. . .

EriDori was easily my favorite couple from the FLOWERS series... one of my favorite romances ever V-V

Angel Beats! 1st Beat is the hardest visual novel to beat without a guide... but to truly 100% it? This is an achievement that is nearly impossible...

The game has 200 achievements and multiple routes and side-routes and a true ending that will require you to put your everything to get to it... the guide covered all of that... but having +500 choices, most of which matter greatly? Made reading all the text inside of them an impossible task unless you cheat and check the game's files... how can you reach them? No one knows...

I have beaten it and got all the achievements... but I am pretty sure there might be 1-5% of content still left out there and I have no clue how to reach it... I might start another run and randomize all my choices, where I would suddenly see a new line that might lead me into a new joke or scene I have never seen before... but I could also keep randomizing and never reach anywhere... to truly see everything, you need to build a choices tree... hmmmm, for this one? I think calling it a forest would be better...

One tree is not enough... to do that? It will require hundreds of hours to build it... and tbh? This task is too hard mentally to do... it is just too damn hard that even the biggest fans of this title never thought about going for it and accepted the fact that they will never truly read all of it... even me, a person with severe OCD, accepted that fact, and it even helped me with my mental illness and made me accept more facts in life I never accepted before... a game that much life-changing is a game I will never truly beat... but I still love it with all of my heart and will one day do it! Not because of my OCD... but because I don't want to give up on the things I truly love!~ V-V

*About this image, whatever name you pick, all the characters in the game will start referring to you using it, all voice-acted. Those names will stick with you for a portion of the game and will allow you to have special jokes and scenes about them. But even after you get rid of those names and stick to your original name, you can find some scenes related to them in such random places during the story, some of them appearing very late in such a shocking way... making you realize how a simple choice at the start of the game will still affect even the latest sections... the craziness that went into Key and made them do this? It is a gift to humanity that we will never get again... we will never forget the greatness we witnessed with this game T-T*

I've sadly found myself self-inserting for nearly the whole experience while reading this game into Momoka-chan. Why? Because she is literally me in personality, but not in soul (I will never accept the fact she is doing it with a man) or body (am a 38-year-old fit black man)

The game itself forces the characters into some weird h-scenes... and seeing that my self-insert is also forced into them, was a very painful experience...

I tried my best to imagine myself as the MC but this is not happening ever. He is an otaku buta-coded. He is skinny and not strong and into watching and... I can keep on going about why he is nothing like me, I can even see myself as the other heroines and not him, even the one who was into sniffing disgusting things... that's how this game's protagonist is far from me!...

So being only capable of self-inserting with the heroines, especially Momoka-chan... it really broke my heart that she is doing it with this man and for very nukige reasons... no sense or logic, while having such a great personality and looks and talent and voice... why give yourself away to a literal cattle when you can find thousands of men the same as him walking down the streets?...

It was always puzzling me... but the strongest part about all of my repulsiveness throughout the whole experience is the fact that this game introduced >!scat!< into the equation... a very CLOCKUP move... not weird from them at this point... but when I saw that it wasn't only for one heroine, but for 2 of them... and then for 3... I started sweating profusely...

Momoka-chan was the only one who didn't have hers yet... and throughout the whole later points of her route, I was just holding my head and having delusions about lots of scenes and how they will end up leading for her to have her "promised" h-scene...

You can't imagine the pain I felt imagining my self-insert doing THAT... and why? Just so that some SICK bastard can enjoy seeing shit on the screen. "Don't shame people about their fetishes, they are not hurting anyone!!!" But they are hurting me!!!!! I am hurt, why not care about me, the real victim here???? Why should I see myself inside the game doing something so low when I know this is something I will never do? Unless maybe I was under the threat of a gun or something... but she wasn't, she was 100% free to break the neck of the protagonist if he ever wanted to propose that or force her into it...

So after all of that worrying? I realized that she isn't getting one, her replacement for it was something similar but totally not the same... for once in my life, I was happy to see an h-scene... just to see that the me in the game is not going to do it... that I can still see myself in her innocently and without defiling my brain... I still got hurt with some of her extreme h-scenes and in general? I never wanted her to have any erotic scenes... but seeing that she didn't have THAT type of h-scene really made me more forgiving... it was like you finding a piss oasis in the middle of the desert after not drinking any water for days... you for sure wished it was water instead of piss, but you will without a doubt slurp that piss to live... and you will be happy while doing it thinking that you finally survived....

I tried explaining everything in the image itself, but if anyone is missing something, you can ask me and I will answer as best as I can~

Those boys and girls... they really deserved their own route T-T even if some of them couldn't have a route because it just doesn't work... I really wished they got more focus or at least more screen time and story T--T

Am not into otome games that much... but from the couple of games I read and the tropes I have seen for other protagonists from different games? it seems like there is this one thing of making the protagonist a very nothingburger girl who acts in the most tame way ever... but Hatoful Kareshi is not like that at all... she was moving like prime LeBron T-T she was easily one of the most lovable aspects of this game even though she was sometimes getting on my nerves... wish for more otome to do that for their main girl V-V

Still on my road to finishing my backlog that holds hundreds of games... thinking that this year should mostly go for kusoge, my pick came to Sagara-sanchi no Etsuraku Life... ZyX's most famous game and their highest-rated game... a game that is written by Mareni and multiple other Liar-soft writers!... it must be good with them on the case, no?... at least it needs to be interesting with some "enjoyable" heroines considering how they are not your average nukige writers?... no?...

Well, I couldn't have been more wrong than that xDD

This game takes you into the daily life of this average Japanese boy self-insert, he is a college boy so a little bit older than the usual... doesn't mean anything here tbh considering how dumb and immature he still is, a "baby" if I might say according to how the internet today views college-aged kids?...

Our MC went to live in the house of those 5 women for his college yada yada yada he ended up sleeping with them yada yada yada the end... anything interesting happening in the middle of this story?... well... if >!NTR !<and >!Rape!< are considered interesting to you?... then sure! lots of them did happen... (what I spoiled are 2 tags this game possesses, I think anyone thinking about playing this game should really see them to make sure he is ready for this shitfest... + they appear a lot and quite early in the game)

I will not spoil any specific events here or plots that happened, but I will talk about the tags I spoiled previously... >!4 from the 5 heroines get molested... 4 OF THEM!!! you wouldn't believe how much this was painful to go through... when it happened the first time? it was whatever... the 2nd time? hmmm... the 3rd time??? 4th time!!! all routes, all of them!!!!<

>!All of them getting molested in some way or another, some of them get raped and some of them borderline just NTR the MC.... what is even this shit man?? why do Japanese otaku really love NTR? what is this weird fetish? do they really see themselves as so lost that they have 0 chance with real women and the only hope for them is to rape them? is that what they imagine when they go outside of their homes (I know this barely happens)!<

>!Do we really still cope and say that them consuming VNs like this day and night will not have any effects on their mentally ill brains?... art was always connected to the societies it was born from, this is true throughout the ages, if Japanese writers are coloring Japan as the land that allows rapists to roam free and do it willy-nilly very easily and can hardly get any real punishment for it, a land that blames the victim and would fight it if they went out to speak against it, a land that has no men who will step up to those creeps to stop them, a land filled with deranged sex-crazed maniacs... if those writers are showing this to us for more than 30 years in multiple media... me as someone who never went to Japan, why shouldn't someone like me take this image of Japan and start hating it?!<

>!How can I not hate a land that hurts women like this? how can I not hate them when I start imagining what my life would have been like if I was born in Japan instead of my country and one day I went through a similar experience to this, got molested or even raped, and I wasn't capable of speaking against it, I couldn't see the villain get his just punishment and die for it, and I got no men around me who would do something to help me physically or mentally...!<

What kind of misery is this? self-inserting into the girls in this game was dreadful, it was just painful and it didn't allow me to enjoy the game even a little bit. I was just thinking about how miserable the lives are of those who live in a similar environment to this... what else can I do? there is no gripping story, no interesting prose, no fun characters, MC is legit brain-dead and I would rather self-insert into a bird or an ant instead of him... is this really my fault?...

