This is the third game in Crystalia's series based on a world where a sport has grown up around using spiritual swords and a prequel to the original game, Kizuna Kirameku Koi Iroha. For those who haven't played the other games, I can say that you might or might not get more out of this game by playing the others first, as playing the original spoils you on the winner of the tournament and a few other issues. On the other hand, this game also fills in a lot of gaps on characters from the original, such as Miyako and Tsubaki.
I'm going to come out and say this outright... this game is probably the best of the three. Why? The more obvious reason is that the battles are generally better quality than the other two games. However, the larger reason is the way it is structured. Ninety-percent of the game is actually a straightforward seishun drama based around a class of talented dropouts and a teacher protagonist. Romance doesn't change the outcome, and actual heroine paths are actually in the 'omake' section of the game, rather than being the main focus.
This comes as a trade-off. For those who want romance to be the central element of their VNs, this game will probably be a disappointment. However, if you like seishun drama with fierce competition and lively interaction between the characters, this is a first-class game.
The protagonist, Murakaki Iori, is a member of the JSDF's Tenju Tokka unit (wields Origami and Tenju as part of their tactics), and he gets pulled for a side mission involving educating a class full of talented individuals who normal teachers can't seem to handle. Iori is, on the surface and for the most part, a good-hearted and hotblooded teacher with a true belief in acting in the best interests of his students and treating them equally. However, he does have a somewhat traumatic past and that past isn't ignored during the story.
Takamine Setsugekka is your classic 'aho no ko', also known as the 'idiot child' or 'airheaded' heroine. She wields a close-in style wielding a ninjatou and hand-to-hand combat, and she starts out at the lowest point of all the heroines in terms of skill. She occasionally, when hurt or driven to rage, goes berserk and wields immense power, but in this state she is easy to handle for an appropriately skilled opponent. Typical of this kind of story, she grows the most in skill as time goes on.
Suzakuin Momiji is, on the surface, a competent and cool swordswoman who focuses on taking apart her opponent's style and habits until she can predict and lead them down the path to destruction. She wields a long katana similar to that of Sasaki Kojirou from Fate/Stay Night. She is Tsubaki's (from the original) eldest sister. However, behind the scenes she is a lazy young woman who can't be bothered to pick up her own trash or get out of bed if she isn't forced to. In all honesty, the first time I saw her chugging non-alcoholic beer (apparently, when at her family home, she goes for the real stuff) with sashimi in her other hand, I fell in love, so I favored her from the beginning (yes, I'm a bit weird sometimes with my heroine preferences).
Kuki Asahi is the younger sister of Iori's best friend and former rival, Kuki Takahisa. From a very young age, she has been in love with Iori, but for some reason she has grown up into a very yandere-ish Iori-worshipper who will ruthlessly act to protect her hold on him. Her preferred style is 'iai-battou', a defensive style where the user counters their enemies with draw-slashes. Emotionally, she is perhaps the most volcanic of the characters, though I imagine some will say Setsugekka is.
Tobe Ririmu is a gyaru swordswoman who has a rather unique style that is very-dance like, combining Tenju illusions with unusual steps with a difficult to predict rhythm. In all honesty, I felt bad for how this game treats her toward the end. While she has a strong presence throughout much of the game, that presence fades almost to nothing due to the events of the tournament near the end. In a very real way, she is a character that existed solely to provide emotional firewood for certain events near the end. She is something of a free-spirit, with a desire to combine fashion with Jindou, designing combat costumes and Origami skins. In many ways, she is like your typical 'slightly delinquent-like child' character, especially when it comes to dealing with teacher-student issues.
The Litrpg genre has a bunch of subsets, from the gamelit (characters are actually in a game) and portal fantasy (go through a portal to a game-like world) to Wuxia/xanxia style cultivation and anime-style harem setups.
William D Arand is an interesting writer... He is definitely on the harem side of things, because all of his protagonists end up with a harem of women who are both devoted to him and end up running his life, as well as being deadly, amoral and more than a little crazy. Most of his books are based in the multiverse of his 'Selfless Hero' series, and the protagonist of that series is involved peripherally in all of them.
Happily, there are no actual sex scenes in his books (I say happily because a lot of harem fantasy writers tend to make sex scenes take up two-thirds of the book), and most of the girls react realistically (jealousy, murderous impulses, etc) to the situation even if they end up accepting it. One girl, in particular, strikes me as being one of his favorite archetypes, even if she is always low in the girls' hierarchy in each series.
In the Selfless Hero, it was Alexia, the goddess of thieves and assassins. This type of character is the 'psychotic monster yandere' type, with a side of a need to be dominated. Normally a girl like this would be relegated to enemy status, get killed early on conveniently, or otherwise cause massive problems. However, he seems to like building into his protagonists a wide degree of tolerance for a number of heroine types. Heck, Felix (Super Sales on Super Heroes series) has a girl who kills one of the other girls on a daily basis (the other girl creates clones of herself) simply out of jealousy and with permission from the other girl... and soaks her sheets in the other girl's blood and eats her flesh... and he is perfectly at ease with her.
Overall, his books have a rather dark charm to them, with just enough in the way of 'moralistic' heroines to provide a baseline for you to realize how out there some of the other heroines are, lol.
Ryuusei World Actor is the latest VN by the up-and-coming plotge and chuunige specialist company, Digination, under its subsidiary Heliodor. This company's games so far have been somewhat unpredictable and unbalanced in my experience, with a great deal of ambition and not quite enough talent to pull things through completely. I say this from the point of view of a long-time chuunige/plotge addict, and from the perspective of a person that has played two of their games to the end and sampled two others.
Moreover, this is a Kinugasa Shougo game... his first since the second Reminiscence game (which is probably why Tonari no Shoujo never got released, the whimsical jackass that he is). The bits and pieces of Kaito's worst qualities seen in Ruka (the protagonist of this game) make it pretty obvious who wrote this game, as do the way the endings are handled.
This game is based in a world where dozens (literally) of sapient species coexist (in the sense that they are alive, though their countries war against one another constantly) in the only nation that accepts all races, as well as the only nation that has achieved a high-tech civilization, The Seventh Federation. The protagonist, Ruka, is a low-ranking detective with a lot of bad habits who gets on just about everyone's nerves (including the readers' at times). He rarely admits when he is wrong, complains when things don't go perfectly his way, uses numerous illegal sources, and generally makes every other cop look good in comparison (even the ones who take bribes). That said, when he wants to be, he is quite capable... even ingenious. Unfortunately, that is coupled with a lack of motivation except when cornered, a tendency to get involved with incidents his superiors don't want investigated, and a fundamentally amoral ethos to getting things done.
In other words, except during a few moments when he shows his true colors, he can be a constant irritant to vicariously experience, simply because the reactions of those around him are almost entirely negative and his attitude is bad enough that you can't blame them.
This game is not ladder-style, unlike many of the previous games by this company. Rather, it utilizes a classic (though I don't necessarily consider classic a compliment) structure where you must experience the three sub-heroine routes before you can see the true route (Claris's route).
The heroines in this game include Claris, the protagonist's naive rookie elven partner; Chiffon, a Seguit (think inhumanly strong barbarian race) with a strong sense of honor who is living on a shoestring budget because of her easy-to-fool goody-goody personality; Mel, the princess of a primitive human nation of powerful warrior-mages who is in hiding; and Komachi, a female traffic cop who is constantly going to mixers in hope of finding the perfect guy.
Common
The common route, as is common in most VNs, serves as an intro to the characters, their personalities, and their circumstances. It is often humorous (well, I found it so), though there are just as many serious moments due to the nature of Ruka's job... and his bad habits. To be honest, I found the common route serviceable, but it also shares a complaint I had throughout the VN, from beginning to end... despite the fact that the protagonist is actually very capable, he almost never shows it.
While Ruka can be depended on to bring cases to a conclusion, his lack of an interest in credit for his work (mostly because he knows he won't benefit even if he does get credit), his need to hide his true abilities (he has good reasons, but I honestly felt that this aspect was perhaps something they should have cut out), and his tendency to bring things to a conclusion in the worst way possible while solving the case (for him) is often frustrating. Worse is the lack of lateral connections between the heroines, with most of their connection being through the protagonist and momentary, rather than being a near-constant.
The combat scenes in the common route are decent... even good. However, they are frustratingly short considering the sheer number of abilities and powers apparently present throughout the Seventh Republic and its races.
The common route also fails to really bring the Seventh Republic's peoples to life, which i found irritating, since the setting has such potential.
Chiffon
Chiffon's path is the earliest branch (the only early branch) and is really a sub-heroine path in structure. Chiffon is perhaps the most pure-hearted person in the VN (mostly competing with Mel, though I give Chiffon the pure-pure prize due to Mel's surprising familiarity with things that made me wince). Her innocence, naivete, and strong code of honor also make me tentatively name her as one of only two people in the VN I consider to be 'true good' alignment characters (the other is Melissa, the fairy the protagonist rescues fairly early on).
Chiffon's path is the weakest and (oddly considering she is probably the strongest fighter amongst the heroines) the most SOL-centric. I liked the relationship, but that was despite how it developed rather than because of how it developed. This path showed off one of the major reasons I am so wary of this company's games... the inconsistent pacing. This path is also the one that is most completely disconnected from the others, and that is more than a little irritating.
The epilogue in this path is good in the sense that it is based more than 'next week' and it reflects the results of the events that occurred in the more dramatic ending parts. However, I felt it could have been more extensive, to compensate for the shortness of the main path...
Komachi
Komachi is my least favorite heroine. She is also a Victim A type heroine (the nosy investigative type with no ability to protect herself), which I constantly scream at whenever they get included in an action story game. This is in comparison to Mel, who is a Victim B type heroine (the virtually helpless sheltered girl who is caught up in circumstances beyond her control), and the choice to plop a heroine like this into the story is questionable at best. I honestly think she should have been position as an occasional sex-friend who dies partway through (hence the Victim A label) or a side-character rather than a heroine, considering the type of story this game is.
Her path's value lies in what it reveals about certain members of the Cult, rather than in Komachi's circumstances themselves. This path is a rather obvious 'revelation preparation for the true path' path, and it seems to exist solely for providing the information that comes out in it. The romance feels a bit forced and the way the two get together just doesn't sit right with me, after reading it.
Mel
I'll say this straight out... Mel's path needed a 'five years later' after story. For better or worse, the core conflict is left only partially resolved (Mel's issues), and, in classic Kinugasa Shougo faction, nothing is concluded. This is the thing I hate most about Kinugasa Shougo... and the part that he seems to insist on unless the company he works for forces him to act otherwise.
Mel's path itself has some excellent action scenes (several levels above either Chiffon's or Komachi's), but it feels like they only scratched the surface of the potential for this path. As such, I felt more than a little irritated about how it was handled. Unlike Komachi's and Chiffon's paths, where the romantic elements felt forced, it is rather obvious that Mel had a crush on Ruka from early on, so I wasn't bothered by the romantic shift.
True/Claris
Aaah... I'm going to be clear about this. This path reveals the truth of Ruka's past, which is hinted at repeatedly throughout the VN, but is mostly shoved to the side in the other paths. It also clarifies his relationship to Claris, who turns out to be a halfway decent heroine...
... unfortunately, this suffers from what I'm tempted to call 'Kinugasa Syndrome'... in other words, Kinugasa Shougo's absolute hatred of concluding his own stories (extrapolated from his writing habits). For better or worse, Claris's path suffers from this disease. Actually, in some ways it is worse, since it cuts off just when things were getting interesting, probably to let them set up a sequel. Claris's path occurs chronologically after a non-romantic version of the other heroines' paths (predictably so, since that is one of Kinugasa's standard storytelling techniques, as was seen by how he handled the transition to Akagoei 3). It is actually written quite well, and its paced about as good or better than Mel's path... but somehow, there is even less action (disappointing, considering the case they are chasing).
