And here we go, my second visual novel review! Today we will look into Fragment's Note - a visual novel made by Alvion and Ullucus Heaven. The English version was released in June 2014 for iOS, and just recently - March 10th 2015 for PSV and Android for the price of 4,5$ (that's actually the price for iOS and Android ver, I'm not sure about PSV) Unlike the iOS ver that you can purchase freely, only players from some selected countries can purchase the Android ver. I myself had to go through all sort of troubles, faking IP, faking account this and that to get this game. Nice business strategy out there
Anyway, enough ranting, let us begin!
WARNING: MAY CONTAIN SPOILER!
WARNING: 100% PERSONAL OPINION!
STORY
"I-I can't, you're like a little brother to me. Besides, I already have a boyfriend..."
"... I'm sorry."
One not-so-special afternoon, I, Tenjou Yukiha, confessed my love to my childhood friend and got turned down.
But before I have any time to grieve, a girl suddenly appears right in front of me.
"Nice to meet you!"
"I'm your daughter from the future, and I traveled all the way back in time to change your life for the better!"
That's how I met my self-proclaimed daughter-of-the future, who changes my entire life.
That was the beginning of it all.
The beginning of my new future.
Yup, this is like the perfect recipe for a pointless moege that has nothing but icha icha and *censored*. The daughter from the future (incest!!!), the osananajimi that already has a boyfriend (NTR!!!), what more can you ask for?!
Woa woa, calm down. Don't be fooled by the synopsis. This VN will give you much more than just a normal moege (actually, this is a nakige!).
CHARACTER
1. Tenjou Yukiha
Mr. Protagonist, a normal student that has a normal life, with nothing but a caring older sister (damn!) and a cute osananajimi (DAMN!). He is a huge siscon that doesn't mind kissing his sister everyday (oh **** you!). His family lived in Russia when he was small.
2. Mischa Eisenstein (Misha Ey-Sen-Sten?)
That name though...
A Russian exchange student, that actually Yukiha's osananajimi. Energetic, has no shame, and full deredere gauge, she caused lots of troubles to Yukiha, bonus with the cold stare from his classmate. She came from a prestigious family, that donated a lot of money to Yukiha's school.
3. Tenjou Haya
*purr*
Yukiha's non blood-related older sister that working at Yukiha's school as a part-time nurse. Caring and pretty much a brocon, she also doesn't mind giving Yukiha kiss and lap-pillow anytime he wants. She is really popular at school due to her personality.
4. Shirasagi Eri
Errr...okay...
Yukiha's classmate, and Yuki's best friend. She is a honor student, that known for her androphobia (dislike men). A tsundere that has a secret fetish that no one (or everyone?) knows: she loves taboo relationship. Due to this, she fully supports Yukiha and Haya to become a couple.
5. Asaka Yukitsuki (Yuki for short)
Almost lost my lips virginity...not that I mind though...
Yukiha's osananajimi. She came to wake him up everyday, even made breakfast for him. However, their relationship became awkward after the rejection 1 second into the game. She also came from a prestigious family that donated 60% of Yukiha's school funding.
6. Tenjou Miu
My daughter is sooo adorable!
Yukiha's self-proclaimed "daughter from the future". She came back to the past to "give him a better future". She is a genius, that can easily tinker with high-tech gadget from the future, and even solved a university level's math "out of boredom". Fun fact: her hair ornament can change "emotion" depend on her feeling. High-tech gadget is high-tech, indeed
ROUTE
1. Common + Mischa/Haya Route
Now, you may wonder, why did I combine 3 ROUTES in one part like this, instead of doing them separately? The reason is, the actual common route of this VN is really short (I can just call it "prologue"), that you can finish in less than 30 minutes, with mostly character introduction.
Yup, and now it's time for "breakfast" *itadakimasu*
The heroine route begins right away after your first choice. The VN will lead you through your "colorful" school days after rejection, the story about the future where Miu came from, why did she want to change the past, and the story about the "real" Yuki.
The story is pretty decent. However, they made a really big mistake: Mischa and Haya route are almost IDENTICAL. Beside some unique events due to the different in relationship between them and Yukiha, the other parts of the route are literally copy-paste. Everything is almost exactly the same, the only change is the name of the person in question. You may get some "feel" when playing the first route, but onto the second, you will just want to skip the hell out of it, and only stop for the unique events and ending. (thank God, at least the endings are different, somewhat).
Incest is fine too!
Another problem, is that the story in the two routes totally focused on Miu and Yuki's story. Mischa and Haya just served as comic relief, to give us some laugh with their everyday icha icha and jealousy toward other girls. Yes, Miu and Yuki's story are interesting and all, but these are Mischa and Haya route right?! Give them some love won't you?! And even if you really just want to focus on Miu and Yuki, at least make the story goes a bit different, please?! The reason, the progress, the resolve, everything is just the same!
Ugh...my heart is melting...
Hell, and here I'm, thinking that Material Brave's straight line story is already bad enough...
2. Eri Route
OK! Why not!
Surprisingly (at least for me), Eri route is what I considered true route, and the best route of the game. It dug deep into Eri's past, about her friendship with Yuki, and the reason for her to keen on helping everyone when they are in trouble. It will also show us what was not showed in other routes,
Maybe it's just me being weak, but
and the moment Yukiha proposed her really moved me to tear -_- And she suddenly jumped up to be my favorite character of this VN, surpassed Miu
Get rekt, son
Funny enough, at first I thought she was just a normal side character with no route, who know that she ended up being the most important one
GRAPHIC
Best friends - Best trolls
The art is pretty nice and suit my taste very well. There are also a-few-but-good SDCG with simple but cute draw. However, I do have a problem with the lack of kissing CGs. Even MoeNovel has some half-ass kissing CGs
And why is Mischa the only one with fan-service CGs?! So unfair!!!
MUSIC
It's...decent, I guess. Again, this is not in my area of knowledge, but at least the music suits the scenes well. There is nothing really special about it though.
Btw, just so you know, there is no voice, no OP, ED in this VN.
CONCLUSION
Pros:
- Nice art, good character design.
- Interesting, heart-warming story. (Eri route)
- Good amount of comedy.
Cons:
- Repetitive, copy-paste scene/line in Mischa and Haya route. (there are some in Eri route too, but doesn't affect much)
- No real story for Mischa and Haya.
- Boring wake-up line that used in almost every day.
- Typo, coding error at some places.
- Some unanswered questions remain (wonder if they will be in the after story?)
- No Miu route Nevermind
Small minus:
- No kissing CGs.
- No voice, movie.
- No Yuki route. I'm really curious about what will happen if Yukiha still choose Yuki in the end.
Score
Story: 9/10.
Character: 9/10.
Route: 9/10 for Eri, 6/10 for others.
Graphic: 9/10.
Music: 7/10.
Overall: 8/10.
Note: I recommend playing Mischa OR Haya first, then play Eri route next. You can just skip one of the first two route, doesn't really matter.
Okay, this will be my first blog entry, and my not-really-first-but-let-just-call-it-that-way attempt of reviewing a visual novel. I'm still inexperienced, so please forgive me if I made any mistake
The first VN I will be doing review is Tokyo School Life, a visual novel made by M2 Co., Ltd., and published by Dogenzaka Lab on Steam in February. This VN somehow slipped under my radar for some reasons, and it was not until about 5 days after released that I noticed its existence. Seem like my radar need a remodel
WARNING: SPOILER! (Can't be helped)
WARNING: 100% PERSONAL OPINION!
Story
This is the story of your trip as an exchange student in Tokyo and the three girls you meet there. Although you don't make the greatest first impression, you quickly settle into the kind of everyday life you've seen in anime and manga -- filled with laughs and tears. By the time you have to head home two months from now, you might find that you've fallen for one of your new friends... (Source: Steam Store)
Not much to say about the story, it's pretty much the same as Go! Go! Nippon! ~My First Trip to Japan~, but it will focus more on the story, rather than "promoting tourist destination".
Character
1. You (yeah, I mean you, the player, not Kogasaka You) (you can name him!)
An exchange student that, presumably come from the US (the game did not tell you exactly where he came from, but he talked about "buying anime in North America" and "eating raw cookie dough from a tube" so I just took my guess). Unlike the retarded caveman in Go! Go! Nippon! who surprised at convenience store and vending machine, he has quite a lots of knowledge about Japan culture. He is an otaku, and learned about Kanji mostly from reading manga/watching anime (damn it!), and also from a neighbor guy who he called "Sensei". He came to Japan, hoping to get to know about Akiba, yakuza culture,...and get a Nadeshiko girlfriend.
One thing really bugged me about him is the fact that he know nothing about some really 101 stuff like "itadakimasu", "gochirousama", tanabata...despite knowing a ton of other things like dougi (karate uniform), tanzaku paper, sumi (ink), Takeshita doori... He even thought that Go-Home Club is a real club. Seriously guy, how many manga/anime did you read/watch?!
2. Minazuki Sakura
Your classmate, and also housemate. A "Nadeshiko" girl that actually is a closet otaku. She is a light-eater, soft-spoken person, with a weak body due to her illness. She is also a fan of Samurai Maiden like the protagonist, thus making him her first ever otaku friend (she has to keep the Nadeshiko-image at school). She takes charge of writing calligraphy in Tanabata festival.
3. Yayoi Karin
2nd member of Tomoe Dorm - where the protagonist is living in. Energetic, and somewhat of a tsundere, she tried to kick him out of the house at first, due to the not-really-good first encounter between him and her - a nice crash resulted in he groping on Karin's boobs. Despite acting all tough and protective, she actually really loves cute stuff, and ready to throw money away to get them. Outside of school, she is known as the new idol Yayoi Karin-chan, a rising star that has a good amount of fan.
As a descendant of Kogasaka Chinami and Isshiki Akane (nope, joking ), she is a super-mayo-lover, that put a ton of mayo on everything (mayonnaise pizza, anyone?), and also a big-eater. She is weak at studying, and really afraid of ghost.
4. Hazuki Aoi
3rd member of Tomoe Dorm, Aoi is the tomboy who in charge of everything in the house - from cooking, washing to cleaning. A good-in-nature mother-like girl who always takes good care of people in the dorm. She loves cooking and practising non-violence karate. Despite the boy-ish appearance, she is a puppy at heart that love people patting her head (LOL!).
Route
1. Common Route
There is pretty much nothing to talk about, just the everyday icha icha between the protagonist and 3 heroines. The choices will require you to save the game a lot, since quite a few of them are unclear. The game will give you a recognizable sound after you made a choice so you know what the hell did you just do (a loud one for affection choice, quieter one for neutral, and no sound for "I dont want you, get out" choice).
2. Sakura Route
Sakura route talks about her attempt of drawing a doujinshi based on her favorite character in Samurai Maiden - Takamori Saigou, and her fight against the illness she has. Her route is supposedly the main drama route of the game. However, in my opinion, her route is the worst out of three. They used a really weird way of telling story, by jumping from event to event, "highlight" only some "comedic" moment between Sakura and the protagonist, making the sleepiness keeps winning over me. The speed got pushed up a little bit when
Just when the I finally got some excitement back, the game nicely gave me ANOTHER segment of painfully boring talk. I pretty much gave up at this point, and despite trying really hard with the drama near the end, I just couldn't feel anything for the character. The ending is, well, no surprise at all, I guess (don't want to spoil anymore)
Another thing though. I'm not sure if it's just me, but Sakura route really makes me feel like the protagonist "bought" Sakura with money. He is an exchange student, she is also just a high school student, and guess what was the first present he gave her? A FREAKING 500$ POCKET WATCH!
3. Karin Route
Mainly about Karin's road of becoming an international idol (wow!) and her struggle with choosing a performing style - Should she go for the cool style of her favorite idol, or the cute style that she has always wanted? (Obvious answer is obvious). It's a really nice and relax route to read, without too much of drama this and that. Man, if only they released her character song, I would be sooo happy. Her ending is also the nicest out of the three, imo. My only problem with this route is the protagonist - playing on the beach for too long and end up hallucinating about Karin's voice everywhere he goes, everything he does. His dere gauge is totally over the top!
4. Aoi Route
Aoi does not practise karate just because she feels like it.
Containing some nice action scenes, as you can expect from the route of a karate practitioner, you will get to know about her will of proving to people that a non-violence karate is not impossible. Though I have to say, they got a bit overkill with this route: I feel like watching not a karate girl but Haimura Moroha chanting his world destruction spell Come on writer, get realistic a little won't you?
Graphic
Really nice with the E-mote system. Character's movement doesn't seem too unnatural like some other E-mote VNs. The artwork is pretty good, though I do have some problem with the character proportion (looks really weird from time to time, especially Aoi). Oh, and they even use real image for some BG too!
Music
Not much to talk about since I'm not a pro in this field, but yeah, at least it's not boring
Conclusion
Tokyo School Life is a short charage that shouldn't take you more than 5 hours to finish. If you want to enjoy some light-hearted romcom to relax after work/school, this is a good choice for you. That said, I won't recommend buying this game at full price - 15$ is kinda not worth it. Just wait for a sale off, then take it home!
Disclaimer: This is not a review.
Warning: Contain spoiler about one (or more) ending of the game.
I don't like VNs with heavy dating-sim element, like the Cation series or such. They usually have a really low score in my list. That's why when I first saw Gaokao.Love.100days on Steam, I did not care much about it, and wanted to just leave it alone (there is the fact that it's voiced in Chinese too). However, I still decided to give it a try, so I would have something to bash on my blog
Result? Yup, I didn't like it, as expected.