>!So legit each girl got her own stalker/molester? except the Manager, that guy got a sprite so he gets to do 2 girls, how lucky are they!!<

Redhead >!just got molested on the train for no reason, MC has the choice to legit watch it happen instead of helping, if you save her? nothing happens to the molesters, skip forward and they return but this time nearly rape her... right in the middle of the train...!<

>!I guess Japanese people are blind and deaf and mute? they couldn't see multiple men covering a girl and some weird noises coming from them? even though we know that Japanese trains are pretty much everyone sticking skin-to-skin near each other... oh, she couldn't scream because they had a knife to her throat, but them laughing about it and her moaning was not heard at all.....!<

Ruruka, >!a literal middle schooler, gets sex-phone-calls from some creep, she doesn't tell anyone at all, he stalks her and tries to rape her, MC saves her very fast when she was just molested, she is the least molested heroine in the whole game, but I mean MC sleeping with her alone is honestly considered borderline rape, no?... so this is why they probably were content with just having the MC do that role for her route ^-^!<

The cosplay girl... >!wait... now that I think about it, she was the only one who really didn't interact with any males other than MC... guess she is the safe-token? the one you go for if you don't want to see any rape?...!<

The mother was... >!this one was easily the one who got molested the most... she is close to Arisa in this regard, but she is the one who got raped the most and at some point, she even starts thinking about some thoughts that were written just to show the reader the NTR they want... btw, all avoidable if the Japan they are viewing wasn't so dysfunctional...!<

The part that blew my mind the most? >!how they used the comedy OST literally 1 second after she was getting raped... and with MC's arrival, it turned into full jokes with the rapist and MC doing some stand-up comedy routine while the mother is right next to them still dripping from how much she was raped... "Ah yes, the famous Japanese trope... comedy rape, Ranclop series main tag!" is what I thought... aaah reading VNs sometimes can be so cringe... I understand the outsiders who make fun of them without trying them.. they are honestly the smart ones who are not wasting their time in such a fucked up medium... am so happy that it is dead at this point and most of the companies who make games like this simply don't exist anymore :))))!<

Arisa... the heroine that had the most potential of them all... my favourite heroine easily... did I like her? HELL NAH! I wanted to... her "big-sister" personality is very nice... and so is her design, voice and way of speaking... also that "quirk" she got... the fact that she is a >!nymphomaniac !<(it was so cringe how they used this to excuse what all the girls are doing xD)

That quirk of hers was going places... I believed that if it was used in a good way, we could end up with an interesting route... sadly, it was used in the most mind-numbing way, 0 thoughts behind it and just h-scene spam like usual. Again, with full naivety, I expected plot from a nukige... I guess that Mareni name fooled me? never read any game from him with him being the main writer, but I expected him to be the one responsible for this route considering how it is the only one that... got anything going for it? but alas, I get nothing...

Arisa also faced a problem that could have been easily fixed if the Protagonist of this game didn't have a below-room-temperature IQ...

>!Her scenes with the Manager... they were indeed a step above the others in depth, but at the end of the day, you don't get far with them at all and they just end up being there like the other NTR scenes... to "spice" things up for the cucks reading and enjoying this game...!<

Arisa was another disappointment... I didn't feel bad about this at all, expecting anything from nukige is not the makers fault but my own. I still consider her the best heroine in this game, but I don't think I will ever call any of the girls here "good" or even acceptable...

Before I leave her section, I was reminded while writing this review about those 2 weird characters with a sprite that appeared for one scene and never appeared again... I legit thought they were going to be big actors in this route and they would make Arisa somehow... have a plot that is way bigger than the rest of the heroines... just for them to never appear again to the point of me forgetting them @_@ after checking who they were, I found out that they were both from Innai Kansen, a long series from ZyX... ok?... that's it?... .... ... whatever ~_~

Some of the h-scenes were borderline disgusting, and this is coming from someone who read Euphoria... there? at least they were done to be like that intentionally... but here, it is just disgusting from how bad they are...

Especially that one h-scene where the MC is doing >!Arisa in the park... MC was being a happy cuck right there doing her while other couples were watching and stopping the sex they were doing to focus on Arisa, they even started clapping for them...!<

>!MC's thoughts?... he was happy to flex her in front of them, to show how she belongs to him... to some strangers that literally don't know them and would never remember anything about them other than the fact they touched themselves while looking at Arisa...!<

>!But, how can you write such an insufferable cuck of a main character like him and expect the readers to self-insert, who the fuck self-inserts into this??? and people get mad at me for dissing otaku??!<

But porn legit is worse than drugs and more brain-rot inducing than doom-scrolling TikTok for 10 hours straight daily for years... to reach the point of loving, searching for, and accepting scenes like this one?...

It is just too sad! and what is sadder? this isn't even the worst this game did! and they did it again for her route!!! >!To fucking use the kids to build up a molesting scene... but how sick are those writers? this is legit like the sickest thing in this whole game... it is forcing the children to say stuff that would help the manager to molest her...!<

>!"let's hide under the teacher's skirt!" and how they make the kids touch her sensitive parts the whole time... wtf is this? this h-scene is legit using kids who are written to be based on real life... this is borderline PDF-ism that you can't sugarcoat. And guess what? that h-scene buildup was used multiple times for her, so you see the kids doing this and the Manager using them again and again and again.... wwwwww this is so sick, yet I doubt anyone online has ever brought this point up... I legit felt sick because of this...!<

The pacing of this game was just very bad regarding how they cut the scenes depending on your choices... sometimes they would start a scene for like 1 minute and then it will get cut right before anything happens, and then when you go forward in the game, the girl will treat us like we have seen that scene... while in truth? that scene was longer and had an h-scene, but because of your choices, you don't see it......

This happens throughout the whole game.... You don't know how much I felt lost because of this and was going crazy... I even repeated the game multiple times thinking there might have been a bug with my version or save or just something is wrong in general... I even thought that the h-scenes were turned off for my version (even though the first h-scene did happen) because of how those scenes were happening...

Also, as usual, it had that nukige "logic" of forcing the h-scene to happen no matter what in the most idiotic ways ever when in truth, they shouldn't be initiated there. Not to mention how some of those CGs barely function as h-scene CGs, feeling weird to see while reading what is happening in the scene or sometimes even looking weird in general.

This game also follows the old mindset of eroge in how hard it is to reach certain endings... especially with how this game is filled with lots of h-scenes (some of them legit use the same CG or they were so unimaginative it felt like I was rereading and watching the same scenes)

But they were for sure not as bad as some other old eroge I experienced @_@ oh, except that one Arisa ending that am sure whoever played the game knows what am talking about... that one legit felt like a myth and searching for how to get it alone felt like a journey xD

The writing wasn't good. Legit nothing good about it... except some of the weird jokes that are told by side-characters that appear for like 1 minute and somehow made me crack a laugh because of how unexpected and out of place their jokes are... those ones felt like they were written by a totally different writer than the rest of the game... somehow? the best comedy was in those scenes that barely appear ~_~

Art made me feel weird... the bodies didn't look bad, but the faces... damn that artstyle was weird T0T it is totally not up to my taste... the sprites just looked not appealing because of it, sometimes they would turn the faces only into chibi-style... that was good @_@

OST was nothingburger... honestly? this time when I went through it again to see if I somehow misjudged it and it got some good BGM, I found myself skipping through them so fast the second I got reminded of how they sounded like again... the OST for this game? I will call it just not fun to listen to... I don't know which version I used while playing the game though, I played the remake.

