Romance with a happy ending?

[Fred the Barber]

People have mentioned it above, but I'll throw in another vote for Kono Oozora ni, Tsubasa wo Hirogete / If My Heart Had Wings. As others have also said, the translation definitely has issues at times, especially during two character routes I've played so far; the third character route is, surprisingly, pretty good so far, as was the common route. Those issues are worth getting through, even for a grammar/spelling nitpicker like me.

 

The translation issue is the only thing that prevents it from being a really top-notch VN, and this is especially notable since it's a very light-hearted romance-oriented VN, which fits your request perfectly. There's always a little bit of conflict in the story, of course (because a story with no conflict is kinda boring) but it's always (at least of the parts of the game I've played so far) external conflict related to the larger plot; relationship-oriented conflict is basically non-existent.

[CapnBlaze]

People have mentioned it above, but I'll throw in another vote for Kono Oozora ni, Tsubasa wo Hirogete / If My Heart Had Wings. As others have also said, the translation definitely has issues at times, especially during two character routes I've played so far; the third character route is, surprisingly, pretty good so far, as was the common route. Those issues are worth getting through, even for a grammar/spelling nitpicker like me.

 

The translation issue is the only thing that prevents it from being a really top-notch VN, and this is especially notable since it's a very light-hearted romance-oriented VN, which fits your request perfectly. There's always a little bit of conflict in the story, of course (because a story with no conflict is kinda boring) but it's always (at least of the parts of the game I've played so far) external conflict related to the larger plot; relationship-oriented conflict is basically non-existent.

 

Thanks Fred. I will likely make it my next VN based on your recommendation. For the record I have no problem with most conflict in a story - I agree that it would be difficult to keep interest without something going on. I only ask that it all work happily for ALL good guy parties by the end.

[ERO!]

clannad. i think i ends happily

[CapnBlaze]

REVIEW from the happy ending perspective: Dra + Koi

 

OK I was having technical troubles getting If My Heart had Wings to run so while I was figuring that out I read through another VN.

 

Dra + Koi.

 

From the standpoint of a happy ending - this one was perfect for me. Despite what I consider many flaws in the VN, I was happy to have read it and would add it without reservation to the Happy Ending list of VNs.

 

Starting off on the criticisms the music choices for background were hit and miss for me. Some I thought was good, some I thought was just outright annoying and I turned the volume off. It should also be mentioned there is no voice acting in this VN

 

This is a very, very short VN.

There are 4 endings, 1 of which - the true ending - is the happy one. There are very few branch points and it is easy to predict which ones lead to the happy ending. Except for the last one - it asks you if you wish to be faithful. It is not talking about faithful to the girl but to the archetypal story line. Pick unfaithful for the happy ending.

 

The protagonists mother was too unbelievable for me. She looked like a preteen, and she was written as a fatalistic, chain smoking, alcoholic General. Who was very upset that she didn't get to take her son's virginity. He doesn't like her much and it's easy to see why. It was written to be comedic and some of it was - but much of it didn't go over very well for me.Based on the mother it is easy to see why he is such an antagonistic character but it was overdone in my opinion.

 

Much of the story line was highly .... esoteric. You really have to read into it. Even with all of the above, I found the idea of the plot compelling - and while I wish it had been better executed, I did enjoy it.

 

I also loved the female lead - she was awesome and mostly very well written.

 

While I know it is unlikely to ever happen I would love it if someone took this story and did a reboot to make it longer and better. Still I have no regrets over reading this and did enjoy it.

 

note: As always, if you would like to see more reviews like this please post a note or give this post a like.

[Yeah Way]

Happy ending? You should try 'Symphonic Rain'.

 

[Snowtsuku]

Happy ending? You should try 'Symphonic Rain'.

 

Why would you even...

To be honest though, Phorni/Ari's route is the only VN route that made me cry from happiness.

[Yeah Way]

Why would you even...

To be honest though, Phorni/Ari's route is the only VN route that made me cry from happiness.

So much happiness. Too much happiness!

Only that and 'Rewrite' made me cry tears of joy. :')

[CapnBlaze]

REVIEW from the happy ending perspective: If My Heart Had Wings (with the adult patch)

 

Summary: Thumbs up from the happy ending perspective. While this VN is not perfect, as a whole it is very well done - excellent in many cases. Overall I was very happy with the plots, art work, music, voice acting, and how the romance was handled. 

 

The first thing I want to mention is this VN is long. I mean really, really long. For most people it will take days or possibly weeks to get through all the story lines. I tend to marathon these things and it took me 3-4 days of straight playing. When I was done I was regretful - I didn't want to say goodbye to the characters and wanted to keep reading their story.

 

The VN is about the protagonist Aoi, and a group of his (mostly female) friends who learn of someone else's dream and work to make it come true. In the process the dream becomes their own. The dream is to build a glider and fly it through a very rare cloud formation called Morning Glory. It only occurs once every couple of decades and is hard to predict. Romance of course occurs in the course of this but the rest of the plot is just as important as the romance aspects.

