Company: MOONSTONE
Game site: Angel Ring～エンジェルリング～
Release date: June 25, 2010

Satoru likes the 2D world and loves 2D girls. One day, he took care of a weakened pure white dove. When he woke up the next day, a beautiful girl who he didn’t know was hugging him. Not only that, but she was naked. His imouto Sana comes to wake him up:

“Hey aniki, hurry and get u- ehhhh!!?＃！※‡？々♂☆♀!!?”

The game is based around two concepts: ‘love angel’ and ‘angel ring’. Love angels come from heaven to support love between people. They don’t have any special abilities except for flying. They feel a great sense of responsibility towards 2D maniacs like Satoru. If there is someone who loves someone else, but doesn’t have the courage to take the next step, the ‘angel ring’ floating around the love angel’s neck will begin to glow. It helps the love angel realize people’s feelings.

[Taken from Micchi’s blog]

The above synopsis of the game explains basically everything there is to the game. Days pass by with very ordinary events happening. Normally each day will have 2 character choices, one in the morning and one after school. These choices show some interaction between the Satoru and the chosen heroine. The events are very generic and sometimes mildly funny, other times very plain. The common route progresses with no obvious goal in sight besides ending up with a heroine of your choice.

I would like to say…Love angels are ANNOYING. They‘re too quick to jump to conclusions, pushy, inconsiderate and they assume too much. For people who yearn to make others fall in love, they sure don’t have much of a game plan. In almost every route, I got annoyed by their intervention in the relationship. Of course, they EVENTUALLY learn that what they’re doing is stupid as hell, but it sure takes a while.

Characters

Mika, the love angel of the game first appears as a dove due to a lack of love energy. She’s your typical tsundere. Her lack of intelligence is compensated by her athletic ability. She has a thing for super spicy food and is a surprisingly good cook. Before meeting Satoru, she already failed to connect the angel ring for 2 other candidates. She has one last chance, otherwise she’ll be judged by the heavens.

Mika’s route primarily involved the conflict between her feelings and her duty as a love angel. Of course, this naturally rolls over and the two get into a relationship. Confession, then straight away H-scene T_T.  The two progress relatively smoothly in their relationship, but soon after you find out that Mika has been neglecting her job as a Love Angel. Love Angels go where they are needed, so they can’t stay in the same spot for too long. Some bull crap about when a Love Angel connects the angel ring to 1000 people they become human is thrown in near the very end. So she leaves, but comes back. Very typical >_>.

Satoru’s imouto by blood. She is good at all types of housework, and has done all the housework since the two started to live alone together. She reluctantly accepts her brothers eroge hobby, and constantly beats him when he does something stupid.

Sana’s route is the blood-related incest route. I was half expecting at the very end you find out that the two aren’t actually related, but nothing. Satoru’s realizes his feelings, and even as an ero-gamer, he finds it hard to accept that he’s a siscon =3. Satoru decides to go with Sana to an amusement park as thanks for all the housework she does. Mika comes in as her usual annoying self and declares that Sana should find a boyfriend for no particular reason. Her plan is to find a guy to go to the amusement park in Satoru’s place. So on the day, Mika prepares 4 guys for Sana to choose from to go with. Sana simply chooses Satoru and things don’t get too out of hand. Soon after there’s a very typical incest confession. Things go great, until Mika tells Satoru that he was connected to the Angel Ring, but Sana wasn’t.

Satoru’s osananajimi who lives close by. Sumika finds out about Satoru’s hobby only a year and a half ago, but still treats him in the same way. She has a thing for cooking, but is very poor at it, often mistaking sugar for salt. She’s very timid and doesn’t show any confidence.

In Sumika’s route it’s not Mika that appears, but Rukia. But she’s equally annoying. Rukia claims that Sumika isn’t in a relationship because she’s worried about Satoru being an Otaku. SERIOUSLY WTF. Childhood friends + Sumika doesn’t talk with other guys much. The arrows point right at Satoru T_T. Satoru starts to feel guilt and starts trying to help Sumika get into a relationship. Things get really hectic when Sumika gets upset over a love letter that Satoru never received. Turns out Sana stole it, for very typical reasons. The lack of emotion in the characters voices and the reasons behind the characters actions made the whole scene feel very weak. A time capsule is randomly thrown in as the last surprise of this route.

Mitsuru is your typical super rich Ojou-sama who has warped standards due to her upbringing. She is very naïve and innocent; showing lots of curiosity towards ordinary things. As an Ojousama, she often attends various classes for things such as flower arrangement and tea ceremonies etc.

The confession in Mitsuru’s route is VERY abrupt, causing the relationship to feel very unreal. No annoying Love Angel intervention in this route, but this is compensated by Mitsuru pushy enthusiasm when it comes to love. Somehow, Mitsuru has built herself this perfect image of Satoru, which causes a lot of stress as he tried to meet these expectations. Mika approaches Mitsuru and for ONCE does something productive. The two apologize for not taking the other parties feelings into account. Just as the two get settled into the relationship, Mitsuru’s grandfather comes in and kills everything. LAME.

Azusa is the energetic heroine of this game. She’s very open minded and even shows curiosity towards Satoru’s eroge hobby. Being raised in a house with lots of brothers, she has a small complex that she isn’t girly enough. She has a part-time job at the same restaurant that Satoru works at.

Azusa’s route is actually half decent. Though the scenes between the two are few, it was quite entertaining. This is how I thought, UNTIL the first H-scene came. It was completely out of nowhere O_O. The two were discussing how they couldn’t understand the feelings they had for each other. Then BAM! They’re having sex. No confession takes place, which makes the situation very awkward. The standstill in their relationship is ended once Satoru makes a simple phone call to her. You don’t hear the two talking, it’s just described. Yep, they somehow get into a relationship over that and everything is smooth sailing from there.

Rukia is the other love angel of the game, who has the smarts but sucks at sports. She has a lot of pride and confidence in herself, but like Mika, has yet to connect the angel ring to anyone. Unlike Mika, she tends to wait for people to come to consult her about love instead of finding candidates herself.

Rukia’s route starts off with some guys mocking love angels. This causes Rika to get depressed over her lack of progress. Satoru encourages her a bit, and she instantly develops feelings for him. She sticks around Satoru, trying to appeal to him, often getting annoyed by how tense he is. Mika realizes Rukia’s feelings and decides to HELP out by pretending to go after Satoru herself. Satoru who has shown absolutely no sign of attraction to Rukia until now, suddenly realizes that he likes her. Unlike Mika’s route, Rukia ends up staying. I found this VERY stupid. If Rukia could stay, why couldn’t Mika?

Graphics

The graphics for this game are quite good. The SDCGs are very nicely done.

Sounds

The sounds for this game were quite average. The character BGMs did match the characters to some extent, but felt very cheap. The voice acting for the game was decent, except for Mika who’s voice sounded WAY too childish.

System

A similar system as I saw in Princess Evangile. Huge amount of save slots, along with a good amount of quick save and auto save slots.

Overall

Story: 4/10
Character: 5/10
Graphics: 7/10
Sound: 5/10
System: 7/10

Overall: 40/100 (Not a total)

One word probably describes what I thought of the game very well: WEAK.  Weak storyline followed by weak character development. The ichaicha in this game isn’t done that well and the comedy is minimal. The events are overly generic and they failed to utilize the setting for more comical relief. Also, as I said earlier, Love Angels are ANNOYING. Remember those routes you found annoying because a other character came and did some unnecessary crap? This is what it’s like in almost every route. Play this game only as a reference for why other games are better =3

Every time I write a post I feel like I say I’m going to play Little Busters. Unfortunately, I’ll be putting that on hold for now. Playing Dousei LoverAble atm. Not sure if I’ll write something for that since Aedes is playing it as well. Maybe we’ll do another joint post? Who knows. Grisaia no Meikyuu is easily my next game. After watching the opening for over and over, I’m super hyped about it. Actually, the opening is so good that I think I’ll leave it down here for you guys to have a look ^^.

As another artifact of my procrastination, Algester has whipped up a Gakuou Review of his own as I’m writing this very post, stealing my thunder in the process as if I ever made one. But that also means I have less to write, for which I’m always grateful. And I’m also hoping that what I write will be more intelligible than the unique writing styles of his and m3rry’s.

The story starts out as our protagonist Hiroto is in a spaceship crash landing to Gynesis, a “school country” where the entire country is basically one giant school with the principal as its president. Once he landed, he proceeds to enroll in the school despite the fact that he’s essentially an extremely humanoid alien indistinguishable from a real human but no one seems to care. The mission given to him by his mom, the queen of his home planet, is to conquer this country through whatever means necessary. But he obviously can’t do that, since he’s all alone with no means whatsoever of taking over a country, and he would much rather have fun in the new school which he has always dreamed of attending.