The concept of the game is pretty simple: You are a guy who just recently got a girlfriend. Unfortunately, it won't be long until Gaokao - some sort of college entrance exam in China, so you will have to manage your time to balance between love and study, so you won't lose any of them.
There are totally 5 heroines, with 2 of them available from the start, 1 just recently got upgraded to "heroine with route", 1 mysterious girl that you need to somehow find her, and another mysterious girl, that should also get her own route in the future.
First, you have Muxin - your girlfriend. She is an energetic girl and also a food-lover (not glutton). She is afraid of darkness and cat, despite owning a big family of more than 20 cats at home.
Next up, Xiaohan. She is your childhood friend and next-door neighbor. She is one the of top student at school and can easily get into a top tier college, though she doesn't care much about it (for her, even third-rated college is fine too). Due to her family circumstance, she is currently living by herself.
Then, we have Cokkie (or Qu Qi in Chinese) - the heroine with newly added route. She is the tsundere monitress (I still want to call it "class rep") with high-speed-talking ability that will increase your pressure level every time you speak with her.
As mentioned, there are two mysterious heroines that you will have to unlock through your choice of action. Unfortunately, I only managed to meet one out of the two (and did not even get her name). For all I know, she is a programmer that is planning to go for the IT course in college. My instinct told me that she is not human, like a robot or something, but I'm not really sure.
As for the other girl, I think I have some ideas about who she is (the psychologist that came to school at 85 days), but still don't know how to meet her. Oh well...
The game has 57 different endings in total. Each single one of your choice, plus your stats/abilities will affect which ending you will get. I only managed to get 4 endings, including 3 normal and 1 bad ending. I'm suck at dating game, haha
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So, let's get to the main topic.
Like I said, I didn't like this game. The game mechanic bored me to death. However, I still enjoyed it. Why?
The first ending I got was the Ending No.47 - Fading Away. (spoiler coming)
In this ending, due to the pressure from Gaokao, the MC decided to break up with Muxin. After that, he soon lost his motivation to study. That's when he learned about MMO and the world of online game.
Day after day, he kept on playing online games nonstop. He stopped going to school, didn't even go home, pretty much lived in the net cafe using the money he got from helping other players in games. Then, one day, Xiaohan found him. She told him about his mother, currently being hospitalized. Only then he pulled himself out of the online game's world, and rushed to the hospital. After that, he decided to go back to school and study hard to compensate for all the time he lost. Luckily, he still managed to get into college, just a second-tier one, but he was satisfied. The end.
Did you know? I was once the same as him.
In my last year of middle school, not long before the final exam, my father passed away due to an illness. After that, I was in what they called "emotional crisis". Nothing the teachers said at school was registered in my brain. One day, I decided to play truant from school. Morning, I headed straight to the net cafe instead of school, and staying there, gaming till late in the afternoon, when the class was finished. Net cafe - home to eat and sleep - net cafe - home..., that was my daily timetable. And that was going on for about a week. Then, my mother found me. She dragged me back home, gave me one hell of a lecture, and escorted me to the school gate the next morning. However, after the first class ended, I disappeared from school again. I was quite "knowledgeable" about the area near where I lived, so I went to a net cafe in a secluded place that "normal people" wouldn't know about. One day, when I went home, I found my classmates, standing there with my mother, waiting for me.
I struggled a lot after that, but somehow, still managed to pass the final exam and the high school entrance exam. My school, just like the MC's, was also just a second-rated school. However, that was plenty enough for me. Things could had been much worse, you know?
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Yup, Gaokao.Love.100days is no good for me. And I blame it for making me remember about my past Still, I enjoyed it, and that's all that matters. Recommend or not? Well...if you like dating-sim, if you have the time to explore that hell amount of endings, and able to play a voiceless game (DO NOT TURN THE VOICE ON, IT SUCKS), then go for it~. Objectively speaking, it's a pretty decent game, so, even if you don't like dating-sim, just give it a try, maybe?
Final rampage:
Dear developer, I don't know if you wanted to appeal to general visual novel players or you are just a freaking weeaboo, but please, give me a break from this kind of sh*tty translation, won't you?
My previous review: Ojousama to Himitsu no Otome (Trial Edition)
Yo, I'm back from the dead! (though I can't guarantee that I won't die again) And what was the miraculous thing that had the ability to revive me? Of course, it was the latest title from the legendary eroge maker Winged Cloud, Sakura Beach, which was just released on August 14th! I mean, if their previous titles from the Sakura trilogy were all so successful like that, there is no reason for them to not make another one, right??
...
...
...
Okay, joke aside, let the summer trip to Hell begin.
SYNOPSIS
Seiji is a daydreamer who spends too much time thinking about space. When he was given a chance to visit the beach with his two childhood friends, all he can think about is his chance to take out his telescope and look at the stars. But gradually, he begins to realise that his childhood friends want him to pay attention to them instead of the constellations...
CHARACTER
1. Seiji
Our MALE protagonist (wait, isn't this a yurige?!). A dense guy that loves the space more than girls.
2. Ayumi
Osananajimi No.1. A classic over-the-roof tsundere girl that always try to act mature. A good cook, and one of the smartest student at school, but has no swimming ability.
3. Momoka
Osananajimi No.2. A cheerful and immature girl that loves to tease the MC and make lewd jokes. A complete opposite with Ayumi (terrible cook, bad in study, but extremely good at sports, especially swimming).
STORY
The story progression can be summarized like this: Seiji, Ayumi and Momoka came to this particular beach-side hotel on their summer holiday. As they were having fun day to day on the beach, the girls tried hard to make Seiji notice their feeling, and also tried to make him confessing the truth behind his obsessed with studying, which they found really unusual. Gradually, Seiji opened up more to them, told them about the thing that he was trying to cover up, his fear, and his true feeling toward his two friends.
One thing I have to say, is that their plot this time is actually pretty decent for a OEL moege. At least better than their previous titles that I played. However, their plot development is still all over the place, with a ton of random events that just happen out of nowhere without any explanation (I will run through this later in the nitpicking section below). Moreover, some important-looking events even contributed absolutely nothing to the plot, almost were just there to satisfy the fetish of a certain group of players. Yes, I'm talking about the yuri scene, which made me thought that this was a yurige. Just suddenly come then go, no freaking explanation whatsoever.
They also brought back a bunch of fan-service scenes that were literally just a copy-paste from Sakura Fantasy (and maybe the whole damn series), and even those scenes were so forced that made me just go "wtf?".
Typos are still lying here and there (and sometimes, it's not even typo, it's just a dumb and funny mistake), seem like their QC need some more practice.
I have a little complaint about the fact that every single day in their vacation happened in a exact same pattern: Wake up -> Go swimming at the beach -> Random talk -> Go home -> New day, wake up -> ...., though, being a guy that almost never go to the beach, guess I'm in no position to judge people. That said, the only once time I went for holiday in a seaside city for a week, I only spent 2 days for swimming, and the other 5 for going around, visiting this and that place.
GRAPHIC
This is my personal taste, but imo, Winged Cloud totally trashed their strongest point, which is the art, this time. The new art is just so much worse, although it's still "acceptable". The BGs are decent-looking though.
Btw, what happened to their old artist? Rage quit?
MUSIC
After 5 minutes of playing, I decided to turn off the music and turn my fripSide playlist on.
Do something about your boring music please, Winged Cloud.
CONCLUSION
Though I did say that the plot was decent, $10 for this game is still a big no. Both the plot and the fan-service quality did not go anywhere near that price. So, if you want to pir---I mean borrow it from someone out of curiosity, then go ahead. BUT DON'T GIVE WINGED CLOUD ANY MORE MONEY PLEASE!
Released 2 days ago on 17/05, Dear Mariko is a short 10 minutes RPG Maker-based visual novel (with about 15-30 minutes actual gameplay) from Soyasushi Production, an amateur visual novel making group. The game is distributed for free on their site.
“Mariko, I love you.
But I can’t do this anymore.
It’s not your fault,
and there was nothing you could’ve done for me.
There’s nothing you could’ve done about ‘her’.”
Dear Mariko is a short, simple game about a girl who comes home to find a goodbye letter from the one she loves.
Into the game, you will be able to control the main heroine, going around the house and examine every item, which all filled with memory about her beloved one - Darien. Upon going into the bedroom, she will find the letter that Darien left before disappearing from the house. That's when the feel strike you and things start going down - fast.
There are 3 different endings for you to explore: the True Ending, Normal Ending and Bad Ending. Rather than choosing "choice 1, choice 2", you will have to use your logic plus some experiences with RPG game to get all the endings.
Wow. Normally I have zero interest in OELVN (despite being in an OELVN group myself) (no offence), but for some reason, this game drew my attention and I ended up deciding to try it out. And I made a right decision.
Despite being really short, this game can still give you a good amount of feel, with the surprise twist in the story. It's not difficult to clear all 3 endings, but chances are you will still get stuck in the bad ending for quite some times before figuring out the right thing to do. The sprites are pretty well-drawn (for an OELVN), the music suits the theme well, and a little-but-crucial-and-right-timing support from voice acting. It's a shame that they couldn't develop the story more though. Still, this game is a MUST if you want to have some quick feel + "fun"(?).
Score: 9/10.
Walkthrough (spoiler)
Note: If you encounter the "RGSS-RTP Standard not found." error when opening the game, all you need to do is opening the Game.ini file and delete the "Standard" in the "RTP1=" line.
My previous review: Mousou Complete! (Trial Edition)
Wah, I have been so inactive here lately. Seems like Love Rec. took too much of my time, haha~~ (Damn Clephas you speed hacker I'm only just onto the 3rd route and you are already done with the whole June eroge ). Taking a break from Love Rec., I decided to try out a VN that has been sitting in my Steam library for quite some time - Voices from the Sea. Released on September 16th 2014, Voices of the Sea is a short OELVN flash game from Zeiva Inc, which you can play for free, or purchase the Plus DLC with the price of $6 to get the game fully voiced and unlock some features like galleries, side stories... Now, let's see what we have here...
SYNOPSIS
Follow the story of a young boy, Cantus as he meets Maris, the mysterious girl by the sea - an experience that will change his life forever. Collect seashells, unlock hidden Wallpapers, Theaters, and Side Stories as you sit back and enjoy this cute relaxing story.
CHARACTER
1. Cantus
Protagonist. A serious-type loner that doesn't have a single friend. He never smiles, and dislikes every kind of "noise" that he has to hear everyday - including other people talking to him. The only things he loves are sitting on the beach, listening to the ocean waves and collecting seashells.
2. Maris
A mysterious strange girl that Cantus met on the beach. She is cheerful, energetic and has a beautiful voice, but absolutely suck at singing. It seems like she loves food, or maybe she is just a glutton. Also, she has a terrible sense of humor.
STORY
The protagonist of the game - Cantus - hated the "noise" that he had to hear everyday. Because of that, he spent most of his time chilling on the beach - his favorite place - while listening to the ocean waves. To him, that's the only place where he could find solace. But then, one day, his heaven was disturbed by a voice calling out to him. It's from a strange girl (Maris) that he had never met before. After a short introduction, they talked a bit about each other (mostly about Cantus). Before leaving, Maris told him "I will come here again tomorrow, because I have not yet seen your smile. Give me seven days, and I will make you smile!". And that's how their strange relationship began - the boy kept coming to his favorite place as usual, and the girl was always there, trying to make him smile by numerous of silly methods. Gradually, the ice surrounding his heart began to melt, he talked a lot more to Maris, and even to other people at school. Finally, in the last day, he learnt about what he had lost, regained his smile, and it was also the last time he saw Maris, before he had the chance to learn about who she really was.
The story is really short, only about 30 mins length. Most of them are the inner thoughts of Cantus about his "miserable" life and the silly conversations between him and Maris. The story itself is nice, but I think it still needs more development. They purposely left a lot of questions in the game for players to find out blind guess and create the "mysterious" feeling for the VN, but it's kinda going against them: why could Maris attract his attention and make him talk, but not other people? Why "seven days"? (this is actually a question that Cantus asked himself in the game, but no answer was given). The unknown identity of Maris I can tolerate, but not these, they are just some too important factors of the story that cannot be left unexplained. The unsatisfied feeling after finishing the game is reaaally annoying, you see.
The choices in the game are pretty much all the same: there will be two choices, the first one is just there for you to unlock additional conversations and CGs, then return you back to the choice. The second one - "Look for seashells" - will progress the story. A little bit weird with their style of "seashells can solve every problem", but I guess I will just let it passes...
SYSTEM
The story-progression choice "Look for seashells" will give you a "minigame" (well...not really, but I will just call it that way) where you can find seashells on the beach and show them to Maris, then she will give you different reactions depend on which seashells you found. However, this does not affect the story in any way.
The game itself used Flash Player. I'm not sure this is the limit of a flash game or the programmer is just suck, but the game does not have a backlog, and you won't be able to scroll back dialog pass a CG (basically, if you just went through a scene with CG, then you can only scroll back up to the first line after the CG), same with choices. There is no confirmation when loading game or overwriting a save, so be careful with that.
GRAPHIC
On the OELVN's scale, the artwork and animation are pretty nice. There are some weird SDCGs, but I will just ignore them....
I mean, they are not bad, they are just...not my taste.