The engine of this game...... I curse those who use engines like them....... Voice lines get skipped on the next line and you can't take screenshots using the normal ways... aaaarrgghhh this is sooo annoying!

The localization... it is from JAST... do I need to explain why it is shit? xD at the last parts, there was even this one scene with a long joke, the localizer legit gave up on it and didn't even bother... average JAST behavior xDD

They did this so many times I lost count... in this game and other games too... here? lots of the jokes were hard for me to understand as a baby-JOP so I wished for this one time that JAST would save me, but they legit either just made shit up or didn't want to put effort... don't forget to support them guys! let's wish they pick more games to ruin!... I would rather have the fans do those translations instead, they were always better for me...

Like usual for nukige, my blogposting for it will be in my book that will be released in 1/1/2027 if anyone is interested in my reactions and thoughts to what was happening during the time I was reading it~

/ourverdict/ ~ some people might say that my complaints against nukige here are not valid, that those games are just there as a cheap way for touching yourself... but for me? this genre means a game with lots of h-scenes... it never meant that those scenes need to be badly written or the whole game is just there to deliver them without justifying them... let's not accept slop just because the standards are too low... have some self-respect, no?... 2.0/10 ~ one of the worst kusoge I have read this year, but we still got a couple more kusoge to read... who knows, it might not even be in the top 5 there~

Last year, I experienced this KINOge... and till this day? I don't think I have seen any other VN that does what it does in that masterful way T-T the mixing of styles, showing 3D and 2D at the same time, having animated scenes, sprites usage that makes the characters feel alive and moving, tons of unique ways of showing the scenes that make you feel like you're seeing hundreds of CGs when in reality, none of them will stay on the screen for more than a couple of seconds before you get hit with a new one. The way the scenes get lots of cuts in the middle and it shows you a still CG for like 1 second... sometimes it could have lots of text and sometimes it is just a joke... reminds me of what the great Shaft Studio did with the Monogatari series... this game was truly the definition of SOVL... I would totally recommend it just for the pure fun you will have while reading it...

If anyone knows another game that does similar things to this, it would be appreciated if they recommended it V-V I think there are some obscure JOPge out there that might do this @_@

Before anything, while reviewing a yurige, I think the reader needs to get an idea of the reviewer and what he thinks about the genre in general...

I used to hate yuri. I used to have that image of it that it is forced and cringe and no writer can make me convinced of liking it. I always had this belief for years and years... why?... I really don't know @_@

I never watched a yuri work before, the most yuri I saw was just the random posts online and maybe the headcanon ships in gacha games?... (Yuri-bait like Heaven Burns Red really doesn't count, it doesn't follow the golden rule of yuri games~) so why did I come to hate it that much?... it is more like a thing about hating something you didn't experience yourself because the ones who did come across to me as annoying?...

Welp... this all changed after I read the FLOWERS series... those games literally turned me into a yuri lover who is still in search of a similar experience... it became my favourite romantic game from all the VNs I have played! it did everything perfectly, and it delivered that yuri in a way, no one can hate on it...

Well, I do find some of the couples to not be up to my taste, but most of them were just super lovely T0T FLOWERS wasn't just an amazing yurige, it was an amazing game in general. Perfect art and ost, very smart direction and the writing? the most believable written girls in all of fiction!

I'm talking about how they legit make me feel like "Yah, those are the type of girls you will find in real life." and that was such a breath of fresh air in this industry that is filled with fake moeshit girls who are just written to please some fatso spending all of his life on dating simulators and then going online to hate on real life women just because they are not like his game's inorganic girls xDD

In my search for more KINO yuri to read? I started the A Kiss For The Petals series... absolute dogshit, a review of mine did it justice... I mean it is the equivalent of nukige but with yuri this time... so, nope... that ain't what I'm searching for at all...

"Let's go for something more fitting... something made by real humans... hmmm a game built by the Liar-soft guys? the company that is super duper beloved by the VN community? must be good, no? @_@ maybe this is another case of a big company making the ultimate yuri! Just like what Innocent Grey did! Oh, and the score of it on vndb is nearly an 8/10? That's it!..." or so thought my younger, naive, innocent self...

Our story starts with Yuna, the protagonist... easily the best character in this game and quite a good self-insert for us the readers... she meets those 2 yuri ghosts... and shit happens V-V what is that shit? the other characters that will appear after!... well... they aren't necessarily really bad, I didn't really hate them... but damn for a +30 hours game, none of them had any special place in my heart @_@

None of them really ended up making me like them... I ended up finding only our first 3 girls introduced to be fine... hell, even them girls sometimes weren't up to my taste @_@ it was just Yuna who stayed the same for me regarding how much I liked her... this could be thanks to how this game had lots of writers, how she was handled? I got no idea, but whoever wrote the main story, AKA her parts, was doing something right... rest of the writers?... just find a new job? xD

Yah, that sounds harsh, no?... but hearing how Liar-soft is THAT amazing and ending up finding such nothingburger plots being written here? it is just heartbreaking... and this is not even my first attempt with them!

I read Adabana Itan last year and it was one of the worst games I have ever read! legit written in the most boring way ever... it feels like it was made for 9 year olds who wanted to read some children book? there is no substance, no depth, nothing fun or interesting for the mature audience, it is literally built like a cartoon episode, and I'm not saying that in a good way. It is like current-day cartoons, not the old KINO ones...

It was worse than what I read here... but seeing this, and then going into another game from them and finding it also to feel like it was written for middle school girls who just got into yuri...

INB4 "the h-scenes!!! :O :O :O" So what? you think kids in middle school don't know about that stuff? I lost my virginity even before that, times are getting different and children are becoming aware of this faster than the previous generations, it is somehow returning to the old times when children were taught about this since they were young, not just in your usual "sex-education class" but as a way for them to legit get married and hold real responsibilities...

To get back to the h-scenes, I will give them props for not making them annoying. I still find them unnecessary and describing them in text like what Key is doing would've been better. But I appreciate that they used them as minimally as possible and didn't go cringe-mode with them like other eroge. Thank you for saving my brain from the immoral rot the other writers do.

I legit think that I either started on not just the wrong foot, it is more like I jumped with both of my feet and fell down while trying to get into this company's games... or they are legit overrated and the VN community as usual has a bad taste most of the times...

It is heartbreaking... especially for me, who legit wanted to drop this game like 3 times?... I was at some point battling the decision of dropping it or not... that first half of this game was so so so dreadful and boring to go through... at some point, I made that new rule of reading only 1 hour of it daily so that I don't end up biting my tongue during my reading session from how frustratingly mind-numbing it was...

And even after that, I wanted to drop it again... only in like the last quarter of the main story, it becomes more interesting and easy to go through... after the characters all turn into couples, and you already got a good image of who they are... only then you will start accepting them... but this takes so long!!! I have read waaaay shorter games that succeeded in doing that! or even games I legit hated like Higurashi still made me like the characters from like the first hours!

It took me here around 20 hours to accept them? that is too damn long for a game that doesn't have anything rewarding for you after all of that time! there is legit no reward at all. The couples were all faced with such boring "struggles" that were solved in the most annoying way... especially the one between the teacher and student... this one made me so mad I went on a rant because of it .-.

Other couples were just nothingburger I didn't feel anything for them when they fixed their situation and became a couple... like, ok, you did it after taking so much time from the readers... and they don't feel anything, what is the point of your game then? in other games, when the characters find a solution to their struggle, if you felt touched by the process, you would feel like you yourself, the reader, also succeeded in doing that... you don't even need to self-insert, a good story and writing is enough to do that for you.

Something this game clearly lacks, if the struggles of the characters and they themselves are not the selling point here... what is? the comedy? for sure it ain't xD I did find some bits endearing and fun, but most of the writing is just stiff and the attempt at making me laugh simply falls off very pathetically.

