Grisaia no Kajitsu Review

[Barktooth]

I'm also reading Grisaia right now, and I'd have to agree with a lot of what Vorathiel says. The common route was pretty bad, I didn't enjoy much of the comedy and the narration didn't do a great job at getting me to care for the characters. I just had to sit through hours of boring interaction between characters I didn't care about. Well, short of Makina - I really liked her in the common route  

They don't really reveal any of the problems of the characters in the common route, there is no interesting character development, no intriguing events happen outside of character interaction, no sudden drama that turns their peaceful life upside-down, etc. But overall, unlike some other VNs it just didn't pull me in and wasn't engaging - I was reading it for the sake of getting to the character routes.

So far I've read Makina's and probably most of Michiru's route, and this changed my opinion about the game a lot. I liked Makina in the common route and her route was as good as I expected - but not surprisingly amazing or anything. However Michiru, while she was kinda annoying in the common route ended up having a marvelous route so far, totally changed my opinion of her and the game. I hope the other routes are just as good.. though from this thread it seems like only Amane's is, and she is my least favorite character lol.

13 hours ago, Zenophilious said:

About Mitcher's route...

  Reveal hidden contents

I'm sorry, but I really don't believe that transplanting organs will give the recipient bits of their personalities or memories.  I'm not saying that it's inherently impossible, but until it's confirmed by reputable scientists in a peer-reviewed study, I'm going to assume that it's pseudoscience and crap, and will treat it as such.  The theories of body and cellular memory haven't had that happen yet, so I'm going to continue to hold that against her route.  I'm not saying that having impossible things happen in fiction is inherently bad, it just makes no sense with the way the other routes in Kajitsu handled that sort of thing.  They never embraced pseudoscience, all they really did was have ludicrous things happen that, while ludicrous, weren't scientifically impossible, aside from the whole "throwing a frozen turkey into a plane engine at high speeds" bit, and that's just really, really unlikely.  The reason it pissed me off so much is because they could have had her develop an actual mental disorder, like borderline personality disorder or disassociate identity disorder, and it felt like they just went the easy, lazy route.

If her route was in a VN that had a bunch of pseudoscience and 100% impossible things happening left and right (a la Majikoi), I wouldn't have minded that much, but that's not what happened, and it sticks out like a sore thumb because of that.  There is a reason they retconned it in the sequels, ya know.

 

Spoiler

I haven't finished all of Michiru's route yet but this is the one thing I'd have to say I didn't like. As you said, the rest of the game does seem to be solidly based on reality, but this whole split personality disorder thing is explained with pseudoscience.. Even the scene with Yuuji burying Michiru was explained properly, like the coffin having thin walls and some air coming in, which I highly appreciated.

 

[kingdomcome]

On 21/03/2016 at 6:55 AM, Dreamysyu said:

and I loved "Angelic Howl" part in Amane's.

I think think this is biggest reason I gave it my high rating, I don't think I've been more engrossed in a story before. <3 Kazuki's part.

On 22/03/2016 at 9:06 PM, Barktooth said:

I haven't finished all of Michiru's route yet but this is the one thing I'd have to say I didn't like

Mmhm, it took me right out of the story.. I thought it was kinda ridiculous. 

[Vorathiel]

I'm just at finish of common route. It wasn't THAT long, I thought I will spend like 2x more time. But still - pretty boring.  Especially because of that type of short scenes instead of flowing narration.
But I just wanted to point that my opinion about this title grew up a litte, it was.... pleasant. Nothing super, nothing really good, but still - pleasant. My anger and annoyance was burned down and the more time I spend with those characters, the more I get accustomed to them. Not that I started to like them, but they stopped disturbing me.

But. Starters for Makina, Amane and Maid routes are pretty... 'cancerous'. Especially Makina. I mean, it's all fine, she looking for father figure etc, because she looks and acts like a child, and that means - she is a child, her age doesn't matter. But I know that VNs have a tendencies to 'fuck every female character', so I'm just trembling about that ultra-wrong idea of father figure having sex with his little child-daughter figure.

Amane and that 'you are my girlfriend, because you are just a homemaiden without any hobbies and interest, but I'm not your boyfriend' sounds pretty bipolar. I like thet really much that he treat her like he should, but on the other hand I think like this is going in really disturbing way.

Maid route starts with 'praise me senpai', which is really stupid, and pretty cringe'y. But oh well, her whole character is very often cringeworthy, so no really complaints here.


And that's all I've read today, rest tomorrow. But basing on that I don't really like anybody besides Makina, so I will read her route as the last, I have no idea with which route I should start. Help me here and tell me which route has a best story. (I don't really want to start with Amane, because verybody is giving allusionthat Yuuji and Amane are/will be together, and I don't like when other people are forcing me things down my throat, so I would like just to rebel, and not doing this route as first. But if this route is hands down the best (excluding Makinas' from this equation) then I will start with that.)

[Molipa]

Well, Michiru is considered as the best route by a lot of people, for what I've seen. And, I didn't like her as a heroine, so I found it difficult to do her route, but still I have to agree that there was a kind of good plot. Personnaly I liked Yumiko's route, but mostly because that's my favorite girl, and also because it's the route where the protag has the more balls, but except that, I think it's not really a good route, not at all even. I think Sachi's route was kinda okayish, but not that great, there are too many things that bothered me. And at last, Amane... well, I liked it for some reasons, but there were other things that bothered me as well, especially the end.

 

That being said, if you want to start with the best possible route, I'd recommand Amane, or, if you don't have too much problem with her, Michiru.