentally unsatisfying (for some reason, Hino Wataru sometimes chooses to drop a single weak heroine path in some of his games).
Momo
Momo is Tetsuo's guardian/oneesan/coworker. She is a heavy-drinker and a heavy-smoker and she is actually thirty, though she looks twenty. She is also a brilliant (genius-level) individual as well as being highly perceptive when it comes to people in general. She and Tetsuo have lived most of the last ten years around one another, and they know each other about as well as it is possible to know another person without being them.
After playing this path, I definitely realized there was a play order... Seika>Momo>Maria>Izana. The reason is fairly simple... Maria's path reveals too much about the 'causes' of all this, removing a great deal of the mystery about what the protagonist is trying to do at the end of Momo's path and the 'why' of certain elements of Seika's path. Seika's path, on the other hand, paves the way for things that are elaborated on in Momo's path. Izana's path is, of course, the true one.
Momo's path focuses on one of the more obvious, if mid-boss type antagonists. This antagonist is a 'rationally insane' type who has no morals whatsoever outside of their personal ruleset. In addition, this path has more death than the other two paths combined, lol. I will say I liked the ending of this one, as well.
Izana
Izana is the true heroine of this VN. She is also one of those 'always involved with the protagonist's life' heroines in the style of Kagome from Comyu or Suzu from Ayakashibito (meaning that even if they aren't lovers, they never really separate). Izana is a very odd young girl... she seems at first to be something of a tomboy, but when you get to know her, she also shows a kind of quiet wisdom that the average tomboy heroine just doesn't possess. Rather than being intelligent, she really is just 'wise'.
Her relationship with Tetsuo is so strong that it is unchanged by the ten years of parting between them. They both care deeply about one another and trust each other absolutely, without reservations.
Her path, true to the form of true paths in chuunige, is the most exciting of the paths, bringing together all the elements of the other paths with a focus on the central conflict that isn't resolved in the others. Tetsuo shows off his manliness quite nicely in this path, as well as his own bit of wisdom (If he was a D&D character, he'd be a true neutral barbarian with an intelligence stat of 9 and a wisdom stat of 16), though it is born of him having such a solid sense of who he is, where he stands, and how he intends to live and die.
Neither Tetsuo nor Izana is the type to hesitate or stand around worrying about consequences, as they both have very distinct senses of priorities.
I honestly wept at the climax of this VN. I couldn't help but cry for a certain character who got the sharp end of the stick from beginning to end throughout this story (even mentioning her name is a spoiler). A toast to those who suffer so that others can be saved! *Clephas smiles sadly and clings his glass of rum against an empty one*
A few extra comments
One thing you should keep in mind when reading this VN is that neither this writer nor Hino Wataru produces 'standard' romances. Their romantic elements are generally good, but they are almost universally 'romance born out of a stressful situation', so don't expect a charage-style romantic element in here. What romance is in there is good, at least from my point of view, and Tetsuo is straight-out one of the manliest protagonists I've seen in a chuunige (since most chuunige protagonists tend to have issues that make them fall a bit short of that standard).
I'm glad that this VN kept up the four year tradition of good VNs coming out on or near my birthday, hahaha...
This game is the second project made by Samoyed Smile, a subsidiary of the same corporation that owns Softhouse-seal. This is, incidentally, why the game has the really crappy lip-sync and sex animations so familiar from that company's works. That said, this company is not a nukige company, despite the lateral relationship.
The game starts with a young teacher, Haruki, teaching a class of dropouts at a night school. Haruki, having had horrible experiences at his first teaching job, has a poor attitude at first, primarily because he was lured by his estranged father with the promise of the equivalent of $4M in inheritance if he succeeded in graduating the last three students at the night school.
Haruki is unusual amongst VN protagonists for being an adult with at least some experience in life, and as a character, he is extremely well-written, his humanity laid bare for the reader to see. The situation is also unusual, since VNs with the kind of atmosphere you start with in this game tend to end up as rape/despair spirals in most cases. The heroines are all a bit loopy and the protagonist isn't much better, when it comes down to it (situation-wise).
Common Route
However, the game's common route is actually fairly uplifting, once you get past the initial bumps in the road involved in the characters getting used to one another. Haruki and the heroines slowly get to know one another and even form the beginnings of something like a bond of trust, which comes to a nice high point before the heroine routes split off. I honestly felt that it was nicely orchestrated, though I did feel that they included an unnecessary number of choices, considering that the events in the common route don't change as a result.
Koshimizu Hayate
Hayate is a spiky tsundere who never fails to fulfill the best - as opposed to the worst - standards of the archetype. She actually has justification for her attitude, for one thing... she came across her flaws honestly. She is also, despite appearances, probably the most 'normal' of the heroines under the surface. Hayate is a Japanese male name, which should give you at least some idea of why she hates having her name spoken or written.
Hayate's problem, like the problems of many runaways, is with her parents. I won't spoil it for you, but it is a pretty deep problem... it reminds me of Fumika from Semiramis no Tenbin, except Hayate is a lot more aggressive and less gentle, lol. Her path is deeply touching, especially as she and the protagonist manage to get over or around their traumas and make peace with who they are. The student-teacher relationship thing doesn't take its usual turns (probably because the night school itself is too intimate for that kind of social drama to occur), so you shouldn't expect the 'oh they got found out, so he might lose his job!' crap you see with similar protagonist-heroine relationships in other VNs.
Kadokura Riko and Kadokura Ayako
I'm going to be clear about something... I hate real lolicon content in every way, shape, and form. If this path had discarded the H content, I honestly would have loved it, but the h-scenes in this path ruin it. This is one of the few cases where I honestly think that sexual content is an active barrier to enjoyment rather than a mere annoyance. That said, this path is well written...
Riko and Ayako are mother and daughter. Ayako is a weak-mannered, weak-willed young woman who had Riko as a young teenager and is now serving as a single mother to her. Riko, for her part, is a 'good girl' (think Sachi from Grisaia, though not quite that extreme). However, there are lots of problems with those two... and the two biggest ones are Riko's 'illness' and Ayako's inability to see anything in a positive light.
This path is all about the nature of human weakness and it deals more with the protagonist's issues with his mother, as opposed to the ones with his father (which were dealt with in the previous path). That said, he is far more pathetic in his 'down time' than he was in Hayate's path, so that was another reason why I honestly left this path with a bad taste in my mouth. The main ending (Riko only) is happy, but the other one is obviously a bad ending, albeit one that is probably pleasant in the sensual sense of things.
Niijima Kina
Kina is a sweet-natured airhead. I don't mean this as an insult... it is an accurate description. She has a definite learning disability, and she is a natural airhead on top of that. That said, she is also determined to learn and the first of the heroines to take a shine to the protagonist, partially because he actually takes the time to create a personalized curriculum for her and partially because he doesn't look down on her after a few initial bumps in their student-teacher relationsip (say what you like about him, but he has to force himself to act like an asshole in most of the cases where he does).
Kina's path is about even with Hayate's for quality, overall... but when you find out the full reason why she's attending night school, I guarantee you will either wince or cry. They go into specifics, and it is pretty nasty at times.
Kina's path also shows off her best qualities as a character... such as her capacity for love and her empathy. However, it also shows off some of her negative points... such as being consumed by hatred and being just a tad psychopathic at times, lol. Unfortunately, despite rumors to the contrary, she isn't a yandere (I thought she would be, but meh), but she comes close to it sometimes. Probably, if they had a bad ending for this path, she would have gone down that path, since she definitely has potential.
Overall
Overall, this game was a bumpy ride. Is it good? Yes. Is it perfect? About as far from it as possible while still being a good game. Reading this game is a high-stress experience, and I actually found myself growing wistful for charage by the end. Nonetheless, this game is of a type that is rarely seen these days, lining up with Yume Miru Kusuri for the heart-wounded heroines and screwy psychological twists.
