ef is an objectively good visual novel that is written well that feels like it has a point even to its most plodding sections. It is a mostly serious story of imperfect people making imperfect decisions based on imperfect information. It has a few standout sections, but also has a few weak sections. The music in particular is outstanding. Reading it is an experience that feels unique, but I struggle to say it was very enjoyable or provided a lessen or food for thought. This will be completely spoiler free, so there will be some parts of the story or bits I outright don't mention, and that is on purpose, otherwise the few spoilers will be marked.
The writing is solid throughout, and I'd like to call particular attention to the slow slice of life moments, since they did not feel like they were there just to be filler, but rather to give background and - at times - levity to what is largely written as a serious story. These moments ground the reader in a sense that these are real people living real lives rather than simple characters in a story. I especially appreciate that these people are not perfect, they make dumb mistakes. The younger characters in particular make decisions you often would see or may have made yourself when you were younger. Chapters 1 and 2 in particular (Miyako's and Kei's stories) are ones I particularly enjoyed. There are some stereotypes in these two chapters, particularly surrounding Kei being childishly violent with that being played for laughs, that will not click with everyone though.
Chapters 3, 4, and final chapter felt like a tonal shift, so it was clear there was a different writer handling most of it. I'm sure some people would prefer those chapters more, but I found them to be somewhat melodramatic at times and at odds with how grounded the first two chapters were. These were no longer normal, imperfect people dealing with relatable situations, but stereotypical dramatic story beats that were foreshadowed a ridiculous amount of time in advance, to the detriment of the story itself. One part I find incredibly odd is
The music in ef is absolutely amazing. Every BGM track adds to the scenes, and I can't overstate how important good BGM is to a visual novel. I had no issues running the game in a modern Windows 11 system. It has high production values, including a lot of backgrounds, sprite variations, lip sync, and sprites that are actually placed in the backgrounds at various depths so you can "see them moving" in the environment. There's even walking scenes where they move around as if they're actually walking next to the person. In particular I was incredibly impressed by the camera scenes where you can see the camera counter counting up in real time as you read.
Overall, ef is an objectively good visual novel. But it isn't perfect, and it may not be enjoyable for everyone. If you're in the mood for a serious dramatic story, I'd say give it a try. At least read the first tale and know that the latter tale gets more serious and dramatic than that.
This review is going to read like a mess because of all the spoiler text, if you'd prefer to read this on VNDB you can here: https://vndb.org/w13482
All specific spoilers will be marked with how major or minor I feel they are. Outside of spoilers I'll use as much general language as possible to avoid them.
I'd recommend Waremete to most readers who want a romantic comedy with some cute moments but a healthy dose of plot. The downside to the plot is that a lot of things are repeated or follow a formula in the various routes which leads to quite a bit of predictability, but I think that is to be expected in this genre of story.
Characters are fairly well written and all of them have a surprising amount of depth to them with a few exceptions. Kenny is a joke character, but a decent one, but even he has a bit of depth with his shows of true friendship and understanding of the other characters. Kaori is probably the most flat main character in this visual novel, even lacking much character development in her own route. On the other side there's Airi, who is the most interesting, smartest, most violent, and deepest character in the story, even - moderate characterization spoiler for an ending -
Nagisa is the barbed tongued ojou who I found adorable, scary, and wonderful. Yui is the airheaded kuudere that is very interesting and gets quite a bit of character development throughout the story. I enjoyed Nagisa's route the most out of all of them, but the only route that really landed flat for me was Kaori's. Extremely minor spoiler:
The plot is interesting. The story does one thing that I personally loved and that's - major spoiler -
Not everyone will like that, but I think it's the most effective way to get across the emotions that the characters themselves are likely feeling in that moment. Past that it's largely a fairly standard story for this genre, although - moderate spoiler -
There are 16 H-scenes present here, they are decently long, are of about average quality, mostly pretty vanilla - H content spoiler -
It's worth mentioning that the H-scenes do feature some decent characterization and some light plot elements in them, which is quite a bit different than your average VN where they could largely be skipped without missing anything. Music features three vocal tracks with Hashimoto Miyuki, all of which are pretty good. A lot of the BGM are just repeated versions of those tracks - mostly the OP - in various instrumentals with tempo changes, which I didn't mind since I liked the OP in particular, but it does lead itself to being a bit one-note. Systems work pretty well with no issues since it's KiriKiri. With it being an older KiriKiri game, I had to use the Win8WOH fix for my disc version. The English patch from Studio Frisay worked with no issues on said disc version. Localization done by them is pretty well done.
With all that said, I'd recommend Waremete to most readers looking for a romcom with a decent helping of plot thrown in. It's a good read, and it's available for pretty cheap, especially if you buy secondhand - it was about 3000 yen for my copy including proxy and shipping fees - and has also gone on sale on DMM before for the same or cheaper.
If there's a quick way to describe Raillore to people I think it'd be, "Sorcery Jokers but a bit worse". So if you've read or tried Sorcery Jokers before, then that's the easiest way to tell you if you should give Pillagers of Raillore a try or not.
It has two protagonists, both of which are at least a half-step down from their Sorcery Jokers counterparts. Reno is basically a robot man who gets a bit frustrating to read since he's always asking for orders - although it isn't as common as "fair ja nai" in SJ - and Gray is a scoundrel who is more annoying in his implementation with it rather than comedic or interesting. On the opposite side of the characters, all the heroines are at least good to great. They range from the girl who always sees the positive in things (Fi), to the joking / teasing / a bit crazy girl (Milialis), to the food loving kind of airhead (Tilt), all the way to a kuudere who only cares about a few things (Easla). The character arcs - of the heroines - was gradual and well appreciated, and well explained through the story. It genuinely made you feel for them. Even the character arcs of the protagonists was not bad, although both were pretty backloaded.