VOICE
The game is fully voiced in English - if you paid for the DLC, that's it. However, it's horrible. Yeah, there is the fact that I don't like English VAs in general too, but this is just...unbearable. The voices are badly recorded, and the voices acting themselves are just as suck. Are they seriously charging me for this s***? If you can't do the voicing properly, then don't do it! Save your hard-earned money for other stuff!
MUSIC
The savior for the horrible voice. They are not special, but can still give you a peaceful feeling, and at least, you will not need to play the game in silence.
CONCLUSION
A decent VN for a short break from work/study. However, you should just get the free version only. DO NOT buy the DLC, because it's a total waste of money.
Pros:
- Relaxing story.
- Nice art.
Cons:
- Unexplained questions.
- Horrible voice.
- No backlog, no confirmation on save/load.
- $6 for s***ty voice and CG/music gallery.
Walking around Google Play can give you a lot of surprises (404: Advertisement not found). And some days ago, while looking for some good tower defense games to kill time, I accidentally stumbled into a nice-looking VN that is not even listed in VNDB for some reason: My Little Kitties - a Korean VN, adapted from a Korean light novel published by Novel Engine. It was released by tales# on March 2015 with the price of $5.
It's loli! It's catgirl! There is just no reason for me to not throw money right at the screen and bring this VN home!
SYNOPSIS
Hanul is a teenager having a weary day because all kinds of animals -including dogs, cats and even pigeons- are chasing him frantically.
One day, he discovers a mother cat and her kitten, which were living in the tree of his yard, lying dead still on a cold floor.
He took them to a veterinary clinic, but it was already too late for the mother cat. And on behalf of the deceased mother, he decided to take care of the kitten named Nuri.
But, the little kitten Nuri was not an ordinary kitten.
She was a mystical creature, an inhabitant of another world not recognized by ordninary people.
After a peculiar meeting with Sora, who has her own story with the supervisor of mystical creatures, Yura, the boy who became a father of two girls after many twist and turns
is now about to begin a new life with his new family.
CHARACTER
1. Hanul
(Yeah, I'm lazy as hell )
2. Nuri
3. Sora
4. Yura
STORY
The 2-hours-long story follows Hanul as he struggled through his daily life, dealing with his two mischievous daughters, the perverted girl Yura and a stray cat named Nero that his daughters had picked up on the street. The entire game happened in only 4 days (game time), but it's still enough to give you a vision about the life of a lone teenager father: playing with his daughters, dealing with their constant tantrums, protecting them from being sexually harassed by Yura, trying to fix their bad diets, habits...
There are totally 6 endings, including 3 bad endings, which in two of them...(super duper huge spoiler ahead )
The game, mostly slice of life/comedy, covers the first two chapters of the light novel, with some light drama in the good endings - actually, I guess I should say "true" endings, because they are not particularly "good", quite sad in fact, not to the point that I would call it an "utsuge" though. For some people, the game can be quite boring from time to time (it's slice of life you know), but it shouldn't be a problem for major players. There is a hell amount of choices, 20 in total, which will help increasing your playing time to about 12 hours or more, since getting in the right route in this game is a huge pain, and the choices are not even that clear (the most common-sense choice can easily lead you straight into a bad ending).
One thing I have to mention, is that the English translation of this game is pretty bad, and it doesn't seem like they will fix it any time soon (actually, I'm not even sure if they even have any intention to do that). Not to the point of unreadable Google-level, but it will still annoy quite a lot of people. Just have to bear with it, I guess
SYSTEM
After played through the game, you will be able to unlock some fun minigames like Horoscope, Rock-Scissor-Paper, Airplane Ride and such. I have no interest in that damn Rock-Scissor-Paper thingy because my Luck stat is zero http://forums.fuwanovel.net/uploads/emoticons/default_dry.png' alt='<_<'> , but the Horoscope game is pretty hilarious, and the Airplane Ride game totally broke my hand due to its "extreme" gameplay In this game, basically, you will give your daughter an airplane ride. Your job is to mass-spam the power button to keep your stamina - which gradually decrease over time - in check. From time to time, your daughter will get bored, make your stamina bar run down faster, and you will have to quickly "shake" her left and right, then quickly back to mass-spamming. If anyone here is a diligent Potion Maker player, they should be able to deal with this game just fine By getting high scores in the game, you will be rewarded with special CGs and voiced lines.
Oh, and this is my best score at the moment. Try to beat me, you!
The game also supplies you with a database about lots of details for unaware non-light novel reader (see those thing I used in the character introduction?) and an achievement system that will also reward you with special CGs and voiced lines.
GRAPHIC
The artwork itself is pretty nice, though it seem like they didn't put that much effort into drawing CGs. Actually, I think they directly put the light novel illustrations into the game, rather than drawing an entire new set of CG... Quite obvious, with all of those monochrome backgrounds, I guess.
MUSIC
Nothing special, just your normal everyday BGM that you find in a VN.
VOICE
The game is voiced in Korean. I have to say, I much prefer Korean voice-over than Chinese one. Yeah, still not as good as Japanese, but at least they managed to keep me from turning it the hell off. Actually, Nuri's voice is pretty cute!
CONCLUSION
$5 for 2 hours of entertainment with your two cute daughters, I think it's a fair price. That said, I won't recommend this VN to people that dislike slice of life, because it will just bore them to death. However, if you want some nice laugh, and are able to handle the bad translation, then go ahead and give it a try, I'm sure you will like it.
Winged Cloud. Guess I don't really need to make any introduction, since they are already well-known in visual novel community for their boobs-first-story-later "Sakura" series. Of course, after getting a mountain of money poured into their pocket with their previous titles, there is no way that they don't want more. May 29th, they released the 3rd one in the series - Sakura Fantasy Chapter 1. Yes, this is only the chapter 1, because they want to milk as much money as possible from this game (that said, the price is still the same as other "Sakura" games, which is 12$). And here I am, with my B-52 Bomb Squadron, ready to engage them.
WARNING: 18+ 15+ MATERIAL BELOW. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
SYNOPSIS
The new visual novel from the makers of Sakura Spirit and Sakura Angels.
Sakura Fantasy Chapter 1 is an exciting visual novel fantasy adventure where you decide the development of the story by the choices you make.
It is the tale of an aspiring female protagonist who wishes to aim to become a knight.
CHARACTER
1. Raelin
Protagonist. A novice knight with the special ability a.k.a "gift" of "farseeing" (basically, let her "spirit" leaves her body and goes looking around). A perverted girl with the hobby of peeking at other people's nude private moment and getting nude herself.
2. Gwynne
Raelin's best friend. She handles paperwork in the barrack, and rarely participates in actual combat practice. She has the gift of lighting (summoning lighting and such).
3. Keira
Raelin's instructor. A serious and harsh girl, especially toward Raelin. She has the gift of stone skin.
4. Ardena
The Empress. An emotionless girl, or should I say, thousand years old grandma Her gift is currently unknown.
STORY
To summary, Sakura Fantasy is about Raelin, a novice knight that is currently training in some random barrack in some random empire. For some reason, she got the gift of farseeing from someone called "the creator". For some reason, she wanted to become an excellent knight in the army to fight again some kind of monster. One day, in her sleep, she found herself getting stucked in a swamp with a huge monster, but decided that it's just simply a dream after she woke up.
Yup, dark.
Sometime later, she was assigned to be the castle's guard. There, she met a strange girl who told her about "a star may soon falls from the heaven". She did not understand it well, until later of the day, when it really happened: A star fell from the sky, crashed down to somewhere outside the "wall" (which protect the city from monster).
Despite the opposition of the Council, the strange girl - who now revealed as the Empress - decided to assemble a group of brave soldiers to seek for the fallen star. Of course, everyone can guess who would be in that group: Raelin - the protagonist, Gwynne - best friend, and Keira - the tsundere instructor.
After crawling through the swamp filled with all kind of perverted monsters that you can expect (slime, tenta-tree) and fought a super anti-climax battle with a "slime girl" (which she soon retreated after throwing out some random attacks), Keira suddenly got shot down by a strange girl. Turned out that that girl - Ethy - mistook Keira with a monster - or something like that. The group then took a break at the small village where Ethy lived.
Before departing, suddenly, a huge monster came to attack the village. The group fought back, and won after a deus-ex-machina battle. They had a big feast, and Ethy ended up joining them after the Empress's spirit emerged from Raelin and talked to the villagers - who had a lot of respect toward the Empress. Anddddd that's the end of chapter 1.
Man, there are so many things to talk about that I don't even know where to start anymore.
First off, language. When Winged Cloud first released Sakura Spirit, they got a full container of rocks for the omfg English in the game. This time, there are improvements, but STILL NOT ENOUGH. I mean...
Yes, I'm not a native English-speaker, but I'm damn sure this is NOT how you use "wake" in a sentence! Btw, this is just the 4th sentence into the game! Other parts of the game are also trashed with random weird sentences all over the place.
In the synopsis also: "female protagonist who wishes to aim to become a knight". No no no, you either "wish" or "aim". You don't "wish to aim". That's retarded.
Secondly, detail. You wonder why I used so many "someone", "something", "somewhere" in the summary? That's because the game simply explained ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about those. They just throw the players into the game environment and leave them there dying with no information whatsoever. What is this empire called? Why did Raelin join the army? What are they fighting against? Where did those monsters come from? What's the current situation? What exactly is "gift"? There are simply no answer for those very basic questions. All there for players to know, is that they are soldiers with "gift" in an empire fighting against monsters. Done.
Let's take a look at the 2nd choice, about 2 minutes into the game:
Before this choice, they did not mentioned a damn single word about what the hell is this "gift" thing, and suddenly, they tell players to make a choice related to that "gift" thing. Are you trolling me here!?
Next, the consistency. In a sword practice scene:
Excuse me, girl, but those things are called "dummy", not "doll".
Realizing their mistake, in the later scene, not far from this scene, they changed it back to "dummy", but decided to keep the "doll" in this scene as it, just to remind the players "Oh, we actually wanted to use doll but it sounded too dumb so we changed it to dummy instead".
In another scene, when Gwynne told Raelin "You should not sleep in late." ("sleep in late", meh...), Raelin replied: "I was making strange faces? Like what?". Errr.....what? Raelin, are you still sleepy? She did not mention a damn single thing about your face you know!?
Fourthly, "the creator". In this game, "the creator" is pretty much "God" in this empire. "He" (nah, don't know the gender) granted people with gift, for some reason. And also for some reason, only granted it for some people, not all. And because he is the "God", some sentences in the game became weirdly funny:
Who were you thanking there, Raelin? The "creator" who granted you the gift, or did you just break the forth wall and thank Winged Cloud?
And finally, the choice. According to Wingled Cloud, players can "decide the development of the story by the choices you make". Nooooope. Most of the choices are absolutely pointless, they affect nothing toward the story development. In like half of them, Raelin will just go ahead and do whatever she wants to do, regardless of your choice. There are only 2, or maybe 3 choices that really make a different, that will result in different CGs, but even then, nothing is actually changed in the flow of story. There is no route, no bad end, so you are free to make whatever choice you want. You want to stay loyal to one girl? Go for it. You want to make a harem (in your imagination)? Go for it. You want to be a coward and always stay in the back line? Go for it. You want to be a crazy girl who charge headfirst into the monster without a single care in the world? Go for it.
You want to go commando? Go for it.
GRAPHIC
Well, it's Winged Cloud, so you know what is coming. Nice art as ever, with a heck amount of boobs, ass and fan-service. 80% (or more, I'm suck at math) of the CGs are fan-service. How did this thing even get through Steam again? No wonder why they can attract a bunch of perverts on Steam buying their games. Eeeeveryone fell for the honey trap. Not me, I pirated.
MUSIC
Just your normal everyday BGM, nothing to talk about. Actually, did they reuse some BGMs from their previous games...?
CONCLUSION
I will just say one thing: Please, stay away from this trash. Don't pour more money into Winged Cloud's pocket, giving them motivation to create more disasters. If you want something to spend your money on, then go for Grisaia (or wait for the 18+ ver if you want), Neptunia, or even Akiba's Trip. Much better.
Pros:
- Nice art.
Cons:
- Still have Engrish.
- Unexplained story, detail.
- Pointless choices.
- No route (this game is not designed to be a kinetic novel).
- Lack of consistency in wording and sentencing.
- Overused fan-service CGs.
- Overkill price.
Moonstone is not an unfamiliar name for visual novel players. Everyone should know about them by now, with all of those successes they got from Imouto Paradise - the heaven for siscon, Princess Evangile - the popular title which English version was just released months ago, and Gi--nah, who cares about that thing. And, at the end of this month, on June 26th, Moonstone Honey - their newest branch company, will release their debut title - Ojousama to Himitsu no Otome. Of course, I'm really interested curious about this title, for an obvious reason that I will talk about later. Now, toward the game we go!
SYNOPSIS
The first game by the new label Moonstone Honey will center around Yuuri Shinohara, a crossdressing yet kind boy who is attending an all-girls school. Since he’s the future heir of a famous fashion brand for women’s clothing he is expected to know a lot about the subject. But he’s actually weak around women and doesn’t really understand them, making it impossible for him to inherit the fashion brand.
And so his family suggested (read: forced) him to attend a high class all-girls school, called Magnolia Academy. But even though he tried to live a quiet school life, for some reason several girls tend to gather around him…
CHARACTER
1. Shinohara Yuuri
Protagonist. A shy boy that was forced into an all-girls school against his will. Same as every trap protagonist ever, he really disliked the idea of cross-dressing at first, but gradually "understand the joy of being a girl".
