Sister Princess is not a good VN

[Getsuya]

I was digging through the random collection of PS2/1 games I have from my various trips to Japan and I found that I had a copy of Sister Princess the VN.

Well the anime wasn't horrible (it wasn't good, but it wasn't horrible) and I wondered if the VN would go into more detail about all of the girls and the strange dynamic of being the brother of 12 girls who aren't far enough apart in age to be physically possible unless we're talking a one father many many mothers situation.

I flew through one of the routes in about 2-3 hours.

It sucked.

The game is 99/100ths common route with the only thing that changes being a few brief scenes with your chosen girl scattered throughout. These scenes are pointless repetitions of 'I love you so much big brother!' or whatever single-note problem that particular character has. They all only have one, just like they all only have one personality trait. Picking a girl and seeing her route through to the end is an easy way to get sick and tired of her voice and personality by the end of the game.

There really aren't 'routes' since that would denote some kind of story arc or conclusion after the common route. Which there isn't. On the last day of the common route the girl will make some declaration of love and then the credits roll.

The only big thing you get to decide in the game (aside from which girl to pursue) is whether you will be blood-related to the girl or not. By picking all the sort of mean options while not completely shutting her out you get the blood-relative ending, and by picking all the lovey-dovey answers you get the blood-related ending.

That's an interesting concept that would have been more compelling if it had been pursued at all instead of just changing the ending slightly. Some character's routes even hint at things like missing their absent parents etc. but nothing ever comes of it. Girls that are crying over being lonely and missing their mom are sunny and happy the next day with no reason given for the change.

But I'm not conveying clearly why this game is bad. Now I will:

1. The character arcs are non-existent. When they are introduced the girls present their one-note personality and that's it. And that's all there ever is. Any issues a girl has at the beginning of the game will still exist at the end.

2. Aria is the worst VN heroine ever. Bar none. In the introduction her maid gives you a chocolate with a letter in which Aria complains about having to give you the chocolate because then she can't eat it and begins crying in the letter because she can't eat the chocolate. She spends the entire game crying over frivolous things like this. All she does is cry. She has no other personality traits.

3. The CG are bad. They are boring and drab and highlight scenes that don't need to be highlighted. There are one or two stand-outs but I doubt any players will feel driven to try to find them all like they would in a good VN.

4. The music is forgettable and bad. The OP almost put me to sleep

5. The game forces you to be a dick by ignoring all the other girls to single-mindedly pursue the one who's route you are doing. Despite this all the other girls will constantly be popping up (due to the common route) and yet the game never punishes you for heartlessly and constantly shooting them down.

All in all the game is just boring. Honestly the anime was better, which is saying a lot since the anime was mediocre at best.

With this lack of content or good plot this is basically the equivalent of a nukige without any H-scenes or fanservice at all. Imagine that. Just fluffy non-story connecting together scenes of girls telling you how much they love you for no reason. Wow.

In the end I guess the only good thing to come out of the Sister Princess franchise was the image album which actually had some really good songs:

http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm11335637

http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm12996965

I guess there's a Sister Princess 2 which appears to be a huge upgrade from what little I've seen of it on Japan sites, but I think 1 may have poisoned it too much for me so I don't really care.

Shirayuki, Mamoru and Chikage are all great characters though and really deserve to be in a better game/series than this.

[Zalor]

26 minutes ago, Getsuya said:

With this lack of content or good plot this is basically the equivalent of a nukige without any H-scenes or fanservice at all. Imagine that. Just fluffy non-story connecting together scenes of girls telling you how much they love you for no reason. Wow.

So its basically Sakura Spirit, lol?

On another note, its nice to see you again Getsuya. Haven't seen you in a while.

[Fred the Barber]

Good to have you back, Getsuya. Thanks for playing and reviewing this so I know not to

[Nosebleed]

The anime was better? Holy crap that's an accomplishment lol. To me it ws already boring because, like you said, the characters are just so bland it's unreal.