Story here is pretty interesting and there are some twists that I didn't see coming. Although it still follows a bit of a formula and I think it somehow simultaneously gets dragged out a bit more than it should have as well as ended too quickly. First it was dragged out in that there were constantly new antagonists at every turn, some of which were not very fleshed out. All the new antagonists led to a bit of a feeling of. "When is this going to end?" and some of the later ones were very much in a, "Here's a short infodump about why they're evil and have to be defeated" instead of a proper buildup.
The action scenes in this have a high production value and at the start to the middle are pretty interesting. However, it suffers a bit from the same issue Sorcery Jokers had in that things have a pretty intense power creep. With that power creep by the end it feels like a saga of Dragon Ball Z or Naruto where there are power ups and ridiculous things going on to the point where the ending had to be anticlimactic because it was built up far too much. Arguably the climax of the power creep even happened around the 60-70% mark and from then on it just became tedious.
Music is all done by mamomo again, with the ED having some help from a new person "kakin" that I haven't personally seen anywhere. This leads to some pretty banger BGM tracks, two great OPs, and a good ED - which was fully in English, which is rare. Systems are pretty standard, and although some other people have reported some lag issues in fight scenes, I saw none of that, but I am running a high-end gaming rig, so YMMV there.
Overall, to most readers I'd recommend Pillagers of Raillore. If you read Sorcery Jokers and were not a fan of that, then skip this. If you haven't read anything by 3rdEye yet, I'd recommend Sorcery Jokers over this though.
This is going to end up being a rather general review of Kinsenka because there's an awful lot in this visual novel and not much of the story can be spoken about without going into some spoilers.
Positives:
- Emotional scenes and stories within stories. This visual novel got me emotional multiple times throughout starting from relatively early on.
- Just enough tone changes so that the story does not become one-note. Some sections had some comedy or some light slice of life sections in order to change it up.
- The music is atmospheric and adds to the experience. I also think the theme song is very well done.
- Localization was done well. If you want to nitpick I'm sure you can find some things - but overall it's well done.
Neutral:
- It's a heavy story. There are some things in here that are hard to stomach and are not for everyone. Including - general spoilers -
so it may not be for everyone. I didn't find any of it to be too heavy, but this is definitely a place where YMMV.
- I feel like the ending was a bit of a letdown compared to how well everything had been built up. To be clear I do not actually think the ending is bad, but I feel it didn't live up to the rest of the visual novel's quality quite as much.
Negatives:
- The story is a bit uneven. Two of the chapters dragged a bit, including the last one. Pacing was quite a bit better through the first half of the visual novel.
- A few unanswered story threads still remain, namely:
Overall, I'd recommend this to most readers looking for a good nakige. It's not perfect, but if you liked this writer's other works then you'll probably enjoy this. I don't think any of its flaws are enough to stand in the way of this getting a high score from a lot of readers. It took me 20 hours to finish it - and I usually land somewhere between 50-75% of average VNDB time - so I think it's worth the $30 cost at full price, but if it ever goes on sale it's definitely worth picking up.
Mojika is an extremely unique visual novel. Because of that this is now the most torn I've been about a rating I've given a visual novel to date. It's definitely a game where I feel there will not be many people in the middle ground for this one - you'll probably either love it or hate it. It's presentation is absolutely amazing. The writing itself is decent. The story tries to do too much and includes a bit of everything when it probably shouldn't.
First off - the presentation. Holy hell is it immersive. Screenshots do not do it justice. It's done in an extreme first person perspective and there is a lot of text on-screen at once to represent that protagonist's mind reading abilities. For a lot of the game when the protagonist isn't looking up it could be described as a "Shoes and floor simulator" which is also interesting in its own way. When the protagonist closes his eyes the screen goes black. Genuinely, it's unique to the extent that I doubt we'll ever see another visual novel do this, and I think that's a loss as it was amazing. This presentation DOES make this game a very intense / heavy read even without considering its story content though. There's a lot of text flying at you frequently, and everything that happens is heavier due to it.
Onto the story / writing.It's a revenge-fueled story. There's a lot of dark things that go on here . The list of potential triggers for people is long and includes: With that out of the way, the story is not the game's strongest aspect. It's not bad, but it's a fairly straightforward revenge story for the most part. I felt that its true route was a step up in quality from the rest of the story, but would likely not be as impactful if you did not read everything else first. I do feel like the story tried to include too many aspects to it which led to some of them feeling less fleshed out than others. There's no major issues with the writing other than it can get a bit drawn out during certain sections which slow its pacing down at times. With all that said, the story is not spectacular or even great on its own, but the presentation elevates the story quite a bit.
Overall, this is an interesting visual novel that I'd recommend to people who are okay with its content and can handle its involved presentation. If you're looking into Mojika I'd really recommend you watch a clip of it in action rather than just looking at the screenshots to see if it's something you want to tackle.
tldr;; I'd recommend this to most visual novel readers looking for a bit of a different take on the moege format, with more comedy and very light to no drama upfront slowly transitioning into more drama and very little to no comedy at the end. Overall it's a very good but flawed read that may not be for everyone. Read on for details.
Love, Elections, & Chocolate (Koichoco) does a lot right, but it also does some things wrong. It has some likeable characters, good music, nice production values, and a well done localization that reads well to an English native. It's also a bit of a messy visual novel, which not everyone will like.
