It Was Nice
AcidSplasher
I put off reading this game for YEARS. And I regret it. Because it was good.A few problems though.1.) This might just be my computer, but whenever I was about to enter a cutscene where they would show chibi sprites, my game would lag really bad. So bad to the point where my computer would tell me that the program wasn't responding. The way I fixed it was to change the text to Japanese, which would make the game run smoothly again. Once I got past the chibi cutscenes I would change the language back to English, bring up the text log, and re-read the lines that were shown during the cutscene. So fortunately I did find a workaround, but since I only had this problem while it was set to English, I take it it was a problem with the patch or maybe even how they ported it. In the end it didn't really keep me from reading, but it did slow me down, so it's not a terrible problem. It could have been, though.2.) The writing. It's not awful, but it does have its moments where I felt a little irritated about it. A huge conflict in the story is that our main character quit his favorite sport. He doesn't enjoy it anymore and doesn't want to play ever again. And the reason is because he "lost" to someone. But once you get further in the game, you'll find out that he didn't actually lose. The person he was playing against caught up to him and passed him up in a race one time. And then suddenly he acts like his career is over because he can tell his opponent is going to surpass him one day. I can certainly relate to the main character a little, since I have times when I'm scared of losing in competitions and falling behind other people too, but the problem is that if you think about it, why would you stop playing what you love because of someone catching up to you in terms of skill? Couldn't some people also be motivated to have someone who can give them a challenge? And if the main character loves this sport like he kept describing throughout the story before his "big fall", why couldn't he be happy that he finally found a rival instead? And once again, he didn't even actually lose, yet the rest of the visual novel goes on about how he has PTSD about it later on. For a guy who was very competitive, I'm surprised he wasn't inspired to become a better player instead. They could have gotten rid of this fake tragedy altogether while keeping everything else the same and it still would've been good - maybe even better. If the main character just decided to keep playing so he could show off and impress the girls he liked that would've been just as entertaining.That being said, I wrote about a bunch of cons, but there are also many pros about this game. Enough pros in fact that I'd say they outweigh the cons and make playing this game worth it.1.) The art style. It's so beautiful. No doubt about it. Enough said.2.) The music. Also beautiful. There isn't a single soundtrack that I dislike.3.) The romance. Especially Masaya and Misaki's. I didn't like how things got led into the final episode of Misaki's route, but the rest of it was phenomenal. Even the h-scenes were amazing, because the dialogue between them wasn't just intense moaning and the character just describing what they were doing to each other - they actually talked like they cared about each other and how they didn't just want to get their cherries popped. Rika's route was also incredibly amazing. Honestly Rika might be my favorite heroine, but it's really close between her and Misaki. The other routes were great too, actually, but Rika and Misaki's routes just left the biggest impressions on me.tl;dr - Problems with the patch, but I found a quick fix. The writing has its ups and downs, but it doesn't make the game unplayable/unreadable. Chemistry between the characters is pretty great.Advice for route order: Asuka -> Mashiro -> Rika -> Misaki
