Aero-ge Review: Love-ressive

Hey all! It’s been ages since I’ve written something for the blog. Real life is partly to blame, but’s it mostly because I’ve been playing a lot of eroge lately. Also I’ve been going a bit crazy with board games and Dota 2 as well. If it’s any consolation, I do “intend” to be a little more active around here. I talk more about what I plan to write about at the end of this review.

Company: スミレ (SMILE)
Game site: ラヴレッシブ
Release date: February 28, 2013
Links: VNDB, Walkthrough

On Valentine’s day, Kaname was confessed to by four girls at the same time: carefree osananajimi Kotora, blonde rich transfer student Reo, baka genius kouhai Ryou, and small meddlesome senpai Mao. They vowed to try to make him love them before White Day. His objections would not waver the resolves of these aggressive girls who are after their man.

[from Micchi’s blog]

Opening

Common Route

The first 30 seconds of the game made me feel like I just scored a harem ending; it’s Valentine’s Day and four girls confess to you! IT WAS AWESOME. The game then jumps back to the start of the school year. During this prologue you see how Kaname gets acquainted with the main heroines of the game. Kaname is your typical nice guy protagonist, so you can probably imagine how things play out. After getting a small taste of how things started, the game jumps back to the present.

Though the name of the game is “Love-ressive”, the girls aren’t as aggressive as you might expect. This is because the girls make a pact to keep the love battle fair. What you mostly see in the common route is situations where all the heroines try to appeal to Kaname at the same time. The “aggression” suggested by the game’s title is probably referring to how heroines force you to accept their invitations if you fail to respond during timed decision.

As you might have guessed, this game has literally ZERO story. Instead what you see is a lot of slice of life “slapstick” comedy (think tsukkomi). The comedy is quite funny…to start off with anyway. All the comedy is pretty similar and it happens quite often, so it gets kinda old.

The common route ends with Kaname confessing to one of the heroines on White Day. Honestly, the confessions feel quite abrupt. The development between Kaname and said heroine easily doesn’t feel enough to establish “love” However I never really expected much in the ways of development given the nature of this game.

Characters

Though the build-up is lacking, the confession scenes themselves were ALL awesome and each had a unique feel to it. Once the relationship is established basically ALL you   basically see is comedy, romance and icha icha. The mixture of this stuff is generally done quite well. A tiny bit of drama is added near the end of each route to lead up to the ending. The routes are quite short despite each having 4 H-scenes.

Okay let’s have a quick look at the heroines.

First you have freedom loving and energetic childhood friend, Kotora. She’s been in love with Kaname since childhood and is constantly causing trouble. As her nature probably suggests, she’s quite the idiot.

Next is the cheerful and slightly naïve transfer student, Reo. She previously went to an all-girls school and was very popular for being a male-like figure for the other girls. Because of this she isn’t very accustomed to being treated like a girl.

Third is Ryou, the cool child prodigy. She is so smart that she’s given the special privilege to attend classes as she pleases. Though Ryou’s a genius, she sometimes struggles with some aspects of common sense.

Last is Mao, the short senpai heroine who loves food. She often tries to act like an older sister figure towards Kaname. Her family is famous for the art of “tea ceremony” and she is quite adept at it.

Reo’s route does things PERFECTLY. The romance is good and the comedy is funny. The dash of drama at the end of her route leads to a very nice ending. Ryou would be a very close second if the not for her ending, which overuses the “genius” aspect of her character. As for Mao, I’m not a big fan of characters who keep insisting on acting like an older sister. The drama added to her route was relevant, but quite poorly executed. Kotora’s easily the most aggressive of the heroines and she uses the childhood friend excuse to try to “claim” Kaname. I don’t particularly care for her character, but her route was well executed and the ending was also good.

Route Ranking:

1) Reo

2) Kotora and Ryou

3) Mao

After completing the routes for the 4 main heroines you gain access to 3 mini routes for Ena, Miki and Mimi. Ena and Mimi are quite similar in the sense that they’re both pessimistic and prone to misfortune. Miki is weirdo who enjoys seeing people troubled and often lies to Ena to get her fix.

These mini routes are EXTREMELY short; maybe 15 minutes? The ending appears shortly after the single H-scene of the route, so there’s not really much room for any real development. Ena’s route and Mimi’s route were extremely entertaining because the comedy was super funny. Miki’s route is a lot more general and because of that my opinion of it is a lot more neutral.

For better or for worse, there isn’t a mini route for the Sakamata triplets. I’m sure a lot of you guys would’ve wanted to see a 4P scene, but I didn’t really care for them. Unless you’re into girls who are OLDER than you called you “onii-sama”.

System, sound and graphics

The game uses a timed decision system which they refer to as “Love Judgements”. A heroine will make an invitation and if you don’t respond within the time limit they’ll “force” you to accept. Heroines act fidgety during the love judgement and will have a reaction at the end of it. HOWEVER the reactions for the accept, reject and time out instances are the same across heroines.  So heroines will often feel VERY out of character because of this fixed reaction.

In the game there’s a SNS called “Tsubuyakii”. The heroines claim that they’ll use it so that you can choose which one of them to meet. However in reality this SNS isn’t actually used for anything and is really just there as an extra.

There’s no feature to load from the message log, which is annoying.

Nothing much to say about the graphics and sound for the game.

To conclude

Characters: 7/10
Romance: 7/10
Comedy: 7/10
System: 5/10

Overall: 60/100

If you’re not a fan of slice of life romance comedy then this isn’t the game for you. Even if you ARE a fan, think carefully before deciding to play this game. The characters are quite cute and the comedy is very decent. However the severe lack of storyline makes gameplay a chore at times. The love judgement is somewhat interesting at first, but it gets super old once you see how flawed it is. The only routes in this game I would say are worth playing would be Reo’s, Mimi’s and Ena’s. So if you DO choose to play this game, I suggest finding a 100% save file so that you have access to the mini routes.

Titles I’ve finished lately which I consider write worthy are:

• Shukufuku no Kane no Oto wa, Sakura-iro no Kaze to Tomo ni
• Aete Mushisuru Kimi to no Mirai ~Relay broadcast~
• Lovesick Puppies -Bokura wa Koi suru Tame ni Umaretekita-
• Lovely x Cation 2
• Hitotsu Tobashi Ren’ai

I intend to write a review for “Shukufuku no Kane” and that is slowly coming along. Amoirsp expressed interest in joining me to write something for “Aete Mushisuru Kimi to no Mirai”. However it seems he only intends to write about his love for “Kei”, so that’s in the “maybe” pile for now. I suggested to Oot about doing a joint review for “Lovesick Puppies”, but that hasn’t really expanded into anything solid so far. Aedes and Fuzzyhobo are currently both playing LxC2 and there are plans for a 3P for that (LOL).

As for when what comes out, I have absolutely idea as of now.