Drama? Does not exist. Weirdly, I felt touched a couple of times, but that was mostly thanks to that huge nostalgia I got for back when I was at school, this nostalgia is always hitting me hard now that I'm turning 39 very soon. Also the voice acting did that to me, especially in the last chapter of the story, when >!Megumi was crying and thanking us!<? I did feel it...

game is not serious enough, not comical enough, it is just weird... what is the point of it? "Yuri fluff!" but why would any respectable member of society, an adult, pick this game to play just for fluff?... I don't get it... if I knew this was the whole point of this game, I would have never wasted my time on it... if I knew that Liar-soft is a company that makes fluff, I don't think I would have ever hyped myself to their games... and seeing that some of their biggest writers worked on it?... *sigh* this is very tiresome.

I think the best plot that was written in this game is easily the one at the end, Yuna's approach to the whole "yuri" relationship she is now facing... does she like the girl who confessed to her that way? does she view her like that? is it fine for her to pick this? isn't this going to bring hardships for her and make her life harder? couldn't this ruin her future? what if it doesn't work out? what and what and what and lots of ifs...

Something very great to see here! a very realistic take to the whole girl x girl romance, something yuri media is afraid to mention because it will simply create a struggle that is not easy to go through. Yuna was indeed struggling, as a reader? I truly felt it here! the teacher x student couple did try to do this, but they did it in the most brain-dead way and it just turned out super cringe, but here? it was legit good @_@

Even if in the end, Yuna reached the answer in a not very satisfying way, and how it was wrapped might not have been up to my taste... but the struggle itself was the star of this plot, it wasn't rushed and it made us feel something... Thank you whoever wrote this! I know this struggle is not something easy to find a solution for, hell, I don't think I got one in my head.

Going for a relationship that is still not accepted by society is very hard... trust me, I know this, I lived through this and understand it. This is why I appreciated this plot that much, it showcased some of my thoughts and was great to read. The answer is not something I can see myself reaching, my situation is not exactly the same and real life is not as easy as this fluff yuritopia... but it is encouraging to see that sometimes, taking a step is what matters whether this step will let you reach new heights, or fall into a hell you can never escape from.

One of the most shocking parts in the last bits of this game? the fact that >!Ano is not a love interest... lol? lmao??? wwwwww?????? So I play 90% of the game thinking about that, the choices felt like they could make us either pick her or Hina, I thought that I would be there at some point, but she is legit not romanceable?..........!<

>!I was so mind blown by this, I went to check the CGs of the game online after I finished it, just to find that a route for her? does not exist indeed... wow? Why tho? it is not like her story was written for Hina only, there was without a doubt a place for Ano to be the love interest instead! and they even teased this in the after stories a little bit! even the VA in the commentary talked only about how she doesn't have a route, as if she was shocked like the rest of us XDDD what is this man??? this legit feels like they ran out of time while making the game and just decided to not do it... but even if that was the case, couldn't they do that in the new version!!!! they released it to just have extra CGs and full VAing... but no new route for her?...!<

>!Could have been easily the best selling point for it and something I feel the original players of this game deserved!... but they got that one fluff Drama CD of them "pretending" to be lovers or something I think?... btw, I'm legit not going to touch any Drama CDs at all... like, even though I'm sure they will probably be fun and covering a better story than the usual stuff, I really don't feel like seeing any of the girls anymore... even the ones I like ~_~ I still asked about whether to do it or not on some related community to the game... but even if they somehow hyped me for it, I will probably take some time from it... maybe I will come back for it next year?... or years... or never!... I don't know.!<

The 2nd most shocking fact about this game?... one that legit felt like a twist? but a twist that goes nowhere at all whatsoever?... the fact that >!Ano was seeing the ghosts the whole time... lol?... ok?... so you revealed that... and then what? you do this in the last 10% of the game and she just tells us this... and then what?...!<

>!Ok, we know there was something weird with her and why she was helping us with no questions or how sometimes she jumped to help us without even us asking her, this is kinda foreshadowing it? even though I know this could have been answered with lots of other ways... but going for this is fine... what I'm not fine with, is the fact that this reveal doesn't do anything! it is just thrown at us right there in the end...!<

>!What is even crazier, this meant that Ano could have interacted way more with the ghosts if they just made this a main plot... she said that if she focused she might be able to see/hear them... now, what if she had a route? this plot would've probably been something big for it! this also adds to the fuel of the idea that this game was rushed. Her plot would've probably used the ghosts a lot, they wrote it in the main route and thought about using it there... but they didn't make that route so it just ended up being stuck there like a sore thumb and making us feel bewildered about that choice of theirs... I'm not going to waste my time and search to find if this is true or not... but this is the only real explanation for all of this...!<

>!It is true that they tried to add more to that plot using the extra stories, but those do not really justify it... even seeing her POV for the whole thing still makes me feel like something is missing... but they at least wrapped up this plot as best as possible to not make it a hole in the story?...!<

Talking about the extra stories you unlock after finishing the game, they were a mix between some interesting stories and some boring ones to the point of forcing me to read another VN literally at the same time while I was reading this... most interesting aspect was the fact that we saw lots of girls who barely interacted with each other before meet here and... slice of life! slicing the life in front of us without the need of having Yuna's POV v-v

But I will say that I did feel wrong sometimes about how the girls acted in those stories... they felt a little bit not like their true selves from the main story... that can either be because Yuna's POV is different from the truth, or because the writers for those were different... either way? it is fine, but I always noticed something off about it @_@

But it was super annoying how you unlock them, go forward and then need to go back in plot again... the chapters in this story are shown in a calendar system, on this calendar you pick a day from a month and then you pick what story you want to read in that chapter... to read a story from the later months and then go back to the early months and then go forward again and back...

This keeps going, and it gets annoying at some point! Like I feel lost about what plots happened at that place and how the characters should act, if they were couples already or if they were fighting, all of this matters in their way of acting toward each other... so they keep mixing their moods and it gets tiresome ~_~

Put in mind that I enjoyed it at first when I first started this game! I liked this way of doing things, I even enjoyed seeing how you can relive the same main story but from the POV of the other girls and see what they thought about everything that was happening, their monologues were interesting...

But at some point you start asking yourself, "Do I really want to see this?..." when I realized the girls are just not clicking with me, I just felt like this was a waste of time... I was spending my time in rereading the same plot and the plot itself wasn't really that interesting to relive through it multiple times... the main plot was easily the most fun, but rereading it right after you already read it?... that was deal-breaking for me...

Which takes me to another point, the worst thing about that system with ease was how it forced you to go through all the girl's POV, to read all the routes of the girls so that you can step forward in the story... at the start of the game? I legit took some time off making a plan about what route I would read and what ones I would skip for now... just to discover I legit was forced to read them all... that was annoying!

Later on I understood why they forced us to read them plot-wise, and tbh? none of the couples stories was horrendous to the point of dropping it... I mean I was already thinking about doing that because everything put together is just not good for me, it wasn't the fault of a certain couple... except maybe the teacher x student, that one was super dum-dum at first T-T I do like both characters individually, but how their ship sailed is just something I don't like...

Btw, I keep referring to most of the characters by describing them... sometimes I would open the game page to check their names, but I also get lazy to do that... why is this happening? because legit none of the characters are worthy of me remembering their names! and because am legit bad with names even in real life... but for this review's sake, we would blame the game!!! V--V ok let's put some of the blame on it, I mean I remember Yuna-chan's name... and let's put some of the blame on me also ,-,

I thought about ranking the ships, but I legit don't care about them at all... should I just pick my favourite? ok, the 2 ghosts... is that good enough?... I do have a simple ranking for them in my mind, but they are mostly all close to each other's in level... it really doesn't matter to rank them @_@ or even to rank the girls... none of them connected with me deeply...

