https://vndb.org/v1704

Machi Gurumi no Wana is an eroge visual novel developed by SYRUP and released on June 26, 2009. It starts off with a woman named Atsuko Takagi along with her sister Yui and her father Shinji who recently moved into a new town named Minamisuicho (according to Google Translate) where they’ll start a new life. However, what awaits in this town are a series of debauchery and sexual assaults that Atsuko will face along with the other heroines featured in this visual novel. Depending on the choices you make, different endings are acquired.

Translation: Yui wraped her arm around mine and tugs me as we start walking

This visual novel takes on the perspective of multiple characters as you progress through the story. At first it takes on the perspective of Atsuko who’s applying as a teacher in the town she just moved in with her family. There are four other main characters that the visual novel revolves around which are Yui Takagi, Chikako Yada, Azusa Ichinose and Nanako (From a separate VN installation). They are the other main heroines, each having their own routes that lead to their own endings.

Translation: A cute boy was standing next to Yui

The main story for this visual novel was quite compelling, but most of it consisted of H-scenes which pretty much makes this visual novel more of a nukige. In fact, it reminded me some of the visual novels I played that were developed by Waffle. I skipped most of them along with some of the dialogue between the H-scenes since they don’t contribute much to the main story. Although there were some moments during the H-scenes where the dialogue goes more in depth about the characters and their background, so I wouldn’t recommend skipping all of them. Plus the art was quite appealing.

What’s convenient about this visual novel is that it actually has a flow-chart that you can use as a guide to navigate throughout different character routes and easily track which endings/CGs you haven’t come across. The dotted lines on the chart represent branches of extra scenarios that are unlocked after acquiring certain endings. In my opinion, all visual novels should have this feature. That way, we won’t have to rely on hours of trial & error or search up some strategy guide on a Japanese website just to get to those few endings or CGs that we may have missed.

In-Game Flow Chart

There are so many characters present in this visual novel and each of them contribute to the main plot significantly well. What I don’t like however is the fact that all the female characters (including the side female characters) are voiced while the male characters aren’t. There are so many male character sprites featured in the visual novel and yet none of them are voiced. This isn’t really surprising to me though as there are so many visual novels out there with the same problem, although I still find this frustrating. Another thing I should point out is the fact that all of the female character sprites pretty much have the same face layout with big round eyes and a small nose resembling this young appearance. The male character sprite faces on the other hand have a lot more variation to them (except for Asuma who’s basically effeminate). In my opinion, it would’ve been better if SYRUP added more variations to these female faces to give them more distinct appearances. Honestly, this just feels a bit lazy.

Male vs. Female Facial Features

Comparing the story of this visual novel to that of its hentai adaptation seems quite consistent to each other. There were some parts in the story that are different but overall, it's pretty much the same. But unlike the visual novel, the hentai adaptation doesn’t go into much depth about the story and mainly focuses on sex. But as mentioned earlier, this visual novel is more of a typical nukige so I'm not really surprised. Needless to say, the visual novel is far better than its low budget hentai adaptation created by the infamous PoRO.

While I did enjoy the story of this visual novel, it was heavily diluted with long H-scenes that didn’t feel necessary. Out of all the routes I went through for each heroine, Azusa’s route was the most compelling one, having significantly less H-scenes and being more focused on her background which also provided some insight about this strange town’s past. The rest of the routes for the other characters are heavily focused on sex but they too also go in-depth about the character's background. But in my opinion Azusa’s story is way more interesting. Nonetheless, I still recommend this visual novel for the ESSENCE.