I honestly was frustrated with how this path ended... especially since it really doesn't go anywhere beyond handling the protagonist's past and a number of h-scenes. I was deeply disappointed by how this was handled, and I'm more than a little angry about the way it cut off...
It is hard to describe just how sharply this story gets cut short... literally nothing gets concluded, obviously setting things up for a sequel... but without even the minimal effort to throw the readers a bone that Shougo usually makes.
Epilogue
This game concludes with an epilogue that becomes available after finishing the four heroine paths. It is mostly a short get-together of the four formerly-young detectives that joined at the same time as Ruka, and it rather blatantly sets things up for a sequel... which made me want to pull out the few strands of hair still remaining on the top of my head. I hate it when no attempt is made to at least tie off a few strands of the storyline. Even in the original Akagoei, at least some of the conflicts were resolved (though he deliberately overturned most of them in Akagoei 3, with Kaoru's path being the storyline that heads into Akagoei 3).
Conclusion
A game whose setting possesses enormous potential, ruined by Kinugasa Shougo being allowed to indulge all of his worst habits without restraint... and with none of his good ones really surfacing at any point of the VN.
Edit: When writing the above review, I tended to focus on what was wrong with the VN... and that was perhaps inevitable since I wrote each part after the conclusion of a path, and the conclusions to each path are singularly unsatisfying, even for something by this writer.
What was good about this VN? First is the setting... the Seventh Federation is an interesting country, a nation enveloped in permanent darkness with numerous races coexisting within. Second? The characters. The characters are all well-defined and stand out well (except the heroines, who oddly are some of the weakest characters... well, other than Claris), and I smiled frequently at the kind of BS Ruka spewed whenever things weren't going to his advantage. The detective action is sometimes hit and miss... but Ruka really is intelligent and experienced as a detective... he is just apathetic when he doesn't have something or someone prodding him to do his job.
Honestly, the only thing I can say to anyone considering reading this VN is wait for a potential sequel to come out. Until one does, this game will be nothing but frustrating to most people.
In action stories, often the story's quality is determined by the quality of the antagonist as much as the quality of the main characters. The antagonist acts and the main characters react, creating the drama that pulls at our heart strings and excites us. The more complex the story, the more likely the need for a strong antagonist will exist, at least in modern fiction. I decided to put down my top ten and my reasons for making them my top ten here. These are my top ten, but there isn't a particular order to them, save for the top five being the absolute best.
1- Shannon Wordsworth-
2- Mercurius-
3- Kefka- Final Fantasy VI's main antagonist. He is frequently listed as one of the craziest bad guys in all of gaming history, with good reason. He is the nihilistic result of experiments with granting humans magic, and as a result he gets the bright idea to destroy the world... and actually succeeds. His psychotic laughter (in 16 bit sound) is familiar to anyone who played the game, and his psycho clown character traumatized an entire generation of gamers into thinking clowns are inherently evil.
4- Christopher Valzeride- The heroic antagonist of Silverio Vendetta.
5- Reinhardt Lohengrin- Legend of the Galactic Heroes- While he can also be considered the protagonist of the massive space opera, he is also an ongoing antagonist. Reinhardt is an ambitious young man whose meteoric rise in the militaristic and expansionistic Galactic Empire are driven by his twin desires to wrench his sister away from her position as the incompetent emperor's mistress and conquer the galaxy. A fierce man with a warrior's demeanor that usually only serves to fuel his strategic and tactical victories, he honors both enemies and allies who show ability and contempt for those who rise above their level of competency. As a ruler, he is ruthlessly fair with those of ability who are capable of loyalty and brutally ruthless with those who are incapable of it. As an enemy, he is one of the most frightening (non-magical) men in any anime, game, or VN I've ever seen.
6-
7- Mikado Ruri-
9-
10-
This is the latest game by ASa Project, a company that rose up during the Golden Age of VNs, making a name for themselves as solid comedy charage makers. To this day, their style hasn't changed significantly, but in some ways that gives them an advantage over modern charage, which tend to be less comedy-focused (actually, most newer charage makers don't seem to know how to make the readers laugh anymore).
This game is focused on the harem of a young man named Hirotaka. The situation is, structure-wise, a classic 'all the girls already love the protagonist' setting, a style that you don't see as often anymore. Instead of the girls getting along and being friendly (the more common modern iteration of this setup), is almost 90% the girls fighting over Hiro. Moreover, the girls are so over the top I couldn't stop laughing throughout the common route, to the point where my voice got hoarse by the end of the day.
There are four main heroines and two sub-heroines with one bad ending extra heroine and two male-oriented 'normal endings'. The main heroines are: The returning idiot osananajimi who throws everything into chaos with her return to town, Mari; the narcissistic and more than a little perverted (too self-absorbed to realize she is a pervert) Shione; the yandere-ish little sister, Nonoka; and the idol who constantly goes back and forth between being a straightforward deredere heroine and deliberately acting cute, Renna. The sub-heroines include the popular idol Yuuna and the class president Ikuyo.
Something important to note about this VN is that the constant byplay with the side-characters contributes a great deal to the comedy and bringing the heroines to life, another technique that requires skill that most modern charage writers lack. The fact that Hiro is something of a forgetful airhead (who happens to be handsome and subconsciously seduces heroines without even realizes he's doing it) as well as being a bit crazy also helps, since it generally means that things never really ease up or calm down.
Yuuna
Yes, I did a sub-heroine first... but most people who get through the common route will understand why. There are just too many reasons to pick Yuuna for a first heroine, even aside from her being an interesting character. Though I call Yuuna a sub-heroine, she is actually a strong enough heroine with a long enough path to be called a main heroine.
Her path is mostly straight-up ichaicha and dealing with the main heroines insane levels of jealousy (seriously), as well as planning for the future. It is generally heart-warming while also keeping the comedic atmosphere of the common route. I liked that the path had a 'years later' epilogue.
Renna
I had to play Renna's path after Yuuna's, because I wanted a good comparison between a sub-heroine path and a related main heroine path. Renna is Yuuna's understudy and younger partner in the idol group Gloria Snow. Renna is a pretty straightforward character who uses a 'cute' persona to seduce the protagonist. In all honesty, since Yuuna was my favorite from the beginning, I kind of wanted this to be a 3P path, but ASa seems to be ignoring the trend toward such paths, lol.
Like Yuuna's path, this one felt like an extension of the common route, with perhaps a bit more in the way of drama (short drama that doesn't really add anything to the experience) and about the same amount of ichaicha. So, for those who just want the ichaicha comedy, it is roughly equivalent to Yuuna's path in those terms.
Shione
I'm going to be blunt... this is the path that kind of made me stop playing the game. It wasn't that it wasn't funny... but as a heroine, Shione's clumsy attempts to take control of the relationship made me nearly go crazy. This path spent way too much time dancing around instead of getting to the point, and as a result, I felt like it took a lot of fun out of the more humorous moments.
Conclusion
For fans of old-style comedy harems where the girls are constantly at each other's throats, this is actually a great VN. If you want romance, it isn't. I say this because, except for Yuuna's path, the romance is the weakest part of the game. The heroines are mostly psycho (makes for great humor and catfights, but not so much for romance), so, while I spent a great deal of time laughing, I didn't get much out of the romance. I did like that the girls never did stop trying to reclaim Hiro, even after he chose one of them... the way girls always seem to give up entirely in other VNs always struck me as odd.
First, as I state in the title, I'm coming off my fifth playthrough (all paths and endings) of Tokyo Babel. As such, I am - very obviously - deeply fond of the game. I'm also a fan of the writer Higashide Yuuichirou (for reference, he also wrote Ayakashibito and the scenario for Fate/Apocrypha).
However, in this post I wanted to address some of the complaints I get from those who play the game. First, I will address the major complaints I've taken personally from those who read or have read it untranslated, then those who read it translated.
Untranslated
1. 'This doesn't feel like a Higashide game/isn't as good as his other games!' For better or worse, Higashide went in a different direction, style, and approach in Tokyo Babel in comparison to his previous works. Ayakashibito is the basis for most untranslated Higashide fanboys' love, but it needs to be said that anyone who has played the two games will barely see any resemblance beyond the writing style.
Ayakashibito was about a young man struggling against the world as he tried to carve out a life for himself with his adoptive sister. His emotional struggles with unreasonable and unreasoning prejudice, as well as the active malice of powers both great and small, struck a chord in a lot of the people who read it. Moreover, it is by far the most slice-of-life focused of all Higashide's titles, whereas a huge portion of Tokyo Babel is fighting, preparation for fighting, and dealing with conspiracies.
2. 'I loved Dies Irae and this was recommended to me based on that, but it doesn't match up.' This one makes me laugh. Sorry, I'm not trying to be contemptuous, but, despite some surface resemblances, Tokyo Babel is wildly different from Dies Irae. Higashide is not a poet. Masada is. Higashide is calculating where Masada is impulsive. As such, I can honestly say the only resemblance between the two is that they both have a preference for fantasy and melodrama. Dies Irae is an opera, whereas Tokyo Babel is more straightforward and to the point, in comparison.
3. 'Why is there no ero? All his other games had ero, so why not this one?' I have to wonder if anyone but me was surprised at this one being the third most common complaint I got from those I recommended this game to. Yes, his other games have a mix of good and horrid ero (Ayakashibito is particularly infamous for its side-character scenes), but Tokyo Babel was written from beginning to end as an all-ages novel. Surprisingly, I agree with those who think the lack of ero in Tokyo Babel had a negative effect. To be blunt, I can't see Lilith not finding a way to shove Setsuna into Raziel's futon or failing to trap him in a room alone with Sorami... and that's setting aside several moments in her path that would have made for some great 'desperate and somber H' scenes. Higashide, for all that his ero scenes were sometimes awful (again, Ayakashibito), always made them relevant to the story and used them to enhance its flow... something many chuuni writers who utilize ero content fail to do.
4. 'What the heck is it with this game's weird mix of styles?!' I'm not an art bigot, so I'm not the best person to answer this question. This game's art style differs from previous Propeller games to a significant degree at times. Is that a good or bad thing? Hard to answer... though I do think the decision to make the main characters look younger than in previous games (with some exceptions) was questionable, lol.
Translated
1. 'What is with the translation?!!!!'. Aah... this is the idiot argument. Sorry, but I've said this a thousand times before 'Japanese to English translation is an oxymoron'. Conjueror was pretty much the only translator brave enough to jump into translating something like Dies Irae or Tokyo Babel precisely because fans of this type of game are such a-holes when it comes to translations. Yes, it isn't perfect. Yes, it doesn't somehow magically mirror Higashide's brilliance perfectly. However, I would like to make a few major points for those who insist they could do better...
Japanese has numerous concepts, sayings, and even casual phrasing that simply don't translate into English without a much larger number of words to fill in the gaps in the language. One reason I always recommend anyone who can read a game in Japanese (even if they have to use a parser and text hooker) do so is because it is impossible to perfectly replicate everything in a localization to English. It is possible to get across many concepts with creative language and a wide vocabulary in English, but that sometimes means spending minutes or even an hour on a single line, trying to create something that can somehow retain the best parts of the original. Chuuni translations tend to be awkward (both anime and games) because the language used requires more of this, and it becomes too easy to fall into the habit of robotically spewing out the translation instead of actually writing it into prose (look at the FGO cell phone game and you'll see what I mean).
2. 'This wasn't as dramatic as I thought it would be!' This one puzzles me... but then, I never played the game all the way through in English (I went up through the Miyako fight in Raziel's route to get an idea of what it was like), so maybe more was lost in the localization toward the middle and end than I thought.
