koisora after Happiness and extra Hearts

Yes, the H’s are capitalized for a reason. There are so many H scenes squeezed in such short routes! I was expecting at least some story in it… I suppose the protagonist is too busy assembling his harem to participate in a story.

The common route is divided into 8 chapters with an emphasis on the newly promoted heroines Aiko, Kiyomi, Michiko, and Yuuki. There are a couple of chapters about the new student council, 1 about the miko, 1 about a test, 1 about the DIY club, and 3 about the school festival. Two things in the common route bothered me. I would much rather see the drama, like emo kids,  leave out of it since I had enough of that in the original Koisora. And the common route is so dang long! Why don’t they learn from the mistake they made in the original excessively long common route. They just had to repeat their mistake.

The routes are very short compared to the common route, with 3 chapters each compared to 8. That wouldn’t be so bad, if the routes aren’t filled with H scenes one after the other. If you skip all of the them, there is barely anything left for you to read. There are 5 of them in the short span of 3 chapters. I can’t help but feel that the routes are crafted purely for the ecchi with some drama tacked onto it.

The prevalence of the H scenes are especially apparent in Aiko’s and Mikoto’s routes. After the confession scene in Aiko’s route, it is practically non-stop H scenes. Aiko gets a little bit scary near the end if you ask me. But she is still an adorable kouhai/imouto two in one. I LOL-ed at the Aiko ending – the power of friendship and love combined!

The same goes for Mikoto’s route, outside of the the more dramatic portion. The conflict was solved so easily it was ridiculous, and they still didn’t solve the main problem left from Koisora. As the result, all the drama feels really stupid. Again, they should leave that out and let the couple ichaicha a lot more. And no, I don’t mean the ecchi kind.

As bad and uselessly drama laden as Sera’s route is, I still love her character! I applaud her for being able to restrict herself to only 3 H scenes as opposed to 5.

Despite the overabundance of ecchi, I’m finding it nice to revisit the characters from Koisora. And of course, to see more of Sera.

There seems to be a graduation ending that is unlocked after you complete all the routes, so I”ll be skimming through the H scenes until I get to that.

SuGirly Wish and the Holy Grail

Title courtesy of Mazyrian. For all intents and purposes of this post, Hina is my Holy Grail. Yeah, I’ve been meaning to post this sooner, but things don’t always go as planned right? I’ve recently finished Hina’s route in SuGirly Wish, and I got exactly what I was expecting – lots of amaenbo imouto goodness coated in thick, pink layers of sugar mostly without the distraction commonly called story or plot.

The protagonist, who has been called onii-chan so many times I lost track of his name, lives in the dormitory of a prestigious school, where ordinary things happen, suddenly has a fancy for one of the girls, they get into a relationship, becomes all raburabu, the end.

Oh, almost forgot, there is a theme about wishes that can be granted after going through certain rituals, hence the title. One example is that a couple who throws coins into a fountain and pray can be together forever. Every heroine also supposedly has a personal wish to be granted in their respective routes.

Hina’s wish is obvious from the start – to capture her onii-chan’s heart and ultimately marry him. Coincidentally, that happens to be the synopsis of the route in a single sentence. Hina tries every way possible to get her onii-chan, who eventually overcomes the sibling barrier and falls into her grasp. I’m pleasantly surprised they didn’t put a onani scene in it, which seems to have become a staple in imouto routes.

Hina is absolutely adorable. She has a built-in onii-chan radar that detects the proximity of her onii-chan and beeps when he is near. She doesn’t hesitate to latch onto her onii-chan every chance she gets and pouts like a sad puppy when pulled away, It was delightful to watch her putting Anna’s hilariously perverted plan into action in order to win her oniii-chan; which includes but is not limited to dressing up in sukumizu for no apparent reason. She is also not afraid to show her affection in public and cheerfully shares the experiences of her intimate moments with her onii-chan to her friends. In short, she is one imouto not to be missed and is without a doubt the best heroine of the game.

Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for her route. The conflict is dragged on for around 5 chapters with little advancement. Then all of a sudden in the next chapter, the protagonist gets a lead from his best friend and realizes things can’t go on like this any more and swiftly resolves the conflict. But I did like the part where they make the wishes to stay by each other forever; it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. An attempt at creating a more serious undertone is felt when the other classmates look at this sibling couple with disturbed looks. I’m not sure that fits in such an overall sugary atmosphere. I won’t complain too much though. You don’t play this kind of games looking for a solid story.

