"Gaokao.Love.100days", and my dark past
Entry posted by Satsuki
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Disclaimer: This is not a review.
Warning: Contain spoiler about one (or more) ending of the game.
I don't like VNs with heavy dating-sim element, like the Cation series or such. They usually have a really low score in my list. That's why when I first saw Gaokao.Love.100days on Steam, I did not care much about it, and wanted to just leave it alone (there is the fact that it's voiced in Chinese too). However, I still decided to give it a try, so I would have something to bash on my blog 
Result? Yup, I didn't like it, as expected.
The concept of the game is pretty simple: You are a guy who just recently got a girlfriend. Unfortunately, it won't be long until Gaokao - some sort of college entrance exam in China, so you will have to manage your time to balance between love and study, so you won't lose any of them.
There are totally 5 heroines, with 2 of them available from the start, 1 just recently got upgraded to "heroine with route", 1 mysterious girl that you need to somehow find her, and another mysterious girl, that should also get her own route in the future.
First, you have Muxin - your girlfriend. She is an energetic girl and also a food-lover (not glutton). She is afraid of darkness and cat, despite owning a big family of more than 20 cats at home.
Next up, Xiaohan. She is your childhood friend and next-door neighbor. She is one the of top student at school and can easily get into a top tier college, though she doesn't care much about it (for her, even third-rated college is fine too). Due to her family circumstance, she is currently living by herself.
Then, we have Cokkie (or Qu Qi in Chinese) - the heroine with newly added route. She is the tsundere monitress (I still want to call it "class rep") with high-speed-talking ability that will increase your pressure level every time you speak with her.
As mentioned, there are two mysterious heroines that you will have to unlock through your choice of action. Unfortunately, I only managed to meet one out of the two (and did not even get her name). For all I know, she is a programmer that is planning to go for the IT course in college. My instinct told me that she is not human, like a robot or something, but I'm not really sure.
As for the other girl, I think I have some ideas about who she is (the psychologist that came to school at 85 days), but still don't know how to meet her. Oh well...
The game has 57 different endings in total. Each single one of your choice, plus your stats/abilities will affect which ending you will get. I only managed to get 4 endings, including 3 normal and 1 bad ending. I'm suck at dating game, haha
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So, let's get to the main topic.
Like I said, I didn't like this game. The game mechanic bored me to death. However, I still enjoyed it. Why?
The first ending I got was the Ending No.47 - Fading Away. (spoiler coming)
In this ending, due to the pressure from Gaokao, the MC decided to break up with Muxin. After that, he soon lost his motivation to study. That's when he learned about MMO and the world of online game.
Day after day, he kept on playing online games nonstop. He stopped going to school, didn't even go home, pretty much lived in the net cafe using the money he got from helping other players in games. Then, one day, Xiaohan found him. She told him about his mother, currently being hospitalized. Only then he pulled himself out of the online game's world, and rushed to the hospital. After that, he decided to go back to school and study hard to compensate for all the time he lost. Luckily, he still managed to get into college, just a second-tier one, but he was satisfied. The end.
Did you know? I was once the same as him.
In my last year of middle school, not long before the final exam, my father passed away due to an illness. After that, I was in what they called "emotional crisis". Nothing the teachers said at school was registered in my brain. One day, I decided to play truant from school. Morning, I headed straight to the net cafe instead of school, and staying there, gaming till late in the afternoon, when the class was finished. Net cafe - home to eat and sleep - net cafe - home..., that was my daily timetable. And that was going on for about a week. Then, my mother found me. She dragged me back home, gave me one hell of a lecture, and escorted me to the school gate the next morning. However, after the first class ended, I disappeared from school again. I was quite "knowledgeable" about the area near where I lived, so I went to a net cafe in a secluded place that "normal people" wouldn't know about. One day, when I went home, I found my classmates, standing there with my mother, waiting for me.
I struggled a lot after that, but somehow, still managed to pass the final exam and the high school entrance exam. My school, just like the MC's, was also just a second-rated school. However, that was plenty enough for me. Things could had been much worse, you know?
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Yup, Gaokao.Love.100days is no good for me. And I blame it for making me remember about my past 
Still, I enjoyed it, and that's all that matters. Recommend or not? Well...if you like dating-sim, if you have the time to explore that hell amount of endings, and able to play a voiceless game (DO NOT TURN THE VOICE ON, IT SUCKS), then go for it~. Objectively speaking, it's a pretty decent game, so, even if you don't like dating-sim, just give it a try, maybe?
Final rampage:
Dear developer, I don't know if you wanted to appeal to general visual novel players or you are just a freaking weeaboo, but please, give me a break from this kind of sh*tty translation, won't you?
My previous review:
Ojousama to Himitsu no Otome (Trial Edition)
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