2. Himekouji Haruka
"Ahaha, arigatou."
Yuuri's next-seated classmate, and his first friend at school. A friendly and energetic girl who seems to be pretty popular among the students.
3. Kamimori Airi
"Don't be so tense like that. We are going to live under the same roof from now on after all."
The friendly and somewhat playful dorm-leader, in charge of 2nd year students. She has never interacted with boys before and really want to know the feeling of talking, kissing and doing ecchi things with them. Yup, that's what she said.
4. Shirayuki Yumina
"Yes...I will try my best...to stop crying..."
Yuuri's 1st year kouhai. An extremely shy girl, with the way-too-soft voice that seem to have a lot of love respect toward Yuuri. She is a crybaby and pretty clumsy. Despite that, she is still very popular at school, although she herself knows nothing about that.
5. Saionji Saya
"It's fine, just do as I say. Got it?"
A genius 3rd year student, who rarely come to class but still manage to stay on top of the school. She is respected by every students and even teachers. When she is in good mood, she loves to drink tea in the courtyard.
STORY
The game started, as Shinohara Yuuri - in a girl's school uniform - after talking with the school guard, stepped his first step into his new school - Magnolia Girl Academy. While walking toward the staff room, he started thinking about what led him into this situation...
10 days ago. A sudden phone call from his mother totally wrecked his life. He was told to transfer to the new school - Magnolia Girl Academy - to cure his shyness toward girl (since he wouldn't be able to inherit his mother's fashion company like this), and also "get a girlfriend" why he was at it. He was hesitated at first, but decided to just yolo, for himself, and for the future of the company.
However, there was one problem remain: how could he get into an all-girls school? Of course, this was when his older sister Akira - a pro in makeup - came in! After a short while, she successfully transformed Yuuri into a super cute girl, making him almost fell for himself!
".....Eeeeeh!?"
...And that's what happened.
Done with the transfer procedure, he headed toward his class. After the awkward introduction, he went to his seat, and the next-seated girl - Himekouji Haruka - right away started a conversation with him. Having his shyness in the way, he had a hard time talking with her, especially when she "aggressively" invited him for lunch, then guiding him around school hand-in-hand after school. It's fine, right? It's absolutely normal for two girls to walk around school while holding hand, right!?
Evening. Just when he was about to go to sleep, he heard a knock on the door. After some commotions due to him being in the middle of changing clothes, the girl walked in, introducing herself. She was Kamimori Airi - the dorm's leader. She simply just wanted to check out the newest member of the dorm, and tell him about the dorm's cleaning up duty, which unfortunately fell right onto his room this week. They talked for a bit, then called it a night.
Next day, after school. While walking along the hallway, suddenly, Yuuri heard a crashing sound, and a girl's scream. He then hurried to where the sound came from...
"Uwaa...I'm soaked~..."
There, he found a little girl, soaked in water, with an empty bucket lying on the floor. As he tried to help her, she stared at him with a weirdly red face while murmuring "So beautiful...". She then panickingly ran off, after learned his name.
That evening, she came to his room. She introduced herself as Shirayuki Yumina - a first year student - and wanted to thank him about earlier - while keeping coughing all the time. Just as Yuuri tried to ask about her health condition, she panicked again and ran back to her room. However, it's not Yumina, but Yuuri himself that he should be worried about, as he ended up getting the cold from Yumina and stuck on his bed for the next day.
Evening, Yumina visited him. After apologizing for a while, she offered to help him with wiping his body. Despite worrying about his disguise, he couldn't fight back against her teary eyes, and accepted her offer. And the yuri night began.
"I don't know why, but my face became hot when I wiped your back..."
Later in the night, Haruka and Airi also visited him, and thus, meeting Yumina and having a short chat with her before everyone went back to their own rooms.
Next day, he completely recovered, and was invited by Airi to take a bath together after cleaning up the dorm. And once again, he failed to deny the invitation. They talked about a lot of lewd things, and surprisingly, his disguise somehow stayed undiscovered.
Weekend. Coming back from home after reported his status to his older sister, Yuuri spotted a strange girl drinking tea in the courtyard under the moonlight. He joined after her invitation, and learned that she was Saionji Saya - a 3rd year student.
Lunch time next day, he talked with Haruka, Airi and Yumina about Saya, as he just had another tea time with her in the morning. Spotting Saya in the crowd, he invited her to have lunch together with the group. During the meal, the group told him about one of the unique tradition of the school - Engage - where 2 students exchange their rings and become a couple.
"Ehem...In Magnolia, there is a tradition called Engage."
He thought to himself: In the future, maybe I will also be joining this event as well? However, is it fine for a boy like me, to "engage" with a girl in a normally girl-to-girl event like this?
The End (of the trial).
.
.
.
.
Wow. Nice work Moonstone Honey. You did a really good job on copying almost everything from Princess Evangile. The same "boy-in-ojousama-only-school" setting, the same "onee-sama" system, the same exchanging item (changed from rosary to ring) system, and they even have an event called "Best Engage", which is pretty much "Chants de Noel" in Princess Evangile. The character design is also a big copycat, which Haruka is pretty much Rise's clone, with almost same appearance and personality. Seriously, Moonstone Honey? This is your debut title, can't you at least make something a bit unique by yourself? You think that people won't notice the similarities between your game and the game that you were promoting all over twitter 3 months ago? Too naive.
Let's talk about the story. Different from Princess Evangile, this game seems to be a H-based moege. The trial is pretty short, so I may be wrong, but I just couldn't smell any kind of drama from the game. Along with heroines's personality, chances are you will be filled with nothing but ichaicha for the rest of the game. I mean, I couldn't even be able to find any SFW CG for Airi, both in the trial and on their main page. And she clearly wanted the D, right off the bat. Yumina also seems to be unknowingly on heat every time she speaks with Yuuri. Geh.
Btw, it's just my impression, but the story in the trial just feels a bit disconnected somehow...
GRAPHIC
They brought the damn skirt design from Princess Evangile, changed the color and threw it in here.
They brought the damn Rise's character desi---Oh, I did talk about this earlier, right?
They unnecessary sexualized Yumina and Haruka's pajamas. I don't know that much about girl's clothes, but I'm sure that's not how they work! I mean, look at them! Look at Yumina's pant!
"I'm coming in. Hmm? If I'm not wrong, you are..."
That said, the art is still nice in general though.
MUSIC
Unnecessary usage of sad music when Yuuri got a cold. Come on guys, it's just a common cold! Do you really need to insert the music that sounds like he just found out about his testicular cancer like that?
Other than that, the BGM is fine. Or should I say, normal, not good not bad.
VOICE
I have nothing to complain about character's voices, though I do think that Yumina's voice is a bit too soft, making her sound a bit...weird.
CONCLUSION
Princess Evangile was a big success for Moonstone, but Ojousama to Himitsu no Otome - or should I say, "Princess Evangile 2" was a big mistake for Moonstone Honey. Normally, this game should be able to get away as a decent fap material. However, under the big shadow of Princess Evangile, I don't think this game will have a chance to see the light of the day.
May hit me hard with a heck amount of games. 4 titles for May eroge, 4 trials for June eroge, plus Akiba's Trip and Neptunia Re;Birth2. And Sakura Fa--- no, screw that ****. Still, I somehow found the time to put together a review for Love Rec. - the newest title from ALcot that will be released on June 26. Now, let's get to it~
SYNOPSIS
Love Rec’s story takes place at a small school located in a quiet town near the sea. Protagonist Akira Yanase is a camera freak who records even during simple meals. Together with his childhood friend Chiho they started a video shooting group. But they meet strong opposition coming from the genius director Miyuki. A competition breaks out between the two of them with the prize of recognition as reward if they win.
Akira starts running around in order to gather more members, but finds no one, with the closing date getting closer each day instead. At that time his favorite camera gives of a strange light and a small girl makes her appearance. She introduces herself as Hitomi, a camera fairy. And with the addition of Nori, a professional in video editing, Akira’s surroundings have completely changed.
Together they worry, get angry, laugh, and cry. And as they live out their youths their hearts get closer to one another, little by little.
CHARACTER
1. Yanase Akira
Protagonist. A camera-freak who "talks" better with his camera rather than talk directly. He is the president of Movie Research Club - including him, Chiho and Hitomi. He is also a pervert boobs-lover.
2. (Yanase) Hitomi
A.k.a Sony ALcot HDR-H10M. She is the camera-spirit that came from Akira's 10 years old camera (Note: Every character in this game are 18 or older ). Childish and a bit stubborn sometimes, she plays the role of Akira's cousin at school. Despite being a spirit, she is a big glutton. Her "battery consumption" is also pretty bad, being an old model camera. Calling Akira's "Nii-sama".
3. Yoshinaga Chiho
Akira's osananajimi and next-door neighbor. A mischievous and playful girl who doesn't even mind being called Akira's "wife". She usually comes over to Akira's house to wake him up and make breakfast/bento for him. Teasing Akira is her hobby.
4. Shirosawa Miyuki
President of Film Club and Akira's "rival". A honor student that is always serious in her work and respected by lots of people at school. She always acts all high-and-mighty toward Movie Research Club's members (except Hitomi). She lives in a big mansion, and always ready to use money to solve problems.
She is a lolicon. Nah, she just loves cute things.
5. Mikuriya Nori
Kenichi (school vice president, Akira's friend/classmate)'s imouto. Online, she is known as OZ - the famous anime creator. Offline, she is a timid NEET girl who almost never goes to school. She is a soft-spoken person and has the habit of apologizing to people even for the smallest thing.
STORY
Morning. The first thing Akira - our protagonist did - was grabbing his Sony ALcot HDR-H10M camera and try to take a picture of a sparrow outside of the window. For him, photography is love, photography is life. He even proudly called Hitomi - the pet name of the camera he received 10 years ago as his birthday present - his "waifu". After done with his morning routine of maintaining the camera (with lus-- I mean love), he looked through the lens. Suddenly, he saw a little girl peaked her head into the frame. Of course, there is no one like that in his room, since he is not (yet) a lolicon criminal! As he tried to wake himself from his "dream", he looked through the lens again, and the girl was still "standing" there. She said: "I will come to see you right now!". Rainbow light then pour out of the LCD screen, and a little girl suddenly came out from there!
"Goshujin-sama!"
She introduced herself as Hitomi - a camera spirit came out from Akira's camera to repay his kindness of taking care of her over the past 10 years. Of course, Akira couldn't believe her that easily, so Hitomi tried to perform magic to make him believes. However, the only thing she could do was making some balls of light floating around her, before running out of "battery" (a.k.a hungry) and fall flat on the floor. As Akira brought her onto his bed to let her rest - his osananajimi Chiho - came in calling him downstairs for breakfast. Great.
After a long introduction and explanation without being able to convince Chiho and Akira's mother that she is really a spirit, she somehow got the approval to live inside his house. They had breakfast, then Akira and Chiho headed to school while talking about the popular anime creator OZ-sensei, unknowingly that Hitomi was following them until she spoke. Since she wouldn't be able to go to school with them just like this, this was the perfect time to convince Chiho that Hitomi is a spirit! Boom! She transformed her clothes into school uniform, totally surprised both Akira and Chiho. Suddenly, Akira's camera blacked out and went dead - along with Hitomi falling flat on the ground - again!
"When I run out of energy, the camera will also run out of battery."
Her body and the camera are one - or so she said. When she ate food, the camera's battery would also get charged. Of course, it could also be the other way - charging the camera would fill her up. But battery charge and food went in different stomachs, so she still needed food to "live" (nope, you are just a glutton).
3 people processed to school after feeding Hitomi with vending machine's food, they met Miyuki - the president of Film Club. As they talked, the reason for the rivalry between Movie Research Club - which Akira is the president - and Film Club started to come out: Akira was originally member of Film Club. However, after realizing his passion of taking photo of people's smile, which was not what Film was about, he left the club and decided to make a club for himself - with the support from Chiho. There were conditions though: his club has to have at least 4 members, and they has to win against Film Club in the upcoming competitor. If they lost, then Akira would have to go back to Film Club - as Miyuki really valued Akira's talent with his camera. After the talk, Hitomi ended up being "dragged" in as the 3rd member of Movie Research Club.
After school, Kenichi - Akira's friend - invited him to go and meet OZ-sensei. He agreed right away, since it's always that he had the chance to meet the popular anime creator. What he didn't know, is that OZ-sensei is actually Kenichi's imouto!
"Auuu...I took an arrow in the knee..."
After a big commotion due to Kenichi "trolled" her - Nori - to distract her from work, resulting in her "crashing" knee right in the kotatsu, they exchanged introduction. Knowing that she is also student from the same school, Akira tried to recruit her to his club and asked her to help with movie editing, but got refused because she was already busy with her work as OZ-sensei. As her father went home and wanted to talk to her, Akira and Kenichi went to the park. There, Kenichi asked Akira to help with Nori's situation: Due to her talent, she was forced to priority money-making work as OZ over school by her father, and as her brother, Kenichi didn't want that. Of course, Akira wouldn't refuse.
Next day, Akira, Hitomi and Chito went to meet Nori after knowing the situation. They met Miyuki there, found out that she also wanted to ask OZ-sensei to help with her movie for the competition (she knew her address through "rich people's connection"). As they talked about work, Akira made everyone surprised with his statement "The person I want to work with is Nori. Working with OZ is really boring. Yes, it's true that her works are good, but they have no passion in them." He then dealt a final blow to Nori, making her shouting at him and run back to her room: "When was the last time you had fun making a movie?".