Koichoco has, for better or worse, a central heroine - Chisato. Chisato is a classic tsundere whose tsun rating is pretty darn high, and she is extra jealous. This bleeds into routes that aren't her own, so you can count on her making her presence known in other heroine's routes to a decent amount. I personally didn't find this to be too bad, but I could see it upsetting some readers who are more used to the other heroines "backing off" after you get on someone's route. Past her you have some straightforward characters, the onee-san, the teasing girl, the mysterious silent one, and the overly nice hardworking type. None of them are too unexpected and they each have their positives and negatives, but I don't really consider any of them standouts in any sense.
The story is where this visual novel both excels and is a bit disappointing. First, it excels because it's willing to tackle some issues not discussed often in moege - At the same point the stories end quickly enough that it can feel like they are not adequately explored, or truly answered at all. I both liked and hated that decision, as it shows how messy real life is that we don't always get clear cut answers, and not everything is wrapped up cleanly. However, this is a story for enjoyment, and many readers - myself included - appreciate some definitive endings. This is the largest reason why I'm a bit torn on Koichoco. What is there is very good, but I can't help but wish for what was clearly thought about but isn't there.
Last few things: it's been ported to Unity using the same UI as Aokana, which has caused some changes but I think it is a net positive, especially given the skip function is now extremely quick. It has a good number of CGs, sprite variations, and an internal upscaler to 4k - although assets are 1080p I believe. Music is good, and there are 6 ending songs, the 5 heroine's voice actors all sing their own which I always appreciate being done by sprite. There's a total of 15 H-scenes present and in my opinion they are average for the genre, but maybe a bit better than Aokana's. If you're here solely for the "plot" then there's probably better options out there.
Koichoco ultimately ends up as a good read to me, but one that could have been much more with either a bit of extra expanding on some of these story bits.
Karenai Sekai to Owaru Hana is a nakige with some positives but it also struggles a bit with a story that is very one-note to its detriment. Past that it's pretty standard fare. To me it's another visual novel where the positives and negatives cancel out to where it's just fine.
Characters are interesting enough. There's a perverted onee-san type, a cheeky kouhai type, a kind and caring type, and a cutesy imouto type. They all fit their stereotypes fairly well, although there isn't much time spent on characterization beyond the basics, so don't expect very deep characters here. There's also not much character development in this visual novel - partially due to its relatively short runtime (7:23 for me). There are no real standouts here, but nothing particularly grating either.
The story is both where this visual novel shines as well as the largest area of failure in my opinion. On the positive end it manages to be a somewhat effective nakige in a very short period of time. It managed to get me emotional within the first hour and a half of reading, which normally does not happen. For me though, once that was successful there was no truly effective comedy or break in the serious mood. It had a few comedic moments but very quickly dove back into serious issues, which led to a feeling of it being a bit of a slog to get through and greatly diminished what emotional impact was there. Most of the aimed comedy moments were the tired and cliche straight / funny man bits, most of which were as cliche as they come, with nothing feeling original at all. I think if you enjoy the kind of comedy here then you'll likely feel a lot more positively about the story as it would have broken up the serious parts quite a bit better. All the story bits were also foreshadowed well in advance, to the point where I had figured out where everything was going by the time the prologue had finished. Take from that what you will, but for me it was another aspect where it diminished the emotional payout when it can be seen from that far away.
The epilogues are where all the moe and cute moments are, but they're not very long and are probably 60-75% H-scenes all take place within the epilogues. There's 10 total H-scenes in total that would feel at home in a Marmalade title.
I found the art to be very pretty, and the direction aided here, especially the multiple scenes with flower petals being animated along the screen, but there's not a lot of CGs or backgrounds present. Music is also fairly limited, but what is there is appropriate, although I wished the scripting of it was timed a bit better. The OP is a very pretty AiRi sung song, but the ED is a run of the mill Sagara Kokoro tune.
The fan translation done by Shinzou translations isn't bad, but it could've used more editing or QA work. It reads like it was translated from JP to Spanish and then into English. From the lines I listened to in full - admittedly very few - the translation itself is fine, but there's a decent number of typos and grammatical errors. For instance there were at least three times "tights" was in the script instead of "thighs". If this kind of thing bothers you then I would skip this one.
This title can be picked up secondhand without too much trouble and there's also a download edition. It worked without any real issues for me on a Windows 11 PC.
I'd recommend this to anyone looking for a decently written nakige if they're a fan of the cliche straight man / funny man type of comedy. If you're not a fan of that comedy it will likely feel one note to you like it did to me.
Ima Sugu Onii-chan ni Imouto da tte Iitai! (ImaImo https://vndb.org/v7766) is a surprisingly good all-ages moege, and one I'd recommend to most moege readers as long as they're okay with no H-scenes being present and can be okay with the somewhat stupid premise the VN itself has regarding crossdressing. I'll only be talking about things in general to avoid spoilers.
Getting the easy stuff out of the way: systems are standard and I had zero issues getting this working on my Windows 11 computer in JP locale and installing the English patch was a breeze. For reference I am running the DVD version with a USB DVD drive, so I can't speak to other versions, but this version was also incredibly cheap to get second hand - well under the cost of the download version when I purchased it - despite being a "first press limited edition".
OST is pretty straightforward and what you would expect from sprite / fairys at this point. Nothing particularly noteworthy to me, but a lot of stuff composed by elements garden, solid OP songs, a few really pretty inserts, and EDs sung by the VA's themselves, as well as one "grand ED" that played after clearing everyone's routes - I didn't specifically test but it may have played just after Ayumu's as that was the last route I did.