3. 'The subject matter made me uncomfortable'... Ah yes, this one. To be honest, even I felt the remnants of my upbringing pounding on the doors of my psyche at times when I played this game. To be blunt, to anyone brought up in a devout Christian (or even Muslim) household, playing any of the routes can be enormously uncomfortable at times. By the nature of the process of 'suspending disbelief' that occurs when you read something fantasy, your prejudices and upbringing inevitably play into how you see the game. To be blunt, by Christian standards, this game is blasphemous, lol. In Japan, due to the way the divine is seen (impossible to explain if you haven't studied it, so I won't go into this here), this game doesn't feel that way. However, this game can cause some odd reactions in some Westerners.
4. 'I don't get the humor.' Sad to say, but a good portion of humor in Japanese VNs simply doesn't translate very well. The funniest scene in the game (in my opinion) is the drunken party in Sorami's path... but there are several points in this scene that don't translate (think plays on Japanese wording, puns, and phone number styles) that had me cracking up every time. Sad to say, but, for those playing translated JVNs, this is something you'll just have to live with.
Conclusion
I didn't really refute any of the complaints here... but I did try to address them. Tokyo Babel is one of the few of my favorite games that have been translated (though more of them have been in recent years, including Hapymaher and Dies Irae), but it is also the one of my translated favorites that is most likely not to be mentioned when someone is asking about this type of game.
Umm... wow?
This game is seriously out there.
Yes, I needed to start with that. Love Destination's every aspect is more than a little crazy. It starts with a salaryman in his late thirties dying in a car accident and being told by the lazy-ass woman at the gates that she accidentally killed him on a whim. She offers him a chance to start over from the branching point of his life (after several other attempts to cover her own incompetence), and he ends up going back in time... only to choose to go to the girls' school he previously refused to go to.
Now, up until this, you might think this was a charage... but that couldn't be any further from the truth. This game is a seriously screwed up plotge with a scenario designed by someone with a rather twisted mind. There are four paths in this game, one monogamist and the other three threesomes. There are also a ton of bad endings at two normal endings (some of them branching off from the paths).
Now, up until now I've focused on how crazy this game is, but I need to say that this game has some negative aspects I need to state early on. First, though the scenario itself is actually at kamige tier, the writing is... second-rate? I felt like I was reading something by someone who loved chuunige but also liked to insert symbols in the place of words. A lot of this game already has furigana even without a parser because of this, which bemused me somewhat. Personally, I found the methods this writer used to be pure eye and brain cancer, so if you are a fan of god-tier writing, you aren't going to be happy with this game. I seriously empathize with anyone who might attempt to translate this, lol.
Second is the protagonist and his osananajimi. The protagonist, in his previous life, was the type of guy who, rather than seeking out positives, always sought to eliminate negatives. As a result, he ended up on the lowest rungs of a decaying Japanese society that was on the verge of losing its sovereignty before his death. While he does try to change in his new life (literal), it is only in the actual heroine paths and at the end of the common route that he actually starts to strip away the layers of cowardice that make up his personality. He does this in a grand fashion in several of the paths, so I can forgive the way he is at the beginning... but I really hate his interactions with his osananajimi Mayuri early on. Mayuri keeps insisting he act in a way convenient to her without ever actually getting around to telling him what she wants from him. That this is true both in his former life and in his new life is one point that annoyed me to no end.
Rina and Shina
The Otona sisters are descendants of foreigners from northern Europe (so no, the older sister did not dye her hair). Early on, the relationship between Shina and the protagonist is almost antagonistic, whereas Rina is so quiet she is not in the picture. Shina pretends at being a delinquent, but she fails utterly (even moreso because the protagonist sees through her easily), but she does, unfortunately, have a relationship with real delinquents.
Honestly, I can't dig deep into the heroines' personalities without ruining the experience for you all, so I'll stick to a vague description of what the path is like. I didn't bother with bad or normal endings on this path. In this path, the protagonist gets caught up in the twisted problems hidden beneath the surface of the seemingly normal sisters and is forced to grow far beyond his previous limits in order to deal with what he finds there. The actual events that occur in this path are... dark and depressing until things turn out all right. This path is probably too muddy for anyone interested in a simple romance, but I thought the ending made everything worth it, since I loved both heroines (despite their... issues).
Mayuri and Sakurako
Mayuri is the protagonist's overbearing osananajimi (who has the worst kind of tsundere thing going) and Sakurako is her best friend, a rich girl who obviously has certain 'tendencies'. Most of this path focuses on this particular love triangle's difficulties (Protagonist>Mayuri<Sakurako), and there are a lot of facepalm moments involved... mostly because all three have similar personalities hidden under different facades. Now, this path's impression, for me... was that it was good but exhausting.
I liked the solution they came to in the end, and I had to rofl at some of the weirder moments. However, the antagonist of the path is a seriously exhausting person... and this is the first time in the VN that I encountered her (vicariously). The first scene in which she appears left me needing to watch something fluffy, so I went and watched a few episodes of Cardcaptor Sakura to cleanse some of that atmosphere's effects on my mind.
This path is quite a bit less dramatic and dark than the previous path... and thus it lacks the sheer gravity born of comparison when you watch the ending. Still, it is a pretty good path, with an interesting concept.
Ai
Ai's path is the only monogamous path in the game, and Ai herself is a somewhat 'mysterious' heroine. Her role in the story is minimal... until you do her path. For various reasons, I recommend that anyone who plays this game do this path last, as it spoils all the other paths' secrets.
Since Ai's path draws on elements from all the other paths, many of the events and revelations were familiar to me. For obvious reasons, I left the Mizuki/Karin path to last, but in terms of experiencing the story as it is meant to be experienced, it is better to do this path last.
Ai appears randomly throughout the common route, often questioning the protagonist's ridiculous good luck (which does seem ridiculous toward the end of the common route, though the heroine routes reveal that his luck isn't as good as it seems), and she has a familiar role to many true heroines... the heroine it shouldn't be possible to get together with.
Now, I'm not questioning whether this trope works. I've played any number of VNs where this trope was used effectively to create truly exceptional stories. Indeed, this path is one of the single best uses of the trope I've ever seen. However, the ending feels waaay too convenient in comparison to the other paths. Yes, it was exhilarating to see the antagonist of the game getting what she deserved, but the way they went all mystic with the ending gave me a headache.
Mizuki and Karin
Yes, I played this path. No, I didn't play this path for the H (as one guy joked with me as I conversed with him on discord). Instead, the events in Ai's path made me curious enough to get over my inhibitions. Well, to be straight, this is a weird yandere SM path. Well, that is the relationship anyway... both heroines are a bit crazy/obsessive/possessive/etc.
This path was surprisingly good, despite the fact that I had to actually read the h-scenes to get to parts of the story (normally, I skip h-scenes, but the first few are vital to progression of the story, as are some later). I also found myself laughing through much of the latter parts of the path, despite the darkness of what was going on, because both Mizuki and Karen are so... out there. Their common sense and personalities are pretty abnormal by most standards, though they grew on me as the path reached its end.
The ending... well, like most of the paths in this game, the ending was good. I still like the twins' ending the best, though.
Conclusion
Well, this game was an unexpected treat. It doesn't really fall into any established genre beyond 'plotge', and the writer/writers (no names are listed) are not the most skilled out there (tons of typos, use of symbols in place of words, etc), but the story itself was pretty interesting. The only 'downside' to the whole thing is that you only ever really see the heroines truly happy near the end and in the epilogue.
Be warned, this is full of spoilers for one of my favorite VNs, Evolimit. Shiranui Yoshikazu is one of my favorite protagonists of all time, and I thought it would be good to just lay out why I loved the guy from beginning to end.
Shiranui's past
The Disaster (MAJOR Spoilers. Don't read this part unless you have finished at least Kazuna's ending)
Even entirely ignoring the events of the main story, Shiranui's story is one of quiet heroism, of sacrifice, and of love-born duty. A flawed hero who often acts the fool, while always stepping up when he is needed, without hesitation or regret. A pioneer in the best sense of the word (as opposed to the Manifest Destiny version) who acted out of duty and compassion to a girl who dreamed of Mars even as she never rose from her hospital bed. A man who, in the end, always acted for others as much as or moreso than for himself.
First, I should mention that this is a true sequel to the original Shugo no Tate and that it is based three years after the events at St Terejia Academy. The protagonist, Kisaragi Shuuji (who didn't get together with any of the girls from the original) is stuck in the job of the cross-dressing bodyguard, and he agrees to carry out this one last mission in exchange for the right to stop cross-dressing (lol).
I'm going to say right off the bat that Nozomi is the true/central heroine of this VN. Only in her path are all the aspects of the story fully revealed, and so I advise reading her path last. There are five heroines in this VN... Nozomi (a shy girl who tries not to stand out), Riri (a cross-dressing girl who is immensely popular with the student body), Mana (an air-headed ojousama), Mai (a poison-tongued maid), and Sonya (a Russian transfer student). Like the original, there are a lot of darker aspects hidden under the elegant surface of the school, and those who prefer to avoid serious drama should probably also avoid playing this. Similarly, there are some battle scenes - generally well-described - where the protagonist makes out pretty well.
Shuuji, the protagonist, is an experienced bodyguard and agent, and his combat skills show that. Unfortunately for him, his cross-dressing skills are even greater (lol). I should say that the protagonist is a lot more central to the plot than is customary in most of today's VNs (in other words, he isn't overwhelmed by the impact of the heroines), and the original in this duology was my first experience with the trap protagonist.
Overall, this game is pretty much what you would expect from a game in the same series as the original Shugo no Tate. There is a decent balance between action, drama, romance and slice-of-life without going overwhelmingly in any of the four directions, save at key points. The endings are generally satisfying enough, though people who have played the better AXL games will definitely recognize their style. The original was a kamige, and this was a fun one to play... but it pretty much requires you to have played the original to get the full effect, so it isn't a VN of the Month candidate.
Edit: I should note that some of the heroines have seriously dark pasts, and two of them are about as twisted up inside as the secret heroine from the original. However, like most heroines with twisted pasts, they tend to have some of the best deredere attitudes once they fall in love with the protag.
Really, the name of this game says it all... 'A Dragon Princess's Lazy Life'. This game centers around Takeru, a young martial artist NEET who will do anything to avoid real work, his osananajimi Suzuka, and the dragon he picked up off the street, Haru. I'll be honest, this game is pretty similar to Nekonin in length, if not in quality (it is slightly better), and I mostly enjoyed it because the double-boke of Takeru and Haru is so hilarious. Neither Takeru nor Haru has anything resembling common sense, and they are both perfect sponges, so most of the game has them quite naturally sponging off the people around them, Suzuka in particular.
The H in this game is plentiful for its length (four scenes in a three hour game), but they really aren't that important. Neither Haru nor Takeru has a serious bone in their body (all they think about is food).
I'll be honest when I say I can't call this a great game... but it was amusing. I'd hoped that this would be a new plotge by Whirlpool, but I guess I can live with a short comedy VN.
The Emirillia Chronicles by Michael Chatfield (incidentally my favorite litrpg author), the writer of the Ten Realms series, is one of the more fascinating ones I've come across. Unlike the Ten Realms, which is fairly unfocused due to Erik and Rugrat's generalized motivations based on their personal ethics, desires, and whims, Emirillia has a somewhat clearer goal for the characters.
In the series, humanity was defeated by an alien empire called the Jukal, but the Jukal almost lost everything in the process. Humanity's innovative and competitive nature made them devastating opponents, despite their lower tech base, so the Jukal decided to destroy them utterly... until one of them, a scientist named Lok'al, came up with the idea of tricking special-grown humans into killing more aggressive species for them.
What they came up with is the Trapped Mind Project, where 'cycles' of people grown in a simulation of Earth, believing they are 'logging in' to a VRMMO, are physically manifested on the planet and sent against aggressive species. Natives of Emirillia are also human variants, made by tweaking DNA to make them seem like the legendary races (dwarves, gnomes, elves, demons, angels, dragons, etc). By the time the protagonist, Austin Zane, 'logs in', over eight hundred years have passed and Emirillia has become something of a reality TV show for the Empire, used as the 'opiate of the masses'. Aggressive races that would have been exterminated previously are instead used as opponents for Players, and the POE (People of Emirillia) get caught in the crossfire, more often than not.