 

There is an aspect to the way the story was written that will either be highly appealing or a major turn off to a lot readers. It spends a lot of time talking about how gliders are constructed and flown. Personally I enjoyed it and learned a lot. The instructional parts can be quickly clicked through for the people that find it in the way of the story telling - reading the instructional bits are not important to the story. For me however it added flavor and helped to join in with the characters love of flying and constructing the glider. It made me feel more like a part of the story.

 

While I really did love this VN there were a number of things that could be improved upon. One of larger criticisms of this VN is it seems the Moe Novel team steadily lost emotional investment as the project progressed. It felt as if there was a wonderful blueprint laid out but the quality control for following that blue print steadily slid with each succeeding route. It just seemed there was less and less polish and care given for each successive route.

 

The English translation needs improvement. While the vast bulk of the translation reads well, there were a significant number of typos. Also there were places where I noticed the translation didn't match what the characters were saying. And I don't speak Japanese. The first cue to me was when I would hear someone's name in the audio but it wouldn't be there in the text. This started me paying closer attention and I also noticed a lot of issues with honorifics. The translation team decided not to use them in the translation. Most people who read a lot of VNs or anime will be aware of how important honorifics are to Japanese language. The translation team in my opinion did not handle it well and it had an impact on the story telling. For example, not using an honorific normally denotes an extremely close relationship with someone. While I don't want this review to become an honorific lesson it is a huge difference when someone refers to someone as sensei, sempai, kun, chan, or simply drops the honorific altogether. And when the characters dialogue is actually about noticing what honorific is used - it can get very confusing when the honorifics weren't included in the translation text.

 

The order the routes are taken matters a little in this VN. I unknowingly did it a bit out of order and wished I hadn't. There are 5 routes that can be taken, some of which need to be unlocked. I would suggest the following: Kotori, Ageha, Amane, Asa, Yoru. With that being said if I had it to do over again - I would probably not have followed Asa and especially not Yoru's route. It is commonly held that Amane is the true route. I will talk more about all of that in the spoilery part of the review. I do want to say though that each of the different routes changes the actual story and that while Amane is the only one that answers a lot of the questions, Ageha was my favorite. I wish the true route was a combination of Kotori, Ageha's and Amane - I will talk more about that in the spoiler section.

 

Before getting to the spoiler part there are 2 things that should be mentioned. Installing the adult patch can be difficult because of some changes that were made in Windows 8. Fuwa has some tech support threads that talk about dealing with it.

 

Second, there is supposedly an effort underway to redo the translation. I have not seen an anticipated release date though. Also I have not seen any recent posts mentioning status so I am not sure if the project is still active.

**********************

I am going to start the spoiler heavy part with the true route - Amane. While I loved Amane's character and all the reveals done in her route, I was not a big fan of the implementation of the route. As mentioned earlier it felt like there was a great script to follow but the people filling in the details of the story started to not care about it and just wanted to get the thing done - there were a number of parts that did not feel like they were written very well. This is the only route where the true dream is successful - Amane gets to fly through the corridor of clouds. It is also the only route where we meet Isuka and where Isuka, Tatsuya, and Amane get their stories fully and happily resolved (or at least started on the path to resolution). I felt this should have happened in most if not all of the other story lines - not necessarily tell the same thing over again each time but at least allude to it happening. Also a lot was taken away for me because they did not do the Isuka reunion well at all. As I write this, it occurs to me they may have had in mind to have a later fan disk to cover it more fully but as written it was too fast and superficial for a character who is central to ... everything in the story. It felt like they built up to the climax and instead of telling the story someone just says - and it all worked out happily ... eventually, probably. It is also the only route where I felt the author of the main script made a poor choice, ie, the new 'secret base' was not used. I understand what the artistic intent was - the garage has all the memories tied to Amane and Isuka. Even so I didn't enjoy the civil disobedience parts to save the garage and I really felt the lack of the 'secret base'.

 

My gripes about the Yoru route. Someone decided there needed to be a lolicon, menage a trois route with twins and to put it in even if it makes no sense. I will say they tried hard to make it work but it just didn't hang together for me. No matter how they tried to package it, it was not in character for Aoi, Asa, or Yoru. In fact especially after they met the twins rich and powerful grandfather it felt as if there was a sense of impending doom and no way they can have a happy future - even though the story ends before Asa and Yoru's relatives learn about the 3 way romance. I also was very unhappy with the choice to have Asa and Yoru be the one's selected to fly through Morning Glory. It felt wrong and disappointing to me. Either Amane or Kotori should have been in that glider. And there is no way Aoi wouldn't have flown - regardless of lacking medical clearance. On the day of Morning Glory the only way to stop him would have been having him unconscious or strapped to a hospital bed. It also felt highly contrived and not believable that all of a sudden Yoru happens to have a pilot license. In short, very disappointing.