Despite that, Akira still sent his photos and raw movie to her everyday in case she wanted to work on them. Few days later, Akira, Hitomi and Chiho visited Nori to check on her. Nori explained that she was only angry at herself for unable to give an answer last time, and still working on the movie normally.
"L-Like I said, please sto---Hya! Kya!"
After having dinner with Mikuriya's siblings and have an overly friendly exchange with Nori, they went home. Suddenly, they heard Nori calling them from the back, since she wanted to have a talk with Akira. There, she finally decided to join his club.
Their work progressed fast after that, as Nori started understanding the joy of making movie by herself, not relying on client's order. However, life was not that simple. One day, her father came crashed in her room.
15 minutes before the deadline of the movie competition. Everyone was waiting for Nori in the school courtyard. Because of her father, she had to put her "real" work up first, so she had very little time to work on Akira's movie. Finally, her call came, carrying her crying voice about a traffic jam due to a traffic accident, thus she wouldn't be able to make it in time. Fired up, Akira decided to go straight to her with the bicycle lent by Kenichi, not to forget to take the camera with him.
Flying through the street with max speed, suddenly, he heard Hitomi's voice. And then, "miracle" happened.
The world around him suddenly lost its color, everything around him suddenly stopped moving as he rushed toward Nori's bus stop. The world then started moving again after he reached the destination, he then carried Nori back, and somehow made it in time.
In the end, their movie lost the competition, but its high quality was still enough to make the school recognizing Movie Research Club as a club. From there, the journey of their youth continue....in the full version of the game.
Another charage-with-the-smell-of-drama from ALcot. Same as Clover Day's, this game also has a pretty relaxing common route, with mostly school-life-comedy, ichaicha and the ultimately cute of the central loli heroine Hitomi. However, there are clearly some hints in the trial that say "s*** will hit the fan in heroine routes". I can almost guess which route will be about what though, except Hitomi route, which I'm still not really certain about. The comedy level is really high, with a lot of lame gags and tsukkomi. Preparing yourself for tons of photography/animation terminology coming, since this is the main focus of the game (or so I suspect, although there is not much of them in the trial).
GRAPHIC
Carrying over the whole set of staff from Clover Day's, including Chikotam, Narumi Yuu and Nimura Yuuji, the art is undoubtedly good. However, not sure why but I don't really like the design of Chiho. Especially her smile and laugh, looks just kinda...weird. Actually, Miyuki too. Also, seem like they reused some CG from Clover Day's to cut cost. Not that I'm complaining though, it doesn't really matter to me.
P/S: Hitomi = Anzu x Hekiru's daughter confirmed.
MUSIC
Pretty enjoyable. I really like the "defeated" music they used when Akira's group came to visit Nori and found her dead sleep under the kotatsu The OP sounds pretty normal at first, but after listening to it for sometimes, it's now officially in my playlist.
VOICE
I just can't get enough of Hitomi's voice with all of the traits from Anzu (despite having different seiyuu). Other characters also have nice voice that suit well with their personality and appearance.
CONCLUSION
With the almost same set of staff, if you enjoyed Clover Day's, then you will surely also enjoy this one.
And even if you haven't, then think about this: How many time in your life do you have the chance to date a camera!? ALcot gave you that precious chance, then please, by all mean, take it!
One year ago, Insync Soft, a newborn company, announced their first work - Mousou Complete!, scheduled to be released in Autumn 2014. However, life is not that simple. The game was nowhere to be seen, and the only thing they could give were delay announcements. One, two, three, four times... Finally, 3 days ago, they officially gave the game the golden status, set its release date on 29/5. And I finally felt like trying the trial version out Now, let see what do we have here...
WARNING: POTENTIAL SPOILER
SYNOPSIS
This is the debut title by Insync. Seiji sees precognitive dreams from time to time. However, since it’s usually only fragments, he doesn’t pay much attention to them and just lives a normal life. One day, he saw a strange dream in which he was very intimate with a girl who he had never seen before. They were both naked and doing what lovers do. When he awoke the next morning, he was puzzled and wondered if it was a sign from the future. He had never dreamt about someone he had not seen before, so he dismissed it as only a delusion to avoid any weird expectations.
He got dressed, walked to school with his imouto Mari, entered his classroom and greeted his classmates. It was the start to another normal day at school… or so he thought. There was a new transfer student in his class, Erika, and she was the girl in his dreams. While he was still stunned, her gaze fell upon him.
“Ahhhh!!! N-No way… You must be joking…!?”
It seems that a strange love story has suddenly begun, with Seiji squarely in the middle of it.
CHARACTER
1. Onodera Seiji
Protagonist. A not-so-normal high school student with the ability of seeing "precognitive dream" with the accuracy of 50%, though most of them are just about random trivia stuffs. Also, what happened in his dream can happen anytime within one month.
2. Onodera Mari
Seiji's blood-related imouto. A super-brocon and hyper-energetic girl with a loud mouth and weird speaking pattern. She does not mind announcing her love to her beloved Onii-chan in front of everyone. Her annoying level is just about the same tier as Chinami, so be careful if you couldn't handle Chinami She is a crybaby (according to Seiji) and has sweet tooth.
3. Sakurai Kukuko
Nick name Kuuko, she is Seiji's osananajimi and classmate. A shy girl that can easily get flustered when speaking to other people. However, behind her airheaded and innocent appearance is a serious personality that even Seiji doesn't know about. Obvious enough, she has quite a lot of affection toward Seiji.
4. Kasuga Erika
Real name "Elixir.K.Witten" (wth?), she is the half-Japanese transfer student from Australia. She always gives off a "princess aura" so people usually treat her like an ojou-sama, though she really dislikes it. She is really weak against ghost. Nicknamed "Blond Tsundere Nee-chan" by Mari.
5. Myouga Sanaka
A real ojou-sama from an prestigious school. She met with Seiji in an incident related to his precognitive dream. She commutes to school by car, and has her own butler named Jonathan. Just as people can expect from a "sheltered princess", she is completely pure with zero knowledge about ecchi things, or rather, she doesn't even know what "ecchi" is.
6. Kanna Mia
The mysterious stalker girl that just keep following Seiji everywhere. She speaks in monotone with zero emotion on her face (or so the game said. She still smiles from time to time though. Must be my imagination ). She picked up owns a stuffed sheep named "Stuffed Sheep" (totally legit). She calls Seiji's "Sei", and forces him to call her "Mia".
STORY
The game started off with a H-scene a scene from Seiji's wet dream. The detail doesn't matter
Right when he was about to do a tongue-job, suddenly, he heard someone calling him "...-chan! Mou, Onii-chan...!". He "woke up", and found himself in the middle of the road. Oh, turned out he was just simply thinking about his dream last night, while walking to school with his imouto - Mari. While talking with Mari about his "special ability", he warned her about his dream sometime ago, when he saw her tripping on the road. Mari - could not care less - keep running ahead. Just when Seiji suddenly noticed a suspicious girl with short silver-hair hiding behind an electric pole, it happened: Mari tripped on nothing and fell down on her butt.
Having no choice left, after she got up, Seiji took her hand and walked to school. And just like that, Mari suddenly "transformed" from a loud-mouth-talkative machine into a quiet and obedient little girl (no princess-carry this time, no worry ).
To school, after a short exchange with his osananajimi Kukuko and classmate Ichirou, their HR teacher came in, introducing their new transfer student. And the person appeared in front of Seiji's eyes was no one other than the girl in his dream! Surprisingly enough, she (Erika) also "recognized" him and let off a loud scream. Misunderstanding the situation, their HR teacher assigned Seiji to be her "care taker" in one week and gave her the seat right beside him. Whoops.
Break time, while guiding her around school, Erika saw the old school building and asked Seiji to guide her in. He led her to the old infirmary room, which served as Seiji's "base". Inside, she started "interrogating" him about what he might be hiding from her, but got no result. When they came out of the room, Seiji once again encountered that "stalker girl", and learned that, for some reason, Erika also got "stalked" by her.
That night, after having Mari as dinner dinner with Mari, he went to sleep, and another dream came to him. No wet dream this time, but instead, it was a dream about an unknown girl that was about to be hit by a truck on a road with sakura trees side by side.
Awoken by his dream, he decided to go out early to try finding that place, but had no luck.
At school, after most of his classmates arrived due to a train delay and Erika's seat was still empty, Seiji decided to go and look for her. On the way, again, he encountered the "stalker girl", but got called out by Erika just when he tried to go after her. Talking for a while, he found out that Erika knew where that place was, and also, somehow had the same wet dream about him. After school, they walked to the location while talking about his dream and the girl in the accident. And, jackpot. At that exact place in his dream, they met a strange girl. She suddenly saw a cat on the road, and went right toward it, not knowing that a trucking was coming toward her. Seiji acted fast, pushed the girl out of the road, and saved her life. However, his action brought him a big trouble: the girl (Sanaka) thought of him as a "prince" and decided to "become Seiji-sama's possession". Moreover, she then bursted out crying when she saw Seiji's wound from saving her. Seiji and Erika decided to brought her and go back to the old infirmary for Seiji's treatment.
After the hell of a commotion caused by Mari and Kukuko (plus Sanaka) because of Seiji's "mistype dying email" to them, they introduced themselves.
Everything finally got somewhat settled down after Erika's lecture to Sanaka. She then asked Seiji if he wanted her to do anything for saving her life, though he couldn't answer her. In the end, Sanaka "confessed" to him, and gave him a good-bye kiss before leaving, in front of everyone and her butler Jonathan. Mari didn't want to lose either, so later, she also gave him a good-night kiss along with her declaration: "I won't give you to anyone".
That night, another dream striked him. Another wet dream. And this time, the main heroine is Kukuko.
Morning, while walking to school and thinking about all the weird stuffs happened to him recently, he AGAIN saw the "stalker girk" lurking around. He left Mari behind, chased after her, and finally, for the first time since forever, caught her. After a can-not-be-more-awkward conversation, he learned that her name is Mia, and she kept following him just because of her hobby - what she called "human-observation". They went to school together, holding hand (Seiji took her hand forcefully) after Seiji realized they were about to be late for school, but she ran off after seeing Erika coming toward them, leaving him hang there with her word "I feel happy when I hold you hand".
Things get painfully awkward with Kukuko in class. After school, Seiji and Erika talked again about the dream, and she end up "confessed" about the content of her dream, so they could confirm that their dreams were the same. They decided to ask other people if they had any dream, but got a no from both Kukuko and Sanaka. They went to the infirmary, just to see Mari and Mia were already there, eating snacks like close friends, despite being completely strangers. After Mia's introduction and Mari's passionately love confession, Erika started questioning Mari about whether or not she had any precognitive dream (and got another no), then told everyone about her having the same dream as Seiji. Everyone got curious, and Seiji ended up having to confess about their dream. Of course, the only two person that didn't react to this surprising confession were poker-face Mia and pure-girl Sanaka.
That evening, Mari once again declared her will to keep Seiji all for herself. "Affected" by that, you know what happened next: another dream came to him. This time, it's Mari.
Next day, at the infirmary (now had become their "club room"). While waiting for Sanaka and Mia to arrive, Seiji decided to bring out the chair and table, and put on the tablecloth that Mari just found. At that time, both Seiji and Erika realized: in this room, on this table, with this tablecloth, was the "crime scene" in their dream. After Sanaka arrived, and Mia woke up from her sleep from one of the infirmary bed (made Kukuko crawling out crying because she thought it was a ghost), Erika started her discussion about gathering data about Seiji's dream for potential future usage (disaster forecast, for example), and about "synchronized dream". Couldn't believe Erika just from some small fact like they realized the tablecloth and such, Sanaka tried to ask them some question to confirm, but still unable to get any result to clarify their dreams and the reason why Erika was the only one who had synchronized dream.
Suddenly, Mia broke the silence: "Why did Kukuko and Mari lie?" Turned out, Mia, for whatever reason, had the ability to look into other people's heart, and saw through the dreams that Kukuko and Mari tried to hide (to every single detail). Somehow, she also had telepathy, which explained why her voice was so soft. And, right before everyone called it a day, Mia revealed her final (?) ability, allowed her to "relay" dream from one to another person, which she used to relay Erika, Kukuko and Mari's dream to Seiji (yup, they were not his dream, he simply just saw the dream of other people being relayed by Mia). Mia asked Seiji: "Whose dream you want to see tonight?"
The choice came out, but only Kukuko was available in the trial.
That night, just as Mia said, Kukuko's dream came. And it was a supposedly "precognitive dream".
Kukuko's word, resounded inside Seiji's head:
And that's how the trial ended. I have to say, wow! At first, I thought this was just another moege/semi-nukige with pretty much no story, but somehow it turned out to be surprisingly story-focused, and even have the dark smell coming. Yes, there are H-scenes lying around here and there in the trial, but it doesn't seem to be the main attraction of the game. People who love light-story moege may also find this game a bit difficult to enjoy, since it will shove into your mouth a bunch of scientific explanations (which I understand nothing) about butterfly effect, Stockholm syndrome, synchronized dream, blah blah...(yeah yeah, sorry for my low grade in Science ) However, I still find the story pretty interesting so far, especially with the supposedly seriousness coming, though I still sometimes get annoyed with all those long ass explanation. Some places feel a bit rush and illogical, such as when everyone just simply accept the fact that Mia has all those special abilities like nothing. Guess they will explain them later...
