A high-production-value lewd game that leaves you craving more slice-of-life out of it! (7.9/10) Disclaimers: 1. I played with the 18+ patch. 2. I am not entirely familiar with the JP side of visual novels, particularly the romance ones. This is basically my first “dip” into this space, so I cannot have many fair points of comparison. However, I’ve recently started playing some VNs that are originally in english. On the lewd front, I still pretty regularly read hentai manga, and I have some surface-level manga familiarity with harems, so I feel like I could still speak my thoughts on this game with those as precursors. That said, I thoroughly enjoyed my time with this game as a dude who enjoys lewd content. For the most part it’s an enjoyable, cute slice-of-life standard romance, but even then, you need to know that this is still a nukige, as per VNDB’s consensus (meaning: it’s a hentai game, and very little thought is put into character development or plot). So the abundance of the H scenes overshadows its other aspects, and I definitely think this game isn’t universally palatable & mostly caters to dudes. Not to mention that some people might find some scenes problematic or questionable, i.e. due to flat body types, some domination scenes, and one scene close to being sleep-assault. There’s also the fact that a lot of the eye expressions during H scenes end up turning into blank, mindbroken ecstasy. If you are familiar with lewd Japanese media in any form, you might be able to stomach these points a bit more or even enjoy it lots like I did, but caution is advised. Even if you enjoy it, binging this game will drain you, because each of the 5 routes has around 6 H Scenes if not more; each H Scene having a climax counter ~3-5 times in most cases. Do the math. Most people can’t exactly follow it to a T within 3 days. Generally, the game starts off quite strongly. Insane flash-forward-into-the-sixway H-scene as aside, the game starts introducing the Love Interests via MC’s daily life, which I did find pretty cute and comedic. Everything is mostly as dictated by the store page; you find yourself into a romcom situation with a potential harem brewing at school. Circumstances forces you to live together and help their issues, which leads to lewd scenes. Although the game’s MC Ren rightfully pokes fun into how Emiri’s logic turned into complete nonsense in suggesting that her brocon tendencies will be cured by doing sexual things, I can at least half-suspend my disbelief for the rest. After the introduction of each girl and the reveal of your role in the dorm, you see again the flash-forward scene at the very start, in which 5 LIs give hand service to the MC. Then follows an H scene with each LI on a more individual, personal level, as a trial run, so to speak. The writer still has values of “don’t have sex if you’re not in a romantic relationship”, so before picking an LI, the H Scenes don’t go all the way on that front. Shortly after the game will then just outright have a “Select Route” screen with all 5 girls on display, in which the UI even reminds you to save. Other than that, the game has basically no choices whatsoever, outside of some (standard in hentai games?) “Where to do it” climax options. What ensues after clicking a route is MC spending a lot of time with the LI, mostly lewd scenes or scenes building up to it. But the funny thing is, despite knowing that this is a nukige, I still feel like there’s some lost potential in most of the route’s writing. The relationship aspect with the LIs you choose by itself is fine; exploring themes of trust, openness, etc. But it’s hard to believe that other girls almost vanish entirely once you pick a route; exception being Miyabi’s route to an extent, but still so. Despite the common introductory route showcasing that Ren practically has a harem of girls who like him, or the fact that Emiri can be clingy enough to want a text update from Ren every 10 minutes, or Riria feeling dejected and Ren comforting her by saying she will always be a special friend; these two girls still feel like they’re gone if not in their own routes. Riria appears as “friend who gives advice” for Ren in Yuu’s route, but even that only ends up leading into a standard jealousy scene. For the most part, inside a particular route, the other LIs only speak two-liners at a time about their own (implied) jealousy, and only like 3 times per scene. And scenes like these only like 3 times between all the H scenes. I dare say that if you literally count how many lines all the 4 non-picked LIs say to Ren inside someone else’s route (+counting Rin as 5th I guess since she’s a pretty prominent side character), they speak ~40 lines tops. Miyabi’s route is an exception since when I counted, it’s closer to ~100 or ~120. Meanwhile, one H scene inside a girl’s route probably has exactly ~40 or more intelligible spoken lines too, outside of moaning noises. It’s pretty grave in my eyes, even for a lewd game. Coupled with the fact that there’s 6+ H scenes in each route, that means that the combined appearance of other LIs in picked LI’s routes can equal to practically 15% or less of the runtime since picking the route. There’s not much to discuss in terms of plot; but after achieving 100% achievements and seeing all the routes, I think the game still did a decently okay job at making each girl shine and appealing. Maybe that just means I am the target demographic among other lonely dudes out there, but despite its shallowness and inclinations towards lewd scenes, it’s sincerely unabashed at exploring what little, special types of quirky romances bloom here. It might be generic and stereotypical, but I find that it’s a good kind. Information: (•)Playtime: Personally, ~40 hours on all 5 main routes + Afterstory extras, ~46 if including sub-routes. How I play is quite slow though; I try not to cut the VA lines if possible. Sometimes with Arle’s route it’s hard to tell during the H scenes if the noises are manually-recorded or it’s one of the heroine-looping noises, but that’s volume balancing issue. Other heroines, by default, have a much quieter loop sfx so I could instantly tell when the manual voice stopped. (•)Has minimal choices . As I said, I only think the choices UI really only appear for Riria and Emiri’s route, and only to show some slight difference in H scene peaks. They impact practically nothing, although the second choice for Riria was pretty fun. I really wish the other 3 girls got something like this though, shame that they didn’t. I guess that’s a con. (•)The “sub routes” outside of the main 5 are short. (+) Pros: (+) Very cute, expressive and dynamic art. I still appreciate the frequency of expression changes. Seeing the kind of options available to us in the in-game Sprite Editor, it does seem like they consider eyebrow, eye and mouth differences separately instead of just making a couple of single-state sprites and swapping between them. It feels lively, and the CGs are great. (+) Robust options and features. It might be standard in JP VNs (I wouldn’t know), but being able to instantly playback the current VA line is an insane plus on top of the wonderful VA work done. You can also adjust the volume of characters separately, and jump back to a particular line via the backlog; even past scene transitions. At least in my experience with some other VNs and narrative-heavy games this is rarely the case. You’re lucky if you even get a backlog at all if not a VN. (+) Fluffy, straightforward romance. I might appreciate some LIs more than others due to their character archetype or body type, but for the most part, I find everyone here lovely in being shown as a romantic partner. For a moment, experiencing these routes for the first time almost always feel like a lovely bliss. (continued in comments due to character limit)
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