As they have pointed out, it is very hard if even possible to take the story seriously. But I wouldn’t consider that a flaw per se since the story doesn’t take itself seriously either, for the most part. The protagonist himself is rather easy going for a conqueror too; he gets fascinated by just about everything he is experiencing for the first time, like the mere act of going to school from home. I can’t think of any better way to demonstrate the absurdity of the setting than showing you the potentially delicious and slightly NSFW images of the circumstances in which he is introduced to the heroines.

In chronological order, he is introduced to Akari in the shower when he somehow teleported into it from the spaceship, found Uzuki in the changing room while he is oh so innocently exploring the gymnasium, bumped into Annemarie with a beautiful pantsu nopan shot, and finally met Hinayu in the women’s bathroom after he walked into the wrong side. I don’t know how anyone can take the plot seriously after these introductions.

After he is acquainted with the heroines perhaps more intimately than they would like, he discovers that the school only has 7 students total, including him, the 4 heroines, and the 2 other guys who are so generic I don’t want to spend the effort introducing them. Since this is far from the ideal school situation he was always dreaming of, he begins the reconstruction of the school by accepting challenges from the school’s president/principal which are really nothing more than fancy introductions to new characters and time for more character interactions.

What this comes down to is that this game is a chara-ge in its purest form with minimal story to get in the way of all the icharabu between the protagonist and the heroines. Whether this is a pro or con is undoubtedly subjective. If you’re like me who tend to skim through the occasional dramatic bits and only pause to enjoy the ichaicha, you can probably enjoy the game for what it is – a shallow and pretty looking moe-ge. On the other hand, if you’re the kind who actually plays eroge for the story, you won’t find any of that here. The game is from Lump of Sugar, what did you expect? They aren’t exactly known for their deep stories, with the possible exception of Itsusora.

Now that we’re done with the story, or whatever they’re calling the story, it’s the characters’ turn in the spotlight. The characters are all fairly generic, including a tsundere with an emphasis on the dere, an athletic genki girl who likes to tease other, a loli with a un-loli-like rack who likes to cook, and another kuudere loli who also happens to be one of the teachers. Then there’s the 2 guys, a musical guy who likes to play the guitar, and a typical ero friend. Of all the side characters, the P.E. teacher is the most interesting one. You’ll see why soon enough.

I’m only going over the 2 heroines, Akari and Hinayu, whose routes I’ve completed. The other 2 I’ll possibly cover in a later post if I feel like it and when I’m not distracted by other things, like Twinkle ☆ Crusaders -Passion Star Stream- which distracted me long enough to complete its primary route after I completed my second route in Gaku Ou. Maybe this says something about how uninteresting this game is, but I can’t say for sure since Illear in PSS is likely to entice me away from just about any game.

The above situation happened during the school’s sports festival. If that happened in my school, I imagine my athletic prowess would be on a whole ‘nother level as then I would actually participate in it. Anyway, Akari is the heroine first introduced, in the shower. She’s the group’s tsundere, possessing all the qualities of one and certainly acts like one like voluntarily making him lunch when he clearly did not request it and blushes bright red after he said it’s delicious even though “it’s not like I wanted to make your lunch!” She’s also the school director’s daughter, which plays a major part in her route but not really otherwise.

Akari’s route deals with her duty of protecting the school, a duty she bears on her own. All it took is for the protagonist to let Akari know she is very much not alone, and their happily ever after life follows. There is a slight obstacle in the way, in the form of a master exam for the “generalist” title which denotes the best teacher with teaching expertise in every single subject area. But once that is done, nothing else stands in their way to icharabu all day, every day. In the process, she lose all the tsun, becomes completely dere, and sticks to him like opposite ends of magnets.

Hear, hear! Lolis aren’t small, the world is merely too big, according to Hinayu the loli teacher and senpai. The archetypal kuudere, she rarely shows her emotions and speaks without much inflection most of the time. But like a true kuudere, she also has a dere side when it comes to the cute animals she can’t stop hugging. She comes from a family of doctors, and is an expert at all things science related. She is very sensitive to anyone calling her small or short.

What amount of plot present is related to her motivation of becoming a teacher which conflicts with her dream of becoming a doctor. But I’m fully aware that no one is reading this for the plot, so l shall skip that aspect and get on with the ichaicha related parts. She is  the kind that tries to put on a senpai aura by trying to take the lead in the relationship, which breaks down the moment the protagonist pats her head like a cute loli. Her love for chocolate bananas doesn’t help her senpai image either. And if my memory serves me right, the fact that she is a teacher is only brought up in the H scenes for reasons you can probably guess.

This concludes my unusually lengthy impression. If you like a moe-ge in a somewhat wacky setting which is what Lump of Sugar is known for, you may like this. Though I do feel that they didn’t take the wacky setting far enough, à la Osananajimi wa Daitouryou, which results in a setting that feels all too familiar with minor twists. Otherwise, if none of the characters interests you or you would like an actual story, this has nothing for you. Except maybe if you want to hear True My Heart again, sung by Annemarie.

The next post will either be about Twinkle ☆ Crusaders -Passion Star Stream- if I decide to finish that, or the other 2 heroines in Gaku Ou whose routes I still haven’t complete. There’s also a small chance I may post something about Dousei LoverAble too. Sorry for being such a mess; I hopped around games too much lately.

Since there seems to be a dearth of images in the walls of text I just wrote, let me right that wrong by spamming you with images.

Company: みなとそふと (Minato Soft)
Game site: 真剣で私に恋しなさい！S
Walkthrough: http://seiya-saiga.com/game/minatosoft/majikoi_s.html
Release date: January 27, 2012

The Kuki Corporation decided to hasten their ‘bushido plan’, where clones of great individuals from the past would be used to solve the shortage of talent workers as well as stimulate the competitive spirit of everyday students.

[Taken from Micchi’s blog]

There are a HUGE number of endings for Majikoi S. Sadly, atm none of the clones have routes. A few Miyako (bad?) ends are chucked in there for laughs. Reminded me of old times ^^. The 5 main heroines of Majikoi S are Tsubame, Monshiro, Margit, Tatsuko and Kokoro. Besides Tsubame route and Monshiro, the other 3 routes lacked a solid story and was mostly H. Margit’s route was especially disappointing. More than half the route was H-scenes, with basically no romantic development. Tsubame’s route was interesting…until they got into the relationship. I won’t go into details, but a certain choice basically decides whether Yamato is the S or M of the relationship. Monshiro’s route was pretty cute, but I wasn’t slightly unhappy on how Yamato still refers to her using “-sama” even when they get into the relationship. The one thing that I really liked about Majikoi S is the balance. With the expanding Majikoi universe, Momoyo is still insanely strong, but she’s no longer unbeatable.

Majikoi S offers a bit of closure for the events after the original game, with after stories for the 5 main heroines. The amount of closure is pretty minuscule and the main focus of the after stories is to chuck in more H scenes. Some nice icha icha is thrown in on the side ^^. I found Momoyo’s and Yukie’s routes the best of the 5.

The Itagaki family plays a large part in the route following the true ending of the original game. Some VERY minor details are changed original game, but they’re SO minor that it could just be my imagination. The loose ends from the end of the true route give rise to some nice comedy here. This route is a small blessing for those into harem endings, containing a couple of 3P scenes.

The new route involving the bushido plan starts at a point after Yukie and Chris enter the Kazama family. Yoshitsune, Benkei, Yoichi and Seizo are cloned for the bushido plan. It comes to no surprise that these four are based off real individuals. The whole clone thing isn’t talked about, which I found disappointing. I like details ^^. Along with these 4, a huge number of characters are introduced. My personal favorite of the new heroines is Benkei XD.

The “true” route for Majikoi S involves Yamato playing with Sakakibara Koyuki during childhood. She enters the Kazama family as a GUEST member, which makes her a lot friendlier and softens her weird personality. Nicely done I would say. Put her in, but not in such a position that screws up the overall Kazama family. This route has the most story, and I found it very good. Not as good as the true route from the original, but still pretty up there. This route follows a similar pattern to the bushido route. 3 new characters are introduced, all wearing china style clothing. I’m not particularly a fan of china dresses, but damn Rin is sexy XD.

The overall system of the game is quite similar to Majikoi, but with some nice tweaks. They completely remade the BGMs. At first I found this a bit disappointing, as the old ones were quite nice. But as I continued playing, they grew on me. There are some new character sprites. These sprites were quite nice for the major characters, but for the side characters I found it completely unnecessary. The side characters generally are only given one character sprite, which looks stupid given some of the situations they are used in. Another thing to note is that a couple of voices have changed or been added. For example, the voices for Yamato’s parents have changed, but I’d say that they changed for the better ^^. They added in a neat feature that allows you to load from the message log. The use of various angles, close ups and new special effects have made fighting scenes even better. Another awesome feature is that they’ve added a few animated cut scenes.

