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This game is the second project made by Samoyed Smile, a subsidiary of the same corporation that owns Softhouse-seal. This is, incidentally, why the game has the really crappy lip-sync and sex animations so familiar from that company's works. That said, this company is not a nukige company, despite the lateral relationship. The game starts with a young teacher, Haruki, teaching a class of dropouts at a night school. Haruki, having had horrible experiences at his first teaching job, has a poor attitude at first, primarily because he was lured by his estranged father with the promise of the equivalent of $4M in inheritance if he succeeded in graduating the last three students at the night school. Haruki is unusual amongst VN protagonists for being an adult with at least some experience in life, and as a character, he is extremely well-written, his humanity laid bare for the reader to see. The situation is also unusual, since VNs with the kind of atmosphere you start with in this game tend to end up as rape/despair spirals in most cases. The heroines are all a bit loopy and the protagonist isn't much better, when it comes down to it (situation-wise). Common Route However, the game's common route is actually fairly uplifting, once you get past the initial bumps in the road involved in the characters getting used to one another. Haruki and the heroines slowly get to know one another and even form the beginnings of something like a bond of trust, which comes to a nice high point before the heroine routes split off. I honestly felt that it was nicely orchestrated, though I did feel that they included an unnecessary number of choices, considering that the events in the common route don't change as a result. Koshimizu Hayate Hayate is a spiky tsundere who never fails to fulfill the best - as opposed to the worst - standards of the archetype. She actually has justification for her attitude, for one thing... she came across her flaws honestly. She is also, despite appearances, probably the most 'normal' of the heroines under the surface. Hayate is a Japanese male name, which should give you at least some idea of why she hates having her name spoken or written. Hayate's problem, like the problems of many runaways, is with her parents. I won't spoil it for you, but it is a pretty deep problem... it reminds me of Fumika from Semiramis no Tenbin, except Hayate is a lot more aggressive and less gentle, lol. Her path is deeply touching, especially as she and the protagonist manage to get over or around their traumas and make peace with who they are. The student-teacher relationship thing doesn't take its usual turns (probably because the night school itself is too intimate for that kind of social drama to occur), so you shouldn't expect the 'oh they got found out, so he might lose his job!' crap you see with similar protagonist-heroine relationships in other VNs. Kadokura Riko and Kadokura Ayako I'm going to be clear about something... I hate real lolicon content in every way, shape, and form. If this path had discarded the H content, I honestly would have loved it, but the h-scenes in this path ruin it. This is one of the few cases where I honestly think that sexual content is an active barrier to enjoyment rather than a mere annoyance. That said, this path is well written... Riko and Ayako are mother and daughter. Ayako is a weak-mannered, weak-willed young woman who had Riko as a young teenager and is now serving as a single mother to her. Riko, for her part, is a 'good girl' (think Sachi from Grisaia, though not quite that extreme). However, there are lots of problems with those two... and the two biggest ones are Riko's 'illness' and Ayako's inability to see anything in a positive light. This path is all about the nature of human weakness and it deals more with the protagonist's issues with his mother, as opposed to the ones with his father (which were dealt with in the previous path). That said, he is far more pathetic in his 'down time' than he was in Hayate's path, so that was another reason why I honestly left this path with a bad taste in my mouth. The main ending (Riko only) is happy, but the other one is obviously a bad ending, albeit one that is probably pleasant in the sensual sense of things. Niijima Kina Kina is a sweet-natured airhead. I don't mean this as an insult... it is an accurate description. She has a definite learning disability, and she is a natural airhead on top of that. That said, she is also determined to learn and the first of the heroines to take a shine to the protagonist, partially because he actually takes the time to create a personalized curriculum for her and partially because he doesn't look down on her after a few initial bumps in their student-teacher relationsip (say what you like about him, but he has to force himself to act like an asshole in most of the cases where he does). Kina's path is about even with Hayate's for quality, overall... but when you find out the full reason why she's attending night school, I guarantee you will either wince or cry. They go into specifics, and it is pretty nasty at times. Kina's path also shows off her best qualities as a character... such as her capacity for love and her empathy. However, it also shows off some of her negative points... such as being consumed by hatred and being just a tad psychopathic at times, lol. Unfortunately, despite rumors to the contrary, she isn't a yandere (I thought she would be, but meh), but she comes close to it sometimes. Probably, if they had a bad ending for this path, she would have gone down that path, since she definitely has potential. Overall Overall, this game was a bumpy ride. Is it good? Yes. Is it perfect? About as far from it as possible while still being a good game. Reading this game is a high-stress experience, and I actually found myself growing wistful for charage by the end. Nonetheless, this game is of a type that is rarely seen these days, lining up with Yume Miru Kusuri for the heart-wounded heroines and screwy psychological twists.

