Rewrite+ - 7.5/10
Entry posted by LostPomegranate in Reviews
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Rewrite+ is both a great visual novel to read as well as incredibly frustrating. It features a few really good routes, a decently good true route, and some genuinely funny moments throughout. It also unfortunately features some incredible inconsistencies between routes both in genre and quality of writing, some humor that didn't land for me, as well as some choices that to me scream the writers didn't agree with one another or communicate well, and I'm unsure which.
I'm just going to summarize things into bulletpoints with some examples, spoilers will be marked:
Positives:
- Entertaining writing and some good routes: I particularly enjoyed Lucia's and Shizuru's routes as well as Moon with some caveats. Terra was also an interesting culmination of everything that came before for the most part.
- Some of the comedy was genuinely hilarious and had me laughing quite a bit more than I normally do.
- Music was great as always from Key
- The variety in events in the common route was interesting.
- Oppai ending by itself is worth calling out as it was genuinely hilarious and the use of the OP as BGM in particular had me rolling.
Negatives: I'm sorry this section is long.
- Writing inconsistencies: with three writers handling the various routes it led to one issue that I'm unsure if it was on purpose or not -
genre shifts between routes, arguably 4 genres present throughout all the routes - from what could affectionately be called KeyBZ all the way to a horror / thriller with a few stops elsewhere
- and a few that I'm absolutely sure was not on purpose - quality inconsistency as well as some things that feel like the writers were not communicating well with each other. For example in Moon:
Lucia is ignored more than the other 4 heroines and is unceremoniously killed off in what feels like a footnote. Kotori is dealt a similar fate, but not to the same extent as she has a few moments of note. The last three heroines have memorable story bits I feel like.
Terra is much more understandable given how each characters backstory was written in their individual routes, however it also
feels like Romeo, the writer for Akane, Kotori, and Terra routes, had his plan for Terra from the start and didn't want to deviate in the slightest.
Again, in Terra this is much more understandable as it would've been hard to have them fit.
- Confusing stuff in general: Example: at the very end of Terra
why is Chihaya still in her transfer student uniform in the last CGs despite now growing up with the other four and attending the same school? I know the actual answer of "It's what she was wearing the rest of the story", but it awkwardly creates a question that shouldn't exist since she supposedly would've never transferred from another school in this timeline.
There's also a few
inconsistencies in powers of characters from route to route, most prevalent with Lucia, which I suspect is just another case where the writers weren't talking to each other throughout.
- Mappie sucks. I spent probably 2 extra hours hunting for the last few Mappie events I was missing to 100% this.
In conclusion: I'd recommend Rewrite+ to pretty much anyone who is looking for an all-ages visual novel that wouldn't mind some diversity in genres from route to route. Overall it's a good read, and one that I think most visual novel fans should pick up.
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