Majikoi S has LOTS of H-scenes, 48 at the moment. The number might increase with future patches. They were actually pretty good. What I can say is that Yamato loves his anal >__>, especially with Yukie. Side heroines from the old game have been given mini routes and an H-scene each. The route lasts about 5 mins, then H-scene T_T. LOTS of super weird storylines are used to get those side heroines in there. One route has Yamato in love with his hermit crabs and another route is initiated when you watch the tutorial enough times. I was disappointed how they didn’t follow up much on the side heroines. But I guess these heroines didn’t really have much appeal and they would rather put in the effort for more interesting heroines.

Looking past the insane amount of H in this game, it still had the Majikoi feel that I came to know and love. In some ways Majikoi S didn’t meet my expectations, but in other ways it exceeded them.The new characters were well made and the comedy was as good as always. Players who liked the original will probably love this fandisk. For those who haven’t played the original, I would highly recommend it. This is one of my favorite games of all time. Majikoi S lacked routes for Mayo, Chika and Umeko, but there will most likely have a number of patches in the future. I’m praying that there will be a Benkei route XD.

Find someone you like? Vote for her on this Majikoi S character poll! If you have no one in particular, please put in 3 votes on Benkei for me XD.

I’ll be finishing off Angel Ring sometime today. Review for it will be up sometime next week, give or take. I’ll be playing Dousei Lover Able after that and then Little Busters! Unfortunately after that, I have no idea what to play. Recommendations are welcome!

So for those who don’t know, I recently finished Majikoi S, and it was pretty good. Lots of H-scenes though…48 in total. I usually skip half or so of the H-scenes in a game, but Majikoi is one of my favorite games EVER, so I decided to watch them all. Before this post starts looking like…a post >_>, I’ll get to the point of this cry for help XD.

So the new characters for Majikoi S were all quite nice, with unique personalities which blended in quite well with the overall setting of the game. A character I came to LOVE is Benkei. She’s the girl loves to drink Kawakami water (a non-alcoholic beverage with the same effects as alcohol?). Her calm, carefree attitude is very soothing and her cute side is to die for XD. I also really like her hairstyle. I’ve heard the term sex hair used to describe that hair style for Kaoru from Amagami. I guess the term is somewhat appropriate ^^. Unfortunately, Benkei didn’t get a route. She did get one H-scene which was out of no where, but the lack of a route killed something of mine inside >_>.

Now for some good news. At least it might be good news, at this point it’s too hard to tell. Recently a ballot has come out for Majikoi S, where you can vote for your fave heroines. I’m hoping that with enough vote on Benkei, that they’ll add some sort of new content for her ^^. Of course I could be dreaming. But hey, hope is a good thing…maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies. Guess which movie I’ve been watching? =p

So please click the banner thing above, or if you’re too lazy here’s the link. Vote Benkei! Wait, you don’t know who that is? Well here’s a short scene for you XD.

Hope you guys can read what’s going on up there and I hope my little rant wasn’t too tiresome to read. I appreciate any support I can get with the whole character poll thing. Just to let you know, one IP can vote every 24 hours so please help out as much as you can ^^.

As a final note, I’ll be posting a REAL post sometime in the next two days. So for now, back to studying T_T.

Let me start this off by thanking Choux for writing such a thorough review on Riaimo so I don’t have to write much here. If you want detailed analysis, please refer to the aforementioned review because I won’t be doing that. Instead, what I’ll do is sharing the imouto love with everyone and letting you all know how much of a siscon I am.

Ryou the protagonist is a dedicated imouto-ge player, since his real imouto Shiori isn’t quite omochikaeri material by being tsuntsun all the time and almost never showing her deredere side. One night, he had a weird dream and woke up when Mai, his beloved favorite 2-D imouto, mounts on top of him in an attempt to wake him up. Then the story of their icharabu days begins, or at least that’s what the premise would lead you to believe.

Barring Miki’s route which has nothing to do with the overall story, which can be explained by the fact that she is the best friend Akira’s imouto and not Ryou’s, the other two routes aren’t all fun and games after you get into them. I wish they structured the routes so that they all get their own happy endings. The bittersweet ending, while resolving everything, left me feeling blue for a while. I see nothing wrong with an imouto harem, but unfortunately Ryou doesn’t share my sentiments. Unlike my corrupted self, he’s much too pure for that.

Miki is the best friend Akira’s extremely flirtatious imouto who can’t wait to take Ryou’s virginity. She will use any chance to do so, and ultimately succeeds if you are in her route. She really feel like a side character with a route, so maybe calling her a side heroine will be more appropriate? Her route deals with her onii-chan Akira having his lovely imouto taken away by Ryou, but they eventually sorted things out with their fists like men should.

In spite of her total irreverence to the story, I nevertheless enjoyed her route. Since, well, I never said I am a story person. I can’t resist the ero kouhai who is madly in love with you and sees nothing else in her eyes but you. Her ero talk makes this route worthwhile. One thing of note though, she radiates a strong do-S aura during her H scenes which scared me a bit. Ryou, you need to man up and take her down before she does the same to you! And fitting for such an ero character, she has 3 H scenes while the others only have 2.

Mai is the 2-D turned 3-D imouto who jumped out of the computer screen to meet her onii-chan Ryou in the real world. She is the perfect imouto in absolutely every way. She is cute,  innocent, bracon, happy to do all the housework, caring, supportive, able to take care of your libido, obedient, and I can go on and on endlessly about how she is the imouto of your dreams. Her ero talk is just as entertaining as Miki’s, if not even more so since she delivers them in such a pure and innocent manner. However, she is not all she seems to be with her backstory hidden in a plot twist. She should have been the true heroine in my opinion. I would take Mai over Shiori as my imouto any day.

Her route would have been my favorite if it had not been so depressing at the end. Yeah, I understand you’ll never replace Shiori as Ryou’s true imouto. But nothing is stopping you from joining his household as his other imouto or more likely, his girlfriend and future wife. I’m sure Ryou will love you both in his own ways, so there’s no need to make this so dramatic. This game does Mai no justice. She deserves her happy ending!

Shiori is Ryou’s one and only true imouto. She has her tsuntsun mode turned always on until later on in her route. And like any good imouto, she harbors feelings for her onii-chan since they were small but due to an incident related to their parents, who were always at each other’s throats which makes people wonder why they got married in the first place, she transformed into her tsuntsun self. She also loves basketball that Ryou taught her which is the central plot device for the first half of the route. Neither deredere nor ero enough unlike the other 2 characters, she is my least favorite character out of the 3.

I didn’t like the route for 2 main reasons. First of all, I dislike sport themed routes. While it only lasts for the first half of the route, it is long enough to make me skip through all the basketball related scenes. If they replace the basketball parts with more elaboration on Ryou and Shiori’s past, I would appreciate this route much more. The second reason is that I dislike the bittersweet ending, because I am very much a Mai fan who weeps on the inside every time I see the ending CG. I don’t care if the writers comes up with a deus ex machina fix for their troubles; I want my happy endings! Harem ending is a plus.

There is a reason I posted all these screenshots with text attached, and it’s not only because I got a good chuckle out of them. The graphics are only average, and the 2 artists working on this game have visibly different art style that you can easily see from the difference between Mai’s and Shiori’s art. Needless to say, I like Mai’s better. The music is average as well, but I especially like the piano tracks and the vocal songs.

I hope this hasn’t been too much of a waste of your precious time. For some concluding words, I would say this game is perfect for siscons. Wait, let me rephrase that. If you consider yourself a siscon, you must not miss this game. Hopefully you can deal with the bittersweet ending. If not, we can cry our hearts out together.

Coming up next will be a Gakuou impression or review, whichever I feel like doing. I know I originally planned to write something about Dousei LoverAble, but I got sidetracked by Gakuou after I finished Kaho’s route. But since Kaho is such an adorable imouto, I’ll consider writing something up just for her later.

Company: ωstar
Game Site: 美少女万華鏡 -呪われし伝説の少女-
Release Date: December 29, 2011
Links: Getchu, walkthrough

This is an ongoing series by the newly-reopened ωstar, featuring a series of mini stories. Horror writer Natsuhiko visits a traditional hot springs inn in the mountains to see a room full of traditional Japanese dolls. There he meets a mysterious beautiful girl Renge. She offers him a kaleidoscope, asking him if he wants to take a glimpse into a world which he shouldn’t see. The first story is about the perverted girls’ school teacher Shigehiko who swore not to lay hands on any of his students in order to maintain his position. However, that all changed after he met a mysterious girl Kirie. He became entranced by her, even though she told him to stay away from her if he valued his life.

[Big thanks to Micchi, as usual]

Opening Theme

Really more of a PV of the entire series rather than this particular game. If you want the PV’s for this game, check them out at the Getchu link above. No songs anywhere though.