The characters are fairly well rounded in this story. MC is relatable and not a complete idiot (if you ignore him being ) - although he still has that donkan trait, but it didn't feel as bad as usual - and is somewhat proactive, which was a nice change. For the heroines, you have the titular imouto (Ayumu), the shy class president (Kimika), your best friend (Matsuri), and the serious martial artist (Mao). It was nice that these characters don't strictly boil down into their archetypes too much either. They all develop through the various routes and make progress in their personal goals, partially through the common route but primarily in their own heroine routes.
With the story, I came into this not expecting as much cuteness as I ended up getting since it is from the same writer as Koichoco ( https://vndb.org/v4028 ) and there was a decently heavy focus on drama in Koichoco. ImaImo's story does take place approximately 2 years before Koichoco and does feature some references and even shares a few characters with it, but there is no need to have read it before; although you will miss some references without having read it, nothing that changes the story, they are simply cute nods to it. The whole common route is focused on slice of life and various cute moments while they introduce the characters. While there is still drama in ImaImo it is much more well balanced and the heaviest bits of it are located within the titular imouto's route. For a simple comparison I cried twice in total over the course of the three other heroine's routes, but maybe five times during Ayumu's. Nothing too ridiculously over the top, but there is believable drama where it pops up in this visual novel so it hits quite a bit harder for me at least than the otherwise melodramatic bits that happen in other works.
Overall, I'd recommend ImaImo to any moege fan who wants a bit of drama but not too much as well as some comedy and a lot of cute moments but does not mind there being no H present in the story. If you're okay with the lack of 18+ scenes, then I think you'll come away from ImaImo happy. And as of writing this review the official English release of Koichoco is supposed to happen in a few days, so why not pick this up to read after - or before if you're a quick reader (it took me 18:54 in total)?
Kunado Chronicles is a more story focused Purple Software game compared to their others. It's still horny - this is Purple Software after all - but focuses a significant bit more on the plot. This is part of what made it close to my favorite visual novel from them.
The story is interesting, especially if you're into superpowered action type stories (chuunige), and moves at a decent speed and I felt there were no major issues present. It's your standard "MC wakes up with amnesia, has superpowers, proceeds to make stuff happen around them" story, but it's executed fairly well without any major issues. It does have the standard drawbacks to this kind of story though, such as the MC's plot armor is pretty darn thick here, so it has some trouble creating enough tension at times. I am also a big fan of the possibility of a wrong choice during an action sequence leading to death, but this is strictly a ladder structure game with no choices between the ladder rungs. There are 13 pretty hot H-scenes included in the game, although 5 of them are in the after stories, and only one is located within the common route.
Shiravune's localization did dramatically reduce some impact during a few key scenes that negatively impacted the story as a whole. Best example is what is the dramatic climax of the game a few key lines are presented as graphics on the screen rather than in the text box - these lines are not translated at all, not even in the backlog. While you can infer what was said from the response to said lines, you can't immediately, it takes a few lines of dialog to be able to do so. I personally just rewound and paid closer attention and translated, but even that reduced the dramatic tension in the scene, as I had to rewind one line a few times that moved quicker than I was ready for as my kana reading isn't the best. I can only imagine what someone with very limited to no JP knowledge would take from that scene, possibly even missing some of the context there entirely and having to rely entirely on what could be inferred. Past that I'm not going to get into localization choices and all here, but that seemed pretty egregious to me, almost like the project lead and the translator hadn't actually read the game or realized the significance there.
Music as always is a Purple Software specialty. BGM are pretty, vocal songs are great. Although like Aoi Tori there is a big reliance on various versions of the OP being used as BGM in sections. That could be a negative for some, as I noticed at one point I was saying the lyrics in my head and had to turn the BGM down as it was distracting. A weird downside to having a very catchy OP I guess.
Standard stuff: engine issues are mostly fixed now, just be sure to use the latest update, although this is still ported from CMVS to KiriKiriZ so it feels extra "slow" at times to inputs and the skip feature is especially slow. They have fixed some of the more notorious issues that were present at launch, such as the cherry blossom animations and added back in some necessary options, but it is still lacking compared to CMVS's normal setups.
I'd recommend Kunado Chronicles to any VN reader who is interested in a chuunige story with some plot.
Aoi Tori is a frustrating read. It's a solid visual novel with an interesting plot containing a plot device that allows it to essentially be as horny as it wants to be. So it's essentially a Purple Software special. However, unlike a few of their other visual novels it proceeds to simultaneously live up to its premise and be a let down. In my opinion, where Hapymaher succeeded on nearly all fronts, and Amatsutsumi succeeded on most, Aoi Tori frustratingly succeeded on only half. However this still sets it above Chrono Clock which failed on most. We'll see where Kunado Chronicles lands on this Purple Software totem pole as it is my next read.
Let's get the normal stuff out of the way. This is a Purple Software game, so it's pervy, the music is pretty great (both BGM and vocal songs), and the engine is unique (CMVS). Heck the game starts on a H-scene, so if you're playing the Steam version you can be sure incredibly quickly whether the 18+ is applied properly or not. There are 25 H-scenes in total per the scene viewer, and they are hotter than your average VN scene in my opinion.
Onto the stories themselves. Common route was decently interesting and I felt like it set up the heroine routes in a satisfactory manner. Mary's route I particularly enjoyed, as it both flowed from the common route best and had what I feel was the strongest narrative payout and conclusion of all the routes. Sayo's route also felt strong and
Risa's route felt like a departure from the rest in a negative way,
I do think the biggest disappointment comes from Akari's route here. Especially its third act -
Despite its shortfalls, I'd recommend this visual novel to anyone who has enjoyed Purple Software's previous visual novels, as well as anyone who is looking for a game with both plot and "plot".