GRAPHIC
I have a serious concern about how they used THOSE EYES as "pouting" expression. Nope nope nope nope nope. You also hardly be able to differentiate the surprising, panicking and laughing face in the CGs because they are pretty much the same.
One more thing, does this school even has an uniform? Erika is a transfer student, so MAYBE she hasn't received the uniform yet, but Mari and the rest (except Sanaka from other school) are from the same school, Mari and Mia are also supposedly in the same grade, so why do they have completely different uniform?
Maybe Mari just simply loves to break the hell out of the school rule?
Well, at least the art itself is nice though.
MUSIC
Another of those "nothing special" BGM, that unable to make players remembering any after they exited the game. The OP and insert song is nice enough to listen to, but not something that will go into my music playlist either.
VOICE
Mari's voice is EXTREMELY-UNPLEASANT. Sorry, just have to say that. I have no problem with Chinami, but her is just...no. Her voice hurt my ears hard when she shouts, and sometimes even sound really "off", not go well with the situation. Voice of side characters were cut off in the trial, so I can't comment on that.
CONCLUSION
Mousou Complete! is definitely not your normal type of moege that you can just fap to it while holding Ctrl through the route, and it also won't give you ton and ton of comedy like others either. If you came for a moege/charage-with-plot, you are in the right place. If not, go ahead and enjoy Chuunibyou na Kanojo no Love Equation. Much better.
May. And June. The two damn months with a hell amount of VN I want to pick. Why do they just have to play gangbang like this, while leaving April with not one single title worth picking?! Uwa, my playing speed is already slow, how should I handle this double-attack...
Well, enough ranting. Here are the titles that I will be picking and doing review on their trials. It's not certain, since I may just lose interest half-way through the game and drop it, but I should be able to get through most of them.
1. Mousou Complete! (Insync) (29/5)
"This is the debut title by Insync. Seiji sees precognitive dreams from time to time. However, since it’s usually only fragments, he doesn’t pay much attention to them and just lives a normal life. One day, he saw a strange dream in which he was very intimate with a girl who he had never seen before. They were both naked and doing what lovers do. When he awoke the next morning, he was puzzled and wondered if it was a sign from the future. He had never dreamt about someone he had not seen before, so he dismissed it as only a delusion to avoid any weird expectations.
He got dressed, walked to school with his imouto Mari, entered his classroom and greeted his classmates. It was the start to another normal day at school… or so he thought. There was a new transfer student in his class, Erika, and she was the girl in his dreams. While he was still stunned, her gaze fell upon him.
“Ahhhh!!! N-No way… You must be joking…!?”
It seems that a strange love story has suddenly begun, with Seiji squarely in the middle of it."
(Source: VNDB/Omochikaeri)
Azumi Itsuki, she is really good at drawing loli That's pretty much the only reason I wanted to pick this VN. I usually don't have much hope on "debut title", especially after this VN got rekt continuously by the delay train. And who know, another train may come soon Still, I want to give it a try. I'm quite curious about his wet dream
2. Love, Vampire Flowers (Cosmic Cute) (29/5)
The story of Love, Vampire Flowers takes place in boarding school that once used to be an all-girls school. And protagonist Hartwig is the sole male in the small gardening club, which has activities like watering the flowers, repairing the greenhouse, planting new flowers, and occasionally bringing flowers to the nearby hospital. The club has also inherited several things from the abolished agriculture department, including their current clubroom and a large greenhouse.
Then on one day they see a suspicious shadow that came from outside the school grounds, which is not supposed to be possible seeing as all students are living in dormitories. As they try to figure out who it was they ask Hartwig if that really wasn’t him out there. Hartwig has in fact a secret… he’s actually a vampire.
(Source: OtakuLair)
Cosmic Cute. I actually haven't played any of their games, although I really love the art and the OP song of their first title - Lovesick Puppies (and from there, I came to love Afilia Saga also ) The art in this one is actually not quite my taste, though the story does make me a little bit interested. Chances are I won't pick the full game though.
3. Love Rec. (ALcot) (26/6)
Love Rec’s story takes place at a small school located in a quiet town near the sea. Protagonist Akira Yanase is a camera freak who records even during simple meals. Together with his childhood friend Chiho they started a video shooting group. But they meet strong opposition coming from the genius director Miyuki. A competition breaks out between the two of them with the prize of recognition as reward if they win.
Akira starts running around in order to gather more members, but finds no one, with the closing date getting closer each day instead. At that time his favorite camera gives of a strange light and a small girl makes her appearance. She introduces herself as Hitomi, a camera fairy. And with the addition of Nori, a professional in video editing, Akira’s surroundings have completely changed.
Together they worry, get angry, laugh, and cry. And as they live out their youths their hearts get closer to one another, little by little.
(Source: OtakuLair)
Hitomi, she is pretty much Anzu's clone http://forums.fuwanovel.net/uploads/emoticons/default_laugh.png' alt=':lol:'> From appearance, character type to personality, everything The heroine cast this time is not as delicious good as Clover Day's, but still enough to make me feel like jumping right in. Expecting some shameless plays with the camera
4. Sorcery Jokers (3rdEye) (26/6)
One day, magic suddenly was born. It was not only known by people, but it was also recognized by the current government. Now, it is used as an energy resource and has permeated many other fields. This story is about six people who live in a world where magic exists whose fates are intertwined.
(Source: VNDB/Omochikaeri)
Another one of those "I never play their games before but it looks good so why not". Seem like they will also use duo-protagonist this time, same as Gensou no Idea.
5. Ojou-sama to Himitsu no Otome (Moonstone Honey) (26/6)
The first game by the new label Moonstone Honey will center around Yuuri Shinohara, a crossdressing yet kind boy who is attending an all-girls school. Since he’s the future heir of a famous fashion brand for women’s clothing he is expected to know a lot about the subject. But he’s actually weak around women and doesn’t really understand them, making it impossible for him to inherit the fashion brand.
And so his family forced him to attend a high class all-girls school, called Magnolia Academy. But even though he tried to live a quiet school life, for some reason several girls tend to gather around him…
(Source: OtakuLair)
Lady and gentleman, it's Princess Evangile 2! "Rise" and "Ayaka" came back for more, "Ritsuko" became an old hag more mature, and "Ruriko" got transformed into a first year loli! Oh, and "Masaya" became a trap also! Now this~is~interesting~ I see absolutely no reason to not pick this one Time to get back the "Ruriko" route that we lost
6. Lollipop Factory (Galette) (26/6)
.................................
On second thought, maybe not........................
I mean.............
................................
Not that I really..........
I mean, it's pretty much a nuki-lolige.............
...............................
Aghhhhhh mouuuuuuuu!!!
7. Magical Dears (Navel honeybell) (26/6)
Magical Dears is Navel honeybell’s second title and is set in a world where magic exists. Male magicians are few in number and this story will focus on one of them, and his romance with one of the four heroines.
(Source: OtakuLair)
...not even sure I wanted to pick this one anymore. Don't think I will make it pass the trial, but still...
And that's it for this month! For this and that reason, I may have to drop this and that, or unable to get a review out every week, but I will try my best! Please look forward to my next review!
PeasSoft. The first time I heard about them, was when they introduced their new title at that time - Koisuru Shimai no Sextet. And no, I was only interested in the catchy OP song, not the VN itself. For me, it was nothing but a nukige, although it's actually not. Definitely not the best first impression. So, why did I decide to try out their lastest title - Chuunibyou na Kanojo no Love Equation (release on May 29th)? Half of it, again, was from the catchy OP that I was humming all the time recently. The other half, well...I just couldn't take my eyes off Spica-chan. A-Anyway, let's get to it, shall we?
SYNOPSIS
The game will start when our protagonist transfers schools and comes to stay at a dorm which had just turned from a woman’s dormitory into a joint dormitory. But it’s only his first day in and he already runs into several unlucky encounters, meaning that he walks in on several girls as they are changing clothes. Does this mean that he’ll now be expelled from the dorm? Will that be the only thing he ever accomplished?
CHARACTER
1. Kanbara Ryuichi
Protagonist. Because of his parents's work (haaa........), he has to change school and move to Fushiki dorm in Kazami city. A lucky sukebe that dreamed about a harem life and all kind of lewd situation in his new place. He was given the name God Dragon by Aoi (Ryu = Dragon. The word "Kan" in his name can also be pronounced as "Kami" = God).
2. Kohinata Aoi
"Is she still alive...the Witch that threatened the peace of this world...!"
"The Dark Avenger". An incurable chuunibyou girl that is in the same class/dorm with Ryuichi. With the common sense level on par with Takanashi Rikka, she pro-claimed that she came here to defeat "the Witch of the Dorm". For whatever reason, she is really weak against dog. Kinda an airhead. Despite being the Dark Avenger, she is really afraid of ghost.
3. Kuromine Mion
"You really think that death has any meaning to me, the ruler of everything in the universe...? Kufufufu..."
"The Witch of the Dorm". A third-year senpai with low level chuunibyou. Basically, she is still capable of talking like a normal human being (LOL), just suddenly go full chuuni from time to time. Like her appearance suggests, she is a S that love to tease Ryuichi. Don't seem to have much sense of embarrassment.
4.Hanagasaki Momo
"The shining moonlight, the thorny rose wines...Respond to my desire!!"
"The Dark Priestess". One year younger than Ryuichi, it's still unknown whether or not she really has chuunibyou. I feel like she just got dragged into the "battlefield" at some point by Rikka Aoi without being able to refuse. Outside of "war zone", she is a pretty shy girl that love cute stuff and manga/anime. Second best cook in the dorm.
5. Hoshino Spica
"...Look, Astral...the Arcturus is twinkling..."
"The Alien Observer". She came to the Earth, along with her alien bunny(?) friend Astral, to observe the life on this planet and report back to her home planet (for unknown purpose). With the emotionless face, the only thing that she's interested in are the stars and pudding. She hates green pepper with passion. If anyone try to disobey her, she will threaten them about destroying the Earth. Because she is a genderless alien in the body of a human girl, she has no problem with Ryuichi seeing her naked. Due to the timeline difference between Earth and her home planet (morning on Earth is much earlier), she is really bad with morning, and always require other people to wake her up with a bit of "violence". Don't try to scare her with ghostly stuff, because those "non-scientific" things have zero effect on her.
6. Ayase Chisato
"Don't tell me, you are the rape demon that just attacked Momo...!? I-I have to call the police!!"
The only normal person in the group. Same year/class as Ryuichi, she is the best cook in the dorm. Serious, strict and good at cooking/shopping/housework, other people tend to see her as the mother in the dorm, and she is not really happy about that. Currently working part-time as waitress in a café.
STORY
After the fierce battle of Dark Avenger + Dark Priestess versus The Dorm Witch at the beginning, the time will be rolled back to 7 days before that, when Ryuichi just came to Kazami city. On the way to Fushiki dorm, he just couldn't stop himself from imagining his dream life in the new place - which was just recently converted from a girl-only dorm to normal dorm, and he would be the first boy to arrive. However, what greeted him at the dorm was absolute silent. Having no choice, he went in and looked for his room by himself. Opening the door, he was speechless when he saw a girl (Aoi) with weird clothes inside his dark room, chanting magic.
"I have never seen you before...Don't tell me, you are the Dark Messenger!?"
Panickingly run out of the room, he met Satomi - the manger of the dorm. She told him about the terrifying state of his room - water leaked everywhere, making the room unusable - aside from being the altar for Aoi, so he had to live in the living room until the room was repaired. Aoi ran down, and they exchanged a short introduction.
Having nothing to do, Ryuichi walked around the city. Back home, he suddenly had the urge of picking flower (LOL) so he headed straight to the bathroom. In there, he had the "fateful" meeting with Momo - just done with the bath and totally naked. Rushing out after Momo's death scream, he bumped right into Chisato (and shortly after, Aoi), who came to check on Momo. Of course, he got rekt after that.
"This is why I opposed the idea of having boys in here...There are only girls living here, so various problems will arise..."
In the middle of their conversation, Mion came down from her room. After a short exchange, she suggested that there should be an one-week-trial for Ryuichi, and everyone would decide his fate after that. Everyone agreed to that suggestion. However, for the "safeness" of the girls, he would have to keep all of his belonging and sleep inside a cage (literary).
Night time, waited until everyone (supposedly) went to sleep, he went to take a bath. And in there, another fateful meeting awaited him - the final resident of Fushiki dorm - Spica. Going in naturally in the middle of his bath, she asked him to wash her hair and back. Then, after everything was done, like nothing happened, she came out of the bath room, leaving Ryuichi all erected confused.
Lucky(?) for him, Spica was sleep-walking(?) at that time, so the next morning, she remembered nothing about him and what happened.
"...Who?"
Going to school, he met Akane - an energetic girl that was the helper of, like, every clubs in the school, and Soushi - a lolicon otaku that doesn't mind boasting about his love for primary schooler. On the way home, Ryuichi's scar on his forehead was discovered by Aoi, and she dragged him right back into her room, and showed him her "Forbidden Grimoire" (a.k.a university notebook). Inside, was a prediction about the future: "The brother from the past life with a wound on his forehead will soon appear". Immediately, she told him that he lost past life's memory from a curse, so she would become his "protector" until his memory came back.
"Alright, from now on, I will become your protector!"