Scenario/Characters

Since this is a nukige, there isn’t much story to get in the way of the ero action as you would expect. And being a low-priced title, this is even more true with only a single heroine. What little amount of story it has though, I found it to be moving and touching, especially towards the ending. Extremely well done excuses for HAWT sex if you ask me.

Strangely enough, I found the story to be very believable despite the obvious supernatural setting and the fact that Kirie is a vampire. A man with a crazy obsession over a girl he believes to be fated with and eventually giving up absolutely everything for her, he is a surprisingly enduring character with only a single thought in his mind – to spend the rest of his life with the girl he loves. I like this protagonist for how humane he is; unlike certain other hetare protagonists with few flaws besides being a hetare with girls flocking to him randomly, Shigehiko is a far from perfect human being who has to work very hard to win the heart of his beloved. Maybe what he did was morally questionable, but I believe in following your heart and leaving no regrets which is exactly what he did. This is how the saga of Romeo and Juliet should have ended, if either of them is a vampire.

Kirie taking a bath with some vampire’s favorite red wine is the only non-HCG in this entire game other than the ending CG which is a huge spoiler that I wouldn’t be posting. Compared to the protagonist, I find Kirie to be a less interesting character. She is a tsundere-esque vampire who views human as a species much inferior to vampires and treats Shigehiko like a food source most of the game and only became deredere near the end. But when she does, she is super adorable and MOE. I also love her gothic dress, shown in the title screen. With that dress, silver hair, loli appearance, and strong jealously and dependency on the protagonist with a slight yandere tendency, she and Sora are the perfect embodiment of my favorite traits.

Ero

With 15 H scenes of various flavors, this game should satisfy your fapping needs for at least a whole day. Since Kirie is a vampire, and vampires like drinking blood, expect getting bitten in the neck during some of the scenes. To my surprise, Shigehiko does not seem to be bothered by this at all. On the contrary, he describes the experience as exhilarating. And for both of their benefits, Kirie discovered that semen has the same effect as blood of restoring her energy. In the end though, it just means he is getting sucked dry in more ways than one. Poor dude has to take supplements to keep up.

Besides the usual assortment of H scenes with vampire flavors, there is also some light BDSM scenes, a sukumizu scene, a thigh rubbing scene, a nun scene, a neko scene, and a scene in the car WHILE DRIVING which expectedly didn’t end well. I don’t know how he can play the piano and have sex at the same time, he must be pro at both. She also calls him sensei throughout the whole game except the very last line, so there’s that too. Other than the plethora of fetishes, the best part is – it has ANIMATIONS during some of the scenes! And they’re not choppy animations either; they’re beautifully animated, albeit there really isn’t much to animate besides the pumping action.

Graphics

As Zen said, the art is 90% of the reason why people would want to play this game, myself included. Other than that, it’s the usual see-it-for-yourself tradition. Don’t worry about the mysterious white clouds, full sized CG’s will be posted at the end.

System

Gets the job done, nothing fancy. But it doesn’t stop the voices when I’m skipping over scenes which caused me to hear incoherent tiny snippets of the dialog, or moaning, when I’m skipping. Can’t think of anything else to whine about.

Music

The tracks all fit the atmosphere perfectly, and are all a pleasure to listen to on their own. My only complaint in the music department is the lack of a OP and that I can’t find the full ED. The seiyuu’s voice might have been a little bit too squeaky, but that may just be me.

Overall

Short and sweet with a remarkably satisfying story (for a nukige) and a sympathizable cast, this is most importantly, HAWT. Definitely give this a try if you’re looking for a concentrated 8-hour burst of excellent erotica. Can’t wait for the second installment!

Story: 7/10
Ero: 8/10
Character: 7/10
Graphics: 9/10
Music: 8/10

Overall: 80/100 (not a total)

My schedule is messed up right now because I’ve just finished Riaimo and will be starting Dousei LoverAble right after I finish typing this. But, I still haven’t done a piece for Riaimo, which it definitely deserves for having not 1 but 2 imoutos. I’m going to have to pick up the pace on the blogging for my schedule to be in sync it seems.

And now for the obligatory image spam, with extra NSFW eye candy.

Company: etude
Game Site: 七つのふしぎの終わるとき
Release Date: December 22, 2011
Links: Getchu, walkthrough, seiyuu listing

Tomo is a student at Tokinodai Gakuen, a small traditional liberal arts boarding school that was built in the Meiji era. However, he has a secret – he has a clock passed down from him by his grandmother which allows him to control time – and he uses this ability to make his school life enjoyable.

One time, Tomo found out that there is a link between the clock and the seven mysteries of the school. If one obtains any of the seven clocks linked to the seven mysteries, they will be able to use various time-manipulating powers. His interest perked, Tomo set out after school to the old school building to begin his search. During his search, he meets various girls and together they unlock one of the seven mysteries. They arrive at a space where time has stopped and find a girl in traditional dress sleeping there. She used to be able to manipulate time, but now she has lost those abilities. Will they be able to find all the clocks, awaken the sleeping girl and return her to her time?

[Taken from Micchi's blog]

Opening Theme

Scenario/Characters

Let us get things straight here first. Despite the impression you may get from the the synopsis, Tomo is NOT a time traveler. Introduced in the very beginning of the prologue, his ability is to “update” a photo so that what’s shown reflects what’s there at the current time. So if he takes a picture of the school in class, then updates it at night, there would be nothing shown on the photo except an empty classroom. I can think of many uses of such an ability, but Tomo is not enough of a pervert to use it the wrong way like I would.

And so for the common route, you are introduced to each heroine one by one under various circumstances. I especially love the way Elis is introduced stuck in the hole on the ground and Tomo can’t stop himself from taking far too many pictures of her. The common routes technically ends after Nanaho is introduced, but the routes don’t branch until a little bit later on.

The routes are structured so that after you complete all the other 4 routes the true ending is unlocked which wraps up all the loose ends and explains everything. Nanaho is clearly the main heroine with all the emphasis placed on her all throughout the game, but strangely enough there is almost no romance involved in the true ending so while our protagonist may have solved all the mysteries he still ends up as lonely as ever.

Overall the story is enticing enough to keep me reading longer than I should, if a bit confusing at times on the details, perhaps because I’m not used to reading mysteries and have dumbed myself too much by playing too many moe-ge. Most of the plot twists were pleasant surprises that kept me reading, but a few of them are rather predictable which takes some of the fun out of the guessing. The character developments are excellent, especially for the protagonist and some more than others. I felt some parts of the drama progressed too fast while some part dragged on too long, especially for Fumi’s route.

I’ll admit that I played this game mainly for the pretty graphics and Elis, and Nanaho to a lesser extent. Feel free to ignore the previous paragraph since there is a chance that I don’t know what I’m talking about when all I think about is how moe Elis and Nanaho are.

The president of the one-person journalism club, Fumi cares about nothing but the truth. She spends all of her time chasing after newsworthy stories, especially ones about the seven wonders of the school, to publish in the school newspaper. Other than a logical journalist who values reason above emotion, she is also a tsundere with deadly kicks.

So much DRAMA! Her route consists of loads and loads of drama about the tension between Fumi and the student council president Yuuki over the magical pocket watches. Sorry to say, but I probably learned more about Yuuki and Ngyen than Fumi in this route. Someone please remind me, whose route was I on again? I can’t tell because with so much DRAMA, there was barely any time left for sweet, sweet romance.

Misaki is the school principal’s granddaughter and is trained to be the next principal. A typical perfect student with flawless grades and magnetic charisma that makes everyone fall in love with her regardless of gender, she’s a nice girl who likes to take care of everyone. She also has a scary side that is shown mostly to Tomo, because she has been openly in love with him but he is completely oblivious to it like a good ol’ protagonist.

Predictable all the way through, but nevertheless enjoyable due to the massive amount of blush inducing sugary romance. If they take the stupid drama out of this, this’ll be perfect. She needs to play more eroge.

Elis is the first loli we’re introduced to. Blond haired blue eyed with half English and half Japanese blood, Elis speaks English like I speak Spanish, which is embarrassingly bad that I shouldn’t have mentioned it. Talks very little, and when she does, it’s usually about food. She is the number two reason I played this game. PURE MOE.

Her route has a few plot twists, but they’re fairly predictable so you should be able to see them coming. But if you’re a moe fag like me, you’re doing it wrong if you’re looking for plot in this one. That is not to say there is no plot; there is sufficient plot that constitute a fairly touching story if you ask me. However, she is such an adorable LOLI! I feel bad for Hyouko  in this route, must suck being a sub character.

Nanaho is the main heroine/loli of the game who encased herself in a timeless limbo to be rescued by our brave protagonist. Always wears a kimono, and likes enduring things to the point of almost being a do-M. She has very limited knowledge of the modern world, but is very curious about it and often ask others questions, including some less than appropriate ones not that she realizes it of course. She can get dangerously jealous, but is otherwise devoted to her partner in accordance to the traditional values which naturally means she’s a great cook and would make a perfect wife.