I apologize if this post seems a bit disjointed, but this game was long enough that I felt a need to write as I finished the paths.
First, Otoboku 3, as the nickname implies, is the third game in the series begun with the original Otome wa Boku ni Koishiteru. Unlike the previous two games, which were based in the same school, this is based in a sister school a few years after the original game (probably a few years after Futari no Elder, which apparently happened about a year after the events of the original). The biggest proof of this is that Shion, from the original game, is a teacher of several years experience at the school the protagonist attends (meaning that at least four, most likely five years passed, plus the several years of experience… so probably about eight years after the original).
The protagonist, Hisoka, is a young orphan who was raised by a friend of his parents to serve the game’s main heroine, Orihime. Hisoka is… one of those characters who can literally do just about everything to a certain extent. He can fight, he gets the highest grades, he can play piano (and pipe organs), he can cook (and do any other form of housework perfectly), and he can even draw.
He does have one huge personality flaw though… he is one of those protagonists who completely disregards his own needs, always putting others before himself. This is what gets him trapped into becoming Orihime’s bodyguard… while attending the girl’s academy with her.
He tries to live quietly, but that doesn’t last long (since Orihime instantly takes a liking to him). Before long, he is one of the three Elder Stars of the school (rofl, first it was one Elder, then 2, and now it is three of them… a bit obvious, isn’t it?). Being kind-hearted and perceptive, he ends up capturing the heart of just about every girl in the school, none of which know he is a guy.
Now, I should say that the common route of this game is… loooooooooong. In fact, it is even longer than that of Futari no Elder, which was pretty long itself… longer than Grisaia no Kajitsu’s common route, for that matter. As such, this isn’t a game for those looking for a quick common route followed by romance and sex galore. The sexual content in this game is actually quite low, lol.
I’m going to be straight with you… if you played Futari no Elder and enjoyed it, you’ll probably enjoy this one. The atmosphere is pretty close to identical, the protagonist’s role is identical to the previous two games, and probably the biggest difference is that this game is based somewhat later on in the same timeline. The reason this is important is because the game doesn’t ignore the real world… and as a result, the setting doesn’t allow for the kind of completely-closed environment the previous two games essentially were (in other words, far fewer of the characters are ‘ojousama’).
There is also one other thing that differs from the previous two games… this one has a much, much bigger emphasis on ‘slice-of-life as the story’. To be blunt, ninety percent of this game is Hisoka dealing with the various characters’ personal issues on one level or another while going about her daily business. While the same can be said, to an extent, about the first two games, the first two games also had a much more extensive focus on the heroines (longer individual heroine paths).
There are two main heroines in this game (well, obvious ones, anyway), Orihime and Mirei. Orihime is a pushy princess type, who has just been given a year of freedom after following orders her whole life. Mirei is your classic ‘new rich ojousama who is embarassed by/dislikes her father/parents’. She is sharp-edged, has an inferiority complex, but she nonetheless finds it impossible not to like the protagonist (there was one of these in both the previous games, lol).
Orihime’s ‘whim of steel’ is her defining trait throughout the game (partially encouraged by Hisoka). This continues into her path and is accompanied by her tendency toward ‘classical romanticism’ when it comes to falling in love (knight in shining armor BS).
Mirei’s growth during the game is perhaps the most obvious of the heroines, because she starts out as a living mass of inferiority complexes, defiance toward her position in life, and jealousy. The fact that, underneath all those negative aspects, she is actually fundamentally a good person (if somewhat dry and cynical by nature), is something that gradually comes to the surface during the course of the story. Mirei’s path is stand-alone, and it can be said that it has the strongest independent character development of all the paths in the game. There are several reasons I can think of for this, but the main one is that Mirei, due to her position at the school and as an individual, spends less time around Hisoka than the other heroines (most of the other ones aggressively seek Hisoka out or live in the same dorm).
Hana takes the same role as Kana-chan and Fumi from the previous two games, being the protagonist’s ‘imouto’ at the school. She is very devoted and innocent, but her clumsiness makes her an object of constant humor and moe for the people around her. Hana’s path splits off from somewhere just short of the midpoint of Mirei’s path. As a heroine, she is easily the weakest of the group (this can be said of her predecessors, Fumi and Kana as well), as she spends most of the game essentially being an appendage of the protagonist, her role almost exclusively involving making him look good (to be a bit overly blunt, lol). As such, she was the last heroine I chose to follow (I wrote the character intros before I actually played the paths). This path, unlike most of the others, has little in the way of 'outer influences' to create drama. This is because Hana is essentially a 'normal' girl. To be honest, I don't like the way that Takaya excessively modeled certain of this path's aspects after that of Kana's from the original Otoboku (though there is no attempt to grasp for tears in this one). It didn't really fit Hana's personality or character as a whole, though having Hana gain more confidence and take a more active role in her own life was a definite positive element. Really, the best would have been to avoid having Hana as a heroine at all, but having the 'imouto' as a heroine has become an Otoboku tradition...
Ayame and Sumire are twins who share a route in this game. Sumire is serious and straightforward, even slightly uptight. She prefers to act on logic and have a rational basis for any action she takes. Ayame is more intuitive, an artist by nature. Sumire is the school president and Ayame is the student council secretary. Their path is a rare twin love path (one of my favorite types), but it is pretty clear from the beginning that Takaya didn’t take this path that seriously, since it is easily the weakest one in the game.
Ibara Kyouko is the protagonist’s collaborator and backup bodyguard, a young woman with a sharp tongue and a fondness for teasing Hana in particular and everyone else in general. She obviously has some kind of darkness in her past, but she is very weak to Hisoka in general, though she is good at hiding it (or at least better than everyone else, anyway). Her path splits off from Orihime’s path (literally, the two paths split off at the end, just before things spill over into romance), and the ending is fairly amusing, given the personalities of the three involved (sharp-tongued and logical Kyouko, the whimsical dreamer genius Orihime, and the natural mediator Hisoka).
Matsuri is the game’s resident yurufuwa heroine. She is a violinist in the middle of a slump, who was sent to the school (which doesn’t have a musical support program) to recover after she became unable to use her arm properly for reasons unknown. Like Ayame, she is an artist, but she is very soft-natured and slow to speak. She is also probably the ‘happiest’ heroine on the surface of things, as very little seems to get her down, at first glance (another quality she shares with Ayame from the twins). Her path is surprisingly long (of the individual paths, it is probably the third longest), and I honestly enjoyed having her as a heroine.
For the information of those who are interested, depending on which of the final choices you picked, you get a different set of scenes for summer vacation, and depending on what heroine you ‘picked’ (based on your choices as a whole), who the protagonist spends his free time with at the culture festival changes. This is pretty much the only major change made to the common route based on your choices before the heroine routes, which might bother some of you.
For the most part, the endings in this game meet my approval, showing the characters years later, as opposed to merely just after the climax of the story. This applies even to the twins, who have the weakest path in the game. This is probably because the common route ends only a few months before graduation for Hisoka and the other third year students…
The writing in this came, as is par for the course with any game written by Takaya Aya, is first-class. Despite this game mostly being slice-of-life, I can’t really all it a charage or a moege, since not one scene in this game is meaningless, for all its immense length.
Visually, this game is Caramel Box to the core. If you like Caramel Box’s visual style, you’ll like the artwork. Otherwise, you won’t.
Musically, this game reuses some tracks from the previous Otoboku games, but I honestly only noticed this because I compared it on a whim. The important thing is that the music is used quite well.
It should be noted that about 1/3 of Hisoka’s lines are voiced, which is about standard for all of the recent works from Caramel Box and is effective for helping create Hisoka’s character and give life to him.
Overall, this is a first-class game. In some ways, it falls short of Futari no Elder… but Futari no Elder was something of a miracle kamige, so that was inevitable. I do wish that they’d spent more time on the individual heroine paths, but the degree to which the characters were developed in the course of the common route really made long heroine paths unnecessary. Oh, incidentally… I wish Miimi was a heroine, since she was my favorite character. I also loved her narration during the play scene.