Unlike how most of the FLOWERS girls legit made me fall in love with them! I made a ranking for them and for their ships... aaah I was having so much fun last year when I was reading that legendary series... no other yurige is going to be that good, huh...

Back to my point... maybe I should just say who is the worst ship?... that would be the 2 athlete girls... those 2 were just... *sigh* I don't even want to remember their shenanigans, it was getting me so tired to go through their stories even though they didn't have any of the worst plots in the game, but they were just... dull.

It was just mainly their characters themselves... like, they weren't interesting at all! compare them to like Megumi, a character I really didn't like at first, she was annoying... but that way she annoyed us the readers? the more I saw from her the more endearing it was... it was like seeing your younger sibling being a little mischievous cutie... I really liked that bratty side of hers.

Or how jealous she was! yes it was annoying, but that jealousy is real and any real woman would tell you it is very true and hits close to home to any girl who read the story, Megumi was written masterfully... sadly, she didn't get any amazing plots to use her correctly when this game kept trying to be as safe as possible with the most boring struggles...

This is also a case for lots of the other characters, you can feel that some of their quirks and characteristic features could be used quite well, they were well written, but no plot at all was there to make them shine! I feel sometimes lost when I think about how this +30 hours game couldn't really write anything interesting for them and most of what happened was nothingburger...

Like, I wished for Maki to show more of her boyish side! that plot was interesting, but they used it one time and right there at the end... and that is it!!! that was the only time I truly enjoyed her ship... I wanted to see more of Aki going after Koba very strongly! also something that just happens at the end... Tsukuyo-chan being the top in her ship was also something very cute to see! and it happens at the end... like, lol? everything interesting is just happening in the last 15% of the game! everything before that was just building for it... but they could have easily reached that point waaay earlier! they didn't need to take all of this time... I was so bored throughout the whole read ,-,

I liked Sachi-san's character, but her plot "reveal" was one of the most "Ha? what do you want now?" I have ever said... it was really really reallllly a nothingburger... and she was hyping it up the whole game...

Hina-chan >!being the love interest of Yuna was robbery in the middle of the day... her being a childhood friend for Yuna and how they are pretty much like sisters is very nice... her character on the other hand? and even her VA...!<

>!Don't get me wrong, I love Yuuki Kajita, her role as Karen in that one game? she legit stole my heart! she was the greatest thing in that game and the only reason that legit pushed me to finish it even though it had one of the worst TLs known to humankind... but her role here?... even her, in the commentary sections said a big part of what she said was just "Hnn" the nodding voices... I know this is her character... but her character is shit XDDDDD!<

>!Even in the serious parts she just sounds dull!! everything about Hina was sadly just bad or average if I want to be generous and sell my land for 1$ to the settlers... and my lands? are literally a continent... yah, this is the generosity I need to show to let it pass... especially when it is the one and only ship for the game's protagonist!!<

>!If we had that Ano route? I would've been fine... but Hina is the only thing we got and this is supposed to be the main ship of the game... which btw, it only started in like the last 2 months?... so in the last 10% of the game... again with those devs and putting everything to the last bits!!<

>!But this one is crazy! to put the main ship last? so we saw all the other ships in this game since early stages, and they spent all of their time building them... that was fine with them?... to make us so bored because of this... that was fine with the writers?... but to write what is supposed to be the main romance right next to the ghosts ship, is not necessary? lol?? what were they smoking or drinking or whatever they were doing!!<

>!Through the whole game, Yuna and Hina are just interacting normally, nothing special between them at all was happening... even the potato scene, which I liked btw wasn't really considered as something romantic or leading to this point... I think the writers wanted to drop this as a twist? but... who are they fooling here? the players who thought the main ship is either Hina or Ano?... so we lost the Ano route to get... that shitty one instead? and it only happens in the end without us feeling its existence at all? when I will leave this game for years, do they think I will remember this at all? I finished it a couple of hours ago and I already don't feel like remembering it at all while I still remember the other ships! Wooaah what a fumble...!<

Talking about the calendar, if I would add some other point to the technical stuff, the game got one of those super duper annoying engines that makes you incapable of taking a screenshot... I HATE IT when games do this... you need to go out of fullscreen mode, then go back in to take one for the same scene you are watching... if you don't do this? you will get a screenshot for a previous scene... how does that even work? I got no idea! it doesn't even make sense when I think about it... but multiple games have this... and it is not because of my device, most of the other VNs and games in general work perfectly fine... ~_~

Btw, this game also has that funny yurige rule of "No males", we get barely any mention of males, they never get shown here. But the ones I saw in other yurige didn't have any voice acting for them, or even sprites... it is always funny and mentally ill when it happens xDD

like, in yaoige... women still exist! all the yaoi games that appear to me have some girls in the cast, the yaoi players are not mentally broken to the point of asking for them to not exist in the whole world!... This is why I call them YuriMONG, and this is coming from a real life yuri... asking for a whole gender to disappear, is just weird and wrong... especially when the ones making the VNs are mostly men, they are gone? who is left now? The artist? Maybe some of the writers?... what can they do alone... both genders are necessary, even if men were lesser.

Localization is... not the worst part of this game, I somehow forgot if it was going ""overboard"", but I think it is fine in general? don't remember getting angry because of it... this might probably be because most of my melties were caused by the game itself ,-,

The OST in this game was utterly shit and I mean it with every fiber in my body... I was legit fighting myself to listen to it... even though I play all my games with arguably a low volume for BGM... but this one forced me to even lower it more! At the start, I forced myself to keep it on so that I don't miss any OST that might be good... but there ain't any good OST! except "Milestone", that one was the only bright spot in this game's list of BGM... I even heightened the volume just for it... then I lower it the second the scene ends and cringe "We are all happy and world is rainbows and sheeeeit" other BGMs start playing... "Together" was fine, but it barely gets used ~_~

The Insert song, "AA Ai!" was the highlight for me... that amazing song... when I heard it first? I just went "Wait, is that Rita?..." and surprise surprise... checking the game's page, I didn't just find out that she did this song and also the OP and ED (this one is also amazing btw, sounds very much like her, which is something we like T-T)... but she is also voice acting Koba!...

I was legit opening my mouth when I saw that she is a real voice actress and not just a singer!... like, how talented are they, what the hell @__@ not only is she one of the greatest singers, the one who made those LB! songs that will never be forgotten by humanity, under the guidance of Maeda-sensei, but she also did a lot for the industry! a true talent... Rita, my beloved... and to this day she is still making songs .-. and her voice acting in this game was also amazing! I liked her character's bits and how she acted, the VAing carried it a lot but her character also in general was very easy to love even if she suffered from what the other characters suffered...

Talking about the VAs, after I finished the game and unlocked the commentary, I thought about only listening to the ones from the VAs I care about... a search in the game's page yielded another surprise... 6 VAs did double roles here... So 12 girls were them...... and I never noticed it at all until I saw it with my own eyes... but we don't appreciate how talented VAs really are ,-, tho they didn't make any of them do a full couple alone... that one would've been crazy... but I think I heard about this case happening before? @_@

Also, do not forget about Kei Mizusawa... That one I noticed earlier... Yuna legit get more lovable after I noticed that... When I started hearing Yuzuriha-senpai in her?... Yah, that was when she won me T-T

The artstyle of this game wasn't to my liking. It is not bad at all but the style itself is just not something I feel like wanting to see... the character designs themselves are fine, the CGs are great, even with that style, their usage and the placement of them was good. Same with their composition, honestly? I got some CGs I think I will use in the future @_@

The sprites on the other hand? they are good, but I legit found myself rarely looking at them and most of the times I was just reading the text... I noticed that way later @_@ I usually focus more on sprites, but I rarely do that here and barely took any screenshots to begin with, don't feel like the sprites looked nice for me to use them in the future...