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 - - 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: Terra is much more understandable given how each characters backstory was written in their individual routes, however it also 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 There's also a few
- 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.
Little Busters is good. Pretty darn good in fact. Its highs are pretty high, it's funny, it's got some emotional moments, the music is great, but it's also somewhat let down by some uneven routes and a true route I personally found a bit frustrating.
The comraderie shown between the characters is pretty great, and that's something you don't see in the majority of visual novels. It truly feels like a gang of friends here rather than just people thrown together randomly. The characters feel like they were written with depth rather than a certain one solely existing to be comedic relief or the silly one or whatnot.
The emotional highs of the story are definitely there, and I think different routes or story beats will hit very differently depending on the person you are or where your interests lie. For instance, Sasami's route hit me by far the hardest emotionally, but I know I'm in the minority there. Some of the routes though feel like they aren't quite as well written - Komari's in particular was a letdown for me, and Mio's felt a bit odd as well. By and large though the routes are written well and are a consistent quality throughout.
Refrain (True Route): Overall I think it was written well, explaining things well and giving some great meaning to the whole experience, however
Minigames: All minigames can be turned off with no detriment to the story itself, but you will lock yourself out of some achievements. I'd honestly recommend turning them off for the majority of your routes unless you really like them, they take up quite a bit of time. There's really only two mini-games that require any skill to them - baseball practice (available in all routes) and the shooting minigame (Saya's route). Neither are too terribly difficult, but the shooting minigame does feature an easy mode. Baseball I wouldn't bother with until after Refrain, as character stats go up with how many heroine routes you've completed, and you will be very unlikely to win the baseball game until you've beefed the stats up quite a bit. The Battle Ranking minigame is automated, but is also significantly easier to do later with increased stats. Battle Ranking is extremely easy to save scum your way through though if you're patient, .
Ultimately I'd recommend Little Busters! to any visual novel fan, especially any all-ages or Key fans out there. It's a solid read without too many glaring weaknesses, and honestly if it didn't hit upon a personal pet peeve of mine with a certain story type, it probably would've scored a bit higher.
I enjoyed Sex Rockets (Byakko / Farther than the Blue Sky) quite a bit. The main characters are all interesting in their own ways, some more than others though. Through its routes it manages to tell a scientific story where the science and progression is somewhat believable on the R&D front, although obviously truncated and simplified so that it would be palatable to a larger audience. It definitely does some things differently - namely the H-scenes and its true route - but I personally enjoyed the differences.
I would recommend a route order for this game: Honoka > Kaho > Natsu > Arisa > True this is for some spoiler reasons which would lessen the drama a bit in the later routes if done in a different order.
The characters and routes present here in Sex Rockets are pretty stereotypical for the genre, and while a few were great examples there were also a few that were somewhere in the middle. There's the violent tsundere (Arisa) who I feel is a love or hate character for the audience and while I personally loved her character, I feel like her route was somewhere in the middle and quite predictable. Arisa's route also deviates the most from the other heroine routes, with her being the project manager it focuses on the big picture rather than specific rocket bits. Then there's Honoka who is the extremely joking / flirty kouhai with a hat and a fang who exists largely to make the MC's life more interesting. She's wonderful as a support character, good as a heroine, and her route is interesting. Kaho is the cute, shy, quiet, and bookish type who is always standing up for what she thinks is right. For me her route was the best, it felt like it balanced the drama and rocket sections better than the others. Lastly there's Natsu, the extremely airheaded senpai. As a character Natsu is wonderful comedic relief, but I found it hard to consider her as a romantic interest, so her route for the romantic sections largely felt awkward. Her story and the rocket business however was fine. The true route I personally found to be entertaining and I felt it conveyed the overall tone and message of the visual novel very well, and was one of the dramatic highlights of the game. However, I can see it definitely being somewhat divisive, so your mileage may vary here.
The balance of storytelling between more dramatic character driven sections and more science heavy rocket sections particularly impressed me. They even managed to make the H-scenes more important to the story. No, you cannot completely check out or skip the H-scenes in Sex Rockets without missing some decently important story bits. It was a nice change to say the least. On the negative end some of the common route can feel very information dense as they essentially give you a quick primer on the basics of rockets. At one point I had to take a break after reading for a few hours.
I would recommend Sex Rockets (Byakko / Farther than the Blue Sky) to anyone who likes a pretty well written moege. Bit of a caveat though: this will be much more appealing to anyone interested in space related things, especially rockets or physics. If you have zero interest in these, then I'm unsure if this is the visual novel for you. If that all sounds good, I'd recommend picking this up even at its high price - but especially so if you wait for a sale.
I originally read Crescendo nearly 20 years ago at the time of writing this review, and I decided to reread it. The only thing I could clearly remember going into the reread was that I got emotional during the first read. Well...it's still got it. I'd recommend this to anyone who enjoys a well written pretty believable emotional story. There are some topics touched on that will upset some people. If you're sensitive to the following you may want avoid this VN: moderate to heavy spoilers
very heavy spoiler
Systems are about as standard as you'd expect from a VN that was released in the early 00's. The OST is actually really good and uses many Scott Joplin classical songs. Voice acting was also pretty good, especially given the age of the VN. Only frustrations really come from it being 640x480 so it's either in a small window or a weird full screen unless you upscale it yourself - which I would recommend doing using something like magpie if you have a larger monitor.