The protagonist is a brilliant engineer and scientist, a man who managed to exceed the parameters of the Earth simulation by creating a company that mined space and dumped the resources on Earth (something that normally didn't happen), and his desire to enter the 'game' was to build a cabin and get away from everything. Unfortunately for him, Bob (Lok'Al) has other plans, and Dave (as Austin comes to call himself) is too good-hearted and active by far to sit idly once he knows what is going on.
Generally speaking, much like the Ten Realms, this is a series for people who like to see the characters growing in power and helping others growing in power. It is also a series for those who like innovative and brilliant main characters (as the main ones are) and nasty characters getting their comeuppance. It is a rather large series (12 books), but I honestly hardly noticed the passing of time while I read it. This game has a significantly stronger western influence compared to the Ten Realms, which was more influenced by xianxia cultivation stories than anything else.
A few weeks ago, I picked up the Steam versions of Silverio Vendetta and Silverio Trinity. My reasons in the latter case were pretty self-explanatory... I wanted to read the append after story that Light so cavalierly and cruelly only included with the all-ages version previously only available on the Vita. Considering that the after story append serves as a bridge between Trinity and Ragnarok, as well as giving you what amounts to a four to five hour extension to the true route... I can say it was worth paying for, even though I essentially skipped through the entire game to unlock it.
There are two new append stories included. The aforementioned after-story is one, and the other is Ashley Horizon's origin story. For those who haven't read the main game, this will contain major spoilers.
The after-story append could have easily become the core of a fandisc for most games. It is extensive (about four-fifths to two-thirds as long as one of the heroine paths) and is action-packed, as well as being chock-full of content of the sort fanboys like me can't help but scream with glee about. (More spoilers below)
Say what you want about Light, but their tradition of extensive append stories and gaiden stories is one I think more plotge companies should consider imitating. Too bad they went down with Masada's delusions of glory.
Edit: I should note that there is currently no text hooks for the Steam versions of either game, so if you want to use a text-hooker, you'll have to either create an h-code for yourself or beg someone who already knows how. I had a huge headache from the usual Light 'I've got to gather all the rare kanji into a single sentence!' when I was done.
If nothing else, it is worth it to see this.
Since I'm still messing around with Cabbit's new game, I thought I'd drop a short review of a litrpg series I just finished reading.
Project Crysalis is based in a future where Earth has been abandoned (not because it is ruined anymore, but because the first non-Terrestrial human nation forced people to leave) in favor of living in colonies all across our solar system. The main political and scientific power in the first three books is Lunar, a nation built on the Moon that began when a private corporation morphed into its own nation-state and managed to completely defeat the Terrestrial nations when they tried to challenge their independence.
That said, it is still a solar system of many nations, with Lunar essentially being the mammoth whale in the room that everyone pretends not to be scared by.
The protagonist of the story, known for most of the story by his preferred game handle of Sagie, was one of many orphans that were presented with their first parents - in a virtual realm - at the age of twelve, when he was first allowed the use of a full immersion pod. While he experiences a brief period of blissful happiness (mostly due to how good of a fit he is with his new family), a horrid betrayal by someone he trusts ends up with him exiled to the in-game Hell, where he is subject to the kind of suffering (and the pain is real) that is really, really hard to picture, even with vivid descriptions from the author, John Gold.
As for how he handles it... well, Sagie isn't exactly a fragile sort. Rather than rerolling, like most would expect, his desire to return to his virtual (but realer than life) family drives him to climb his way up through a very horribly realistic Hell, inuring himself to suffering and gaining power along the way. For those with a weak stomach, most of the ways he gains power are pretty morbid. He uses blood rituals, necromancy, eats demons, and deliberately goes out of his way to strengthen his resistance to the various types of damage and pain Hell can dish out. Sagie, while he was extremely focused even before his fall into Hell, becomes focused to the point that it is almost painful to read his story at times.
The first four books basically focus on his adventures in Project Crysalis, as the virtual world essentially shits on him at every turn (Shield Hero had it easy in comparison). He tries to help people, he's seen as a monster. He tries to defend himself, he is seen as a monster. To be honest, I cried more than once for him, just because it was so godawful.
The last two books are... a different animal entirely. To be honest, in order to avoid spoiling it, I'll only say that those who came to love Sagie in the first three books will be frustrated for large portions of the second three. I know I was. That's not to say it wasn't interesting, it was immensely so. However, I often felt cheated, because I loved following that manic little demon while looking over his shoulder in fascination to see what crazy idea he will come up with next (and many of his ideas really are insane).
The last two books are full of conspiracy, horror, and self-sacrifice on a grand scale. Even just taken on their own, they would be first-class books. There just isn't that much of Sagie there until the final entry, where you get to see him up to his usual craziness, albeit in a way that is quite different from before.
Overall, it is an excellent book series. It has its bumpy parts and can be frequently frustrating or emotionally painful to read, but for those willing to delve into it, it is completely worth it.
I took my first steps onto the road of the otaku in 1992, when I watched the poorly dubbed (all dubs were godawful back then) Record of Lodoss War Volume 1 OVA VCR tape. Now, I was already a heavy fantasy addict, having been introduced to the Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance in 1990, and my obsession was at its peak at the time. When I watched Record of Lodoss War, I saw the typical 'elven maiden with human hero' romance in a new way (incidentally, this is a pretty typical romantic theme in those days, less so nowadays). I also saw oddities that stood out as odd to me precisely because of the oddly black and white point of view enforced on one by the various D&D universes.
Of course, I was a chuunibyou brat by that time, already, so it should surprise no one that I got obsessed. It got ten times worse, however, when I encountered Chrono Trigger as it was played on my cousin's SNES. Chrono Trigger is still, to this day, one of the single best rpgs ever made. Looking back, considering all that has been done since then, it is almost TERRIFYING that someone was able to do what was done with Chrono Trigger with the limitations placed by using the SNES system. The story, the world, and the various layers of time were put together into such a subtly complex experience that, to this day, I've yet to see any other rpg manage it. Chrono Cross would manage to imitate some elements of this with its parallel world jumping, but Chrono Trigger's jumping around in time gave you impetus to explore how every aspect of the world could change based on how and when you did certain things. Rumors constantly abounded that there were secret endings (such as the infamous 'vampire Chrono' or 'Save Schala' fake rumors, which some believe led to the way the Chrono Cross storyline was handled), and people - such as me - would play the game repeatedly, using all the meager saves allowed by the cartridge limitations of the time, in hopes that they might trigger those endings or find a way to discover something new.
In all honesty, Chrono Trigger being the game that got me into jrpgs probably ruined me for life. It set my standards to a ridiculously high level on a subconscious plane, resulting in me comparing every single jrpg experience since then to it. Aesthetically, musically, and structurally, it was a true jrpg kamige. It was also the game that turned jrpgs into my second otaku obsession.
During the SNES-PS2 eras, I literally bought and played EVERY jrpg that came out. I still own them, in fact. I played most of the PS1 and SNES era games multiple times.
However, it was also in the PS2 era (often called the 'dawn of the mainstream jrpg') that jrpg quality began to fall off drastically. The kind of genius and artistic flair using minimal resources you saw in previous eras was lost entirely within a few years of the release of FFX (FFX being a good game that also turned VO from a curiosity to a mainstream 'thing'). Musical direction, a role differing from composition, where someone was assigned to decide the timing of using a musical score and which ones fit which dungeons, which story scenes, disappeared in the middle of the PS2 era, as VO was used to fill the gaps of emotionality. However, this also meant that the subtlety of previous eras was lost with a swiftness that left me bewildered at the time.
By the time the PS3 era came around, jrpgs were slowing down, due to what I now call 'flashy kusoge fatigue'. Oh, a few sub-genres, such as the Atelier series' alchemy obsessed SOL titles and the more action-based titles continued to be prolific, but what were called 'console-style rpgs' started to vanish. MMO elements were introduced into normal jrpgs, making progression and gameplay less interesting as a result (mostly because it seemed to have been done primarily to draw the WoW crowds into solo rpgs). Storytelling was dying a surprisingly swift death, as tedious gameplay elements (for loot and level-obsessed completionists) began to devour higher and higher proportions of each game's overall playtime.
There is a very good reason why people go back and play so-called 'retro' jrpgs so much. There simply aren't that many more recent jrpgs that have that kind of flair and subtle genius. I know for a fact that one of the best ways to get people addicted to jrpgs is still just to let them play Chrono Trigger.
Ironically, it was VNs that saved my soul. This was back in 2008, four years before I joined Fuwa. I was introduced to Tsukihime by a fellow anime fansubber, and, for the first time in over three years, I had something interesting enough (story-wise) that I was given a perspective on the nature of my growing irritation and fatigue with jrpgs in general. At the time, the JVN industry was still as vital and full of genius as the jrpg industry was in the PS1 era. Tsukihime and a few other major classics put out near the turn of the century had created the potential for a market of story-focused VNs that had allowed more and more creative people to get into the medium. Masada was releasing his latest version of Dies Irae, and there were literally hundreds of potentially interesting VNs for me to try.
Needless to say, I lost my mind almost as badly as when I first played Chrono Trigger. I must have blown four grand of my meager savings on VNs within the first year, and I didn't regret a penny of it. Yes, roughly two-thirds of what I bought was pure crap. However, the gems I discovered gave me a taste of the potential of the medium in a way that was horribly addictive. Moreover, after a few years of being starved of any decent new stories, even the worst VNs had something that I could find I liked about them.
In retrospect, I have an addictive personality. I get addicted to things easily, especially when they scratch my story bug. People have said to me, when it came to my jrpg obsession 'if you want a good story, why don't you read a book?', to which I usually gave them a blank stare and said 'I'm already reading good books. I just want stories in my games too.'
Interestingly enough, there were a few bursts of true creativity in jrpgs in the years since, like Tales of Berseria and Nier: Automata, but they partially stand out due to the sheer bleakness of the genre landscape. People praise Octopath Traveler and Dragon Quest XI with intensity, and they practically worship Bravely Default. However, I have been shocked at how low-quality the presentation of these stories has been. It's like an entire generation has gotten used to ineptness in presentation to the point where they can be charmed by backhanded efforts at retro-nostalgia. Octopath has all the grind of the old SaGa Frontier games with none of the charm, the best part of each of the paths being at the beginning. Dragon Quest XI retains the horribly grindy nature of Dragon Quest games without improving on the formula in any real way. Moreover, locking so much content into the post-game annoys the hell out of me (I prefer new game +, obviously).
JVNs have suffered their own decline, which is ironically due to the same demographics that inflated the medium in the first place (the dominance of the moe/charage lovers). VNs were always destined to be a niche medium, but the over-specialization of the industry has led to an inability to adapt to changing spending habits and demographics. Even if they wanted to regear for a new generation of consumers, most companies no longer have the access to the necessary talent to do so.
I'm fairly sure that jrpgs suffer from a similar lack. Yes, there are some excellent composers and graphic designers in the jrpg industry, as well as access to the solid voice-acting industry of Japan and the growing one here in the US. However, there is a severe lack of writers capable of bringing a story to life, and there is no point in a top-tier OST that has no one to properly coordinate its use. The very fact that something like Undertale could bury so much of the commercial rpg industry, in the eyes of rpg fans, says everything about how far the industry has fallen.
So what am I getting at? Not really anything, in truth. I just needed to blow off some steam. Thank you for reading.
I haven't decided which of these VNs I will play this month, but I thought I'd let yall in on my thought processes.