The seiyuus are the other aspect I don’t like about this game. The one for Hina is too high pitched for my taste, but I suppose it fits her character. But the one for Anna drives me nuts every time I hear her speak. Her voice is so whispery my ears are straining trying to hear, and it doesn’t help that she speaks in such a bizarre accent that I would have trouble understanding it even if I could hear it. The one for Megumi tries too hard to sound soft spoken and ends up sounding lethargic. I don’t like any of the male voices either, they sound half-assed and unprofessional and the one for protagonist’s best friend is the worst. Thankfully, the seiyuus for Akane and Kurumi are fine.

Don’t have much to say about the music except they’re all standard eroge fare. Seems like this game lacks an ending song for the credits, but makes up for it by having an insert song play during the very last scene right before the credits. The graphics are decent with lively bright colors and no apparent flaw.

All in all, this game does what moe-ge do best; it delivers hours of sugar laden romance for anyone looking for them. If you’re looking for story, sorry, but this game has none of it. But are you honestly expecting a story from games like this?

On the other hand, it’s Koisora’s FD launch day! That means I’m dropping everything I’m doing right now and focusing my attention on getting my hands on that sweet piece of software. Sorry Hina, but I’ll see you after I’m done with this! Sera and Mikoto, I’ll see you girls again at long last!

 

 

 

Tasogare no Sinsemilla Review

I’ve noticed a significant portion of the review’s material has been already covered in my previous impressions, so I’m going to borrow some of that here and integrate it with the rest of the review specific material. I’ll try to keep the spoiler to a minimal level, though that’ll be a challenge in coming up with stuff to write about.

Company: あっぷりけ
Game Site: 黄昏のシンセミア
Release Date: July 22, 2010
Links: Getchu, walkthrough, seiyuu listing

There’s a legend about an angel’s robe in the scenic town of Minakami-mura, in the middle of which there is a large shrine. An university student, Kousuke, visits his mother’s hometown during the summer break to do some part-time and reacquaints with some old friends while also meeting some new ones. However, their normal lives are altered by the presence of a mythic drug that can cause living beings to become abnormal. This is the local story of the monster named Yamawaro.
[Shamelessly taken from Micchi's blog]

Tasogare no Sinsemilla Second Impression

I’m facing a dilemma. I won’t be done with Tasogare no Sinsemilla for at least another week, so I can’t write a review until then. But I’ve promised myself to blog at least once a week. And the last post I’ve written is Tasogare no Sinsemilla’s first impression. So naturally, the next post to follow is the second impression, in lack of a better term or a more creative title. If I’m spoiling too much, or too little, please let me know.

So far, I’ve finished Sakuya’s, Misato’s, and Sachiko’s routes. Out of all of them, only Misato’s route disappointed me, and I wasn’t expecting much from a sub-route to begin with. Sakuya’s route is an excellent route fitting for an excellent imouto, and Sachiko’s route is surprising good, being a sub-route, since it contributes to the overall story unlike Misato’s which felt more like an extension to Shoko’s route that I haven’t played yet.

Tasogare no Sinsemilla First Impression

This is going to be a short post as I’ve just finished the prologue so there isn’t much material to write about. But before I get started, please, can someone teach the eroge companies some English grammar so they don’t use sentences like this as the tagline just below their title – It is the one that the person must not touch that it is beyond this; the meaning of this sentence is beyond me.

First thing I noticed is that, being the typical me, there are not only 1, but 2 imoutos. We have Sakuya the level-headed true imouto, and Syouko the shy niece who calls him oniichan. I’m content as we got both side of the imouto spectrum covered. I also noticed immediately that this isn’t a game with the typical high school setting. Out of all the characters, only 2 are high school-ers and 1 of them is a sub-character.