Normally, considering how far I got into this game, I would have just kept going (I got halfway through, literally). However, it needs to be said that I only kept going in hopes the game would get more interesting as things went on.
The answer was no.
This game uses a system that draws partially from the early Fire Emblem games, partially from the Disgaea series by NIS, and partly is drawn from other Eushully games. The Fire Emblem elements include the basic 'flow' of strategy rpg battles, leveling up where stats randomly appear (it is purely random, I know from some deliberate testing with saves), and an intermission where preparation for battle occurs. The Disgaea elements primarily reside in the 'Ritual' system, where you can use various rituals to strengthen your allies, level them up (by expending Ritual Points) and sacrifice or contract captured monsters (the former giving you Ritual Points, the latter giving you a new unit).
A few negative aspects, first. No battle is repeatable in a single playthrough, there are no 'free battles', and battles take a ridiculous amount of time to finish. The reason for the last part is simply economical. If you don't take the time to capture as many enemies as possible, you'll be unable to maintain a capable army. As such, capturing a good portion of each map's enemies is not a convenience... it is a necessity. This is not to mention the other Disgaea-like element, which is putting a bunch of sub-missions into each battle, which you fulfill for ritual points and items. Treasure chests have to be opened by an ally unit with the unlocking skill.
The positives next. If you aren't trying to capture enemies, the battles are actually quite interesting. The ritual system has an immense amount of potential (if they'd taken the time to make it deeper with a wider variety of potential paths for unit evolution), and capturing monsters only to use them as sacrifices later is totally fitting with the game's aesthetic.
Now let's get to the story... never mind, there isn't one. I'm not kidding. For beating a battle that took you thirty minutes, most often you'll get a very, very short scene (think thirty seconds for a fast reader) and get sent back to the intermission. There are technically scenes in the intermission (called interaction scenes), but these are generally equally short... and halfway through the game, I've only found ten total, for all the characters I have combined (most of them just excuses for h-scenes and new skill acquisition). Technically, I guess you could count the ubiquitous contract h-scenes (one for each female unit type and one for a small minority of the males), but I don't.
All in all, this game wasn't providing me with any joy for the amount of time I put in (think thirty minutes of story for twenty hours of play), I so just dropped it.
Edit: As a side-note, the potential ways to improve this game are so blatantly obvious a five-year-old could figure it out. They needed to create a large number of interaction scenes and extend the story scenes to make it actually worth digging into it. As it was, the tiny number of interaction scenes I'd experienced halfway through the game (despite having leveled the named characters thoroughly) only taught me what the heroines were like when they were naked.
This is the newest game by Sweet & Tea, the makers of the near-kamige (kamige in my heart) Karenai Sekai to Owaru Hana. This has a different set of writers, with Ban'ya of Kuroinu and Mugen Renkan handling the sweaty H-scenes and NYAON, the writer of Moshimo Ashita ga Harenaraba (and a few charage and nakige besides that) as the main writer.
Now, this is a kinetic 3P lovey-dovey nakige about a girl named Iroha who, after spending ten years trapped in a divine realm by accident with a wolf god, is returned to that realm... with wolf-ears! (lol) I say it is about Iroha mostly because of my fetish, but it is really about her, the protagonist Shuuji, his girlfriend Kana, and the people around them.
Now, a few things to get out of the way before I put down my own feelings and impressions... for those who don't like cheater protagonists, I'm going to come out with it straight up. He cheats on Kana with Iroha. The fact that this is mostly a comedic element is because of Iroha's animalistic/innocent manner (she's actually just aggressive about what she wants and more knowledgeable than her speech patterns indicate), and the fact that Kana has pretty much been the seducer/brainwasher side of the relationship with Shuuji, who tends to be the type to give in to the girls he cares about in just about everything.
Now, this game never goes really dark. It has some bad moments for the characters emotionally (the protagonist has his own issues and ten years is a LONG time), but that is all properly resolved in a cathartic way, as is the way with nakige. Unlike Karenai Hana, there is no aura of terrible suffering and despair, and the protagonist is mostly about compassion and love rather than self-sacrificing love and guilt.
While this game is pretty short (think about four hours for me, six to seven hours for the average reader), it doesn't feel unsatisfying for what it is. I did want a more extensive epilogue, but the one I got was hilariously H, so I came out of this feeling mostly satisfied.
Perhaps my sole real reservation is the fact that this didn't become a 4P with Chihiro, who is obviously interested in Shuuji (even moreso by the end). I'm thinking that they will eventually make a followup, sequel, or fandisc to advance the whole story more. However, with the immediate issues all resolved, the game doesn't feel as truncated as I usually feel with games setting up for sequels or fandiscs from the beginning.
After playing this route, I am severely tempted to immediately abuse my authority as the master of this blog and just name Silverio Vendetta VN of the Month for February. However, that really would be an abuse, so meh.
Vendetta's route... let's just say it blows you away. The battles, the twists, and the overall awesomeness that accompany them are almost equivalent to that of Marie's or Rea's route in Dies Irae in impact. The way that so much of the cast evolves during the course of this particular path - Zephyr in particular - is just... superb.
In terms of narrative quality, this by far blows away the other two routes, which is no surprise, considering that Vendetta was marked as the true heroine from the beginning. As a heroine, she frequently comes across as being contrary or paradoxical in nature, but at heart, she is anything but. When it comes to Zephyr, she is love incarnate... though it is sometimes tough love (frequently).
...Zephyr really shows off his anti-hero nature in this route, especially at the end. He has a level of humanity a simple hero cannot match, and for all his flaws, he really is an awesome protagonist. Like most of Light's chuunige works, if you hear the description of the plot, you might think it was trite... but if you experience it, you feel nothing of the sort, lol.
Overall
Overall, I do think this game is one of the better VNs produced by Light since Dies Irae... in some ways much better than Senshinkan, which was last year's big hit. A lot of this is because the writers went out of their way to create an incredibly deep setting, with a unique culture, physics, and political dynamic.
There is definitely a sense of 'a science-fantasy Germany, fifteen hundred years in the future' to the setting, with Hitler replaced by a moral purist military ruler and war hero.
In terms of the battles, they managed to bring back the best of Dies Irae's battle narration style while escaping some of its flaws. It felt like they'd refined the style without falling into the trap of being unbalanced the way Zero Infinity did.
In terms of characters, they managed to create a much larger and more varied cast than is their wont, though they - as always - made a lot of oddball people (and not in a funny manner, for the most part).
The game's weakness and strength is in the difference in focus and detail between the routes. Because of the way the story is constructed, the Milly>Chitose>Vendetta play order is the only one you can take if you want to feel satisfied with all the routes. As a result, if you did play it in this order, it feels like the VN gets better with each route... but if you were to play it out of order, you'd probably get a bit frustrated, to say the least.
Content Created by Kiriririri and edited by fun2novel and myself (Clephas: I kept myself to grammatical fixes, so the content is pretty much as-is, with me only eliminating some excessive spoilers here and there.
Kamidanomi Shisugite Ore no Mirai ga Yabai.
Hulotte’s previous game Yomeyaba was an unexpected surprise. It wasn’t anything special but it appealed to readers with a fondness for charage with lots of ichaicha and some drama. Hulotte’s newest entry, Kamiyaba, treads similar grounds with identical structure and writing. But Kamiyaba is either too similar or in some case not as good as Yomeyaba and those expecting more of the same might want lower their expectations. Not like the expectations were very high for Yomeyaba anyway.
Our story begins with Hajime and his quest to find a girlfriend. The poor guy even goes to every marriage related shrine he can find, visiting and buying good luck talismans... All in the hopes to finally find a girlfriend for himself and maybe even get ‘lucky’ in the end. As it happens his life is turned upside down when a cute kami Urara takes pity and decides to help him with his fateful encounter. Urara picked 3 partners for Hajime and tells him he needs to get his “fate-counter” with each of the girls to hit zero. It’s an interesting premise actually and can lead to lots of interesting and even hilarious situations.