Basic Impressions (based off of previews, official pages, and Getchu pages)
Hamidashi Creative- This looks like a solid charage, just from the way they actually decided to handle the intros. https://vndb.org/v27449/chars?view=2S-7Nx23xHY#chars
1) No protagonist intro- Speaking from experience, when the protagonist doesn't even have a brief introduction on the official or Getchu sites, that usually means there is a good chance of a kusoge. This is because it usually signals the writers' intention to twist the protagonist's personality to fit the heroines in each path, rather than giving him an actual solid characterization.
2) The story summary actually describes something valid to the story, giving you at least an impression of what the game might be like- This might not seem that important, but games that avoid giving such impressions, focusing 90% on introducing the heroines only, are basically moe-whore-bait. Very few aren't kusoge in those cases, and the ones that aren't are because the writers were actually hiding a story behind the fluff they put up beforehand (a tactic that tends to have negative consequences, but still some companies do it).
3) The existence of an imouto heroine- Very few charage that don't have an imouto heroine or imouto support character are any good. I don't say this because I love imouto characters (though I am moderately fond of them), but rather because for some reason, imoutos as support characters tend to help characterize the protagonist and heroines both. For some reason, charage writers seem to have trouble making heroines feel real if there isn't a token imouto standing by in the wings.
4) One of the heroines is presented as being 'whimsical'- This might seem like a weird sign for me to mention, but if at least one of the heroines (preferably an older one) or support characters is a whimsical and influential individual, the game tends to be more amusing and/or interesting. This is because the whims of this character can break up the monotony that plagues the average SOL game in ways that keep the reader interested, even if it isn't their favorite genre.
Sakura no Kumo * Scarlet no Koi https://vndb.org/v26664
1) NOT based in the modern era- This in itself can make things interesting, depending on how it is handled. Generally speaking, the 'present-day SOL school setting' is the most abused and overused setting in all of JVNs and visual novels in general.
2) Possibly a mystery VN? To be honest, this isn't that much of a draw for me. However, sending a modern-day guy back to the Taishou era (twenty years previous to WWII, before the extremist fires of Imperial Japan reached their peak) sounds like an interesting premise (technically Hachimyoujin did something similar, but it isn't the same thing). As such, I will definitely play this eventually, even if it isn't picked for this month.
3) Protagonist is introduced in the official and Getchu pages AND he has a sprite- This really is important, because it shows how much, in the way of resources the makers of this game are putting into it. Most of the time, even if the best friend and support characters have sprites, the protagonist won't, mostly using a FP perspective as an excuse (and it is an excuse). That he doesn't have VA is a downer, but VAs for protags outside of chuunige are rare, at best.
Kagi o Kakushita Kago no Tori https://vndb.org/v25670
1) Cabbit game- All Cabbit games are weird. No, I'm not kidding. They can be SOL one moment, with mild-mannered heroines doing normal things, then turn creepy as all hell the next moment, depending on choices or the events of the story. Midori no Umi was creepy from the beginning, but their other games were a bit more up and down. You can never tell what a Cabbit game will be like just by looking at it, so I'm interested to see what they'll do to my brain this time.
2) Androphobic heroine- This might not seem like a positive element, but the act of slowly getting past the guard of an androphobic heroine can be extremely therapeutic for the reader. It is also often interesting (unless they go the dark nukige route) to watch. Of course, depending on how it is handled, this can destroy the game too, lol.
3) Murder Mystery- This isn't the first time I've played a Cabbit game with a murder mystery, and, considering how they handled it in the other games, it is probably going to surprise the hell out of me. That said, I've already guessed the two most likely perps, but I'm still interested to see if I'm right (cues in character descriptions).
Seishun Fragile is the latest of Purple Software's VNs. Purple Software is famous these days primarily for powerful nakige/borderline utsuge like Aoi Tori, Amatsutsumi, and Hapymaher. However, they also are responsible for Chrono Clock and Mirai Nostalgia which, while having an actual plot, are closer to charage than their more plot-centric brethren. This game is much closer to Mirai Nostalgia in style (based on a few comments inside the story, it is probably based some years after the latest point of Mirai Nostalgia, while utilizing the same world setting) than it is to the Hapymaher style, so the emotional impact is greatly reduced in comparison. However, it does have its high points.
This game focuses on Yugahara, a hot springs resort town where a young man named Shiki Yuuto lives in a mansion that used to be a bed and breakfast. Other than the fact that he is a magic-user, there is nothing really remarkable about him. He has a lot of standard-issue charage harem protagonist qualities, like being insanely dense about his osananajimi's deredere attitude and accepting his fake imouto maid's service with a blase attitude, but he is surrounded by a few stranger characters, such as his self-proclaimed magic teacher Liz and his stalker (yes, she is stalking him for real) Setsuna.
To be blunt, Setsuna is the main heroine of this game. The constant hints about a past (serious one) between Setsuna and Shiki, her very real stalking habits, and any number of cues will tip you off if you have been playing VNs as long as I have. She also has the type of heroine profile that has become typical of true/main heroines in recent Purple Soft games (though I can't reveal what it is without spoiling it for you).
Despite that, I went ahead and played another path first, though.
Liz
Of course I played the foreigner girl path first. Yes, a ditzy blonde with no sense of self-control is weirdly attractive to me, even after so long. The fact that she can use magic is just icing on the cake.
Liz's path was... uninspiring. To be honest, while it had some high moments (mostly comedic), I found the drama to be excessively derivative and disappointing for a Purple Soft game. Liz, despite her issues, has a rather straightforward personality, and the drama feels kind of forced because it requires a level of complexity that anyone who was reading the common route would have had difficulty reconciling with her characterization. While I liked the ending, it still felt like this path wasted my time, at least a little, despite my fondness for some of the more comedic moments.
Setsuna
Setsuna's path stands in direct contrast to Liz's. I will state this openly... Setsuna is yandere. Oh, she puts up a good face, but there is a ton of darkness hidden behind her joking manner and 'playful-seeming' stalking habits. To put it bluntly, Setsuna is more than a little dependent on Yuuto for her mental and emotional stability, and the reasons for it make absolute perfect sense after you get halfway through her path.
To be honest, the degree to which this path differs in quality to Liz's pretty much finalized my viewpoint on who the main heroine was, if I hadn't already got it from the common route's cues. This path has much better emotional buildup than Liz's, and the drama toward the end is actually pretty enjoyable to read, though it made me feel even more like a voyeur of people's pain more than any of the recent works I've encountered.
Toune
Toune is Yuuto's fake imouto/maid. She is originally from a family that served his since their arrival from Britain a century and a half previously, and she has seemingly devoted her life to feeding her 'dame-oniichan' and cleaning up after him.
Generally speaking, if you aren't in her path, Toune takes a supporting role, usually taking Yuuto down a few pegs when he looks to be getting full of himself. She has a cheerfully optimistic personality and a very strong sense of what she wants out of life, and she is a bit obsessed with resurrecting the B&B that the Shiki family used to run (out of their mansion).
Most of her path is a normal 'I always loved you but it was more important for me to be with you than be your lover' transition. To be honest, this isn't one of my favorite tropes, but it works out all right in this case. Toune's path gets pretty emotional toward the end, but it lacks the darkness that was so evident in Setsuna's path, giving it less impact over all (more evidence to my Setsuna is the main heroine hypothesis).
Hio
Hio is Yuuto's osananajimi, the younger sister of Hibiki, who runs the Sakuranomiya ryoukan (Japanese inn). From early childhood, the two families have had close relations, while being sort-of rivals (obviously, that ended when the B&B went under, lol). Hio is a rather obvious tsundere with a tendency to retaliate against Yuuto's ever-present density (think nuclear reactor shielding thick) with pro-wrestling moves. To everyone but Yuuto himself, her feelings are ridiculously obvious, and she is horrible at hiding them even in the best of times (even for a tsundere).
Ah... but about the path. 'Predictable' is the word I'd use for the romance portions. To be honest, if you have seen a tsundere osananajimi heroine get together with a dense protagonist often enough, you've probably seen a variation on this path. There is some serious drama, but the drama is even weaker than Liz's path. Hio is pretty adorable as a girlfriend, but again, that is fairly typical of tsundere heroines once they lose most of the tsun. Probably the best part of this path was the protagonist's firm belief that sexually harassing Hio doesn't count as sexual harassment (no basis in fact). Use of that particular running joke was spaced out just enough that it didn't get boring.
Yura Extra
Anyone who reads the common route probably likes Yura. Yura is an occult-obsessed yurufuwa girl who can generally be trusted to make the situation funnier. Honestly, other than Setsuna, she was my favorite female character in this game, so I had hopes that this would be an actual path...
... unfortunately, it was just a brief set of scenes with Yura and Hibiki, followed by an H-scene with each. To be honest, I was saddened, since I liked both characters. Maybe we'll see an actual path in a future fandisc? Especially considering that this game doesn't have an official true ending.
Conclusion
By charage standards, this would be a top-level game. By nakige standards, it is undeniably sub-par. To be honest, if this game had only had Setsuna's path or if there was more complexity to the other paths (maybe removing Hio's path, since it was the weakest), this game might be worthy of replaying in the future. However, as it is, this one is unlikely to drift to the top of my list anytime soon. Setsuna's emotional darkness and traumas made her path interesting, but the other paths feel like half-assed attempts at nakige paths (Toune's path was reasonably good at drawing at the emotions, but Liz and Hio's path didn't manage it).
I honestly normally wouldn't bother explaining why I choose not to play a given VN in a given month, but with Hooksoft games, given their rather high popularity, there is a real need for me to say something.
First, I don't like Hooksoft games. They are written well, are visually pretty, and generally have moe-stimulating heroines. However, they are also perfect examples of every reason I can find not to bother with the genre at times. The characters are cute, there is plenty of ichaicha and slice of life... and the protagonists, no matter their role, are always just 'normal guys'.
This game, in particular, managed to make me lose interest inside the prologue, where most VNs manage to catch my interest. The simple reason is that the protagonist's accomplishments have already occurred in the past, and all that is left is for him to literally pick one of the girls from his harem of the school's best beauties.
To me, this felt right off the bat like a cheap excuse to avoid relationship formation issues. Within the first thirty minutes, all of the girls have confessed their love to him, on one level or another, and he is put into the position of picking one of them.
I'm going to say this straight out... I loathe this pattern. If they'd gone through the student council election campaign in the prologue and hit this in the first or second chapter, I probably woold have been willing to forgive a lot more, but the decision to start in the middle of things was a seriously poor one in this case.
As such, I absolutely had to drop this one, as it kept putting me to sleep.
For most people who play VNs, taking a break is a normal thing. Even taking a hiatus of a few months or a year seems to be standard for many in our little community.
For ten years, for me, it wasn't.
My new addiction to litrpgs succeeded in breaking me of my compulsive VN-reading for the first time in a decade. While some might consider this a bad thing (and have told me so), others have said that it was a good one. Personally, as I've started playing Purple Soft's latest game, Seishun Fragile, I'm leaning more towards good than bad. Many things that had ceased to be joyful in recent years have regained their luster, such as cheap manzai humor, obvious moe, and general donkan harem protagonist antics.
I won't say I love that last part (ha, like that would happen), but I can say that my viewpoint on it is less... bitter and jaded than it was before. I've had a refresh, and
I don't regret it, despite how much it built up my backlog with those few games I bought anyway despite not starting any. One thing I find interesting is that I find it easier to find good stopping points than before, instead of just forging on ahead for a straight twelve hours and then flopping into bed. I no longer stare at the screen for entire days while downing endless snacks and bottled water.
I also didn't want to get rusty on my Japanese, which is why I started up a new VN today. It was then that I realized that I no longer felt the pressure that still remained, even after I tossed aside VN of the Month. To me, this was an amazing sensation, harking back to my third year playing VNs, when my love of the medium was at its most fanatical.