Next day, after school, Spica was given the task of going shopping. Chisato also assigned Ryuichi to go along with Spica, to prevent her from buying whatever she pleased. Despite this, during the shopping, you would have the choice of whether or not you want to obey her to keep her from destroying the Earth spoil her with her eating preference (no green pepper, pudding for life!), or be a cold heart asshole proper man with the policy of "tonight dinner first, the Earth later!".
After various incidents in the next days, including him charging into the toilet with broken lock while Chisato was still inside, and the "I already done with changing clothes" troll from Mion, the judgement day finally came. And the result was...*censored*
This is the end of the trial version 1. In the version 2, you will be able to go a little bit further into the common route, and have a peak into Aoi and Spica route (about 1/3 the length of the actual route, I guess). Plus, 5 H-scenes for 5 heroines will be available.
"Pyon pyon pyon...pyon"
SPICA IS SO CUTEEEE!!! Sorry, my bad.
Overall, this seems to be no different than Koisuru Shimai no Sextet - a moege with zero story and can easily be mistaken as a nukige. The comedy is at medium level, and mainly come from Spica's cuteness the chuuni exchange between the characters and all those lucky sukebe situation from Ryuichi. The heroine routes are expected to be all the same - they will fall in love with Ryuichi for whatever reason, then invite him to live with them in their room, and every kind of ichaicha will happen. I can't really say anything about the romance level in heroines route, since they have not even confessed yet in the taste-test trial. The common route is capable of keeping you away from falling asleep, but not good enough to make you want to play it for a long time. In fact, it took me two days just to finish this short trial, which normally I would consume in a single day. The language is painfully hard to understand when Aoi speak in full chuuni mode, though the daily conversation, and even Mion/Momo chuuni language are pretty simple.
GRAPHIC
It's Yukie a.k.a Peach Candy (Kimi e Okuru, Sora no Hana, Neko Cafe Macchiato, Hakoniwa Logic) who is in charge of the art, so no complain whatsoever. She is one of the few artist that managed to attract me even with huge boobs characters (Iriya Koko is an example. Well, there is the fact about Ogura Yui being her seiyuu too, but...). The moeness of her art is killing me! Still wish she would reduce the amount of balloons though...
MUSIC
Aside from the catchy OP, the rest of the BGMs are pretty normal, or maybe even, bland. Definitely not something that will make you remember afterward. Just my personal opinion though.
VOICE
Momo's voice is seriously annoying. I don't know why, but I just couldn't handle her weirdly high-pitched voice, especially when she was panicking. Again, personal opinion. Aside from that, everything is cool.
CONCLUSION
I have to say, this is not the moege-for-everyone. With the non-existence story, high amount of H-CG and just decent amount of comedy, unless you really like a heroine (like me, I played this VN just for Spica), or else, don't pick it, you won't be able to stay for long.
April eroge releasing day came. Lucky for me, I didn't pick any VN this month, since they all are just boring as hell. (well, maybe that's not the case for Chrono Clock and Kami no Rhapsody, but nah, I just can't be bothered with them) So, I decided to start on some trial that just released recently, and my first one (actually, it would be the second after Rensou Relation, but, oh well...) was Pure x Connect - the lastest title from SMEE (Lover Able, Fureraba). The game is scheduled to be released on May 29th.
SYNOPSIS
Of course every man wants a girlfriend, and the protagonist in Pure x Connect has been longing for love for a long time. He’s had enough of wasting time with his current boring days. He wants to have a love just like in those eroges. But the people around him tell him that he should look at reality or ridicule him. Is he wrong by yearning for something like that?
Then this winter he might have reached a turning point, when he is invited to work at a popular (to girls) bakery restaurant near the main street. Now having been put in a world he has never experienced before, he might be able to change his everyday life.
CHARACTER
1. Protagonist (you name him!)
A normal university student (man, when was the last time I played a VN with "legal" characters again...). He is an otaku that love 2D girls more than 3D. For him, most 3D girls are nothing but "kuso onna" (what an ass~).
2. Ichinose Sora
Protagonist (main character - MC)'s osananajimi. Energetic and mischievous, she can easily handle all of the lame rants from the MC. Just like him, she is also into manga, anime and stuffs. Her favorite singers are Vocaloid (don't rage on me if I accidentally used the wrong word, LOL). She eats quite a lot without any care about keeping her image. (and of course, her body is still perfect) She doesn't care much about getting a boyfriend, although her standard is pretty low: her boyfriend just need to be someone like Johnny D*pp. She is currently working in the "La Pivoine" Bakery&Restaurant.
3. Shinozaki Ayumi
MC's long-time-no-see cousin. Due to various cliché reasons a.k.a parents busy with oversea work, she will be living with the MC's family for 3 years. Shy, gentle, polite and good at cooking, she is the perfect waifu imouto material, unlike the MC's real imouto, who is not even a heroine and I don't even remember name. She is kinda a crybaby. (my impression) Her favorite food is eihire. (like...fried fish fin?)
4. Konno Arisa
Sora's friend and kouhai. She was introduced to the MC in a blind date organized by Sora. She usually keeps on a grumpy face and ready to rage at people anytime, but they all are just her way of saying "I'm super duper nervous right now!". Currently working in "La Pivoine", she is pretty serious with her work. She has absolutely no interest in love and such.
She is kinda like a tsundere, though I'm not really sure...
5. Doumyouji Moemi
Another staff member of "La Pivoine". Highly energetic and mischievous, she charged right in when she overheard the conversation between the MC and Arisa in "La Pivoine" about part-time job, with the can-not-be-more-cheerful attitude. She loves to play with children, and usually joke with them about "Onee-chan doesn't need a boyfriend because I already have you". In her route, she will switch from her talkative mode to super shy and dere mode.
6. Makihara Shiho
"La Pivoine" 's manager. 28 years old (SPOILERRRRRR!!!), she is serious in her work, but also have a pretty childish "hobby" in her free time: bully play rock-scissor-paper with dogs. Due to generation gap, her knowledge is pretty outdated when it comes to technology. She is normally cheerful, but if you anger her, especially with something to do with her age, then hell await you. She played the "onee-chan" role in her route.
STORY
Starting with a short introduction scene for each heroine, after that, you will be able to witness the most wtf rejection in VN history (LOL) of the MC, with the support of a 2,5 tons excavator he borrowed from a nearby construction zone where he is part-time working. After making the confessor run away in tear, he got dragged to a restaurant by Sora, just to rant with her about love and all kind of stuff. In the end, she suggested that he should go on a blind date with a girl she know from her work. Thinking for a while, he then accepted her suggestion.
Back to home, he went to check on the "visitor" that his imouto Karina told him earlier on the phone, and saw a cute BB girl sleeping on the sofa. Looking at the name tag on her luggage, he finally recognized his cousin Ayumi whom he haven't met from when he was a child.
After some nice exchange with her, the MC got ready for the tomorrow's blind date and went to sleep. Next day, after having breakfast with Ayumi and Sora(she come to his house like everyday), he went to the place Sora told him and wait for his blind date partner. Shortly after, Arisa came, greeted him with the super grumpy face that made him speechless. The tension kept high up as they went to a restaurant for lunch, just to suddenly fell down to zero after Arisa confessed about her nervousness and made the MC roll on the floor laughing. They had lots of sex talk after that.
The next day, after school, while going around thinking about finding a new part-time job, he encountered a strange woman that was "bullying" a dog with her rock-scissor-paper game. Annoyed by her "dirty" play, the Pomeranian dog (which she mistook as a Chihuahua) ran off with her bag, not forget to hit the MC right in the ball on the way. He then joined the woman on the chase, and finally managed to get the bag back. The woman (Shiho) introduced herself, gave him her business card and told him to visit her sometime.
He went home, and got a phone call from his mother, telling him to go out for dinner since she would be home late. Remembering about Shiho, he and Ayumi went to "La Pivoine" (Karina - his imouto - had a stomachache) (it's a DATEEEEEE), and were surprised to see Arisa and Sora working there (seem like Sora never told him where she works). He also met with Moemi - who busted right in when he and Arisa were talking about getting a part-time job at "La Pivoine", and Shiho - who he didn't even know (notice) that she was the manager of this place, and got offered a slot to work here. After the meal, the MC, Sora and Ayumi went up the mountain to look down at the town at night. Here, he thought about Shiho's invitation earlier, and decided to take the job at "La Pivoine". The game ended in the next day, after the MC went to "La Pivoine" and succeeded with the job interview(?).
The trial also included a short scene from each heroine's route, and H-scene for all 5 heroines.
Played through the trial, I can tell that this will pretty much be a normal moege/charage that focused on romance and comedy rather than story. Actually, I'm not even sure if this VN has a story or not, because it just gives me the "cation" feeling with the "I suddenly feel like getting a girlfriend so let's go and look for one!" type of MC. Chances are we will get nothing but raburabu in heroine routes, though it's not like I mind or did not expect this. The MC's rampage is pretty difficult to understand sometimes, but I guess I will just put up with it.
Oh btw, I guess this kind of plot will satisfy a lot of people that doesn't like the idea of "every characters in this game are 18 or older", because every heroines here really are "legal" adult. Guess we don't need to worry about getting arrested while playing this game
GRAPHIC
Nothing to complain about. Ame nochi Yuki did a nice job as usual. The art is totally fabulous. And those French breads in the background make me so hungry...
MUSIC
Nothing special, but at least they suits the scene well. The OP is pretty enjoyable though.
VOICE
They really need to get someone else to "voice" Sora's iguana pet, because it's FREAKING TERRIBLE. It sounded more like someone from the mental hospital than an iguana (actually, does iguana even cry at all?). The voice of a male side char is pretty quiet and hard to hear. Aside from those, all good.
CONCLUSION
No loli for me (damnnnn), no imouto route (dam--- nah, I don't like her anyway), full of BB (welp...), and all legal characters. Still, I guess I will pick this one, for the art, for the raburabu, and for Ayumi! Though, it won't be in my high priority list, since I will need to finish Rensou Relation first.
Already fed up with all of those balloons? No worry, Clochette got you cover this time!
Koko kara Natsu no Innocence! is the lastest title from the famous balloon maker Clochette. This time, Oshiki Hitoshi - the exclusive artist of Clochette (lol) will not take charge of the art, but instead it will be Sesena Yau (1/2 Summer, Timepiece Ensemble, Diamic Days). The scenario will be written by Hozumi Kei (Mashiro iro Symphony, Witch's Garden, Clover Day's, AstralAir no Shiroki Towa, Sanoba Witch) so we can expect some good story rather than "plot" support like every other of Clochette's games....or so I wanted to say. It's Clochette we are talking about here after all, and he also wrote the story for Sakigake Generation, so...chances are they will still be focusing on H and stuffs...
Anyway, I guess this will be the first time ever I have a little interest in Clochette's game. Will it be a big surprise to everyone, or will it be just another failure traditional Clochette's fap game?
Few people (or everyone?) know that I'm a big fan of Lump of Sugar. And of course, their lastest title - Rensou Relation, is no exception either. So when the trial edition of the game came out 2 days ago, I jumped right in and download it, though I only started playing (and finished) it today since I was busy with Kujiragami no Tearstilla. So, let see what they brought us with this game~
SYNOPSYS
Rensou Relation starts when the results for entrance exams are just rolling in. Sakurazaka Sinnosuke unfortunately did not get in the school of his choice but that would not get him down. But before he realized it he was left with not a single acceptance letter.
After a short moment of panic, Sinnosuke decided to call his former homeroom teacher. His teacher actually tells him to apply to a new and extremely popular school, with an awful competitive acceptance rate. With his grades it would be hard to get in, but there happens to be 1 special recommendation left open for a local student. What happens after that opens the door for an endless amount of possibilities…
(Source: Otakulair)
CHARACTER
1. Sakurazaka Sinnosuke
Protagonist - an extremely perverted otaku, a lolicon and also big boobs lover (wow). He is a lazy ass that hate study, only like playing game and eroge (just like me). However, he has a smooth-talking mouth, and get blessed with extreme luck. Currently living alone because his parents are busy with work (as usual).
2. Sakurazaka Yuuko
Sinnosuke's cousin. Her father manages the "Maison de Saint" apartment next to Sinnosuke's house, so she comes by his house a lot. A gook cook and caring person, she takes care of Sinnosuke with his meal and housework. She loves history, and even know about every kind of military strategy/strategist - Zhuge Liang, Masamune Date and such. She has a twin sister - Aiko.
3. Mikuriya Himari
The new resident of "Maison de Saint" apartment. A kind but clumsy girl, with zero sense of direction. She is a huge gluttony, and easily fall into "break down" state if she doesn't have enough food supply It seems like she is pretty bad with technology (or maybe just cellphone).
Her special ability: catching cellphone with her boobs
4. Sengoku Ichika
A kuudere with serious attitude and the infamous sting tongue. Not much is known about her, but I can tell that she is pretty smart and love reading book (especially English science, technical, and alike book). She hate people touching her, so she always wears gloves (Lucia much?).
Her special ability: Mind reading (can read Sinnosuke's mind with the accuracy of 100 percent )
5. Garland Arisa
Another new resident of "Maison de Saint". There is not much interaction with her in the trial, so the only thing I know about her is that she is a foreigner and an air-headed. Oh, and she is an osananajimi with Ichika (be in the same class with her since primary school).