Let's first lay out my basic view... I loathe microtransactions. I'm not an anti-industry activist, and I don't have a serious bone to pick with any individual company about them. I've had a few bad experiences with them, but the reason for my loathing is something more fundamental, that I came to realize only after I'd put a year or so between my worst experience with them. First of all, my experience was with an MMORPG on PC, rather than a blockbuster title or a smartphone game. As such, in some ways my experience is probably the most 'traditional' one for the original form microtransactions took... the 'pay-to-win' model of massively multiplayer games. Basically, in that game, you could not only buy clothing and armor with real money, you could also massively accelerate your experience gaining and basically not even do several annoying but important quests that gained you new skills and and access to higher classes if you were willing to fork over enough money. Now, this was the game that essentially put an end to me playing MMO's, even out of curiosity. Before then, I'd only played subscription-model games, and as a result, I'd never experienced a game designed to essentially squeeze more and more money out of people in that manner. My frustration kept growing, because up until then, I'd basically played games when they first came out until I reached the level cap, then dropped them, cancelling my subscriptions and deleting my account. However, in that game, I kept on running into roadblocks to my curiosity about the world I'd entered, and when that frustration reached its peak... I made the mistake of indulging in microtransactions to speed things along. I probably wouldn't have realized what it was doing to me or my bank account, if it weren't for the fact that I got caught up in a minor scandal where a GM was raiding players' accounts using his administrative rights and selling off their non-bound equipment and items on the marketplace. While it wasn't a direct result of my microtransactions, it nonetheless served to cool my head... and make me realize I'd basically thrown away money on virtual items, some of them with frigging time limits for their use. I got my money back for the stolen items, but only after I flatly stated I wanted nothing to do with the game after that and threatened to lawyer up if they refused. So, I managed to escape before I reached the degree of financial loss Japanese 'kakinhei' have been casually enduring for years before the concept wormed its way over here (incidentally, it is much, much worse in Japan, China, and Korea than it is here...). Microtransactions are essentially an outgrowth of the dlc concept, save without even attempting to give you value for value. Once you've purchased dlc, it is yours, you can leave it installed without worrying the 'time limit' will run out, and you don't need to feel driven to show off how much money you wasted to people who were just as stupid as you were. However, the most critical difference is that dlc isn't an 'infinite product'. It isn't constructed to draw ever greater amounts of money out of the user and indulging in purchasing dlc or a season pass for a regular game you like isn't nearly as damaging to your wallet or your mental health as microtransactions are. Edit: To be clear, I see microtransactions as being one of the most fundamentally dishonest types of scam directed at consumers to have cropped up this century. The techniques are well-established, predatory, and poisonous, especially to those too young and inexperienced to realize that money doesn't spray in infinite clouds of green from the cards in their parents' wallet.

This game is the one I've been waiting for... a mimikko nakige that doesn't ignore the setting or human nature. At the beginning of the story, the protagonist, Kazuki takes in a puppy he finds abandoned in the park, feeds her, and then falls asleep with the half-feral cat he feeds occasionally watching. When he wakes up, they've both transformed into mimikko, a catgirl and a doggirl... Soon after, it becomes apparent that shortly after this event, pets around the world began turning into humanoids, resulting in the kind of mixed reactions you'd expect in the real world if that happened. The reactions, as described, vary between fanatical religious obsession and fetishism to xenophobic psychopathy and upsurges in racism... and everything in between. Now, this game has a really odd balance... there is almost enough H content in this game to call it a nukige, but the emotional narration, the characters' actions, and the way it is written is pure nakige fare. Kuro and Hana (the cat and dog) are really obvious deredere characters, and Hana is the obvious main heroine. However, Kuro and the three other heroines are not neglected in any way, shape, or form... they all have their unique story/paths. This game is big on the feels. Kazuki is a young man with an intimate knowledge of loneliness and isolation and a sense of compassion that is close to saintly. In addition, he is wise enough to do what will prepare the two girls in his care for the world they've come into, rather than simply protect them from the knowledge of what is is like (which would be typical for the average VN protag)... For the example in the prologue, he takes them along when he goes to the local animal shelter to help pick out the animals that will be taken to the place he works (a charitable organization that takes in abandoned pets and trains them for adoption, similar to organizations in 'no-kill cities' in the US, such as my own Austin), where they will be trained so as to make them more adoptable... and makes it clear to them the inevitable results for those who aren't chosen (note: I only chose to spoil this part because it is vital to understanding the difference between this and your standard moe-fuwa mimikko game). This is one of three games I've encountered of the type, each approaching things from a different perspective (for one thing, this one is fantasy). Those other two are Sakura Iro Quartet and Otomimi Infinity. Nekopara ignores human nature a bit too often to make it into that particular rarified company, lol. Anyway, for those interested in a mimikko nakige with really good feels, this is a good choice. This is a great emotional story. However, don't expect extreme levels of depth or dark motives from the main characters, since they are all essentially good-hearted people.