The thing that makes this game interesting and keeps it a few levels above other similar titles is that the female cast is interesting and have great personalities, it’s a must for people who are into this genre.
Nanami is Hajime’s classmate and she is also the daughter of the prime minister of Japan. It’s a premise we’ve seen many times before. The girl is a snobbish high nose tsundere who thinks she’s better than anyone but the protag wins her love…. Oh wait. What?? She’s NOT??? Well, that was quite a surprise. You see, she is actually a nice girl and pretty awkward at times. Her father is concerned about her as well and wishes for her to live the life she really wants and for her to be happy and has no problems with her dating and socializing. Hajime starts to care for her and tries to ease her loneliness, which is bad enough that she eats her lunch alone on the schools building’s roof (with the other two girls, the roof is their sanctuary). She gets a good development in her route. Unfortunately, the potential drama in her path, the usual 'introduction to the father', never happens, resulting in it sort of falling flat in the end.
Suzumiya is a clumsy senpai of the group. Hajime’s first encounter with her was when she fell down the stairs on top of him. Little did these two know that fate had bigger plans for them. She is also a very popular idol in Japan. She is good at cooking and spends time making benrous for everyone once a week. On other routes she even teaches the girls how to cook. So she’s a pretty nice and interesting character. Hajime’s fate counter with her is the closest one to zero, as it is down to 15 (Nanami had 900 million). Her route is about her dealing with being an idol and dating someone at the same time, a common theme in idol heroine routes, and by the end everything is resolved. However, out of all the girls she is the only one who changes little throughout her route. Nonetheless, the ending was very beautiful and shows them together in the future.
Yukari is the mischievous kouhai of the group. She is also a detective but they never say why she wants to be one. She just does. Perhaps they tried to give her some special quirk, but it is never explored much, with means it ends up just being 'flavor' for her character. Her fragile body doesn’t mesh with her detective occupation. Most of her route is her and Hajime spending their time in the school infirmary and many scenes have Hajime carrying her there. There aren’t any real conflicts like Nanami and Suzumiya routes. The ending was nice too, but I couldn’t help but think that something was missing.
Urara is the kami that took a liking to Hajime and wanted to help him find a girlfriend. They were not supposed to be partners in fate. But Fate seems to be perfectly happy breaking its own rules sometimes. She doesn’t change much in her route, but that might not matter much, since she’s best girl in Kamiyaba. She is a hyper energetic girl and says ‘maji’ too much (Clephas: gyaru kami heroine? lol). She also demands a reward for every good thing she does (usually ice cream), and she is very cute when she’s embarrassed. She really is best girlfriend material our of all the heroines in Kamiyaba. She is disguises herself as Hajime’s imouto,7 and this causes problems when it leads to them dating. However, things are resolved with the usual ease seen in the average charage. I don’t want to spoil her route because it’s the best one.
All the routes are full of ichaicha and any focus on something dramatic is resolved very quickly before anything really major can happen. There are two shorter side routes as well, but they are also just ichaicha with one h-scene each. Overall the characters were great and enjoyable but they don’t do too much with them, which is a little disappointing. Yomebaba wasn’t highly rated and Kamiyaba is scored a few notches lower so don’t expect the same quality from this game. But if all you want is ichaicha this game is good for consumption. Did I say icha icha already?
Kanojo Step is the latest VN from Smee, a company famous (or infamous) for making old style first-generation charage (right down to being able to name the protagonist and having him be a non-person, as well as there either being no drama or only weak/easily resolved drama in the story). As such, I wasn't anticipating a blowout hit, and I didn't get it, of course. However, it did surprise me a bit in one aspect...
... and that was its comedy. Ok, most of it is cheesy and 'familiar', but the timing of the comedy (usually emanating from the protagonist, as he is a 'class clown' style protagonist) is pretty much perfect and frequent enough that I spent about sixty-percent of this VN laughing.
Unfortunately, the slice-of-life in this VN and the romance (which make up everything that isn't comedy) are... unimpressive. They chose to go with heroines that were surprisingly dependent and deredere after they and the protagonist get together, and that wasn't a bad choice. However, the simple fact is that there is a huge gap in the quality of narration and dialogue between parts meant to be funny and parts that are meant to be semi-serious. This is the first VN I've encountered in a while where I felt like going to sleep whenever I wasn't laughing... and that isn't even an exaggeration.
Part of this can be attributed to the fact that the common route pretty much gluts you on everyday slice-of-life, and by the time you hit the heroine routes, it feels like being handed an apple pie after having gorged yourself on six others only an hour before. Another part is that the way the everyday life parts are sectioned out is almost always the same, leaving you with a somewhat exaggerated sense of monotony. This, combined with the frequent meaningless choices and map movement systems (the classic type seen in a lot of older slice-of-life VNs that went out of style because they drove most people up the wall) made this a VN that reflected older styles... in a bad way.
For all the salt I just spat, this VN is actually fairly enjoyable most of the time... it's just that when it starts to feel monotonous, it really feels monotonous... Given a more story-driven plot combined with this same comedy and the complete elimination of the map movement aspects, it would have probably inched its way up into the top five percent of the charage I've played over the years. Unfortunately, those aspects made for a VN that was far less than it could have been, at least from my perspective.
Edit: Understand, the people who like the 'warm and fuzzy, devoid of any stains of negative emotion' charage will lap this up. If I were to design a VN engineered solely to prick at 'mainstream' Japanese VN otakus' desire for 'an ideal everyday youth' this would be what I would aim for. However, as a story, it is fatally boring, unoriginal, and lacking in any entertainment value outside of the comedy, which happens to be hilarious.
I know many people have chimed in on the debate about what precisely VNs are to them... but the three main schools of thought pretty much come down to 'story-delivery system', 'pretty picture delivery system', and a mixture of both. To an extent, I can sympathize with all three... but I fall mostly with the 'mixture of both' school of thought with a leaning to the 'story-delivery system' end of things. Why? Because, when it comes down to it, all forms of otaku entertainment are story-delivery systems, when you get right down to it... even if that story is somewhat out there, disjointed, or so mixed in with pointless moe that it is hard to recognize. Of course, that is in the larger sense, so it is basically playing with sophistry on my part to think that way... *loves making it impossible for anyone else to win the argument*
Nonetheless, it is a valid point. I love stories, in general. I live for fiction in all its forms, though the written word is my preferred way to receive it, preferably with narrative, not just dialogue. More than anything, my taste in VNs is shaped by this simple root cause... in the end, I'm a narrative junkie who needs his fix. Chuunige like Dies Irae give me that in the most obvious form, and every once in a while, a fantasy masterpiece like Ikusa Megami Zero comes along and revives my love of world-building and deep settings. Even more rarely, I hit gold with something like Konata yori Kanata made, which burns so deeply into my soul that it causes an epiphany.
The last half-decade of my life has been pretty much shaped by my addict's pursuit of good VNs. As a result, outside of my work I'm pretty much the picture of the hikikomori erogamer (actually, since I work from home...). At the same time, I've more and more come to realize that almost no one across the water has any real idea of the potential of the medium in general for storytelling, despite having the best of all tools in all areas relatively easily at hand.
If I walk through a section my local bookstore (any fiction section), I can pick out at least a dozen titles I've read and left their mark on my way of thinking and expanded my mind in general. Going through all the VNs I've played, I can name only about forty out of the five hundred that left their mark in a significant way on my mind and spirit... and that is seriously a small number, even proportionately speaking. Less than a tenth of all the VNs I've played have been something worthy of remaining for the future... and how sad is that? This is despite the sheer potential the medium has... When I think of it objectively, I'm sometimes driven to despair.