The writing here is good with no real lulls in the story, so even though it's a 10 or so hour read, there's not really any wasted fluff reading. A lot of the story is told through flashbacks as the characters recall their time in high school as they (MC and some heroines) are graduating in a few days. I personally appreciated this storytelling method as it also helped give a sense of time passing through the various stories rather than everything just being done in a whirlwind 4 days. Characters are believeable in their motivations and actions, which brings weight to the story. I personally enjoyed every heroine, but they each had their flaws as well, which just made them feel more human. I'm not going to go into the routes themselves in detail as they would be difficult to discuss completely spoiler free. I don't really think there's any obvious outlier routes in regards to writing quality present in Crescendo, all of the routes are well written and have their arguments.
For those of you wondering how sad it gets on the nakige / utsuge front to help you decide whether you want to read it:
I'd recommend this VN to anyone who likes well written emotional stories.
I really enjoyed this visual novel. It's actually been quite a long time since I binged a visual novel as quickly as this, reading the entire 9:16 it took me to read this in a single day. I'd personally recommend going into this VN as blind as possible but it has a few touchy subjects that will make it hard to read for some or just plain make people want to avoid it
With that out of the way...There's a lot I can talk about here, but I'll keep it relatively short so I don't go into too many potential spoilers or anything. This story is a well-told slow burn romance slice of life drama coming of age story. It's written extremely realistically. I could see everything in the story actually happening, so there is no struggle with any level of disbelief due to how characters act or any situations that come up.
The art is gorgeous in my opinion and features moving sprites including lip sync. While it's not always perfect, it works the majority of the time. The music is understated but used extremely effectively, and I adore both versions of "sun shade" (the OP and ED). Systems are fairly straightforward and don't feature anything unexpected in a visual novel like this, I do appreciate a chapter menu though to more easily traverse if you were to forget to save or wanted to backtrack more easily.
On the negative side, the pacing is a bit inconsistent - especially post-climax where it drags a bit. The story also takes a bit longer to wind up than I would have liked, but it was still done very well and I'm honestly unsure if the story would've been better if it ramped up faster. While the ending wrapped most things up pretty cleanly, I wish the epilogue had jumped a bit further into the future to see how things were going, but that's a pretty minor gripe.
Overall I'd recommend this visual novel to any yuri fan who is interested in a grounded slow burn slice of life drama story. I'd even recommend this to non-yuri fans as something they should pick up to maybe give the genre a chance.
Fatal Twelve is a life or death drama visual novel that focuses on a death game and has a light yuri substory to go with it - specifics about the yuri-ness -
I really enjoyed this visual novel and feel like it has some really strong highlights but also some faults that prevent it from being rated truly highly.
This will be very general as going into almost any details would be full of spoilers for a visual novel focused on a death game like this. The story does an effective job of introducing all the characters to you in rather swift fashion when they get their time. It manages to build up enough of who they are that I felt myself caring about them - some more than others - as the story went on. This is helped by some shifting character perspectives that show different angles to the story as it persists. A significant portion of the characters also show some significant character development through the story which is appreciated. I think the middle section of the story was also incredibly interesting and found myself binging through it in just one sitting without any trouble at all.
The negatives to this visual novel are a bit frustrating. While the middle of the story was quite good, - spoiler for type / number of endings only -
There were also a few technical issues but none were too major: the achievements are a bit buggy and I had to re-choose some options a few times to trigger the "choose all options" achievement, and one other achievement only popped upon replaying a route. There was also a weird issue with it on full screen that it would randomly flash a few times like it was resizing to my screen again, but this didn't cause issues, it was just distracting for the second it'd do it and it would occur every few hours without being able to find a cause or solution for it.
Music is relatively good, the BGM lends some extra feeling to some scenes, but at the same time I feel like it plays a bit too early in some scene transitions, i.e. playing the "bad stuff happening" music before it's actually shown anything bad happening yet, which just telegraphs what is about to happen. Systems are standard as this uses Ren'py.
Overall I'd recommend Fatal Twelve to anyone looking to read a life or death drama visual novel. It's pretty good and for the most part my complaints are pretty minor. While there is a secondary yuri story to it, this is largely not a yuri visual novel, so don't let that deter you.
Kakenuke★Forward to Our Sparking Youth! is a moege visual novel that is relatively low drama, has a decent amount of comedy, and a good deal of cute moments. I would recommend this to any moege fan. It has some high points in my opinion, and unfortunately one route felt like it dragged out a bit, but overall it is a very solid read and was an enjoyable experience.
The common route does a good job of introducing all the characters and the setting while injecting some comedy. It makes it relatively easy to choose which character(s) you want to pursue first without giving any of them the short end of the stick. One big positive regarding the common route is at the end of it route selection is as simple as choosing which heroine you wish to pursue rather than choices present throughout the story. I personally really enjoy this as it feels a bit more focused on the individual routes and feels a bit less harem-ey than with choices throughout the common leading to different routes.
Systems are pretty standard for the visual novel genre. There's a large number of CGs and backgrounds in this title, which I appreciated. There's 24 about average for the genre H-scenes for your enjoyment. I will call out the OST in this which I found to be particularly great - the main ED being a particularly great song.
To avoid spoilers regarding the routes I'm going to go into just some general thoughts.
The routes are fairly well written with very little drama present outside of the true route. I did feel like Hibiki's route got the most attention and had the best backstory of them, which makes sense as she is arguably presented as the "main" heroine of the game. Nagiko's route I enjoyed quite a bit as it provided her some needed character development and showed the MC as more of a support character which was a nice change of pace. Riri's route was full of so many cute moments it was almost overwhelming. Shiori's route felt like it dragged at points and from my timing was the longest route as well, which was unfortunate. Ritsu's route was also cute and surprisingly beefy for a sub-heroine route. Kikka's (true) route was surprisingly well-written in regards to how it built off the information you had from completing the other routes before it (it's locked behind the main 4 heroine's routes), and got me emotional at multiple moments. There are some plot holes you'll have to overlook a bit, but they don't detract too much from the story, but they may bother you like they did me and it did make me downgrade my rating a bit.