I've advised many people to take a step back and rest from VNs when they have started to lose their way, but this was the first time I took my own advice... and it worked (even if it was by accident).
I have only recently 'discovered' the litrpg genre (for those unfamiliar with this, the most similar examples I can give are Overlord, SAO, and Log Horizon) of novels. As such, I'm not going to presume to review things like stat systems and how the stories 'played'. It would be ridiculous for me to do so (since I'm not a min-max freak who loves all that math), and it would also be boring as hell to listen to here, lol. I will note some classic tropes: Protagonists who jump to wrong conclusions about the 'systems', meaninglessly horrific tribulations that seem tailor-made to force the protagonist to grow, a higher tendency toward gamer brain (dual-thinking amorality, a tendency to consider people not from Earth to be soulless NPCs, etc), and min-maxing and/or crafting obsessed protagonists.
The Chaos Seeds
In the Chaos Seeds, a dark force plotting on a Jupiter-sized world called the Land decides to summon humans from Earth using a video game, whereupon he believes the Chaotic nature of the humans of Earth (who all have a bit of Chaos in their souls) will destroy the seals holding his kind. Richter, the protagonist, is one of the first such individuals. Richter is a clever man who was also a heavy gamer on Earth, and his reaction to be ripped from his homeworld is oddly muted (at first). Rather, he quickly throws himself into adapting to his new world, making the best of it, mostly forgetting Earth as irrelevant. This story has a lot of fighting, crafting, and town-building for those interested in those things. I will also say that it doesn't make one of the greater mistakes some litrpgs make, such as making brain-shots non-fatal if the individual has high hp, lol.
Singularity Online
To be honest, this is one of my favorites (a relatively recent one). Essentially, the protagonist, a guy named Jeff from a future that seems just one step removed from the horrors of Giga's Baldr series, is a programmer involved with the company making a VRMMO named Singularity Online. The setting of the game is an interesting combo of Lord of the Rings and Wheel of Time setups, with corrupted races, a powerful and unkillable ultimate evil, and enclaves of the Light surrounded by Blight and Darkness. Jeff, who is a genius programmer and scientist, through the game's system, manages to gain the class of Sorcerer, which allows him to make his own spells (yes, very D&D), though this requires imagination, inspiration, will, and passion to succeed. Jeff is a pretty all-around awesome guy, in that he has a powerful sense of self, a strong sense of compassion, and a knack for figuring out stuff he wasn't supposed to. Reading his story as he works is one of the better litrpg experiences out there, at least so far.
The Silver Fox and Western Hero
I'll be honest. This is actually more Wuxia than litrpg, with the only litrpg element being the protagonist's ability to look at his progression in cultivation. The protagonist of this story suffers from racism constantly throughout the story, with only rare individuals considering him on a personal level instead of a racial level. Not only this, he is constantly forced to weather assaults from all fronts in his path toward ascendance, with allies suffering for getting involved with him and those he loves constantly under the most horrific of threats. He is an insanely stubborn individual, determined to find his own path, forever denying the easy way. While this series can be immensely stressful, it is also very good, so far.
Ten Realms
This series begins with the Two Week Curse, which is both the name of the first book and the name of a phenomena where people from Earth spontaneously begin displaying semi-magical abilities before suddenly disappearing two weeks later. Erik and Rugrat are mercenaries, playing bodyguard to people from a parasite corporation in a war-torn African nation (unnamed), until they get ambushed (due to their client being a total moron) and Erik loses his legs and gets the Two Week Curse. They immediately begin to prepare, with Erik using his newfound mana to create a healing spell that lets him regrow his legs and Rugrat building a capsule full of guns and supplies to take with them. They are then taken to the new world, the Ten Realms, a game-like world with a mix of traditional leveling and cultivation. Most of the series, so far, has Erik and Rugrat forging a path of progression while dragging their increasing (rapidly) number of followers in their wake. Erik is the one who constantly pushes the limits of what is possible, while Rugrat tends to rest a little more on his natural talent than his friend, while also supporting him in various ways. One of the most important things of this series is the soldiers' bond between Erik and Rugrat, that of two men who trust each other utterly, knowing both their own abilities and those of their partner. It adds a rather unusual flavor to the usual litrpg/Wuxia combo.
Conclusion
These are the series that have left the best impression on me over the last three months. While I've read almost forty series and ninety books, these are the ones that stood out the most.
Needless to say, when I hit my latest speed bump in the form of another partial burnout on VNs, I was left wondering what to do with all that free time. For about forty hours of that time, it was Ghost of Tsushima, but when that was over, I accidentally picked up my first litrpg on Kindle Unlimited... and oh god, I almost wish I hadn't.
The problem, when I analyze it in retrospect, is that my fondness for anime like SAO, Log Horizon, and Overlord had primed me perfectly, my addictive personality instantly latching onto the familiar elements to draw me in beyond retrieval. While roughly two-thirds of the books I downloaded weren't worth reading, the ones that were left me unable to stop (The Chaos Seeds, in particular).
I'm pretty sure anyone who paid attention during the peak of my VN of the Month years can probably guess that I have a tendency to throw myself into my addictions rather than trying to restrain myself. In this case, it was made worse by the fact that I'd been 'starved' of anything worth my attention (new) for months on end, so when my first litrpg dug its claws into my stimulus-starved brain, I became incapable of stopping.
In fact, I haven't really stopped even now, despite 70 different books completed from over a dozen authors in just under forty days. I even ignored last month's releases, despite Phantom Trigger's latest episode having come out. I don't even remember the VN I was playing at the time anymore, because I've consumed so much content of late between long bouts of stress working with even more stressed out clients who want even more for less than usual.
I'm mostly writing this post to laugh at myself, since I have absolutely no intention whatsoever of ceasing to indulge in reading the near-endless list of litrpgs available for free with my KU subscription...
Kami-sama no You na Kimi e is the latest game by Cube, and it is based in a near-future setting where AIs run just about every aspect of society. In this society, people have gotten past that raw terror of AI horror stories and have pretty much accepted the the ease and luxury of having AI run most of the important things that make civilization possible.
At the beginning of the story, the protagonist, Kaito, is hacking into Central AI, the AI based on the Moon that runs most of the world's infrastructure. Triumphantly, he succeeds, essentially gaining control over the AI that rules the world... and the one thing he asks for before getting out of the system is for it to find his ideal girlfriend, which the system then says doesn't exist. Kaito, quite naturally, is a bit down after this, but he goes to sleep more or less normally... only to answer the door in the morning to find his ideal girl standing outside.
Quite naturally, this ideal girl is Tsukuyomi, the game's flagship heroine and the embodiment of Central AI in girl form. As requested, she is already completely deredere over him, and a great deal of the common route has him running from her excessively sexual approaches. In the days after this, like dominoes falling in a row, he meets a number of attractive heroines, and he shows off the usual donkan protagonist routine almost constantly when it matters.
Now, just from this, you'd think this was your standard charage... but in actuality, it is a lot closer to a plotge in structure. The heroines have real issues, the protagonist doesn't flake out or become less interesting as you proceed, and the paths actually have solid stories that involve most of the game's cast of characters. For someone who wants an SOL plotge with some decent drama in a futuristic setting, this game is pure crack.
Tsukuyomi
I probably should have left her for last, but I played Tsukuyomi's path first. Tsukuyomi is the game's obvious main heroine, the girl who is most prominent on the package and in the advertising, and in general is the one most central in the common route. In most cases, I don't like 'no common sense' heroines, but Tsukuyomi manages to pull it off without it feeling excessively contrived, which is actually a feat, considering she is a robot heroine. It is helped along by the fact that Kaito generally accepts that Tsukuyomi is what she is, has no illusions about her nature, and is perfectly fine with her being a different existence from himself.
Her story is your usual deredere heroine romance at first, but it quickly goes dramatic about midway through, for reasons that should be fairly obvious. While the templated turn of events in this path is not revolutionary, it is well-executed and interesting. There is even a truly surprising and emotional moment near the end that had me crying. That, in itself, makes this path a success. My only real complaint is that this path lacked an epilogue to tie off the story.
Rein
Rein is the cold-hearted student council president, an honor student with a black heart and an overabundance of pride. Her path branches off from Tsukuyomi's path and is a great deal weaker, at least in my opinion. To be honest, this path was kind of 'meh' for me, since it never revealed anything important about the details of what was going on with Rein beyond the basics that were revealed in Tsukuyomi's path, which is a huge weakness in a plotge or a charage. While the protagonist remains a cool and interesting character, the failures of this path are really glaring.
Worse, the same as Tsukuyomi's path, there is no real epilogue, meaning you don't get to find out what happened after.
Rana
Rana... Rana is the heroine on the cover dressed like Sherlock Holmes, a cosplay uniform she wears nearly constantly. As it indicates, she is a private detective and extremely intelligent... but also fairly perverted (she has a thing for Kaito's butt). Her path... let's just say it is surprising and diverges widely from the events in Tsukuyomi's path (I didn't really like how Tsukuyomi almost became a non-entity in her path, but meh...). This path... is a bit depressing, to be honest. Oh, if you choose the Rana-only good ending, it is actually pretty good and heart-warming at the end, but the process you go through to reach that point is pretty hard if you came to like Rana.
Sophia/Sophia & Rana
At first glance, Sophia seems like your standard 'yurufuwa oneesan', but she is actually a fairly intelligent adult (yes, she is the adult heroine in this game). She is Rana's older sister and one of those involved in developing the S-CHIP, an AI chip designed to be implanted into the human brain as an aid to those who have brain diseases. Sophia's 'path' diverges from Rana's during the darkest period of Rana's path, and... to be honest, while it is easy to understand why it happens, this path is fairly unusual/stand out for a modern VN for reasons I'm not going to spell out here.
Anyway, toward the end of Sophia's path, you have to decide whether you want the protagonist to be with just Sophia or with both Sophia and Rana... of course, after a seriously awkward set of events. Generally, I recommend the Sophia and Rana choice... the guilt-trip you get from choosing just Sophia is pretty awful.
Kirika
Kirika is the protagonist's fellow loner, a girl who accuses him of stalking her because they keep meeting whenever they are trying to find places to be alone. Her secret comes out relatively early in the common route, but I'll keep it quiet since it is funnier if you don't know in advance. Her path actually begins very much like a charage path. It is only toward the end where it becomes as deadly serious as the other paths above. Indeed, in some ways it is the grimmest and most shocking of the paths, even compared to the depressing aspects of Rana's path. It is also the path where the other heroines showed the least amount of relevance, a fact that I have mixed feelings about, considering how powerful the characters are.
Similar to most of the paths above, this path's greatest weakness is the fact that while it does have a conclusion, it doesn't have an epilogue or after-story to tie off the last few loose ends. For that reason, I'm pretty sure they are planning a fandisc, as I can't see them leaving things as is.
Airi
Airi has the dubious honor of having the single weakest path in the game. She is a net idol that the protagonist meets in the course of interacting with Kirika, and her main focus in life is on her work, despite being the youngest heroine. Unfortunately, she is also the least unusual personality in the group, meaning that her character is by far the weakest... and her path follows suit. Where the other paths had somewhat grandiose episodes that showed off the darkest aspects of an over-connected society, Airi's path's drama feels like an extension of internet trolling, so I had trouble getting into it.
Conclusion
A good game with a solid setting and characters, this is probably a good choice for those who want a decent near-future sci-fi plotge who have already played Komorebi no Nostalgica and Missing X-Link. Tsukuyomi is an above-average AI heroine, though she falls short of the genius of Cinema and Fluorite from Komorebi or the raw emotions experienced with the AIs in Missing X-Link. It's greatest flaw is how it handles the endings, a common flaw in modern VNs that seems to be born of the bad habits of the fandisc-loving charage companies. It's greatest strength lies in the way it manages to keep the protagonist, the heroines, and the story interesting while balancing it with enough SOL to make them feel real in the first place.