Secondly, I feel there is more story in the prologue alone than in the entire game of the previous moe-ges I’ve played. That may be an overstatement, but I said it to emphasize since I haven’t played an eroge with a good plot in a while. We get a nice tension buildup of an evil lurking in the darkness. First they smell rotten odor all around, a dog gets slaughtered, then the protagonist finally meets the monster for a confrontation. We even get a short scene from the monster’s perspective as it devours the dog; I have no idea what it was talking about during that scene however. The only negative aspect so far is that I can’t say the action scenes are that good, but they get the point across of two entities fighting each other. Also, the dialogue has less comedy in it, but not to the point where it becomes dull reading them.

I like the characters and the seiyuu line-up. Don’t know much yet about the true imouto Sakuya yet since she is introduced near the end of the prologue, but I like her already when her hobby appears to be texting her oniichan. Then there is the shy and perfectly loli Syouko voiced by Natsuno Koori; I started liking her from the moment she called the protagonist oniichan. There are also two mikos, this game seems to like things in pairs. I like the reason they became mikos – jobs were hard to find and the local jinja just happened to be hiring. Additionally, there is the mysterious Ginko who appears to be a hobo, a pretty one at that, living in the mountains and says weird phrases no one understands. Finally, there is a tsundere who stands out only because she is voiced by ringorin Aoba Ringo.

The music I like as well. It has that epic traditional Japanese feeling to it that I’ve heard in Kitto sumiwataru asairo yori mo. The OP is one of the better ones I’ve heard, not often do you get a non J-Pop sounding song for an OP. Sadly not all the tracks are of the same quality, but they are all at the very least above average.

As you can see above, the game has an elaborate flowchart system where you can jump to any scene you have previously played. It also has short summaries and pictures of what happened at each scene. The chart branches off any time you make a choice. The  scenes that aren’t connected are scenes told from another person/thing’s perspective. Since this is just the prologue with only a single choice to be made it doesn’t look too fancy yet. But I am expecting it to be a lot more complicated once I get onto the main game.

That sums up my experiences with Tasogare no Sinsemilla, for the prologue. So far, I’m impressed. My only wish now is for the story to not get too dark and depressing. The world is already too full of those; I need something to keep my happy, not sad.

Blog Update no Sinsemilla

The title doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, and the picture even less so, but I hope they gets the message across as I’m trying to do multiple things at once. The blog’s sidebar and static pages have been updated, I haven’t been able to devour Tasogare no Sinsemilla at any reasonable pace, and I’m declaring Takanashi Yaya to be the official mascot of this blog, visible in the eroge page. Micchi can have his Sana, I’ll have Yaya please.

As you can see right from the home page, I’ve made several modifications to the content of the sidebar to the right of the home page. I’ve removed the more or less useless calender and replaced it with the, in my mind at least, much more informative What I’m Doing section. Below that, I’ve added my To-Do List complete with pretty banners of games and charas that I’m planning to play soon; needless to say, right now the list is filled with all manners of imoutos. I call it a to-do list, not only in a vain attempt to be different, but also because it’s a composite of a backlog and anticipated titles; some of the games are released while others are still on the horizon.

In addition to the redesigned sidebar, all the static pages like the about page of the blog are updated as well. No major changes: revised several paragraphs, added some links here and there, decorated anime and eroge pages with pictures of my favorite anime and character, and expanded the names of a few eroges from their contraction in the list.

I have also updated my blogroll to include a more extensive listing of blogs related to visual novels. Granted that some of the blogs cover as much anime as visual novels, nevertheless I feel they are all valuable contributors to the visual novel community. I always welcome link exchanges. If your link is already in my blogroll, I would love that my link be put into yours as well. Otherwise, let me know and we can exchange our links!

On the other hand, the miserable bloke Aedes is still crawling through Tasogare No Sinsemilla slowly; I’ve yet to see the intro movie. Haven’t been playing this as much as I would like due to my recent workload. Nevertheless, a post dedicated to it will be up later this week, if work doesn’t strangle me first.

 

Noble Works Review

Company: Yuzusoft
Game Site: のーぶる☆わーくす
Release Date: December 24, 2010
Links: Getchu, walkthrough, seiyuu listing

Takumi is a normal guy who barely gets by with part-time jobs. One day, he was asked to attend the prestigious private school Rokuroku Gakuen while impersonating a rich student that looks just like him. Although he was hesitant to accept this strange request, circumstances (mainly financial) compelled him to agree to do it. However, he knows nothing about the celeb world. Will he be able to keep his cover?
[Shamelessly taken from Micchi's blog]