Overall, I really enjoyed my time with Kakenuke★Forward to Our Sparking Youth! and if you're a fan of moege, I think you will too. There's nothing too far outside the norm here compared to a Yuzusoft visual novel for instance, but that doesn't reflect poorly on this title. Even if it makes it a bit vanilla, vanilla is still a pretty good flavor and one I enjoy quite a bit. So give this a shot if you're interested in moege.
What started off as an offhand joke about how fast I read visual novels - after I read 22 between June and July - became a bit of a self-imposed challenge to see if I really tried how many I could get through in a month without sacrificing reading comprehension or time with my wife. To ensure I was having reading comprehension I made myself write at least a short review on VNDB for every VN completed. I also tracked exact times for each one played. I decided whatever VNDB decided was a separate visual novel would be what I'd use, so fandiscs and separate volumes if separate pages on VNDB existed would count as separate visual novels. I also would completely finish any VN, so all endings had to be seen - ended up with one exception due to technical limitations though. When I made up my rules I set the goal number at 31, or one per day, since that seemed reasonable, but I wasn't allowed to give up until the month was over. Apparently the number I could reach was 50. I wouldn't recommend to anyone to try to replicate this or beat it, and I'll go into details below. Some facts, figures, and interesting things I'll note below as well as some quick recommendations from what I read this month.
Logistical Setup / thoughts:
First the setup time I did on the first few days of the month was a lot more than I realized since there wasn't a good way to narrow my backlog by reported VNDB times. I literally just went by the series that came to mind that I knew were in installments, took some recommendations, and branched out from my normal reading genres some. There was also quite a bit of setup time between finding what store may have the visual novel I was looking for, if there are R18 patches or just general patches that need to be installed, etc. I wish I had tracked the setup time to include with this, but I did not. Across the entire month it would not be ridiculous to say I probably spent close to 10 hours doing these logistical tasks. This was also an expensive outing to say the least, which is another thing in hindsight I wish I had tracked, but a good portion of the visual novels - especially in the first half of the month - I had already picked up on various sales.
General thoughts / realizations:
Reading this many short visual novels in a row is surprisingly exhausting, far more exhausting than it would have been to read even 3-4 long to very long visual novels that added up to more time in total. All the rapid changes in story made it a bit hard to keep my head straight and in similar stories keep what characters were in what story clear after it had been a day or two. This got worse as the month went on, especially after I started playing more unrelated visual novels rather than series. The other thing I noticed early on was that emotional stories really slowed me down quite a bit as they're naturally harder to recover from, so they ended up getting largely removed from the playlist where I was aware of them. I also realized from this month that I am not a fan of pure nukige. From that - and one other incident this month with Yume Creations's works - I realized I shouldn't buy visual novels in bulk when I'm unsure of their quality. On the positive side I realized I am completely okay with and enjoy yuri stories, which I would not have tried otherwise. I also only realized near the end of the month that I rate short visual novels pretty harshly as a lot of them have some issues of developing their premises or presenting problems that they cannot solve or elaborate on in such a short runtime. Yume Creations (developer) visual novels suffer from this more than any other single developer I read this month.
Time / VN numbers breakdown:
Reading time: 97:37 (3:09 rounded per day on average)
Average VN completion time: 1:57
Average VN / day: 1.61
Longest VN read: Figures of Happiness at 7:35
Shortest VN read: My Ex-Sister in Law at 0:28
Most VN's completed in one day: 4 on both 8/16 and 8/22
Least VN's completed in one day: 0 on both 8/2 and 8/5
Average VN rating from me: 5.1/10
Highest Rated VN from me: Tie at 7.5/10: Neko Para vol. 4 and Dreamlike Love with Seira
Lowest rated VN from me: Tie at 1/10: Imolicious and Figures of Happiness (due to bug preventing multiple endings in current download version from JAST)
VN with the funniest name: Invisible Cock: They never saw it cumming!
Visual novels:
I'll provide a whole list of visual novels completed in order afterwards, but some special callouts for quality that I'd recommend people read - if you want more detailed reviews, all of them are up on VNDB, usually as short or medium length reviews:
Chihiro Himukai Always Walks Away: Pretty cute single route visual novel if you like a straightforward rom-com with a bit of a fussy heroine.
Uchikano series: All three are cute single route visual novels with heroines that are interesting in their own rights, depending on the individual title it can be pure fluff (girlfriend), a bit more comedy (sister), or a bit more serious at points (lovers).
Neko Para series: Pure fluff, but it made me smile throughout the entirety of it, it's just so cute.
Stay. -Fragments of Memories -: Doujin work done by the people that eventually became ALcot. Done based off the endings in the visual novel ONE. so if you haven't read it, don't read this, but if you have and enjoyed ONE. you should really read Stay. It's incredibly well done for a doujin work and provided some feels. It also has surprisingly high production levels, especially for a doujin work, as there are even multiple voiced songs in it.
OshiRabu: Very cute yuri work that helped settle into my brain that I can really like yuri work. There's nothing incredibly special here, but it's so cute it had me smiling throughout.
Megasuki: Best nukige series I read all month by a decent margin.
Dreamlike Love with Seira: Despite dropping a plot point in the middle, this was still a really comforting and entertaining read. I'm hoping the next game in the series gets localized as well in hopes that the dropped plot point gets picked back up. Like a few other visual novels read this month, it just made me smile.