*pukes a river of sugar*
*wipes his mouth clean*
Ok, I'm better. This game is very much what you would expect if you came in knowing nothing of Lump of Sugar's past works and only knew the name of the company itself. It is sugary sweet, adorable, and generally interminable to someone who likes a nice balance between the cuteness and ichaicha and other aspects of a VN.
That's not to say it doesn't have good points... the common route is pretty funny, if you are a cat lover, and I can honestly say the heroines are attractive, though not all are my type. I will also be frank that I only played one path (and it was long), Tsuki's path. I only played one because, by the time the path was over, I was dealing with ichaicha overdose symptoms (including a headache and a desperate urge to go to sleep).
Understand, I could see from the beginning what type of game this would be, but mimikko girls are my primary fetish, so there was no way I wouldn't at least try to play it. If it had merely been a standard charage with a standard-length route and a standard level of ichaicha, I probably would have had a better end impression. Instead I got a game that had me plowing through literally hours worth of ichaicha in the heroine path before the atmosphere changed and there was some nakige drama that I couldn't fully enjoy because of how tired I was.
If you want a game with an excessively fluffy atmosphere and a large amount of ichaicha scenes, this is a good choice. Otherwise, there are better games out there, lol.
Yes, it is another Takaya Aya game... to be specific, his joint work with Morisaki Ryouto (known for his sci-fi bent and work with Applique). This work is also considered to be one of his penultimate masterpieces, which is ironic, since the company he created got bought out almost immediately after this game was released, hahaha.
Anyway, Komorebi no Nostalgica was one of two contenders for my VN of the Year 2013 and lost out to Hapymaher. However, given how Hapymaher has proven somewhat difficult to replay (the Christmas arc puts me to sleep every time), and the way I find new things in Komorebi every time I replay it, I'm going to go ahead and say that that decision was probably a mistake, lol. Komorebi is a meticulously-written game, with so much attention to detail on the part of Takaya and Morisaki that it is literally impossible to pick up everything on one playthrough... and more importantly, it has a strangely powerful emotional impact that can't help but make you reflective on the issues it brings up.
The setting of Komorebi no Nostalgica is based in the twenty-fifth century, long after the changing climate sank wide swathes of the world's land beneath the oceans and fifty years after a humanoid AI rebellion that resulted in what amounts to a negotiated draw (mostly because the AIs didn't want to wipe out humanity). The AIs in question are self-aware machines that possess human looks and emulate human emotions using a quantum processor and a unique set of self-developing algorithms. They are called the Metosera and live alongside humans in a larger society that coexists with human society while they dwell in 'Arks', large towers in the major cities that take on the maintenance and 'procreation' of their race. The government is now a world government, mostly because the nations that existed before the war were utterly dependent on Humanoids for most forms of manufacturing and manual labor and couldn't continue to exist on their own.
This VN focuses on a group of friends that discover an extremely high-spec pre-war Humanoid hidden in the walls of their school building, and the discoveries they make as they rebuild Cinema (the Humanoid in question) and learn from her.
Cinema is not a heroine, but she is undeniably the centerpiece of the story. The mysterious 'Store Manager' that customized her (to the extreme) and his intentions become central issues in several paths, and her unique aspects come into play in others. However, the universal aspect is that her presence sparks a number of issues that were dormant to rise to the surface during the course of the paths.
Main Characters
Shimazu Shouta is the protagonist, a guy who loves retro machines and is great at repairing old hardware and jury-rigging solutions to mechanical problems. By default, he is the homemaker of the family, since the two women living with him (his stepmother Kagari and his adoptive sister Akira) are both programming geniuses incapable of taking care of themselves. What stands out in regards to his character is his adaptability and his acceptance of the way the world is. This is important because it is what makes him an excellent partner for Fluorite in her path and gives the perfect perspective on Cinema.
Shimazu Akira is Shouta's adoptive little sister, a natural-born hacker with a neural implant and way too much talent for her own good. Unfortunately, her impulsiveness and intolerance of 'inelegant' solutions to programming problems lead to constant trouble, since she has no impulse control. She is utterly dependent on her brother, to the same extent as her mother, without the wisdom of years to stabilize her.
Fluorite Alvega is a Metosera who has spent most of her formative years with the 'group of friends', making her somewhat unusual for her kind, who usually end up spending more time with their own than with humans. While she has the Metosera tendency to think in straight lines and constantly analyze the world around her, she is more self-reflective and tolerant of the flaws and foibles of humans than many, who tend to be overly straight-laced.
Kaja Fruhling is the daughter of two of Kagari's (Shouta's stepmother's) coworkers and was born in Germany. She is an easygoing girl who shares Shouta's love of motorcycles and scuba diving, and she is generally easy to get along with. While has some tomboyish aspects, she is surprisingly perceptive and compassionate beneath the surface. She is an all-around athlete who often gets recruited by the athletic clubs for help, but she isn't interested in joining any of them permanently.
Sawatari Itsuki is a sharp-tongued young woman who is the most reserved and bookish in a group that is full of straightforward people. Of the group, she is the most 'balanced' in terms of talent, being a general prodigy (as opposed to one-point monsters like Seijuurou/male-Momoka, Flow/humanoid AI, or Akira/genius hacker). She is bookish and tends to get put in positions of responsibility, but this is mostly because she has a surprisingly forceful personality that is at odds with her appearance. She is also feared because of her tendency to wield 'correctness' as a weapon while being perfectly willing to ignore it if it is inconvenient to her personally.
Cinema is the Humanoid uncovered in the school's secret room. Last active the year the Two Years War began, she was designed by someone even Akira describes as a 'genius'. She displays reactions that can only be described as 'emotional' and 'alive' in a fashion even the Metosera have difficulty managing, and certain aspects of her design indicate an extremely unusual design philosophy. However, she is undeniably too low-spec to gain sentience in the same way the Metosera did... so the question is just how is it that she leaves such a non-mechanical impression on those who see her...?
Samon Seijuurou is the last member of the 'group of friends', a muscleheaded martial artist who is infamous for knocking the classroom door off its rails as he runs in just before the bell. At one point in the past, he wanted to become the strongest fighter in the city and went around picking fights with delinquents from other schools, but he eventually ran out of people to challenge. He is very simple-minded and straightforward and disinclined to question things. He has a good heart, but his inability to understand subtlety often trips him up (not to mention that he is an idiot and an open pervert).
Important Side Characters
Shimazu Kagari- Akira's birth mother and Shouta's stepmother. A genius programmer who is utterly incapable of taking care of herself (a quality her daughter shares). She has a very childlike manner and tastes, but she is in actuality very intelligent and mature (if in an odd way) beneath that appearance. Her attitude toward parenting is very much a 'wait and see while taking everything in' approach, and this has resulted in her daughter becoming a hacking wild child (who is essentially good natured) whereas Shouta became a mature homemaker despite his natural tendencies.
Samon Munenori Seijuurou's grandfather and the master of the dojo that Seijuurou, Shouta, and Kaya attend. He is a veteran of the Two Years War and one of the few veterans who managed to get past his resentment of what amounts to humanity's defeat by their creations (it was only a draw because the Metosera avoided killing humans directly, though some died due to complications later or because they helped the Metosera).
Celes is Fluorite's 'mother' and the Elder of the New Capital's Ark, the home of the city's/region's Metosera. She is a veteran of the Two Years War and one of the first Metosera to obtain sentience. She has a gentle manner and is deeply compassionate, and her attitude toward Fluorite and her friends resembles that of a gentle grandmother, as she merely laughs off the antics and trouble they got into in the Ark as kids. She sees Fluorite's oddities, born of her mixed socialization, as a source of hope for the future of her race, and she treasures the relationships that her 'daughter' has formed.
Fluorite Path
If you want the joy of discovering the details of the setting for yourself, do not open the spoiler box. I'm essentially getting extremely nerdy in the paragraphs in the spoiler box, so if you want my usual completely spoiler-free commentary, just ignore it. I considered just leaving it in the open, but I concluded that some people would not want to be spoiled about the setting to this degree.
As I say above in the spoiler box, Flow has a rather stunning gap-moe thing going in her route, with her normally calm, almost flat manner showing serious cracks when she is around Shouta (hints of this can be seen in her reactions to Cinema in the common route as well). The early part of this route is very telling about both Flow personally and the Metosera as a whole, revealing a great deal about how they think (analyzed partially by Shouta himself, who has spent most of his life around Flow as a friend). The latter half is fairly action-focused, with Cinema's issues taking center stage (really, in all the paths this happens), and it is very strongly focused on the legacy of the Two Years War. The climax of the path would have anyone in tears, and I honestly found my heart breaking each of the four times I played this game and this path in particular. The box below has a very general setting spoiler involved with this path.
Itsuki Path
First I'll say that the romance in this path is fairly conventional. Itsuki and Shouta have known one another for a long time, and they already care about one another, so there is a lot less of a hurdle for Shouta in getting together with her than with Flow, where he had a moral dilemma born of him worrying about how he affected Flow. As such, I won't comment on the romance any further, since it is little more than a device to help the story along in this path.
There is an excellent fight scene (by non-chuunige standards) toward the end of this path, and that is something to look forward to for action fans. However, the true spotlight of this path is
Yep, that was me geeking out again.
Essentially, this path contrasts the Metosera's evolution with Cinema's once again. This is one of the primary themes of the game, and Itsuki's path provides another point to build things up for the reader.
Also, the epilogue to this path is as good as Flow's if in a different way.
Kaja Path
One thing that is interesting about replaying VNs is that you realize the reasons why you forget things and remember others. All of the heroines in Komorebi no Nostalgica are extremely close to the protagonist, and all the ones other than Akira can be considered 'osananajimi' (childhood friend) characters. However, Kaja fits the most perfectly into the osananajimi template, especially in the romantic elements of her path.
Kaja's role with Shouta is as the 'friend he doesn't really see as a woman', a trope that gets pulled out a bit too often in VNs for my taste (it isn't so bad when they aren't heroines, but when they are heroines, the romance is usually wince-worthy at best). Because of this, it is no surprise that I avoided this path on future playthroughs, despite the insights it provides on Cinema. I should note that this path is one of those where there is a massive wall of text between the actual love confession and them becoming lovers (meaning the 'worrying about this and that' period is that long).
Unlike the previous two paths, this path doesn't have a major action scene, though it does have some drama. While this is a much better path than charage equivalents of the same trope, I still hate that trope, lol. The epilogue, like the previous two, is a 'several years later, after graduation' epilogue, which is always nice, since it is great to know how things turn out for the characters central to the path.
Akira Path
If Komorebi was based on D&D rules, Akira would have an intelligence stat of 40 and a wisdom stat of 5. To be blunt, Akira is something of a spoiled brat whose talent, mother's social position, and Shouta's tendency to spoil her have shielded her from most of the sticks and stones that would have hit someone like her. Her hacking ability is extremely high (helped by her uncontrollable curiosity and disinterest in restraining herself), but she tends to outright forget common sense in any number of situations.
One thing that stands out about the romantic part of this path (other than Shouta over-thinking things, as usual) is Kagari is a great mom, despite being incapable of cooking, cleaning, or doing the laundry (Shouta does all these things, lol). Her tendency to see through Shouta and the others is present in all the paths, but it is particularly in the open in this one.
Let's just say that this path has less of a philosophical bent than Flow's or Itsuki's and less of a romance/SOL focused bent than Kaja's. This path's drama is mostly focused around the search for 'Tenchou's' identity and fate after he concealed Cinema. While there is some action, the actual stakes involved are far less than in Flow or Itsuki's path.
Last Episode
Last Episode is a chapter unlocked by completing all four heroine paths. It is very revealing about how and why 'Tenchou' vanished from the public world, and it also provides a conclusion to the story as a whole. Certain aspects of this chapter change based on which heroine you choose at the very first part of the chapter, as this determines which heroine is your canon heroine, lol. Of course, I always choose Flow... if there is a choice between human and non-human, I will always choose non-human.