Her route started out marvelous with a sweetness level that rivals Misaki’s route. Then the WTF drama hit and I was lost. I mean, another loli popping out of no where is nice, but suddenly weird stuff started to happen and things aren’t so nice any more. I suppose the true ending makes up for this by righting the wrongs, although I would have preferred much much more romance of which there is none in the true ending.

I felt like doing a section for sub characters since there is this scene where they all line up nicely, so here it is. Starting from the left is the black haired Hyouko who isn’t that remarkable except getting screwed over in Elis’ route. The blond haired Ngyen to the right is an extreme feminist who views men as an inferior species. The red haired Yuuki is the iron hand student council president. The brown haired Harumichi is the typical guy’s best friend and pervert. Blonde haired Ridley is like Ayumu from Hoshikaka; absolutely everyone wants a piece of him.

My route rankings: No surprises here – loli always wins
Elis, Nanaho, Misaki, Fumi

Graphics

My number one reason to play this game. So pretty and cool at the same time! Besides that, well, just look for yourself.

System

One of the most visually appealing system I’ve seen in a while. Clocks are displayed prominently everywhere, and you can click the character in the CG viewer to see hers. They might have gone a bit too far in the fanciness though. The save and load menu displayed below doesn’t let you see or click on more than 5 files at a time, which is in stark contrast with ordinary save and load menus which let you see many more than that. Everything else worked fine, and I appreciate the eye candy put into this as well.

Music

Pretty good OP and grand ED bu Kawada Mami. There are also separate ED’s for each of the heroines; I looped Nanaho’s ED for hours. The music all fit the atmosphere well, and the seiyuu all did their job professionally, so nothing to complain about. I would even go so far as to say the music is above average. One thing to note about the music player is that it also doubles as a movie player for the openings and the endings which play on the screen when their respective songs are playing.

Ero

3 scenes with multiple positions per heroine. Nothing out of the ordinary, besides maybe Fumi’s curious request of doing it from the back since she heard it hurts less that way (?) Decent H scene progression with plenty of lead in and development for almost all of them, they deliver what you would expect to see – the couple having some warm and loving intimate moments together. They’re just about as pretty as the rest of the CG’s, which is a definite plus. Elis’ second scene is fetish fuel. If you don’t like nekomimi or physical education uniform already, you will now.

Overall

Beautiful graphics and cute characters are all I ever need, and this game delivers them both with a selection of pleasing music on the side. If you’re looking for a story, this one is decent, neither great or awful. Above all, play for Elis!

Story: 7/10
Character: 9/10
Graphics: 9/10
Music: 8/10
Ero: 6/10
System: 9/10

Overall: 85/100 (not a total)

I originally planned to play Bishoujo Mangekyou after I finish Nanatoki, but somehow I ended up finishing that before I even got started on this review. So my second choice is now Real Imouto ga Iru Ooizumi-kun no Baai which has been on my backlog forever. Yeah, several people recommended Haruuru Haruka ni Aogi, Uruwashi no to me, but I’ll play that later because I’m feeling a serious need for imoutos right now.

I think I wrote too much, so I’ll post some images now to maintain the balance. The overt Elis bias is very much intentional.

Sorry to interrupt but before going into the synopsis, let me get one thing straight. I did not play the game! With all the hype surrounding it, it is near impossible to not notice it. But being a mild seiyuu fag, I can’t get over the fact that the game is not voiced. I need my sweet voices! Besides that, I don’t have anything against the game. This also means I haven’t played many unvoiced classics, but I’m going off-topic now so I’ll shut up.

Hisao Nakai is a normal high school student, currently in his final year of high school. One day Hisao receives a letter from parties unknown in his locker and waits at the written place for the sender. The person who wrote the letter turns out to be his crush; while speaking to her, he suddenly collapses. He awakes in a hospital bed, and is told by the doctors that the reason he collapsed is due to arrhythmia, a rare heart condition that causes his heartbeat to sometimes become irregular. Due to this, his parents have enrolled him in Yamaku, a school for disabled students of all kinds.

[Taken from VNDB]

Links
http://katawa-shoujo.com/ – The game’s official website. Download the game for FREE!
http://katawashoujo.blogspot.com/ – Katawa Shoujo Dev Blog. Find out how they did it!
http://generationotaku.net/2012/01/katawa-shoujo-walkthrough/ – Walkthrough.

I guess in real life the whole disability thing is a very awkward subject. I would be lying if I said that I’m completely comfortable around the whole thing in real life. However, this is a game and it’s a lot easier to accept the disability setting. I was able to play the whole thing without feeling uncomfortable or shocked by this element of the game. However, I couldn’t help but think sometimes about random consequences that might occur due to their disabilities.

I don’t understand the antagonism behind using disability as a central theme. The disability isn’t being made fun of, the girls aren’t taken advantage of because of it, and they aren’t portrayed in a derogatory fashion either. The girls are human beings, who deserve to love and to be loved, so I don’t find anything wrong with the portrayal of romantic relationships depicting them. If anything, this raises awareness for the disabled so people can understand their hardships better. This may be because I haven’t played the game, but as Aero said, this is just my 2 cents.

The game consists of 4 acts, with Act 1 being the common route. The common route of Katawa Shoujo is pretty standard. You meet all the heroines, get an idea of their disabilities and learn a bit of their personality. Like most games, nothing really happens until you enter each heroines’ route.

Worth mentioning is that Act 1 is available in many languages: English, German, French, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Russian, and Chinese. The full version of the game in those languages will hopefully be available sometime in the future. Never mind how many people play this in languages other than English, Japanese, or Chinese. More options is always welcomed.

Shizune is the deaf and mute heroine of this game. I was quite touched when Hisao started learning sign language to talk to her. However, it seemed like he learnt it WAY too easily. Of course the game explains that he had a knack for it and he practiced quite a bit. But understanding everything Shizune could say after a few weeks? Unrealistic. At the start of the game I found her character quite interesting. The stubborn type who like things to be interesting and doesn’t like to lose. However, as her route progresses, this gets a bit tedious. I found it quite boring how the main focus of the route deals with her competitive personality and how she likes things to be done well. Her route was the most disappointing out of all the routes because it showed a lot of promise in the romantic development. The confession happens quite early on, but basically nothing happens. The end result was Shizune and Hisao being in a relationship that seemed like best friends who happen to have sex with each other from time to time. Friends with benefits anyone?

Learning sign language to pick up girls? Sign me up! Wait, on a second thought, don’t. I’m not the protagonist and learning sign language would take me years not weeks way which is too much effort to simply pick up girls. I wonder how to do the pick up lines in sign language though, but I suppose they are the same, except I probably don’t want to mention anything related to eyes or sight ears or sounds. You know who she reminds me of? Sera, from KoiSora. I’m still bitter over the fact that Sera only have 3 H scenes in the fan disk.

Wait I dont get it, how would mentioning anything related to eyes not be a good pick up line?

Because you know, the girl you’re trying to pick up is blind?

Aren’t we talking about the deaf girl atm?

Oh stupid me, let me fix that

The blind heroine Lilly was probably my favorite heroine of the game. Blindness is something I fear greatly. As an ero-gamer, without my eyes how the hell am I meant to play >_<. Lilly has no trouble with her blindness, so it doesn’t really play a big role with the route. What I found interesting is that she says she thinks Hisao is handsome after feeling his face. Unlike the other heroines, Lilly shows a lot more concern about Hisao’s condition. Naturally this leads to his condition showing up a lot more in her route compared to others’. Family issues pop up in the route regarding Lilly’s family. They don’t strike as anything TOO dramatic, but it does affect their relationship.

I would rather be deaf and mute instead of being blind, for the same reason Aero mentioned. With the advances in technology, such as text-to-speech and hearing aid gadgets, being deaf and mute doesn’t seem like that big of a disability anymore. But of course, I still prefer being healthy and free of disabilities. How Lilly have no trouble with her blindness is beyond me, a third eye and/or a sixth sense perhaps? More realistically though, I read somewhere that a person can make a mental image of the surrounding using tongue clicks as sonar. That’s probably it.

She’s knows a lot of the places she tends to walk around quite well. With the help of a walking stick, she doesn’t really have much trouble to get around. Though it is a bit unrealistic how she gets around without much trouble >_>. I’ve heard about someone in real life who uses sonar tongue click thing and apparently he could ride a bike using that??? Unfortunately, Lilly doesn’t use this dolphin like ability.

Too cool to use her tongue. Amazing, she is simply amazing.