Sonohana series: Yuri works that varies depending on how much you like each individual heroine set, but most I read this month were decent to good, with only one heroine set I didn't like (Runa / Takako in 7 & 9)
Full list in order:
Chihiro Himukai Always Walks Away
Figures of Happiness - bugged so only 5/10 endings could be seen as a choice was locked in current download version preventing progression
planetarian
planetarian: Snow Globe
Uchikano: Living With My Girlfriend
Uchikano: Living With My Sister
Uchikano: Living With My Lovers
Neko Para Extra, Volumes 0-4
Slobbish Dragon Princess 1, Fandisc, 2, 3
Invisible Cock: They never saw it cumming!
Stay. -Fragments of Memories-
Imolicious
My Ex Sister in Law
The Invisible Man's Stealth NTR: Convincing and Inseminating the New Announcer with an Invisible Boner
My Yandere Sister loves me too much!
Breeding Village
Yozora Rhapsody
Yandere Goddess: A Snatch Made in Heaven
Games & Girls
Daitoshokan no Hitsujukai -Houkago Shippo Days-
LipTrip -My Boss Is My Heat Suppressant?!-
Suteki na Kanojo no Tsukurikata
OshiRabu: Waifus over Husbandos & Fandisc
Megasuki: Love Through Lenses trio (Yuuki Hoshino, Ayumu Sakura, Otoha Inami)
Dreamlike Love with Seira
Animal Trail ☆ Girlish Square 1, Fandisc, 2
Amayakase - Spoiling My Silver-Haired Girlfriend
Do you believe in Santa?
Sonohana 1, 6, 2, 4, 3, 5, 7, 9, 8 (order read in couples, so Nanami / Yuuna's story, then Kaede / Sara, Mai / Reo, Runa / Takako and lastly Eris / Shizuku)
Closing Thoughts:
I'm never going to do this again. Not unless someone pays me. I wouldn't recommend anyone do this. With that said, a small part of me thinks 60-80 is completely doable, and someone who has more free time could hit 100 in a month if they were really trying with the right setup / organization. I started thinking of the first longer VN I was going to read once this month is over since probably the second week in. After I finish Sonohana 10, I think I settled on Senren Banka cause my brain is a bit overloaded and some relatively straightforward moege is needed I think.
Hapymaher is an interesting read. It's a multi-route mystery with some really entertaining comedy bits throughout. Many people have called it a nakige, and I can definitely see where it could make a lot of people emotional, but it didn't really make me emotional almost at all. I think personally I may have just been distracted by trying to figure out what was going on at any given point in time to get emotional, so YMMV. Some parts are stronger than others, but overall it tells an entertaining story that manages to draw the reader in at various points, even if the major parts are foreshadowed well in advance. Overall I'd recommend this to anyone who enjoys a multi-route mystery or just a well told story.
Systems in this VN are pretty standard. I do like to call out that they do let you do custom mapping of buttons, which is incredibly useful for me as I prefer using space bar over enter to advance text. BGM is pretty unique in that it doesn't just blend in and felt like it was actually adding something to the story rather than simply being there, as well as being memorable. I do feel that the BGM is probably in my top 5 or so and I feel like I will actually remember it for quite a while, which can't be said for most VN BGM's for me.
The story is pretty obviously influenced by Alice in Wonderland, right down to the character designs. Characters are pretty straightforward but cute and memorable. Character designs are pretty good, my favorite among the Purple Software games at least. There's Yayoi, the upperclassman who acts as a sort-of advisor to the MC, Saki, the childhood friend / sister who enjoys tormenting the MC, Keiko, the underclassman who is stubborn and standoffish. Alice, the naive, energetic, sort of mysterious girl, and Maia the sadistic younger sister. There's also some support cast that are entertaining in their own ways. I personally found all the characters entertaining to different levels. I found Saki to be particularly adorable throughout the story. Yayoi was also fun - and is voiced by my favorite VA Kazane. Keiko I found to be a bit of a one note character personally.
I won't go into details regarding the routes as they would be full of spoilers, but they were interesting and shared quite a bit of story between them with entirely different last chapters (8 chapters in the VN in total with a few intermissions). I found all the routes to be entertaining in their own ways, there were some emotional high - and low - points in the stories that are designed fairly well to get you involved in each heroine's individual history and story moving forward. I particularly enjoyed Yayoi's route personally, as it was the most relatable to myself, but I feel most people would probably enjoy Saki's route (among the three main heroines) the most. I liked Keiko's route less than the others, but that's probably partially because I was less of a fan of her character as she felt somewhat one note at times. In total there were 8 endings if you include the bad end, normal end, each heroine's route, and 1 true end at the very end of everything. Because of the shared scenes, each route you play through takes less time than the route before it (in most cases).
Due to the nature of the mystery and shared scenes, if you're a completionist like I am, I think it's best to follow a recommended route order of Bad End > Yayoi > Keiko > Saki > Maia > Normal End > Alice > True End - although both the bad end and normal end are completely skippable and Yayoi/Saki/Keiko can technically be done in any order. I do think the normal end adds to the story, while the bad end won't be missed except by completionists like myself. My argument for the order of Yayoi > Keiko > Saki is so that you slowly find out more information without seeing it in a weird order and possibly getting confused, as I feel Saki's route has the most useful information in it (at least in my opinion). The order I followed was actually Yayoi / Saki / Keiko and I feel that Keiko's route then dragged a bit as I felt I already had most of the information necessary to keep moving forward.
Ultimately I'd recommend Hapymaher to most readers, especially those who enjoy a well told story, multi-route mysteries, or a subdued nakige, especially if you're a fan of a mix of them. The BGM and systems were particularly strong suits in my opinion. Characters and routes themselves were solid without any obvious weaknesses or anything to complain about.