There are some seriously teary moments in this episode... particularly
To be blunt, this chapter is really about Cinema and the final purpose for which she was created. If you, like me, have come to love Cinema by this point, you will probably break down in happy tears.
Extra
There really isn't anything to the extra chapter (accessed using the usual Takaya Aya code nkmr). It's basically a short joke skit written for people who have finished at least one of the paths.
Conclusion
A few stylistic comments first. Each chapter of this game has an episodic preview that hints at a key aspect of the next chapter. It is done using the second opening song and credits, and I thought it was worth noting, because while it hints at what comes next, it does so without spoiling things. It is also notable that the second opening song is just as beautiful as the first one (in retrospect, the music in Komorebi is top-tier, but Hapymaher's god-tier BGMs are so beyond the pale that comparing them at the time couldn't help but be a win for Purple Soft's flagship game).
Komorebi no Nostalgica is one of a very small number of VNs that is 'complete' in every conceivable way. For better or worse, most VNs leave an opening for fandiscs, sequels, or dlc. However, Komorebi ties off all the loose ends and provides the answers any sane reader having experienced this story would want to know. Moreover, it does so in a manner that is not detrimental to any of the four heroines or their paths, which is, in itself, an incredibly unusual thing (essentially providing a true path that applies to all the heroines).
Komorebi no Nostalgica also touches on a wide range of philosophical and ethical topics, in particular relating to AI and information technology in general. That this was done without compromising the emotional aspects of the story at all is a tribute to the genius of the writers.
Final Comments
If I have any advice for someone playing this game, is that the magic (not the devil) is in the details. This is a game that rewards people who actually take the time to think about or look up things they don't quite understand from what they are reading, and both Takaya and Morisaki rather obviously created this as a work of love and art, not just business. There is food for both the intellect and the heart in almost every (non-H) scene, and the characters, especially the main ones, are all well-written and brought to life well in the course of the story, which is in and of itself both touching and food for thought.
This is a list of my favorite artificial (non-magical) heroines. The reason I thought this up was because I am currently replaying Komorebi no Nostalgica, which is pretty much the top for an AI-focused VN.
Emmy from Akabanzu https://vndb.org/c42670
Akabanzu itself is an unusual game in that it is a charage focused on a protagonist being forcibly rehabilitated from game addiction. The AI in this game, Emmy, focuses on a support role, which makes for a surprisingly interesting (and comedic) story. She isn't one of my absolute favorites, but failing to note her would leave the ignorant with no way to know such a VN existed.
Tsukuyomi from Kamikimi https://vndb.org/c85636
Tsukuyomi is a pretty interesting individual AI. Designed from the beginning to answer the protagonist's desires, she is somewhat... excessively enthusiastic about what she considers to be her duties. However, her story as a heroine and a side-character in the other routes is powerful, so I honestly consider her a good choice for a robot waifu.
Himefuuro from Missing X-link https://vndb.org/c78927
Himefuuro is an AI designed to form empathic links with her master, one of two projects (the other conflict-oriented). I'll be straight and say she is a lot like a cross between an older sister who spoils her younger brother rotten, a psychological therapist, and a maid. Her role is rather unusual while at the same time being the epitome of what a young male with a scarred psyche would seek from an empathic AI.
Accela from Reminiscence https://vndb.org/c12819
In the underground arcology that Reminiscence is based in, robots like Accela serve a number of service roles, and they have evolved a great deal since the age of Akagoei (which was centuries before). However, Accela is unusual in that her limiters (especially on emotional reactions) have been removed. She is the glue that keeps Aki and Hidetaka from breaking into pieces, a dear friend to Aki, and the holder of an emotional debt he won't even allow himself to speak of to Hidetaka.
Fluorite Alvega of Komorebi no Nostalgica https://vndb.org/c11680
A member of a race of self-aware and independent AIs in the twenty-fifth century, she is straight-out a member of the 'group of friends' in the game, having grown up with them quite literally. She is still in the process of developing emotionally (a process that never really ends, apparently), and her mechanical origins are obvious by her choice of wording and mannerisms. However, she does display emotion (if subtly) and cares about her friends (and Shouta in particular) greatly. As the member of a publicly-acknowledged machine race with equal rights to humans, she is unique on this list.
Neueblau T MILLA of Re:Birth Colony https://vndb.org/c44998
An AI 'child' born of the genius of a single scientist and grown inside a partially biological body, she is unusual on this list that while her origins are entirely artificial, she is nonetheless partially biological. She is an agent and diplomat for another arcology, and she acts as such, partly out of her duty to search out and handle dangers born of pre-Disaster projects. As a lover, there is little difference between her and the average human, save that she can switch bodies at need. Her older sister is married to the protagonist of Fake Azure Arcology in the story's canon and is also an AI.
Misora of Shiawase Kazoku-bu https://vndb.org/c23258
What can I say about Misora? Think 'standard-issue anime robot heroine' and you won't be far off. The game itself is more notable than her, similar to Akabanzu.
Ripple of Aekanaru Sekai no Owari ni https://vndb.org/c58825
The mischievous AI main character and main heroine of the sci-fi VN Aekanaru Sekai no Owari ni. I could say a lot about her, but not without spoiling the game. The game gets mixed reviews from those who like this kind of thing (mostly because of its age), but Ripple is a pretty good AI heroine, if one that is less 'convenient' as a heroine than most (you'll understand what I mean if you play the game).
There are other AI heroines out there (many of whom I have probably forgotten or don't consider to be heroines) but these are the ones that came to mind when I asked myself about AI heroines from games I could feel safe recommending.
To be honest, I had great hopes for this game, based on the fact that Agobarrier wrote up the drafts for the story before his unfortunate passing. I thought I'd see the peculiar humor, the deredere-MAX heroines, and the wacky antics that I associated with the original game. I expected running jokes (frequently used as accents to various scenes), and I hoped that Navel would finally regain some of its original 'magic'.
Unfortunately, it seems that those hopes are a bit too high. Perhaps it was inevitable... the team that did this game was partly made up of the writers that have been doing the Da Capo games, which should have told me they would have a less amusing approach to things (though it saddened me that Ou Jackson didn't manage to force things into his style more often...). The loss of Agobarrier's unique style is sadly all-too-clear in this game, as, while it does channel some parts of the original, the way the most important scenes is handled is far more fumble-fingered and lacking in flare, which is just sad.
That said, there were some parts where the writing quality suddenly jumped up massively, such as in any scene where Primula was involved (for some reason). To be honest, it was that very jump in quality that illuminated just how poorly some parts of the game - in particular the prologue and large swathes of the common route - are handled.
What is truly sad is what they got perfectly right... the characterization of side characters. Primula, despite being, and all the side characters are really well-done. So it kind of amazed me that the heroines were so sloppily done. There is far more effective character development done in the common route for the side characters than the heroines (other than Lims, who has good characterization for the most part) considering their roles, which struck me as a horrible approach. Rishia in particular is a horribly awkward character from the very beginning, and while some of that comes from her character concept, more of it comes from everything from her VA to her sprite poses... not to mention an odd lack of face time in the common route. Her voice actor is a familiar and excellent one, so I can only imagine that it was the director that screwed things up...
To clarify, the heroines that had the strongest characterization in the common route go in this order Lims>Kohaku>Kirara (I hate Kirara anyway though)>Rishia>Nelia. I say this because Kohaku gets more face time due to living with Raito and Kirara's characterization is so blatantly obvious that it can't help but be effective, if annoying. Nelia has the least amount of face time in the common route (even if you pick her 'side' of things in the various choices) than the other heroines, and Rishia suffers from her initial introduction.
What is canon?
Without spoiling the important stuff:
1. It is 100 years since the end of Shuffle.
2. A great disaster happened sixty years in the past.
3. Primula is apparently an eterna-loli and is still alive and well.
4. The current King of the Gods is the son of Shia's much younger (born after Shuffle) brother.
5. All characters other than Primula from the original have long-since passed away.
7. At least some of the events in each path actually occurred.
8. Rishia was very close to her great-aunt, Shia, who passed while she was still a child.
9. Neria was very close to Nerine, who died childless and was her adoptive grandmother.
Primu- errr... I mean Limstone
Lims was the first heroine I went after. This wasn't because of any fetishes on my part (my fetishes lead me to Nelia), but simply because she had the best characterization of the non-human heroines in the common route. Her development and even her story pretty much mirrors that of Primula's, up to a point. More is revealed to the protagonist than was to Rin in his time, and the development of their relationship - up to a point - feels natural and even touching.
Unfortunately, the romance is handled... awkwardly. Considering this comes from a team known for having at least minimal skills in this area (if few others), I was awed at the way the romance in this path felt so unnatural. While this isn't a path-killer for me (because romance isn't that important to me as part of a story), it was a disappointment.
On the other hand, the drama in the last part of her path and the path up to the actual relationship formation were both excellent... too bad the ending was a little wince-worthy in terms of quality.
Nelia
Nerine's adoptive granddaughter is a seductive young woman who has horrible characterization in the common route (if you read the official character profiles and compare them to the actual heroine in the game, there are almost no similarities). She has inherited her grandmother's recipe for tamagoyaki, and her path has some eerie similarities to Nerine's in Shuffle (in a generalized sense) without having the same impact. I won't spoil the original game for you, but I had to wince at the drama used in this path.
I'll be honest, if more effort had been put into making Nelia into a real character instead of a caricature in the common route, this would have been a good path. Unfortunately, very little time was spent on Nelia in the common route relative to the other heroines, and this has an unfortunate dampening effect on the reader's emotional investment.
I have to wonder after finishing this path if they just intend to partially mirror the paths from the original game...
Rishia
Rishia's scenes in the prologue are the single most awkward introduction scenes I've seen from a heroine in a commercial VN from a major name in over ten years... no, ever. To be honest, considering that intro scenes are something most charage writers do well, I didn't expect the awkwardness I experienced. I mean, I almost dropped the game inside the first half hour, which I wasn't expecting, considering how much I loved the original. Rishia's character eventually sheds the awkwardness created by the introductions, but I thought my feelings toward her would be ruined by the introduction to the very end.
However, her actual path is a complete turnaround from my experiences in the common route. Suddenly (and jarringly) the quality of presentation goes up and Rishia goes from being a thin caricature of a heroine to an actual person. To some extent, this also happened in Nelia's path, but part of the reason this path suddenly took on depth for me was the way it tied into the story of Spiral. In fact, it feels like a direct extension of the political elements of Spiral, which is why it felt much deeper to me than it probably is if you haven't played Spiral.
That said, the impact it had was enough to overcome the awful introductory scenes... but it still needs to be noted that this game is horribly flawed, not the least of which by the difference in style between the four writers (why they combined the writers of Tsuki ni Yorisou, Otome no Sahou and that fluff-fest series - Da Capo- I'll never understand).
Conclusion
Understand, I have no interest in the human heroines in this game. Kohaku is ok, but I find Kirara to be so annoying that the idea of romance with her makes me want to vomit.
Anyway, this game's primary flaws lie in the common route, which is, to be blunt, mostly fluff. The character introduction for Rishia was botched, and there was a severe lack of face time for the two main heroines. These flaws don't make the game unplayable, but for fans of the original, it can't help but be a disappointment. Rishia's route manages to overcome most of the weaknesses of this particularly mismatched group of writers, but that is more because of the existence of Spiral than the inherent value of the story.
Also, there should have been a path for Marine and Citron.
Extra
To add to the canon above, I should note that Spiral was apparently written as a prequel to this game. It occurs a few months before Rishia's arrival in the human world, and it is centered around an agent from the Divine Realm. I originally thought it was a prequel to Shuffle, but it turns out that it was a prequel to this game, lol.