Again, the artstyle is not bad, it is just me who is being difficult here toward it... I remember other anons saying that they liked it, good for them and anyone else! but I'm sure that not all artstyles are made for all people... maybe except Key's and Innocent Grey art... how can you hate them? @_@
>remembers the whole drama about Nagisa's design that happened recently on Xitter
Ok some people are just weirdos, it can't be helped...

Before I end my review, I blogposted my whole experience on my Xitter account... if anyone is interested in seeing my thoughts live or my reaction to specific scenes? you can do it here~

/ourverdict/ a very conflicting read for me... I liked some parts of it, but in general? it missed the point in lots of metrics... I wished for more of certain things, and they instead gave me more of the stuff I didn't wish for... 3.9/10~ It might get higher if I listen to the Drama CDs in the future and my heart starts opening for the characters more... but it is for sure not passing the 5.5 mark ^-^

It is no news that Nitro+ has never made a new vn in years, and it is no surprise why they stopped. They opted to start making different types of games, and other activities, mostly exclusive to Japan with no global support whatsoever, something painful to see when you consider how they are easily one of the top 3 most influential visual novel studios, and their games have a big spot in the whole industry and that spot will always be there no matter how much time passes.

The company got multiple beloved titles, but in all honesty? they are mostly niche and exclusive to the vn community... but the Saya no Uta IP is different... it is the only game from them that I can safely call "mainstream", even me personally when I was still a child knew about it, back then I had some different thoughts about it, thinking it is a dark anime (there is actually an anime that kinda looked similar to it, I always thought they were both the same), and throughout the years, I saw larp upon larp for it...

Saya might be the most cosplayed vn girl, the title lives strongly today thanks to the e-boys and TikTok users in general... Which is why, Nitro+ might be using it as their gate to return to making new visual novel content~

The Morimens collab story... before we got deep into it, I think a little introduction to the game would be fitting here, especially from me, a newcomer who just downloaded it literally for this collab... I read the prologue and first chapter... your typical gacha story beginning and writing... I mean this in the worst ways possible.

That was like 2 hours of story? it took me multiple days to finish them from how boring they are... Yah, I can't read gacha stories anymore now that I mainly read visual novels, it is just not the same, gacha writing and way of doing things is clearly inferior in such a way it brings me pain... multiple anons told me to keep reading it and that it would improve... but they also said they liked chapter 1, how can I trust someone who liked literal slop and trust their words and waste weeks to finish a story that will probably suck?...

As someone who put +10K into playing gacha? I know that the words of those communities can not be trusted... the game had an acceptable ost and gameplay, but those are things I would never care about if the story is just simply bad.

Song of Perennial Wandering... the Saya no Uta collab... From the first PV we saw of it, it was announced that NITRO ORIGIN is supervising it... hearing this? I had all hopes up to get a fun story and a nudge back to the greatness of Saya's game...

What we got in the end?... a full collab of the story's protagonist recapping some parts of the main story to Saya as a way to solve her new made-up troubles after she suddenly gets isekaied to the game's world with amnesia... but you can't write a more dogshit story than this and expect someone who came here just for her story to be fine with this...

This collab was clearly made up mainly for the fans of the game, and not the newcomer... as someone who just started it? They wanted me to finish all of the 7 main story chapters, to just get those references... but even if I did, those references were not heavy and the whole retelling of the main story was told in an ambiguous way so that those who are like my case could still """enjoy""" it...

The whole collab was what, less than an hour long? And most of it was literally a nothingburger... Saya talking about her beloved who she forgot about, trying to erase the image of Fuminori from our minds. Sometimes the way she talked made me feel she was aiming her love toward this game's protagonist... There is nothing more saddening than seeing this. And I'm not even a moePIG who would get mad about those type of made-up "NTR" but in this context, I know gacha writers do this because their communities are a literal asylum. I've been there and know what type of weirdos they are...

Game's protagonist talking also about their beloved (which makes Saya kinda sad for being left alone in this world), everything is just happening at a bad pacing and us the readers are just in the middle lost and got no idea what is even the point of this story? like it literally felt like just telling us that "Hey, Saya still exists!" and that is it...

Why even make this? I understand the Morimens devs being happy about it, but Nitroplus really needed that?... you couldn't literally pick any other gacha and make a better collab? I know that the IP being originally an erotic media could make this hard, but isn't it super mainstream at this point to make this passable?...

I wouldn't have minded getting a whatever collab, but hearing that it was supervised by them just put a strong bitter taste in my mouth the whole experience when I realized how bad it was... and the sad part? it legit had great potential!

The opening scene was just tear inducing to see a Nitroplus new story and Saya being back (and I just read her game last year, imagine the reaction of those who didn't see her for years?), the event's CGs were legit very great and pretty, They made a whole ost album for this collab and it sounds fine!

Most importantly? A new Saya no Uta song {忘却の彼方} from our aunty herself, the legend Kanako Itō herself!!!! and it was such an amazing song! truly capture the fact that this is Saya, and we didn't see her in years and years... the love we harbor toward her, it was there... I think this song would end up in my list of the top songs for this year... this alone? makes reading this collab not a total waste of time T-T

There is even an English version of the same song, sung by Emi Evans... personally? I didn't like it much. But I know there are lots of fans for her and people are probably happy to get this version, so it is not a bad thing to do considering this collab's quality.

Sadly (yes, we need more sadness to this misery) the collab's story was not voice acted, but Saya as a gameplay unit did get voice acting from the original VA {Naoko Takano} so you do get some new voice lines to our daughter... Oh, and she did that one 7 minutes Drama CD... the content is pretty much nothingburger mostly, but I do like hearing her voice ,-, all in all? it was nice to have and appreciated ,--,

There are also some lore/story bits here and there throughout the game section, I grinded the game for two days to unlock most of them (learned I can just find them in the game's wiki instead of unlocking them personally... wasted my time, I did ^---^), some nice bits here and there, most of them are just empty words, but I did enjoy going through them...

I mean at this point I am as if I was someone lost in a desert and he just stumbled upon a cactus, he would start munching at it even if it would harm him if it meant his survival... Nitroplus gave me some bad bad Saya no Uta content... but I will take it like a champ V-V

We also got a stage reading, I talked about it more in detail in a previous thread I made a couple of days ago~ {Saya no Uta Stage Play~}

The interview that happened between Gen Urobuchi and Kotori Koiwai, a Voice actress who claimed Saya no Uta saved her life is also something quite interesting... most of the interview was talking about the game, lots of interesting points were mentioned here

How SnU was made as something closer to the "indie" games we got today, how Steam changed the industry, how his fear of dandelions could be a big reason of the birth of this game... most interesting one was knowing that the reason why Urobuchi's own works can be so amazing because he feels free to do whatever he wants while working on someone else's project would end up making him follow their rhythm while doing his best to not disturb them at all... makes sense why his touch is missed from lots of works that claim to "have" him working on them @_@ Sadly, he seems really not thinking about making a vn at all... but he is open to making more games, at least the unc is still here with us T-T

This interview holds more meaning to this post tho... Kotori Koiwai is not just a big fan of Saya no Uta, but she also wrote the lyrics for the collab's song that was sung by Itō-sensei! She truly captured the SOVL of The Song of Saya with it... I can honestly see her as a TRVE fan T0T

But there is something quite interesting happening here... the fact she goes into this interview, and then Urobuchi-san agrees to do it very fast... then she also did this collab, and am sure he also knew about it and gave his blessings to it... then he did a special interview for the stage reading... and guess what? she was there and she saw it... this is like them being there for all of the Saya no Uta new activities... isn't that crazy? am not going to throw a theory or something wild, but it is just interesting to see so much love to Saya after so many years of her lonesome...