 

I also was not a big fan of the Asa route. Asa and Yoru were supposed to be two exceptional sides of a coin. Yoru was intellect, Asa was compassion and empathy. Yoru is a genius at understanding science, Asa is a genius with understanding people. Their bond is based on seeing and valuing the aspects their twin had and they lacked. They got Yoru down pat but they made Asa wimpy. It's like someone didn't get the memo that Asa was supposed to be exceptional (they talk about this in the grandfather flashbacks). Whoever was chosen to implement the writing misunderstood the duality and rewrote the two sides of the coin to be Yoru/Exceptional and Asa/Average. Bugged me a lot. Also this is the one ending where they don't fulfill the dream. While it is technically a happy ending, I found the route unsatisfying.

 

The Kotori route was very well done. It is the first route that should be followed as the other routes seem to expect that you have knowledge of information revealed in this one. It is the most highly polished of all the routes and while it is not my favorite, I enjoyed it a great deal. I wish the other routes mimicked part of this plot line a bit more. I felt the other routes needed to give Kotori more flying time and to make sure Aoi fulfilled his promise to her. Perhaps not as much flying time as the Kotori route but definitely more than they did.

 

Ageha's character was amazing. I absolutely adored the way her character was written. With that being said I noticed a little bit of the polish missing from here that Kotori had. Nothing major but a lot of little things. I also felt that her ending format should have been the one used for Kotori and Amane. The way Ageha was written here seemed 'true' to me. I would have liked to have seen her bringing in all the other clubs in the other endings like she did in this one.

 

 

This review has gotten lengthy so I am going to tie it up here. I would like to say that I enjoyed this VN a lot and have no reservations recommending it. With that being said I would have liked to have been made king for a day and done a rewrite of Amane's route so that it contained a number of elements from Kotori and Ageha's routes. That would have felt more true to me and made for an even better story over all.

 

 

note: As always, if you would like to see more reviews like this please post a note or give this post a like.

[Fred the Barber]

Your feelings about the game very closely match my own. To be honest, I still haven't finished all the routes (I have Yoru remaining), so I skipped over that section of your review. I'm debating abandoning the game with that undone, especially after how much I disliked Asa's route, but I'll probably give in and finish it (playing without the restore patch, though, so I expect Yoru's route to be a rather different experience...).

[CapnBlaze]

Your feelings about the game very closely match my own. To be honest, I still haven't finished all the routes (I have Yoru remaining), so I skipped over that section of your review. I'm debating abandoning the game with that undone, especially after how much I disliked Asa's route, but I'll probably give in and finish it (playing without the restore patch, though, so I expect Yoru's route to be a rather different experience...).

[mitchhamilton]

i find it kind of funny that amane's route is considered the true route. not that i dont like her im just saying that kotori's route felt more like the true route, since shes the first character you meet and is also more of the focus of both the fan disks released by pulltop. but amane's has the ingredients to be true as well. like having her route be unlocked after finishing the first girls route. asa and yoru's route are the same but they're more like bonuses than anything else. also at the end of amane's route

isuka is found and kind of reunited with amane.

in flight diary though

isuka plays a bigger role in amanes route but shes still found in kotori's route. kotori's and amanes route are the only routes in flight diary to have isuka, but only kotoris route was the only one with the storyline that kotori had her surgery. its weird that the true route has isuka found but not have the kotoris surgery storyline since these were equally a huge part of each girls story. maybe when the visual novel was released kotori was a bigger hit than they were expecting.

 

idk thats my thoughts on all that. great review btw.

 

also im still pissed at moe novel for spoiling kotoris route. when i started kotori's route i was curious what other vn's theyve done and so i checked their website. on it had a big spoiler.

they had a picture of kotori on crutches. the very last picture in kotori's route and they decide to use that on their site.

 

i was also spoiled to amane's route. i blame the twitter for fuwanovel for that. theyre twit pic is

isuka with long hair, meaning they found her. i knew it was her before i finished amanes route because of that hairpin.

[CapnBlaze]

i find it kind of funny that amane's route is considered the true route. not that i dont like her im just saying that kotori's route felt more like the true route, since shes the first character you meet and is also more of the focus of both the fan disks released by pulltop. but amane's has the ingredients to be true as well. like having her route be unlocked after finishing the first girls route. asa and yoru's route are the same but they're more like bonuses than anything else. also at the end of amane's route

isuka is found and kind of reunited with amane.

in flight diary though

isuka plays a bigger role in amanes route but shes still found in kotori's route. kotori's and amanes route are the only routes in flight diary to have isuka, but only kotoris route was the only one with the storyline that kotori had her surgery. its weird that the true route has isuka found but not have the kotoris surgery storyline since these were equally a huge part of each girls story. maybe when the visual novel was released kotori was a bigger hit than they were expecting.

 

idk thats my thoughts on all that. great review btw.

 

also im still pissed at moe novel for spoiling kotoris route. when i started kotori's route i was curious what other vn's theyve done and so i checked their website. on it had a big spoiler.

they had a picture of kotori on crutches. the very last picture in kotori's route and they decide to use that on their site.