Sounds like a terrible experience and I'm sorry you went through it.

[XReaper]

ooops mistook your thread for a unjustified rant against sisters & flipped my table hard out of rage, spilled my coffee, burned my d**k ... *ahem
re-read everything and can only say "well written son, this game is indeed some piece of non entertaining trash"

[Narcosis]

>a nukige without h-scenes

Getsu, pls

[Getsuya]

I actually have a bunch of older PS1/PS2 VNs sitting around that I should play. I think I'll repurpose my review blog. I don't have a Vita anymore, but I could go with the theme of reviewing old PS1/2 era VNs. Especially ones that don't have PC releases.

 

(I'm also playing around with the idea of doing an otome review blog from a guy's perspective and calling it Brotome)

[Scorp]

You can even go deeper and review PC-98 VNs (and they were not censored, while the ones on PS/PS2 were damaged beyond belief - especially when you have a port from PC like Cartagra and Sony removes all references for person using drinks/living in brothel/all blood and stuff). But I am fine with PS/PS2 titles as well. Otome blog from guy perspective... Well, no big point I see here.

[littleshogun]

From the review, guess it's looks like you going for choosing the girl rather than enjoying back story of the girl like in usual modern VN. And apparently the game was also classified as Dating Sim, which one of them (Love Plus) also had some of controversy in regard of the player married with the character from Love Plus (By the way, I didn't made up. It really happened, and here's the evidence). And as of old dating sim, you goal was to date one of 12 sisters anyway (Who need character development for those kind of game, although in here sometimes dating sim mixed up with visual novel games (VN games is sub part of adventure games). And I think dating sim effort usually only for the girls design imo (I didn't know if there was recent dating sim following this game format). Let's leave the topic at that.

Okay, while I known that this is old dating sims, I acknowledge that the character was very flat if from the example was Aria only remember of she couldn't eat chocolate and always cry when she didn't get sweet. Although I also saw the difficulty if somehow the company want made this game into something like Kanon at 2000 (With 12 sisters living in the same house as MC it would be impossible for each heroine to had unique past). While the character according to OP was one dimensional, the seiyuu involved was big name. For example Nana Mizuki who played Aria here (She had less role listed in VNDB compared to her fellow seiyuu at Nanoha, Yukari Tamura), Yui Horie aka Hocchan, and Ayako Kawasumi who we know as Saber seiyuu. Well, to OP if Aria character was bad, guess it was waste of seiyuu big name imo.

My comment here might be wrong or messed up since I didn't know much about the game except either from your review or VNDB info, so I might miss a lot. Oh, and for the company info, the company was the one who spawned 0verflow, which we loved because of their School Days franchise and their very heavy game size (Shiny Days reach 16 GB size by the way). Also nice boat thing and infamous MC Makoto. One of the character from here was also main character in Summer Radish 2. I think that's all I could write, since obviously I didn't play this game, and once again I might be wrong here.

[Tyr]

11 hours ago, Getsuya said:

Well the anime wasn't horrible (it wasn't good, but it wasn't horrible)

That was your fatal first mistake. The anime is horrible. Except for the opening of course. I can still sing Love Destiny even today...
~~aitai ai ai ai ai no ni, aenai ai ai ai konya wa~~
~~moe tsukite mo ii kore ga saigo no shinjitsu~~
 

[Toranth]

Yeah, that's about what I remember.  The girls are one-dimensional stereotypes, specifically created to BE stereotypes.  It wasn't quite "take a poll for character traits", but starting from the original 9, they were designed to cover all the bases.  Adding more certainly didn't add any more substance, just clichés.

No, the best things about Sister Princess were the music and the jokes (both the official 4-koma, and the many parodies).

 

I would not recommend wasting your time with SP2, or any of the side stories/special games.

[Leaf]

12 Girls!

Well as the old saying goes here less would definitely be more here.

I've seen some terrible anime with the same problem so I know how you feel.