Btw, those who knows about the live-action movie adaptation that was in the work since long time ago... Savin Yeatman-Eiffel (@EiffelSavin), the creator of Oban Star-Racers was supposed to be the one making it... he did miraculously acquire the license to do this adaption for the IP...

We know he was at the stage of wrapping things up to look for financial partners... that was like what, 9 years ago? and to this day? he never said it was canceled... he knew this project would take a long time to happen... but did he really expect it to take THAT long?... or did things not work out and he just don't want to admit it... I did make a tweet about it asking him (I didn't DM him, don't want to annoy him and am shy) and hopefully he will see it one day and answer this... more importantly? hopefully he one day just give us the final answer T-T

There is a clear push for the merchandise of this work of art, and it is quite easily noticeable... the merch that were being sold in the stage reading, were sold like butter also... and we are getting 3 new figures releases in the span of nearly 1 year? considering the last figure we got was in 2017 (re-released in 2020)... this is truly something big!

Those are clear indicators of something... just in about 1 year, we are getting all of this... and Nitroplus is still making new version of their games, mainly ports and small stuff... but this is enough to give a small speck of hope in my darkened heart...

What if they are preparing for their return? they also did some other gacha collab using their IPs, I remember them using them in some online projects other than those for lottery and merchandise...

What if they will give us this one last gift, a game that will have all of their SOVL, to check if the industry and humanity itself is worthy of having them?... what if Project Vermilion is that last dream... what if Narahara was being held in Nitroplus's basement for the last 10 years, writing the ultimate visual novel scenario, a +200 hours sequel to Muramasa that will shake not just this medium, but even the ones that are close and far from us... Narahara and Nitroplus going all out... I want to see this~

If you missed out on it, a couple of months ago, it was announced that Song of Saya is getting a stage reading. And all the plays happened around a month ago... Urobuchi did contribute a little (they made an interview with him and the play's director/scriptwriter that was exclusive only to those who went to the play, no one shared it online as usual)...

From what I have read online? it seems like it was a very passionate work, everyone who watched it liked it in general. But the theater "etiquette" in Japan is something else... 0 coverage, to even say we are getting crumbs is an exaggeration... no one recorded them, and they are probably never happening again...

but the most informative info I got about the play was from a chuuba who is also an actor and she did play the game (most of those who watched the play and talked online didn't) and is a self-proclaimed big fan of it, 神座ムク - Muku Kamukura -... she made 2 short streams talking about her experience with the play! she watched it in total 4 times... I found some interesting bits (will bold them) and thought about translating them as best as I can (Baby-JOP) :-

1st stream:-

-she thought about how it is hard to turn into a play because of the +18 elements, her being an actor and all

-play starts at the hospital scene when the MC and Saya meet for the first time

-the characters are doing narration similar to the game and they are doing it fast, so you could miss the plot and lines quite easily, you should for sure read the OG work before watching it

-she says it is fine to just go and watch the play if you really want to

-all +18 scenes are cut like everyone thought

-the gore scenes are also all mostly gone, the play is easy for those who can't handle gore to watch it

-the game's BGs were shown using some type of projecting thingies

-the 2nd half was cut waaay more

-the doctor scenes were cut very heavily, only the diary scene was shown

-the play was 2.5 hours

-the final scene was butchered and very rushed

-it ends with the same ending as the true ending

-one of the Saya actors didn't have the AURA and wasn't petite enough for the role even though she was "pretty"

-last scene was tough on all the watchers

-the play ends with "沙耶の唄" playing

-she wished the play's scene was more directed to fit with the song

-she talked about her hard time at the merch booth there and how they only accepted cash and how the timing was bad between the play and the booth time and lots of nothingburger talk regarding this

-she spent the next minutes unpacking the pens to see what she got and also checking on other things she purchased

-she went for the play wearing Saya-coded clothes

-there were lots of merch, more than she expected

-the play in general was good and better than her expectations

-you still 100% need to play the game after it and not leave it at that

-she did a full walkthrough of the game, if anyone cared

2nd stream:-

-she watched the play again

-she is still wanting more merch

-she cried when she got supportive comments

-she realllly loves Saya no Uta , keeps mentioning this fact

-she watched the play 4 times and wrote some notes she will share soon

-she cried the first time and started holding herself in the later ones

-she keeps talking about the novel adaptation, not just the VN

-in the first video she rushed her points and now she will talk about them with more detail

-she believes the story is about true love

-the MC was talking very fast and couldn't deliver that love, until the last scene where he went slow and delivered it

-because of how fast he was talking the whole time, she couldn't think about any of it as true love the whole time

-she keeps talking about the actors, I couldn't get connected to her words in this part, tbh I don't care about them and nothing really important was said

-they didn't deliver the ending scene through with their acting and didn't show the love, it felt more like a deal to her, but the effects in that scene were the best ones

-Saya was like a Pokémon in that one scene when the MC called to her (she is making a joke about that one fight at the end)

-Ito Kanako AKA the S;G singer did a mini-live and she sang the SnU song

-She wished she sang more of her other songs and not just one song

-there were talks about other Nitro+ games

-The last Saya was the best one showing the most emotions

-The Saya who was out the most was the most liked by her but her description of her doesn't make her very fitting for the role in my eyes

-each play had 6 actors doing the MC part, it was a very tiring role so one actor would've been hell for them

-she at first thought the play wouldn't work and be really Saya no Uta, she went there just to get the merch and check the vibes but she ended up watching it on the first day and enjoying it

-the actors were becoming more and more true to the characters with each new play

-she talks about her experience as an actor and how they wish to show the best version at day one but naturally the later the version the more polished it will be

-it was a stage reading but she felt like it was a stage play because of how much it was moving

-she got used to how fast the characters were speaking to the point of feeling like they were speaking normally

-merch was getting sold very fast

-mentioned Bokyaku Zenya (Morimens in English) she views the 7 minutes' drama CD as a love letter from Saya to the MC, she liked it, didn't play the collab though

If someone else was also interested in the play and can provide some extra info, it would be very appreciated. We don't get Nitro+ stuff daily T-T

The A Kiss for the Petals series... I learned first about it because of the anime... you know that very catchy OP it had? I always found it being used online in AMVs/MADs and stuff... it was very harenchi back then for me and I always looked away when it was playing... but I liked the song... skip to 10 years later? I found out it was originally a VN series... and a very massive one!...

The game I want to play is specifically that +15 hours one the anime clearly adapted... but before it, there are 3 sagas... 10 games I need to beat first... am not sure if I really need to play them, I might be fine to just skip them and go for the one I want... but I know that I will not like doing this, am always about playing the games I want to play in a way that will always make me end up having the most fun out of the experience... what if there are references and homages about those games in it?... I can't just skip it... I need to see how that studio started and reached the point of their greatest creation... and for that? this marathon started~

Let it be clear that I used to always think yuri is cringe... I don't know why I had this image? I think because the posts and clips I used to get about it were just not hitting me? even though am a yuri in real life lol... but after playing the FLOWERS series? I just realized how great yuri can be, this series is on my top games ever list. And the romance in them was one of the main pluses, next to everything else in it that was done greatly.

After that, I played Yuri Spirits on the Roof, didn't like it much, just clearly way inferior and not fun in general... What I learned is that you can make good yuri and bad yuri, it really depends on the creators to make this theme work, but sadly? it is way easier to mess things up and end up with a bad work...

This takes us to the Sono Hanabira ni Kuchizuke o series... The original game, My Dear Prince, and Joined in Love With You... I needed to put them all in one review so that I can talk more about them, I really can't imagine myself reviewing each one of them individually... I also wanted to give a fast introduction to my views on yuri in general and this work before I start commenting on it... not that I got lots to say about it...