Hanako is the scarred heroine, in more ways than one? Hanako brings shyness to a new level. However it’s understandable, given her tough past. I still found it somewhat annoying though, seeing the relationship move at a snail’s pace. You literally see meetings of the two where they speak 3 lines to each other. There are too many meetings where the two just meet up and read next to each other. BORING~~~. Okay enough dissing the route, lets get on with whats good with it. The slow meetings, though boring, aren’t exactly bad. They provide a nice build up to the end. Hanako often gets blushes, which is a huge plus XD XD XD. I’ve read on forums that a lot of people found Hanako the best. My insight on this is that they’re basing this off her good ending, which was GREAT! If I were to base it off just that one end, I’d probably say that Hanako was the best heroine as well. However, I like to think of things as a whole, taking into account all routes and her personality.

You’re making it sound real bad. Scarred in more ways than one? That’s something I find in horror movies, not supposedly icharabu stories. And blushes worthy of 3 XD’s must be really destructive, I don’t know how you survived that. I would have a HNNNNNGGGG seizure and died on the spot.

When I mentioned the scarred thing, I was referring to emotional scars >_>. Haha maybe I was overexaggerating when I used 3 XD’s, but then her blushing was enough to pull at my heart strings. Is that the term for that? I don’t even know, I saw that from some random anime somwhere.

That really doesn’t make it any better, just so you know. That would be the right term for it seeing you’re here right now. If you died from it, it wouldn’t be just pulling at your heart strings. It would be ripping it apart and put it all down a grinder.

Emi is the heroine with no legs who probably appeals to all the lolicons out there. I’m looking at you Aedes ^^. Her energetic personality is a definite plus and I though I’m not a big fan of loli, Emi appealed to me quite a bit. This is the only route where Hisao starts exercising a lot to deal with the whole heart thing. You would think that he would be a LITTLE bit more concerned about his heart in the other routes as well, seeing as he could die.The confession scene in this route was out of the blue, but good none the less. Trust issues appear in this route. Emi keeps Hisao at a distance at all times, telling him out right that she doesn’t want to rely on him.

Please don’t underestimate the fervor of the lolicons. I do NOT consider Emi to be a loli. Her smaller body size has nothing to do with it, and I would rather not delve into that issue in fear of the morality police coming after me. Yeah, she has the twintails, but that’s not all there is to it. Is she a pettanko?

I will never understand Lolicons >_>. She’s not a pettanko, but she’s not exactly huge when it comes to that department =p.

See? Not a pettanko -> not a loli.

FINE >___>

Okay Rin…sigh~. I would like to get this out before I say anything about Rin. RIN’S ROUTE ALMOST SCREWED ME OVER. For those who don’t know, I go into most eroge and VNs using a set system where I go after my least liked heroine first. Up until now that worked out fine, but with Rin it was hectic. I ALMOST dropped the game after getting onto Rin’s route. Thankfully, the other day when I was super bored in the library and decided to play Lilly’s route, which pulled me back in. Rin’s personality is SO dull and boring, she doesn’t really show interest in anything. She’s a good painter, having no arms, so she uses her feet to paint. Amazing huh? I would think that It would be easier to use your mouth to paint. Her route is as dull as her personality. The romance gets nowhere and even at the end of the good route it leaves you thinking why the hell they’re together at all. If you’re set on playing this game, DON’T PLAY THIS ROUTE.

Playing eroge in the library – that’s what libraries are used for, obviously. I mean, why read books when you can play eroge, right? Don’t blame her for trying to be sanitary and not putting stuff in her mouth! By the way, beware of the Rin devotees; better watch your back.

I can play eroge in the library fine, but when it gets to an H-scene…yeah that’s a bit TOO much. I’ll let the library remain R15 for the time being =p. I would be surprised if there were ANY Rin devotees.

I find your devotion to eroge lacking.

I’m not COMPLETELY on the dark side of the force…not yet anyways =p

Now you may have noticed that I didn’t really go into detail about the disabilities for any of the routes. That’s because they didn’t actually come up that often. The game doesn’t over emphasis the fact that they have disabilities or the problems associated with them. Rather it deals with emotional side of things. What happens if you were to take out the disabilities? Well you get Grisaia no Kajitsu =p. A special school where the heroines each have an emotional problem associated with each of them. That aside, the problems and the development that occurred within the routes were very realistic.

Personally I would like to see the disability theme utilized more, otherwise it ends up being a mere gimmick and fuel for people to hate on. And also, you can’t have Grisaia no Kajitsu without Sachi, or at least a maid. Without one, who is going to take care of everything?

They probably wanted to give off the feel that disabilities don’t necessary have to change your life or something like that. And yes, it’s just not Grisaia no Kajitsu without Sachi.

Being a doujin, I’m guessing a lot of people won’t judge the graphics as harshly and will forgive inconsistencies in graphics. My thoughts on the graphics are that they aren’t bad. The character sprites are drawn very nicely. Some of the CGs give of a painting sorta feel, which I find appealing. There are some inconsistency with CGs here and there; I find it to be most common in H-scenes. Lets not forget that this game had several artists, so there are bound to have some inconsistencies. So regarding the graphics for Katawa Shoujo, I would say that they did fairly well.

For some reason, this game’s art is giving me the Shuffle vibes. Regardless, this game has 6 artists working on it, which is more than just a several. I wouldn’t give them too hard of a time on it.

Not much can be said in the sound factor for this game – no voices >_>. The lack of voices make the names a lot less memorable, I can barely remember them at all. The BGMs normally fit in nicely with the mood, but sometimes I felt it was a bit out of place. I remember for one of the H-scenes the BGM gave off a really…scary feel? It really didn’t match the moment, but I can’t actually remember which scene I’m thinking of, so I might be completely off.

Any vocal songs? For the game I mean, the characters don’t have to sing their own songs.

Not that I know of. Also I doubt it, being a doujin and all.

They should make the staff sing one. To show how serious they are at this, you know? Just pick a girl and make her sing! There has to be a girl in there, I hope. If all else fails, a guy can sing too.

I’m not really a fan of songs sung by guys.

Guess the makers of Katawa Shoujo, probably ero-gamers themselves, would know what to put into their system. I loved how Katawa Shoujo gives you the ability to create new save states. I haven’t tested how far you can go with this, I would imagine its indefinite. I would have liked it if they included a feature to sort these saves. Another small annoyance is the skip feature for this game. There’s nothing wrong with the skip function itself, but you need access the menu to turn it on. Alternatively you can hold ctrl, but who has the time? Like your typical eroge you can access CGs and sounds from the extras menu. Katawa Shoujo also has the feature where you can rewatch scenes, given that you remember what the scene is called. This is a rare feature, but not unheard of in eroge. Overall, a good system with minor flaws.

So uh, whats a save state?

A new save slot

That doesn’t sound too revolutionary.

Haha it normally would be useful for me, seeing as I like to save at nice scenes. However, seeing as the game as the scene watching feature, the usefulness of this feature seems to decrease significantly.

Katawa Shoujo, girls with disabilities. Was it really worth the hype? The game didn’t stress the disabilities of each heroine. To some degree I feel like the whole setting was pointless. BUT, when I was playing through this game, I never really felt sorry for the heroines because of their disabilities. They were just girls, who were slightly different. If the makers of the game were going for this kind of feel, then they were probably geniuses. Those who find that they are put off by the whole disability theme will be surprised at how little it actually affect them once they get into the game. Judging the game overall, it was good, but not fantastic. At most I would give this game a 7/10, and that’s being generous. Being an english doujin, they did a good job. Heck, I’m impressed that they were able to make the game have such an eroge feel to it.Though I’m not a big fan of doujins, I hope that more groups will start making english doujins to expand the eroge community.

Slightly different, is putting it lightly. Seems like a solid effort put forth by an English doujin with some minor flaws, I heard that word choice is one of them. Nevertheless, I applaud them for their commendable efforts for spending years of their lives on this. I’ll be looking forward to more titles by this group and I hope this will inspire more people to do the same and start creating eroge catering to the masses instead of the tiny Japanese speaking niche. Anything to breath some new life into this slowly declining industry is much needed. 

Haha I’ll admit that’s true, but when playing the game, the girls only felt slightly different ^^. I have to say congratulations to them for being able to stick to the project to the very end XD. Well done.

There you have it, our first collaborative post. Hope you enjoyed it ^^. Atm I’m playing through AngelRing. They did a much better job with Princess Evangile, but I should be able to finish it.

 Company: Noesis
Game Site: CURE GIRL
Release Date: May 20, 2011
Links: Getchu, walkthrough, seiyuu listing

Chikuma Kazuki have problems connecting with others, and so he joins an online community called Communis where others like him gather to try to overcome their shortcomings. Ain’t this the shortest synopsis ever; this is all there is to it.

[This condensing of an entire game into a single sentence is my original work]

Opening Theme

However short I want my post to be, this OP deserves special mention. Chosen to be one of Micchi’s list of best eroge OP in 2011, this is one of my favorites as well. See for yourself how awesome this is; aya Sueki became my favorite singer of the month.

Scenario

Extremely short and very close to the point of being non-existent, the common route has essentially a single scene. You meet up with the 3 heroines, one of whom leaves right away, for an offline meeting then lunch after. The end.