Aoi Tori is Purple Soft's latest project, a VN based in a girls' school in the mountains, where the protagonist, a priest (I'm assuming Episcopalian/Anglican for various reasons), goes to school as an exception, as he cannot live outside of the school without being taken by demons.
Ritsu, the protagonist, possesses the power to take others' negative emotions, thus enhancing their feelings of happiness and joy, and this power works best when he has sex with them. Now, given that he is a young man, you'd think from this description that he was going around finding girls that were in trouble and 'saving' them that way... given eroge culture. However, if anything, it is the reverse... girls that are desperate to escape their personal reality come to him, seeking the happiness he can give, and he has reduced himself to something like an automatic mechanism for giving them what they want. To be blunt, his point of view seems very close to that of a lifelong prostitute, save for the miraculous ability he possesses... moreover, a prostitute who didn't choose the work (his first experiences were all oneshota, apparently).
One day, his monotonous days of sex and quiet prayer (it sounds odd, but outside of school, that is pretty much what it was like), a century-old vampire named Mary Harker appears before him, having intruded into his home behind the chapel, and he lets her stay out of kindness. At the same time, a voice (referred to as the 'demon on the phone') tells him over the phone that he has a rather dark fate awaiting him and his power isn't what he thinks it is.
This night is closely followed by a number of meetings and reunions... a devout girl with a self-destructive streak a mile wide (Akari), the young teacher who stole his virginity (Risa), and the twin sister he never knew he had (Sayo). In addition, you have Mikako, who is Risa's sister and Ritsu's only friend... and who is a genius as well as a pragmatist. Overall, it is an interesting cast of characters, even for a Purple Soft game.
I'm going to be blunt, the part that will put off at least some of you is the sheer amount of sex in the first part of the VN. The game begins with two h-scenes, neither of which involves affection or love, and, while this is a good intro into Ritsu's situation, it also will probably drive the romantics amongst you a bit crazy, judging by my previous experiences. So... if you can't stand a protagonist who doesn't bother refusing sex from women and is used to having sex with girls he doesn't know, you probably won't like this game.
That said, there are relatively few similar h-scenes after this, probably in order to keep you from getting too swallowed up by his attitude toward sexual activity.
Ritsu is a rather strange young man, even setting aside his destined role as the Prince of Darkness (Mary's term for it). As the demon on the phone puts it, 'You are a madman who can only be satisfied by saving others.' That fits him perfectly, and that part of his personality never really goes away. He is fundamentally a giver, above all other things. Even if he can be convinced by the heroines to be selfish in the now, when things come to a climax, he always falls back on that nature. He is also a natural S and a hedonist (though he is not conscious of this most of the time), and he doesn't have it in him to become paranoid or maintain his anger for long. That said, once he decides on the result he wants, he will literally do anything to achieve it.
Mary Harker
Mary Harker, in any other game, would be the true heroine. I don't mean to be mean about Akari... she is creepy has hell sometimes, despite her apparent normality (you'll see what I mean if you actually read the first two h-scenes), but if I began this game without a walkthrough or seeing the cover of the game package, I probably would have assumed she was the true heroine. The reason is very simple... she is the catalyst that sparks the game's engine at the beginning, and, given eroge custom, that heroine usually is the true one.
Now, her personality... Mary is probably the most cheerful and normal vampire I've seen outside of a 'nerfed' vampire setting (this one isn't, since just a bite is enough to turn someone and she takes injuries from her own prayers and the sun). Nonetheless, she has lived a century, and that has had various effects on her psyche, though the biggest one is a growing awareness that maintaining her humanity and human persona is becoming harder and harder. It is only because of Ritsu that she is able to have some kind of a hope for the future, and she is pretty dependent on him during the story. Despite that, she is also sort-of an oneesan character outside of her own path. She does have a lot of experience under her belt, and her attitude toward him at some times skirts the motherly.
Her own path is... a clash of two people destined to live in darkness, her and Ritsu. They are both people who don't understand romantic love at the beginning, so seeing them change is somewhat amusing, but the bigger issue is that their natures press down on them, making a happy romance difficult. Overall, it was a highly emotional experience that I enjoyed thoroughly. I do wish - as I almost always do - that she had a nice long epilogue after story, but I have resigned myself to not receiving what I wish for most of the time, when it comes to that.
Akasabi Risa and Akasabi Mikako
Akasabi Risa was the protagonist's first sexual partner. Like all the girls who had sex with him in the past, she was seeking escape from reality by having him give her happiness, but she, unlike the others, was actually in love with him from the beginning. Risa is a consummate actress, hiding her true intentions behind her feelings, a technique she apparently developed in the years she was away from Risa. She is also essentially a 'giver' type, willingly giving everything for those she cares about.
Mikako is a pretty unusual character. If it weren't for her fondness for Ritsu and her love for Risa, I would be tempted to call her an emotionless sociopath, based on her surface actions. I called her a pragmatist above, but this isn't despite her emotional reactions... it is her natural state of being. Pragmatism is usually a product of socialization and rationality being prioritized over emotion. However, in Mikako's case, she is able to (and does so automatically) completely analyze and render meaningless her emotions before they reach the surface. Her love for Risa is pretty much the only exception, and it is that emotion that renders her as almost human (her fondness for Ritsu exists because she loves Risa and Risa loves him).
Now, the demon on the phone takes on a rather more direct role in this story than in Mary's, where he/she is merely speaking to the characters. In fact, the demon's interference is what brings this path's conflict to the surface, and overall, it made this path more interesting than it otherwise would have been. To be blunt, without the demon's 'help', it is highly unlikely that Risa, Mikako, and Ritsu would get together, based on the revelations in this path. There are a number of reasons, but the biggest one lies with the fact that Ritsu quite simply doesn't have strong emotions toward his sexual partners normally (once he actually loves them, it is different)... not even remnant lust.
Kurosaki Sayo
Kurosaki Sayo is Ritsu's twin, separated from him at birth. She is a cynical, emotionally twisted young girl whose only love is Ritsu (though she does have affection for others based on whether they make Ritsu happy or not) and whose hobby is toying with him and Mary. She appears on the scene shortly after Mary's arrival, guided by the demon on the phone. She is also a part of the demons' plans for him, and that plan is the center of her path.
This path is an utsuge-style path... don't expect a happy ending. There is a good reason why Sayo was given to a different orphanage by their mother, and that reason becomes apparent fairly early after Ritsu chooses her. I enjoyed this path and it has some really good cathartic moments... but I honestly thought they were a bit excessively obvious in foreshadowing this one.
Afterwards (read this if you don't mind a bit of spoilers)
Remember, this is a spoiler.
As techniques go, it is interesting, and I felt the need to mention it before Akari's path because of how it leads into it.
Umino Akari
Akari is... the girl whose outer personality and inner desires are most in conflict. Akari is a devout Christian (Ritsu's assessment), kind-hearted, gentle, and takes pleasure in giving of herself to others. However, she is also strongly driven to seek out danger, corruption, and self-destruction in every way, shape, and form. As one of the milder examples... she is afraid of heights but she willingly participates in the school swim club's high dive competition. A more extreme version is the one you run into at the beginning, in the first scene, where, after watching her friend have sex with Ritsu, she is drawn to him and has sex with him as well.
Akari's path is... interesting. Actually, the beginning of the path is slow, because the story refrains from going to the extremes you saw in the common route and the other paths. However, that slow build up is a near-perfect lead into the solid drama leading up to the ending. There is actually very little I can say about this path without spoiling it, but I can say that I liked the ending. I cried numerous times throughout the path, and the ending itself satisfied me completely, a rare event in and of itself.
One thing I should note is that there is a distinct Chrono Clock reference in this path, which startled me a bit. It was actually a stronger link than the mention of the kotodama-users early in the common route. For those who are interested, I'll respond in a PM, but I'm unwilling to spoil this. I did laugh though. I'm unsure if this is an affectation or not, but it is interesting.