STORY
The game started with a H-scene. Yes, you heard me right. A FREAKING H-SCENE. So don't play this game in public http://forums.fuwanovel.net/uploads/emoticons/default_dry.png' alt='<_<'> And it will make you go like "wait, did I download the wrong game?", because that H-scene is NOT from this game - but directly from another title of Lump of Sugar - Tayutama -Kiss on my deity-. Don't panic, they just want to troll you, and show you what kind of person the protagonist is, that's all And no, I won't post it here, even with my own censorship, because my life will be on the line
"There is a loli in front of you calling you "Onii-chan". Do you need anything more than that? No, nothing."
After the morning breakfast with his cousin Yuuko, Sinnosuke headed to Yamada High School for his entrance exam result. It's a school that "only utterly idiots may fail" - and guess what, we have an idiot like that this year - him. Carrying that depressing news home, he bumped into Himari - currently struggling with the map to find the way to "Maison de Saint". He invited her home to have party dinner with him and Yuuko - the party Yuuko made to celebrate his acceptance to Yamada High - just to pathetically confess with Yuuko later about his result, and his plan to apply into some private school. However, life said "nope" to him.
Note: All of these are "denied" letter from all of the private schools he applied to.
In the middle of his agony, a miracle suddenly happened - he received a call from his former HR teacher, telling Sinnosuke that he will give him a recommendation to Amami High School - a high-class school where Yuuko and Himari are enrolled in, only required him to pass an interview. Of course, he snatched the golden opportunity right away, and dash to school for the interview - and succeeded!
Next day, Sinnosuke left house early to get some food for his real celebration party, and meet with Himari outside - struggling with the map (again) to get to the supermarket. He offered to help, and ended up having a nice date with her. At the end of the "date", they visited a candy shop, and Himari ended up taking a part-time job there to help an old woman with managing the shop.
I actually had to pause the game here to get some food, since my stomach was protesting so much. I had no dinner last night, haha...
School day came. While waiting for Himari, he suddenly heard footstep running up to him. BANG! Someone bumped right into him. At this point you will have a choice - a REALLY IMPORTANT CHOICE - that will decide either you can skillfully recover from the bump and impress the strange girl - Arisa - or activating his godly skill - "Pantsu Stealing" - to unlock a no-pant H-CG. And no, I won't post it here either, go find it yourself
Depend on your choice, things will happen differently. But in the end, he will ended up in the same class Himari and Ichika, and may even unlock extra scene with Arisa if Sinnosuke used his technique.
Back home, he had a nice dinner and gaming session with his two kawaii cousin - Yuuko and Aiko. Funny enough, somehow Aiko is - at the moment - the only character with super-deformed sprite in normal scene.
Physical measurement day came, while Himari was up and down about her weight and her diet plan, Arisa in contrast, seemed to be really excited about this, because "it's not everyday that you can look at other girls naked" (no yuri - unconfirmed). Ichika - hate being touched by others - not so thrill about this either.
While waiting for his turn, Sinnosuke received a call phone Arisa - Himari fell unconscious during the measurement session - due to running out of gas (a.k.a hungry). He took her to the infirmary, just to witness Ichika come in, lock the door and start taking off clothes (to take the measurement herself). Of course, she found him out right away, but for the weirdest reason ever - "Somehow, I feel like you are the only exception of humanity that can touch me." - she asked him to measure her 3-sizes. Welllllll..........I mean..........Hah? Umm, hold on, the heck with that reason again?
The trial ended after the physical measurement day. Well, what to say... I generally not that much of a fan of perverted protagonist (My Girlfriend is the President for example, I played that one just for Ell then drop. Couldn't handle the protagonist, wayyyy to annoying), and I do find this guy a little bit annoying, but still acceptable. The plot doesn't seem to have any sort of serious story (my impression), so it should be a pure moege focusing on comedy and romance. Most of the comedy are based around the perversion of Sinnosuke, so it may get a little boring if they just keep it like this in the full game. The amount of H-CG in common route - with nipple and v*gina is unusually high, so play the game with caution And I really need some explanations with the weirdly sudden change of attitude of Ichika. Seriously Lump of Sugar, that reason is totally wtf.
SYSTEM
As usual, Lump of Sugar loves to implement random mechanic into their games, and this game is no exception. Aside from the "Doosle" choice system, which may lead you to a completely different flow of story in the flowchart (in theory), you also have the "Hirameita!" system, which I still don't really get how it works (haven't seen the actual usage in the trial). Supposedly, it will be used in a minigame to unlock some new choices in the "Doosle", or something like that.
GRAPHIC
I love Lump of Sugar's art, so I have no complain about this. Totally suit my taste. All of the special effects are nice also.
No, actually, I think they over-colored a bit, but I will just let it slide.
MUSIC
Pretty good so far, no complain. And I love the OP - as usual, their OPs are always nice and catchy.
VOICE
When they first introduced this game, I decided that I would go straight into Ichika route first - I just fell in love with her right in the first sight. However, when they released the countdown movie, I just hit my head to the pillow - her voice, imo, is absolutely off with my impression about her. Technically, it still "suits" her in a way, but I just find it really unpleasant somehow. I would give it 10/10 if they changed her seiyuu...
CONCLUSION
The trial did tickle my interest a bit, so I guess I will pick it (actually I will pick it no matter what ), but whether or not I really play it, is a different matter. That, only the full version can answer me -_-
Hey what's up, Satsuki here, welcome to my chan--- Wait, this is not Youtube...
*cough* Anyway, today I will do a review on Kujiragami no Tearstilla, a moege made by Whirlpool released in February 2015. You can download it fr--- oopsie. You can get a copy from AmiAmi, or just ask OriginalRen for some cheaper options. I noticed some people from Fuwa already played this game and gave it some pretty bad scores, but who care, my policy is "there is no problem as long as I like it". With that in mind, let's get down to business~!
WARNING: MAY CONTAIN SPOILER!
WARNING: 100% PERSONAL OPINION!
STORY
The water capital, Amanoshima Island, brings in many tourists with its network of canals. It became prosperous due to its ‘energy water’ industry which can be used for everything from consumption to energy, and a school was built to do further research on it. It is on this mysterious island that there is a folklore about a water god who can grant wishes.
One day, Yuuma drifted ashore in a suitcase. He met a young girl Riru, who was the kujiragami (whale god) in the legend. However, for some reason she had lost her ability to grant wishes. She asked for his help to regain her powers and thus, he became her messenger. This is the beginning of the story about the return of the legend of the water of wishes.
CHARACTER
1. Narumi Yuuma
Well...At least he is not Faceless Void
Our protagonist. A normal high school student, that one day got kidnapped (and almost killed) by his own imouto to the strange island "Amanoshima". He is a pervert, and pretty much a hidden siscon. He was forced to transfer to the school on the island after get forced (again) the position of "messenger" by Riru and unable to leave the island.
2. Narumi Marine
"Hora, boku no oppai, fukafuka dayo!"
Yuuma's little sister, a huge brocon and pervert. She loves to assault her onii-chan every morning (actually, any possible time) with her sexual attack . She came to Amanoshima island in order to research "condensed energy water" for some totally "pure and innocent" purposes. She is also the most helpful person when it comes to her onii-chan's love trouble. Energetic and mischievous, she is the mood-maker of the group.
Oh, she is also the "kidnapper" that brought Yuuma to Amanoshima island - in a freaking suitcase - "on a whim". Wow, my imouto, you are way too dangerous.
3. Kamitouno Ena
"So you are here after all. I was really worried, you know?"
Yuuma's osananajimi, a top-rated student that even teachers on Amanoshima island heard about. She took care of Yuuma and Marine since their childhood, because their parents were almost never home. A gentle onee-chan type that loves doing housework, but you seriously don't want to make her angry, because her inner demon will come out She came to the island after figured out Yuuma's kidnapping incident just by some small clues, and end up staying there to take care of Narumi's sibling.
Because she is older than Yuuma and Marine, they call her "Ena-nee".
4. Tenkawa Mitsuki
"Um...but I feel like we are just like a real family"
A student from Amanoshima High School (sorry, I actually don't remember the school name). She found a suitcase drifted ashore, and was plenty surprised to see a human come out of it
She came from a traditional miko family on the island that serve the kujiragami. Not much to say about her, since she is kinda...normal, with nothing special worth mentioning.
5. Riru = Whale
"Wa...so good! What's this, it's so delicious!"
The legendary Whale God of Amanoshima Island. She met Yuuma by chance, after Yuuma fell down the waterway and got swept up the mountain and landed right in front of her shrine. A stubborn, immature and clumsy goddess that love to order people around whenever she wants something. She lost almost all of her goddess power due to *censored*, and the only power she has left are "causing trouble" and "granting wish in a weirdest way possible". Due to various reason, she enrolled into school, and was put in the same class with Yuuma and Mitsuki. She has a serious complex about her childish appearance and her small boobs. Her favorite food is canned mackerel.
ROUTE
1. Common Route
"You are the worst! Why did you use my pantsu to wipe the floor?!"
Aside from character introduction and everyday ichaicha, the common route will throw at you a bunch of unanswered events that you can explore in heroine routes, and give you more info about the island and the kujiragami. The level comedy in common route is pretty high - however - kinda depending on what you are into, because chances are some people won't enjoy much the annoying level of Marine and Riru (I have no problem though - in fact, I really like them). Not to the point of Chinami in Hoshimemo, but you should prepare yourself for something like that
2. Marine Route
"Onii-chan, I love you...I will love you forever"
In Marine route, you will be following her on the road of researching Viagra condensed water, finding out the "real love potion", and solving the lab incident in common route. The story focuses a lot on Yuuma and her, with not much to do with Riru. It has some light drama here and there, but it's kinda unnecessary for me, since it doesn't do much emotional damage. It will be a good route for your siscon out there you to have some laugh, but for plot value, it contributes pretty much nothing. Well, the route still explain this and that about energy water, but it's definitely not some unique-route-info.
Minor spoiler in white text: Oh, and she has a wedding ending!
3. Mitsuki Route
"Yappari dame!!!" (so much for the wet dream)
Mitsuki's route mainly focuses on her trying to help Riru regain her power by reviving the old ritual/festival to worship kujiragami. I have some real problems with the super fast relationship-progressing in this route. Also, the whole reason of her trying to holding back her feeling for Yuuma is...kind of dumb. Oh come on, don't just "hate" a guy just because he unintentionally took your place as Riru's "right hand". Some big drama happen in this route, but ended up solved by "miracle", which will leave you go all "wtf?" until the true route.Oh, and you will need some thinking to figure it out too
4. Ena Route
"Yuu-kun...can we stay like this, just a bit longer?"
80% of this route are "newlyweds life" of Yuuma and Ena. They threw in some plot-event, but just for the sake of reminding players "you are still playing Kujiragami no Tearstilla, not My Girlfriend is Ena". The only thing worth mentioning is the sudden drama come out of nowhere near the end. Expecting something good? Nahhhh, it will be solved in minute in a totally ridiculous way, with the nice timing support from a random guy call "Deus Ex Machina". Wow. To tell the truth, I skipped through half of this route, because it's just simply too boring for me (Ena is not even my favorite heroine). If Ena is No.1 for you, then you MAY enjoy this route, with nothing but flirting this and that. If you don't? Ctrl through it. Oh, but stop near the end though, because that sudden event will give you some hints about the true route.
Btw, it's kind of funny to see how Marine act in this route: she said that it's bad to use wish water to change a person's feeling, although she herself tried to get Yuuma with her love potion
I actually expected a triangle love in this route after Marine and Ena's "battle" in common route, but sadly, Marine just simply gave up and turn to support Yuuma x Ena instead. What a let down, my imouto -_-
5. Riru Route
"Ugh...calling me idiot again"
In Riru route, you will learn more about the history of kujiragami, and the sudden event that heading to her - the wall. Her route only serve as ignition for her true route, so you will see things go down real quick, along with heavy drama. Despite this, you may feel pretty annoyed with the super anti-climax power return, which just totally kick your feeling off the bridge.
After finished all 4 route, you will unlock Riru true route. Everything will be solved and explained in this route: the original meaning of the miko dance/ritual, the origin of energy water, the real kujiragami altar, the relation between Riru, the energy water, and the island. It's a pretty good (although kinda cliché, and again, hello miracle) ending for me. My only complain in this route is Yuuma (incoming rant and heavy spoiler):
GRAPHIC
"Haaa....please...be gentle with me..."
I like Whirlpool's art in general, and this one does not disappointed me either. However, I do find some CGs where character's body proportions look just...weird (usually leg and hand too small, compare to others part of the body). Also, I think they should give characters more sprites. Seeing Mitsuki changing clothes in a matter of seconds between CG and sprites is kinda meh.
The SDCGs are nice as ever. Need more of them though
MUSIC
Nothing special, just the typical BGM you hear everywhere. The OP and 2nd ED are nice though.
VOICE
Damn, I especially like Marine super deredere voice and Mitsuki rage/embarrassed voice. I even recorded some of their lines to hear again (oh, did I mention this? The game has a function that allow you to "save" a dialogue into a collection to listen again later). Riru voice is kinda annoying, to tell the truth.
Quality of the voice sometimes decrease suddenly, (I felt like they were talking into a box or something), and may affect your enjoyment.
H-SCENE
Don't ask me, I don't care, I skipped them all . One thing though, after finished a route, you can go to scene collection and enjoy a bonus H-scene or two.
CONCLUSION
Pros:
- Nice art.
- Good comedy level.
- Marine!
Cons:
- Pointless route (Ena).
- Mr. Deus Ex Machine and Mrs. Miracle.
- Lack of sprites.
- Some illogical details.