This game has a route structure I find…strange. After the aforementioned scene, you get to spend a month with a choice of who to spend your after school hours with. Each day begins with him getting out of bed and going to school, then after he arrives at the school the time skips to after school for your choice. The time is almost always spent leaving school together with another choice of what topic to talk about on the way. ZERO interactions with characters besides your chosen heroine. Needless to say, it was EXTREMELY repetitive after doing nearly same thing for a month in-game. The true route at the end is much more interesting, but you have to read (skip) all the routes to get to it.

At the end of that month the confession scene occurs, then the OP movie plays. WHAT? You mean the month I just spent was only an introduction!? After the questionable OP placement, the game proceeds on a much more familiar eroge route fashion with much icharabu and H goodness. Still very little interaction with the other characters, but better than none I guess. Oh god I love those kisses in public, and in front of the whole school watching. Too bad there is only 1 per route, and NONE in the true route.

Certain bad ends lead to nukige-like H scenes. Avoid them if you prefer them raburabu, or enjoy them if you like the hot stuff. I especially enjoyed Miyu’s “bad” end so much I don’t consider it a bad end at all. Though Tsukuyomi’s first bad end is for do-M’s only.

Kotone is the senpai, student council president, and the all around perfect student. Except that she hides a secret that is pretty easy to figure out once you get into her route.

The drama in this route made so little sense and appeared out of absolutely no where like Cthulhu suddenly busting down your front door and yelling ”Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!” But, the other routes aren’t much better so I won’t go so hard on this one. Bonus points for being the second best looking character.

Miyu is Kazuki’s osananajimi and loves to take care of him, for obvious reasons. She fell hopelessly in love with him a long time ago, unnoticed by our hetare protagonist.

If I have to come up with an analogy for the suddenness of the drama in this route, it would be something like –  The Borg suddenly invading the local Starbucks and yelling ” Resistance is futile!” The drama is thankfully short-lived though, so that leaves plenty of time for icharabu. Props to her for being the best kisser.

Rena is the resident KUUdere with way too much kuu and way too little dere. She will kick you in the shins and curse you to death if you attempt to get close to her, and even if you are her best friend she still won’t hesitate to do so; maybe that’s why she doesn’t have any friends? She has taken over the school’s infirmary not because she is sick, but because that is the place least frequented by the students. Strangely enough, no body complains, perhaps because the school doesn’t have a nurse. The headphones aren’t used to listen to music. By the way, I don’t see cords. Are they wireless or something?

So now for another analogy for the stupidity of the drama – it’s like if you discovered President John F. Kennedy was actually assassinated by Hitler using a Holy Hand Grenade but the government covered it all up. Her extremely rare deredere moments made up for all that, along with her loli-ness and twintails.

Not my fault for that borderline SFW image! That is the best looking picture of her. Tsukuyomi is the not-so-secret heroine unlocked after you completed every other route. Tsukuyomi is her screen name used on Communis, she has a real name too that is revealed later on. She is very denpa and lives off of ice cream alone. Don’t ask me how that works. A genius with photographic memory, she is living the good life despite not having ever attended high school. Also wears sukumizu at home and has only 1 other set of clothes not including the towel. Loves using emoticons (*^▽^*).

Sorry guys, no analogy here. The drama isn’t that bad, but it isn’t that good either. It leaves so many questions hanging there. Like what is up with her obsession over Kazuki? Without that explained, the rest of the plot makes little sense. But she has silver-hair let down, my most favorite hair style, so all is forgiven. If she didn’t cut it short later on, I would have given the characters 1 more point. Not joking.

My route rankings:
Tsukuyomi, Rena, Miyu, Kotone

Graphics

In an effort to keep this short, just look for yourself. Really, your own opinion is worth a thousand times more than mine. Picture dump provided at the end of the post.

System

The skip function could work much faster. And don’t get me started on that bizarre route structure again. The Communis system didn’t play much of a role, only coming up and functioning like alternate textboxes every once in a while; I was expecting to click and interact with it given the game’s premise but the Communis interface is sadly not interactive. There were a good number of interactions via text messages though.

Music

Awesome music with English and pseudo-Chinese(?) chorus in some of the tracks. I know Chinese, so I know that is NOT Chinese but I also know enough Japanese to know that isn’t Japanese either. Regardless, that track played in the Chinese restaurant cracks me up every time I hear it. OP by aya Sueki is one of the best in 2011, and the insert song as well as the ED by Marie are sweet as expected given the quality of the OP.

Overall

You might be better off picking up the CG pack and the OST tracks for this game, because those are the only things worthwhile. The first part of a route, before the OP, is too repetitive, and the second part is packed full of H scenes not leaving enough time for icharabu outside of bed ( or other places) or meaningful drama. The true route doesn’t deliver the enough closure or romance either. But it did deliver a couple of beautiful CG’s!

Story:         5/10 (I’m being nice here)
Character: 8 /10
Graphics:  8/10
Music:       8/10

Overall: 65/100 (not a total)

That turned out longer than expected. I was planning to write a short impression-esque review, but oh well. Let me know how I did!

I’ll be playing Nanatsu no Fushiji no Owaru Toki next. From the looks of things and RORI BISHOUJOUZ, there is going to be a mystery theme. I hope my brain hasn’t melted too much past the point of making any sense of the story.

Now for the DELISHOUZ picture dump!

Another thing slowing me down is the Jet Programme. For those who don’t know what that is, JET stands for Japanese Exchange Teacher. If you look up “JET” in google, the Jet Programme actually comes up first, not the airplane =p. I’ve been writing the statement of purpose for why they should choose me to be in JET. For a guy who has done basically nothing but watch anime and play eroge, I’m finding it pretty difficult T_T.

Enough about that, on to the review! XD

Company: アクセル (AXL)
Game site: 愛しい対象（カノジョ）の護り方
Release date: May 27, 2011
Links: Getchu, walkthrough

Yuuto hasn’t seen Yui for years, but still keeps in touch through letters. He finds out that she decided to go to Military school. He decides this is a good opportunity to fulfill the childhood promise of the two meeting again someday. Yuuto enters the school as a first year student for the guard class. Much the surprise of all the guard class first year students, the guard classroom is horrible. Students share tables, there are no chairs, no air conditioner and not even curtains. He manages to meet up with Yui who’s also in the guard class. The meeting isn’t as touching as one would suspect, where she shouts “WHY DID YOU COME HERE!?!”. The guard class finds out soon that only their room has bad facilities. This school works on a system where you challenge other classes in war activities to exchange facilities. Not only this, the other classes look down on the guard class. With this, Yuuto’s new school life begins.

[This is somewhat original, with some bits taken from Micchi’s blog]

Opening

Scenario

In the game there are three types of classes: the Military class, the Research class and the Guard class. This being a military based game, the classes sort of speak for themselves. The Military class and Guard class defer in the sense that one is for war while the other is for something like bodyguards.

I found the common route quite typical. It’s the start of the new school year, the perfect setting for character introductions. Yuuto quickly makes friends with a number of girls, including one from each other class. The common route is basically made up of three things: training, challenges and eating. The common route progresses with the guard class wanting to gain better facilities. A couple of the challenges for these new facilities appear in the common route. Challenges include stuff like hunting the other classes with paint guns. The challenges aren’t very exciting to read, but at least they aren’t too long. In between challenges you see various training scenes, which are pretty boring. A reasonably large aspect of the game involves conversation in the cafeteria, where they complain about training and discuss stuff. For each of the main heroines, they throw in random chapters that focus on them to show them getting closer to Yuuto. The common route finishes off with a long segment of survival training. The first years get thrown out a plane and need to get to a checkpoint. The common route was average. Besides Yui, you don’t actually get to know about the other heroines much until you enter their routes.

Characters

There are 8 endings and one bad ending which doesn’t relate to any of the heroines. A route has two endings, one for the main heroine; the other for a side heroine. The way they integrate the side heroines into the route feels really cheap. There is usually some problem involving the main heroine for that route that involves the side heroine, but once you enter the route, the problem gets thrown aside.

The routes themselves are pretty bad. They don’t follow a clear path and some random  drama is added at the end. The side heroines’ routes are VERY short; I cleared each one in about 30mins.

Amagi Yui & Takayanagi Otoha

When Yui firsts meets Yuuto again, she avoids him and shows hostility. She’s stubborn and hates to lose, which fuels her desire for the guard class to get better facilities. As she spends more time with Yuuto, her attitude towards him softens. She starts to show small signs of jealously when Yuuto hangs out with other girls. It’s later revealed that she didn’t want Yuuto to come to this school because she didn’t want him to get hurt.

Otaha is the daughter of the principal of the Military school. When Otaha first appears, it feels like she’s a gentle high class lady. However, she’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing. She’s a manipulator and loves to see Yui distressed. For the first facility challenge she gives the Military class some info which ends up disqualifying the guard class.