Overall
I'm seriously tempted to scream 'kamige!!!' to the sky... but in retrospect, they game does have some distinct flaws. The main one of these is the somewhat haphazard approach to the beginning of Risa's path (it felt kind of like they were shoving things along a little too forcefully in that one). However, even so this is one of the better games that have come out this year, and, in its own way, keeps the Purple Soft fantasy nakige tradition started with Mirai Nostalgia alive and kicking. Where Chrono Clock fizzled and Amatsutsumi committed the sin of using the ladder-style progression system, this game manages to both satisfy and feel like it treats the non-true heroines well.
First, a short intro... this is the second Clock Up game where Kurashiki Tatsuya (one of Light's second team of writers) has been involved, and those who played the previous one, Maggot Baits, will recognize the atmosphere and 'flavor' of the story instantly. This is a game devoid of salvation in any real sense. The protagonist and the other characters are universally the scum of the Earth (Mirei being the only exception, though she is a bit screwy too), and their lifestyles and pasts range from the distasteful to the outright disgusting.
While there are relatively few of the violent h-scenes that defined Maggot Baits, they do exist, so I do feel a need to warn you that a lot of the content in this game is graphic and not for those with a weak stomach.
The protagonist (who never reveals his true name in the entire story) is a professional killer who needs to kill people in order to sleep (it is more interesting if you read it yourself, so I won't go into detail). One day, he gets the order to investigate/find the killer of a paparazzi killed at the love hotel at which he works most of the time. What he finds is... Azami, a serial killer, whom he gets into combat with immediately. The end result of the battle is them having sex... and her getting obsessed with/attached to him. He returns the obsession in part due to the fact that, after having sex with her, he can sleep.
I'll be blunt, there is no point in this game where the characters can really be said to 'shine'. There are three endings, two of which are different based on how the protagonist pursues his relationship with Azami. The final path, the true path, brings their relationship to the final stage (visibly inevitable, if you get to know Azami), and you are presented by a predictably depressing ending.
This game has excellent writing, which goes without saying really, since it is done by Kurashiki Tatsuya. However, the unending dark atmosphere that infuses the story is energy-draining in the extreme. This is made worse by this general sense that the game is just trying to say 'humans are worthless' throughout its entire length. While the battle scenes are excellent, there were too many points in the story where cruel turns of event occurred simply to push things forward or to titillate the reader. This was true of Maggot Baits as well, but this game lacks the 'sort of good ending' you saw in that one, which gave you a sense of satisfaction, even if it was only in comparison to the rest of the game.
Umm... I'm going to be honest with you. I'm not terribly fond of Astronauts' irregular ventures off into the lands of dark fantasy gameplay hybrids, and as a result, I chose not to play this one when it came out. My experiences with the original Demonion, which, while the story was decent, was incredibly tedious when it came to the gameplay, made me not want to have anything to do with this game.
I won't say that this game surprised me... the story is straightforward Astronauts-style (lots of sex, immorality, and violence) combined with the classic dungeon-crawler setup. I'll be straight with you... I think the resurrection of dungeon-crawlers is what killed the classic jrpg, so I automatically subtract points from any game that looks like or acts like a dungeon-crawler. I even felt the same way about Persona 3 and Persona 4, which tells you just how much I dislike the genre.
Why? Because I've never seen the point in a story centering around diving into the same dungeon over and over. Adventuring doesn't seem like fun to me (I got over that phase in middle school), and the stories tend to be ridiculously easy to predict, even for Japanese games.
Regalias focuses on the city of Ishgalia, which was built over a labyrinth made from the ruins of a floating magic city that fell to the ground a few centuries back. The former mercenary, Orias, enters the city with the hope of finding the secrets to his past deep within the labyrinth.
Now, let's set aside the craziness of monsters infinitely welling up from the depths of a ruined magical city. If I were to complain about that particular tired trope, we'd be here all day. I'll even set aside my need to question how the city wouldn't have been completely explored after decades of people going into its depths.
What I won't do is gloss over the way I began to feel by the end... which was tired of finding my way through a bland set of dungeons. I honestly recommend that this game be played in stages, as the dungeon is exhausting and the story sections are not quite frequent enough to break the experience off into manageable bits. Essentially, you form a party of five characters (from an eventual roster of nine), and the battles are classic-style turn-based, which most enemies and your characters having one action per turn (the exception being certain 'special' enemies and bosses). On normal, the beginning of the game was the single hardest part of the entire thing. For some reason, the special enemies early on can frequently one-shot you even if you are overleveled for the part of the dungeon you are in, which is ridiculous. Since the only resurrection option early on is to return to town, this is frustrating and irritating, since it isn't always possible to avoid the enemy.
On the other hand, in the late game, you'll most likely be faced with a distinct lack of challenges... or at least, I was. I had to go back to town every once in a while when I ran out of mp, but I rarely died or even had a character killed after the fourth chapter (there are ten, including the final one). Part of that is that Orias and Shizuku are overpowered when using the double-sword passive skill (believe me, this is great for both normal enemies and bosses). The other part of it was that I had the range of skills I needed to wipe out enemy parties in a single turn.
One thing I seriously hated about this game was the way it essentially forces to stick with your original party... because the other four girls are significantly less capable than the first four to join the party. Dora is almost as capable as Edna as a mage, but Nemu is half-assed (they obviously couldn't decide whether to make her a true attack mage or a healer... and it shows). The less said about Meriel and Zenobia, the better (think, 'magician who couldn't kill a fly' and 'swordswoman with a ridiculous number of support magic that verges on being useless late-game).
The characters in this game are actually pretty good... though you spend an inordinate amount of time with them naked (five or more non-rape h-scenes for all the female characters except Fortuna and Zenobia). They all have realistic motivations for their actions and background to explain their personalities... which isn't surprising from the company that produced Erect! which is notable for being my favorite borderline nukige in existence.
Story-wise... it is fairly predictable. Honestly, the presentation isn't bad... in fact, it is good. However, I found the lateness of certain revelations to be irritating (since they weren't really revelations by the time they came out and said them outright), and I found the antagonists less than inspiring...
The end of the main story was actually pretty decent, and a good happy ending overall. There are also plenty of post-game events for the 'finish everything' freaks, including hints at what the characters might do afterward. However, I was disappointed there wasn't a final epilogue...
After almost three months of playing it about a half hour a day (usually right before I sleep), I finally finished this one... I didn't have the time to devote to this all at once, so I've been inching forward to victory since it came out back in October.
First, this is the latest Venus Blood game in the 'monster birth' side of the series (except for Hypno, all Venus Blood games fall into the 'Goddess Corruption' or 'monster birth' types in a general sense). Unlike Gaia and Abyss, which required you to use some of your rather limited turns (there was an absolute turn limit) and were essentially dungeon defense (and occasionally invasion) sims, this one doesn't use turns for the monster birth aspect of the game, has unlimited turns, and is an on-rails dungeon crawler.
I'm not going to go into a huge amount of detail on the game's system. It would take five or fix posts to get all the details out, so I'm just going to touch lightly on things.
First, monster birth in this game, like the others, has the heroines acting as 'mothers' for the monsters they birth. However, monsters don't fight directly in this game. Rather, they have two separate roles... providing passive skills and stat boosts to the heroines, and providing special skill cards that are drawn randomly each turn. As in all Venus Blood games, the former is the place where the game places most of the importance. Passive skills, such as the ones that determine the likelihood of critical hits, give boosts to stats, and others, normally make Venus Blood games the most customizable ones out there...
Unfortunately, this game went kind of casual. There is no real complexity to the birth system, your access to the higher levels of monster is nonexistent on the first playthrough, and the game encourages grinding, rather than encouraging you to blow through things as fast as possible to get bonuses.