The route begins with Otoha approaching Yuuto a lot, much to Yui’s annoyance. You see various moments where the two fight over him. A random child is thrown in, under the name of Alice and the guard class is ordered to protect her. Alice learns about Yui’s feelings for Yuuto and attempts to tell Yuuto, being stopped each time by Yui. Alice goes with Yuuto and co to buy souvenirs but gets attacked. The gang manage to fend off the attackers. Watching all the commotion, Otoha starts to develop feelings for Yuuto.

Otaha’s route starts off with Yuuto stumbling on Otaha smelling his clothes…? Otoha finds her feelings growing stronger and stronger, however she knows that Yuuto came to military school for Yui’s sake. She asks Yuuto to learn about his past with Yui; running off in tears after hearing the full story. Yuuto spends a sleepless night thinking about his feelings.

Yui’s route involves her spending many nights writing a love letter to Yuuto, causing lack of sleep.  She accidently loses the letter and it’s picked up by Otoha. The letter eventually makes its way to Yuuto and the two become lovers. You find out that Yui wants the school to become a guard school, where the students learn to protect people and not kill them.

Ooi Narumi & Hinata Ayano

Narumi has a somewhat fear of men, where if a man surprises her she’ll kick them. Narumi is the energetic type that easily makes friends. She love’s cute things, making her really like Lotte. She also likes cooking, but is terrible at it. She eventually finds herself falling in love with Yuuto, but feels like she has no chance against Yui.

Ayano is the devil teacher of the military school. She is aggressive and punishes those who lose focus in her classes. She occasionally shows her feminine side.

This route starts with Yuuto and Narumi chosen to be the models for the guard class for the school magazine. However, Narumi kicks Yuuto every time he gets close to her, so the picture can’t be taken. The work together to overcome this and she slowly gets closer to him. Ayano basically only tells the two of them to work hard…that’s it.

Ayano’s route involves Yuuto seeing a more feminine side of her. This results to her asking him to pretend to be her boyfriend when she meets up with an old friend.

Narumi’s route starts off with her trying to improve her cooking and asks the gang to taste test. The rest of the gang reject her out right and suggest that she ask Yuuto. Yuuto happily obliges, but of course the food is terrible. Soon after the two become a couple, Narumi fantasies about their relationship progressing further, leading to many hilarious moments. Narumi’s past is revealed and the rest of the route deals with Narumi overcoming her fear of using a gun.

Charlotte Tiger & Asakura Shiori

Charlotte is usually referred to as Lotte in the game. Lotte is part of the military class and the top student of the year. She gets good grades and she’s and excellent soldier. She’s quite arrogant. She tends to believe she’s very great and that others should look up to her. Her downsides would be that she’s short and her stamina isn’t too great. She gets closer to Yuuto after he teaches her to play Shougi. After losing to him in it, she starts to think of him as a rival, challenging him many more times.

Shiori is the Loli teacher heroine that everyone loves. She is very gentle and optimistic. Much to her distress, a lot of the students address as Shiori-chan instead of Asakura-sensei. She is childish and is scared of the dark. She has complex about her appearance and how a lot of her friends are getting married and having children.

This route starts off with Lotte being questioned about if she has a guy she likes. Yuuto comes to mind, but she tells herself that what she feels is rivalry. At night, Lotte happens to see Shiori grabbing onto Yuuto out of fear. She realizes that she actually DOES like him and she starts to act out when Yuuto’s around.

Shiori’s route will move onto Yuuto doing the night watch with her a few more times. Ayano finds out that Shiori likes Yuuto and starts acting as cupid.

Lotte’s route starts with a lot of awkwardness between her and Yuuto. Doing 3 years of stuff in weeks, she graduates from the Military class. She then enrolls back as part of the guard class. It turns out that Lotte has difficulty trusting people due to events in the past. Later these events turn out to be a misunderstanding. Through Lotte’s effort the guard class manages to get the military class’s facilities, however Lotte collapses from fatigue as a result. The military and research class conspire to get back at the guard class while Lotte is down.

Morishita Mifuyu & Tachibana Hiyori

Mifuyu gives off the impression as being an airhead and is constantly tripping, but she’s actually a genius. She’s the only member of the Research class given their own personal lab. She was always researching and she didn’t have friends in the past as a result. She has obsessed with medical supplies and loves to go to pharmacies. Despite being a member of the research class, she doesn’t actively participate in their activities and often indirectly helps Yuuto and the gang instead. She also has a thing for BL.

Hiyori is Otoha’s timid maid. She loves serving Otoha and helps her as much as she can, even if she doesn’t always agree with Otoha’s decisions. She doesn’t have much confidence in herself and is often in panic.

This route starts the gang meeting up for food after recovering from the survival training, Mifuyu is the only one not there. Hiyori accompanies Yuuto when he goes to visit Mifuyu in the lab. Mifuyu starts to think more about Yuuto and cleans around the lab hoping that he’ll visit. One day, Mifuyu sees Yuuto get injured during training and rushes to go treat him. However, before she gets there she sees that Hiyori is already helping him.

Hiyori’s route starts with Yuuto staying at Otaha’s hotel room for a couple of days because he needs to learn proper manners. Naturally this situation brings forth lots of interaction between him and Hiyori. After the training ends, the thought of not seeing each other again makes the two panic.

Mifuyu’s route Yuuto notices her acting weird and tells her he’ll do anything. She kisses him out of the blue and tells him she wants them to act like lovers. Yuuto confesses and the two sleep with each other. Mifuyu tells Yuuto that he doesn’t need to act like this anymore, misunderstanding his confession. After a bit more trouble, Yuuto’s confession works. As the route progresses you find out Mifuyu’s inventions are potentially being used for warfare when she wanted to help people.

If you read the description of the routes and thought they sounded not bad or even good, don’t be fooled >__>. The routes are pretty boring and messy. I’ll admit that the level of ichaicha was decent, but it’s compressed into several chapters which are lumped together. After the ichaicha it seems game falls down the cliff and some random drama is thrown in. The military setting seemed like it was just a fail method to introduce some back story for some of the characters. Frankly, this game probably would have done better if it was in a normal school setting.

Graphics

The graphics for AXL games are always quite unique. They have a particular feel to them that make it stand out. Good? Bad? That’s up to personal opinion. I would have to say that they’re pretty good. I love the SDCGs XD.The the quality of AXL games has slowly improved, while maintaining the unique AXL feel.

System

Wow for once I can actually talk a lot about system for a game. AXL has a unique system. After you finish a scene/chapter, it can be skipped instantly. A small summary of the scene will appear and then it’ll ask if you want to skip the whole scene. The choices that appear in scenes also appear. A very good feature, you don’t have to watch all that stupid text while the skip function is in action.

The game also allows you to change from wide screen to…non wide screen. The non-wide screen will add in an extra bit of display at the bottom. I don’t really see the point of it, but having the choice is nice.

If you go to the log, you can jump back to any previous scene. I find it very handy because like to save at funny bits to watch again later. This way I was able save those funny bits even if they jumped out to surprise me.

Finally, after you finish a route the title screen will change to show the uncolored heroines. Then as you progress through the routes they get colored. This is the title screen after the bad end.

The color is added in as you finish routes. Sorry I forgot to save an image after a side heroines’ route. Think of the color picture of Lotte there, just a lot duller and the lines a lot less clear.

Sound

I personally loved a lot of the characters voices and found that voice actors matched the characters well. The BGM’s fit in quite nicely as well…yep that’s all I’ve got >_>.

Overall

If you haven’t played an AXL game, DON’T play this. You’ll be very disappointed by the crappy story and character development.

Fans of AXL will also be disappointed with this game, but probably not shocked if they’ve been following AXL since Koitate. The quality of AXL games seem to be a steady decline since Koitate, which this game being their worst yet. The ichaicha is there, but the whole getting facilities from challenges feels too much like Bakatest. The whole military setting doesn’t really fit the facility grabbing challenge thing, making things feel very bland and stupid. Only one of the routes actually had an aspect that focused on the facilities challenges. The story felt like it was going crazy. One chapter you see tons of ichaicha and the next you’re getting hunted >_>.

Overall, you can probably live without playing this game. Play it only if you’re an AXL fan, but go in with low expectations.

Story: 4/10
Character: 7/10
Graphics: 8/10
Sound: 7/10
System: 10/10

Overall: 60/100 (Not a total)

Funny as it may be, I still hold hopes for AXL games in the future. I’ve finished Sucre, but I won’t be doing a review on it. It was boring, not as much as this, but it was pretty close. The full English patch came out recently for Little Busters! So I’ll be playing that next. There are enough reviews for it out there as it is, so I don’t think I’ll write anything about it. The game after that will either Angel Ring or Otome wa Boku ni Koishiteru ~Futari no Elder~.

Feedback is always welcome XD