Like all Venus Blood games, this game has tentacles... lots of tentacles. However, the story's approach to them is frequently hilarious (outside the actual h-scenes). The protagonist's attitude, the way the heroines change as the story goes on, and the disparity between the high aspirations of the heroines and the way they begin to act later in the game all make for some seriously hilarious moments. Uzume, in particular, is about as hilarious as a heroine can get, especially if you get her ending (which I did, along with all the Law route endings and regular heroine endings... and the true/harem ending).
This game's story is reasonably interesting... but like all the Venus Blood games I've played, it suffers from the lack of a truly great antagonist. For better or worse, Lagar is a distant figure throughout most of the game and only comes to life on the Law route apparently. Isabella is slightly more interesting, but the way she steps out is kind of anticlimactic. Also, the writers left too many hints in the story about the true antagonist for me to actually be surprised when I ran into her. Her motivations are petty and narcissistic, without the psychosis and flair that made Kefka in FFVI interesting. As a result, the last part of the game mostly just felt like a rehashing of the battle against Lagar.
The endings... are mostly hilarious. Oh, there are cool and touching aspects... but true to Venus Blood tradition, the fall of the heroines into the aftermath of their corruption at the protagonist's hands (and their seeming happiness there) is the true attraction, lol. You know you have been playing too many games like this when a final scene of nine heroines delighted to have sex with tentacles feels humorous to you....
First of all, this is, like most Yuzusoft games, a high-quality charage, though a charage first and foremost. As such, there is definitely a lighter atmosphere than you'd expect, considering the protagonist's personal difficulties and those of the heroines. Problems are resolved quickly and with no real secondary disasters, and they are generally resolved to the satisfaction of the characters involved, if not in the most ideal of manners.
In other words, you won't be reading this VN for superlative story... but what is there is good nonetheless. The characters are interesting, the actual use of the tachie is as brilliant as always (Yuzusoft's tendency to choreograph rapid tachie expression and posture changes into each spoken line is alive and well here and used to extremely good effect), and the crises do have enough emotional impact for you to care to at least a reasonable degree.
Ayachi Nene
Nene's route is... really the main heroine route, to be honest. I was halfway aware of this, but the first meeting between her and the protagonist is so... rofl. I love heroines of her type in charages, so I honestly couldn't bring myself to play anyone else first.
Nene is your basic 'cool and kind-hearted beauty' who has a hidden 'dojikko' side that makes her absolutely adorable. The side-effect of her witch's abilities only makes this part of her personality come out more.
While I was able to easily predict the flow of events leading to the end of the first half of the route, I was nonetheless able to honestly enjoy them. This is rare, because usually charage routes that I can predict this easily don't tend to be able to keep my interest. It says a lot for the basic quality of the game that I could sit back and just enjoy the ride.
The big downside of this route (and probably all the others) is the sheer amount of ichaicha (that state where the heroine and the protagonist are all over each other). Yuzusoft loves their games to be full of this quality and this one is no exception... so for those who just want to pursue a story, this VN is probably not a good choice.
This game, which I will refer to by the nickname Kukoro from now on, is Palette's newest low-price release, based on the same concept as Corona Blossom (episodic releases) and other games released in the last few years. It is also written by the same individual who wrote Nanairo Reincarnation and Akeiro Kaikitan, so in that sense this is definitely something I was looking forward to. I should tell you that my philosophy on this kind of episodic game is not to play it until all the episodes are out, and the value of this philosophy has been reinforced, in my mind, by my experiences with such releases.
First, the big plus of this VN is that the protagonist is voiced and that the writing, in and of itself, is of excellent quality. The action-based and emotional scenes have the same kind of first-class writing that turned those two into kamige, and that in itself pushes it ahead of most of the episodic releases I've had the misfortune to experience so far... unfortunately, that really isn't saying that much.
This VN hits one of my top five biggest pet peeves, and one that is pretty much insurmountable with VNs, in my experience. It doesn't give me the whole story, even for the one heroine it covers.
This is an abominable choice on the part of the company, even if it isn't the writer's fault. I can honestly understand covering only a single heroine's path in a release. Tiny Dungeon did the same thing, and each game stood on its own as a masterpiece, despite only covering one aspect of the main story. However... this is what amounts to a chuunige, with all the buildup and hints at potential drama you see in a chuunige 'beginner heroine' path (the heroine whose purpose is to simply get you involved with the setting). What does this mean for the reader? This means that you are given tons of hints as to what might happen later, but this path doesn't give you anything of value, despite a bad ending you are forced to watch and an utterly unsatisfying heroine ending where nothing is resolved and a new problem pops up at the very end, where it cuts off.
I would much rather pay one hundred dollars for the full story at once, than have to endure this kind of BS. I went on a rage after playing the second Grisaia because it did the same thing. Cliffhangers drive me nuts in VNs like this one, and this brings back memories of why I blocked out the second Grisaia as a traumatic memory until the third one came out.
In other words... don't play this game until the rest of them come out. It is too frustrating and too short to be worth the trouble. Not to mention that it doesn't give you time to get used to the characters and setting (there is no common route, so there is no 'settling in to the characters' to serve as a reason to hope for the future releases). So, I'm left with a story incomplete in every way, with a cliffhanger ending, and with a near-indifference for the non-Miyako, non-protagonist characters because this company chose to take too many shortcuts on the first part of the game. The raw quality of the prose and the dialogue, as well as the voiced protagonist, simply aren't enough positive to make me feel better about the negatives.
Edit: Keep in mind that my opinions are based just on this version... Also, I wanted to add some comments on the protagonist and other characters. Like many decent half-chuunige (half-chuunige referring to VNs that have strong chuunige elements but don't quite fall into that genre's aegis) this VN's protagonist is intelligent, psychologically flexible, and more than a little humorous. As a protagonist, I don't really have any complaints about him besides the fact that they chose an "I'm the only helpless one' role for him, which is why I relegated the game to half-chuunige status (since it wasn't protagonist-centric enough). The heroine for this one is Miyako, the daughter of the Kujou family, technically an ojousama (rich girl). However, her family's philosophy is that the company's money belongs to investors and workers, so they aren't nearly as wealthy as their company's success would indicate for most such families (she thinks paying five hundred yen for a meal is too much, lol). The only other character who you get a halfway decent impression of is the protagonist's little sister, Sora. She is a fun-seeking, somewhat air-headed brocon girl who is probably destined to be the heroine of a future installment, given her fondness for hanging out with her big bro. I have to note that the two other heroine candidates made really weak impressions due to only appearing in three scenes each.
Primal Hearts is a game I have an odd relationship with. At the time I first played it, I don't think I gave it a completely fair assessment. The reason why? I was hitting the first of my many 'charage doldrums' periods. However, in retrospect, it grew on me... sort of like mold.
First, I should note that the game is actually fairly old-fashioned, despite its modern visuals. The wacky concept, larger-than-life characters, and the sometimes ridiculous 'coincidences' that pop in all hearken to a previous era. At various times, this game channels such famous games as Haruka ni Aogi, Uruwashi no, Majikoi, Shuffle, and any number of 'golden age' games. Of course, it doesn't go as far as any of those does, but the makers' fanboyism is fairly evident throughout the game on a second playthrough (something I didn't notice on the first playthrough).
First, the resemblance of Majikoi lies in the larger than life characters and sometimes crazy abilities some of them have (the protagonist included). The protagonist's casual manipulation of the other characters for his own amusement (and for their own sakes, more often than not) is very much reminiscent of Yamato, without ever actually approaching his level.
Perhaps the strongest resemblance to Haruka ni Aogi, Uruwashi no lies in Haruhi's path... to be blunt, Haruhi is a redesigned version of Miyabi, with Kanna a reformed version of Lida who also happens to be a heroine. The resemblances and relationships are so obviously drawn from fanboyism of that particular kamige that I just had to shake my head during this replay.
Shuffle is channeled, along with a lot of other early charage, through the setting. While the specifics are drastically different, the wacky, overblown occurrences, the general madness surrounding the 'elections', and any number of other factors in the setting make me nostalgic for the middle of last decade (soon to be the decade before last).
I perhaps didn't notice all this the last time because I was focused on heroines... and I was playing charage rather mechanically already, two years into VN of the Month. A peculiar element that you generally don't see in most charage in general is character designs like that of Mizanori. Most charage tend to make all their regular characters (the ones at the center of the cast) attractive to one degree or another. However, Mizanori stands out as a character who was made comically unattractive, which struck me as hilarious at the time, since I used to make some of the same excuses he did to eat more as a teenager, lol.
The common route of this game is excellent. The relationships between the characters are formed and deepened appropriately, and it actually makes sense that the heroines would fall for the protagonist by the end. It helps that the protagonist is really a 'great guy' in every way, though he can lack common sense at times. The decision to avoid mediocrity in the protagonist and those around him is one that is rarely made in charage, which just made it that much better as a result.
Sadly, after the common route, this game stumbles somewhat. The heroine routes lack some of the depth the common route does, perhaps because the shift to romance automatically debuffed the intelligence of the writers. Oh, the heroines are unbearably cute when they go dere (Sera's dere makes me giggle hysterically even now, and Haruhi's is as strong in its own way), but the 'drama' included in the heroine paths pales a great deal in comparison to the drama that pops up in the common route. In that sense, it felt almost like they were running out of ideas at the end...
Overall, this is an excellent charage that manages to escape mediocrity by channeling some of the best parts of a number of famous VNs into its characters and setting. I won't say it is a kamige (because it isn't), but if you are just looking for a good charage to add to your collection, this is a good choice.
This VN is by the makers of Pure Girl, Innocent Girl, and the Grisaia series... Front Wing. As such, I couldn't ignore it, since it turned out not to be a nukige... though it feels like one toward the end of the heroine paths.
To be honest, I didn't have any hopes for this game, so it was nice that it had such good humor in it - think Pure or Innocent if they weren't nukige. I'm keeping this short because playing this game got really stressful in the heroine paths, and it is a bit hard for me to be spiteful here.
To be blunt, the structure of this VN is classic 'normal' charage. The common route is about two thirds of the game, and it is used for introducing the characters and building the overall dynamic and character relationships... and the heroine routes are straight 'fall in love>ichaichaichaicha (insert infinity sign here)'. The sad part is that the common route is really high quality... but the heroine routes are so unbalanced toward the newborn couple making out that I wanted to puke sand.
While this isn't VN of the Month quality, it is more than enough for your average charage/moege lover.
I'm going to be frank... for people who liked the original game and those who didn't, this is a waste of time. Do I sound like a jerk? I'm not trying to be... I don't think I've ever come across such a weak direct sequel (since it really is a full game). I sampled one of the new heroines, one of the main heroines from the original game, one of the secondary heroines from the original game, one of the sub-heroines from the original game, and one of the 'extra' heroines from the original game (Tia>Yurina>Silvia>Jubei>Minamo). As a result, I came to a very straightforward conclusion...
... this game is crap. Oh, in terms of visuals and sound effects, it is massively improved. The main story, such as it is, has a few nice battle scenes too... but in every single path, after the shared scenes are over, it slips into a third-rate charage 'lovers' pattern. The actual romance is lackluster, all the heroines already love the protagonist so there is no struggle, and all conflicts were either resolved in the previous game or in this one.
So what is there left to experience? Ichaicha and h-scenes, my least favorite part of a VN. There are no individual conflicts, difficulties, or troubles to resolve. There are no grand difficulties that are unique to each heroine path... so what you have is a bunch of 'industry standard' post-drama heroine-protagonist lovey-dovey BS that drives me up the wall.
That isn't even mentioning that the new heroines suck, lol.
Well... first, I should say that Baldr Force EXE was the thirty-fifth untranslated VN I played. At the time, I didn't have a controller, and I ended up suffering from horrible wrist pain from playing using the keyboard. So my first piece of advice to anyone trying to play this game is to get a controller (most are compatible) that you are comfortable using. This shares basic gameplay with Baldr Skydive, though that game's battle system is quite a bit more advanced. As such, feel free to search my Random VN Thread for my comments on it, lol. It is an action-based system where you use three attack buttons in combination with being at short or long range, dashing, or sprinting (short dash) to combo up to twelve different attacks ranging from fist strikes and submachine guns (you'll use the submachinegun attack throughout the game, because of its utility) to beam bazookas and landmines.
The actual story of this game is very different from what you'd expect from a similar VN today, simply because the choice of characters is different from what most modern readers have grown to expect. There is very little of the 'manzai' comedic byplay that is common to almost every VN made after 2006, and there are bad endings and horrible things that happen to the heroines just in the normal course of the route. While bad endings in themselves aren't rare, ones with story as extensive as these are a bit rare, lol.
This VN's art quality is probably about the best you'll see in any VN from the same era. The CGs, the tachie, and the backgrounds are all about as detailed as you can expect from a VN made around the turn of the century, and all the characters are well-differentiated from each other (though the designs are familiar from various anime that ran before or around the same time).
The musical quality is pretty high... no generic tracks here, though there are remixes of them in later Baldr games. Voices are a bit (quite a bit in some cases) less professional or more grainy than you'll have grown used to with modern VNs, though it isn't so bad as to break the experience.
The protagonist is a young hacker who is a typical rebellious youth who ends up caught in a nasty situation through his own stupid actions. If you know basic tactics, you'll frequently find yourself facepalming early on because of the sheer stupidity of some of the things he does. Nonetheless, compared to the hetare or 'normal' protagonists that are common to most VNs, he is a definite improvement.
There are a total of six heroines: Minori, Ayane, Ryian, Tsukina, Hikaru, and Ren. The route order is locked in stone, with you having to play Minori and Ayane, followed by Ryian and Tsukina, followed by Hikaru, then finally Ren as the 'true' heroine. Each heroine has multiple endings (one sad/bad one good at the very least) and a strong individual route that splits off at some point from the main route. Tsukina's route splits off the earliest, almost at the very beginning, whereas most of the other paths (except Ren's) split off about halfway through the game. This leads to lots of separate events with each heroine - none of them pointless. Just to warn you, like all Baldr games, the setting and story are fairly dark, so don't go in expecting rays of sunshine.
If I were asked which - besides Ren's - stood out the most, I would say Ryian's or Tsukina's stood out the most. Both paths follow unique progression that puts you through an experience almost completely unconnected with the others in general flow. Ryian's is perhaps the hardest emotionally, whereas Renn's is by far the hardest in terms of gameplay.
My overall thoughts on the game generally focus on the simple fact that going through six heroine paths in a VN with gameplay is frigging exhausting. Not only that, but there is a definite feeling of information overload afterward... which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Nonetheless, the actual raw story is very well-written, if in a convention many newer VN readers won't be accustomed to. At the same time, the scenario design is of the highest quality... reminding me why Giga should never be allowed to make VNs outside the Baldr series, since it makes their normal works look like crap.
Meguru is the 'lively and cheerful, puppy-like kouhai' of the story. She is also the most 'fashionable' of the heroines, and the one who is perhaps the most like a 'normal girl' as far as this type of VN goes. The fact that Yuzusoft managed to make her character work is a mark of how high quality their stories are.
I will say that the ichaicha in this one is a lot more tedious than it was in Nene's story, though. A lot of it is that both Meguru and Shuuji are really dense about their own feelings, and they are really slow to progress once they do get together.
The drama in this story is about evenly split between Shuuji's and Meguru's issues, with Meguru's main issue resolved fairly early in the path and the protagonists' issues resolved slowly over the course of the path as a whole. While this is generally nice and the ending is decent... the fact that so much of the story is endless ichaicha kind of made me fall asleep.
Nonetheless, I like Meguru, and her tachie is probably the most well-used besides Nene, who was the main heroine.
Look forward to Togakushi Touko in the next entry!