The stories in all 3 games were pretty much basic. Calling what we got in them "story" is kinda exaggerated. The games were pretty much just h-scene spam... sadly? this simply killed all the joy and hype I had for them. You just can't do that and expect the reader to like the characters. What am I going to like about them? moaning well? looking disheveled while doing it? what am I going to comment on? the way they spew their fluids? I just can't understand why nukige are still a thing right in the middle of the Heisei era... am not going to keep yapping about my hatred toward that genre, let's go to the next point.

Each game had a "struggle" inside of it, a very slight struggle? you can honestly barely call it that with how they solved it... The first game had the heaviest struggle but they legit just mentioned it... and then totally ignored it? xD The 2nd game was the one that delivered the most regarding this. It kept going at it until it was solved in an acceptable manner. Thanks to that, it was also the game with the most story? I legit feel like it wasn't as nuki-heavy as the rest... the 3rd game was the smoothest one, it did have some type of struggle but it knew how to just peacefully end it in a way most readers would like... personally? afine with what they did, I don't care that much about the plot of it.

The characters... if I were to rank them, it would probably be 3rd game > 1st game > 2nd game. The 3rd game had with ease the best characters, they were levels above the previous games @_@ I enjoyed them the most, their fun quirks and cute interactions...

I know they are present in the anime, hopefully the 11th game will be well written to show them in a better way than here... The rest of the games girls weren't bad, I did also find them fine. In general, not having a story is a really buzzkill for me that forces me to just not be able to accept them in my heart... btw, this is not related to them being in a nukige, I did like Nemu-chan even though she is from a literal shithole of a game...

Writing was fine (by nukige standards AKA the lowest of the low) in general, a couple of funny jokes here and there, the girls were never annoying and that is good. Nothing deep, just your average fluff nukige writing. I just want to add that I hated the use of the pissing fetish, this one needs to die at this point, it is just disgusting, I don't care if there are pigs who like it.

No, there is no freedom in this world for things like that, we give the green light and someone would start forcing scat and y'all would be like "They are free to shit in each other's throats don't ruin their fun!!!" Just stop being disgusting, how hard can this be? I hate when I read those bits (I legit went through so many scat works in other nukige T____T) and go full cringe...

Other choices pretty much don't lead anywhere at all, they each change like 5 lines? except maybe for the last game where if you didn't pick specific choices, you might end up missing some CGs and the game will get cut earlier by like 15 minutes before the true ending?

Art is nice looking, moe moe moe.... we love moe, so we're fine I guess? The sprite work is your average stuff. Worth noting, Yuuna for some reason looks SO big next to the other girls when she appeared in the sequels @_@ like, they always looked small next to her?... kinda funny. Some CGs were weird looking, but this is just because am too nitpicky V-V

The OST is very bland, nothing special at all and you will legit forget it the second you leave. It is suiting for the game, but they could have easily done better... oh, but ignore the fact that the first game's h-scene ost sounds like it is straight out of a rapege...

Before I started the series, I knew that it got a couple of Drama CDs... for this saga? ain't no way am checking them out... you are not going to write the story there and ignore the games themselves... I don't care how good they are, am not touching them as long as the series keeps being on this level... but there is a chance that the next games somehow miraculously win my heart... I might give them my time ~_~ the 11th game got the highest chance of doing this... if this is somehow possible.

The localization... the 1st game's TL was different from the 2nd and 3rd... personally? I found it to be fine for the most part, it is a very simple game with barely any story or character building, 20% of the text is like moaning xD but I found the 3rd game sadly the worst regarding how "localized" it was.

Or maybe it is the same level of localization as the previous ones but I noticed that because I cared more about the couple compared to the previous games?... it was more apparent here.

About the next saga... am not planning to start it right away... my plan was to go through all 10 games this year... but honestly? I don't want to feel burnt out from them... I think am in a positive position right now regarding them but I don't want to push myself too far with them... + I saw the covers of the next saga and all of them feel like they are sequels to the 1st saga? @_@ hopefully they are not remakes... if they were sequels? I think playing them next year would be fine... this is what I feel.

/ourverdict/ First game is 3.0/10, Second game is 3.4/10, 3rd game is 3.6/10 . . . Not a lot to unpack here, a Saga filled with nothing but h-scenes that were also nothingburgers... those ratings could get lower with the passage of time, but for now? I think it is where they reside... right there in the tiers of the other nukige I read... right at the lower half... We really don't hate nukige enough here ~__~

Post-Review Realization:- Before I posted the review, I checked online for the anime to make sure it really adapted the 11th game and not a way later game in the series... just to find out that no such anime really existed for this... "Ha?" in the calmest, most heartbroken tone left my mouth... Yes, there was an anime but it was some hentai, that is the one I saw some related gifs of from time to time online, but no OP for it showed and the one in my head was clearly not it...

I found another 2 anime entries for the series but those 2 are also clearly not it and they don't even adapt that one long game I kept mentioning... I did some fast searches and the anime in my head was "Sakura Trick"... based on a manga... it has got nothing to do with this series... lol? did I really waste my time here hyping myself up and building hopes for... nothing?...

Welp... I wasted +200 hours in Higurashi, this is not really the end of the world ^-^ I will keep playing the series until I finish "Maidens of Michael" at least... then I will decide based on it what to do with the rest of the series... but oh boy what a disappointment xD

The highest quality anime related to the series though is built on the 3rd game in this Saga, I guess everyone else also found this couple the best?... that is something... I really can't bring myself to talk about this anymore, my mind is broken after discovering I was delusional about all of my childhood...

Can't be more KINO...

Another typical dating simulator... it is a weird mix between moege and nukige... surprisingly? when I replayed it again to pick my 2nd choice for the h-scenes (this is pretty much the only choice in this game and they don't matter), I realized that this game legit got lots of CGs that are not made for the h-scenes... something I have never seen before for any other nukige @_@ this is why I consider it a mix between both genres... honestly? I was happy they did this. This made the game have less h-scenes, and more story building... I appreciate this. For sure wished for more story and less h-scenes than we got, but I understand this is not the type of game to do this for me...

The story was just your average nothingburger moege story. The issues the heroine had were solved by the MC just existing and you can pretty much say they got solved by her maturing more with time after having a boyfriend?...

The protagonist's character is not bad. He is quite realistic, not much personality but that is fine... the heroine on the other hand? I liked her for most of the time. The way she speaks and lots of her quirks and personality are very realistic and similar to real-life girls! something I rarely feel from moege. But I truly hated that lack of self-trust she got and the wish to please others... I know this is her whole thing in this game, but because of it, we got her buttering up the MC so much it disgusted me... the way she spoke made me feel like she was a hooker trying to please some dirty loser pig otaku... like, the writer was going for the realistic approach in her writing and then they just turned to this?... her h-scene dialogue and some of the outside ones were so painful to read... she was going like "Your way of breathing and intaking air is so great and cool and hooot please dooo mmeee~~~~" or some equal level of cringe... please, what is this? I can see girls going for this approach with an older guy if they wanted to like scam him, yes, we are cunning like this when it is necessary for survival... but to do that with some poor virgin salaryman? wwww? why... ~_~

Writing had some funny bits. Weirdly, I liked the side characters and found them to be interesting. One of the rare times those spriteless characters were worth a damn @_@

The h-scenes were just boring, not necessary at all. The rest of the CGs were fun, not sure if they used them in the best places possible but they were fine. The biggest problem with them was the art itself... same with her sprites, they are good in quality... for most of the time @_@ sometimes it legit just looks weird or uncanny... it has got to do with something with the way they draw her mouth? I have noticed some weirdness throughout the whole game and on lots of occasions... this is one of the reasons why I couldn't take lots of reaction images here...

The translation is sadly too localized. Like most cases in this industry, it is 100% avoidable but we got localizers who are legit untalented. The OST of the game is fine for it, you forget it the second you leave the game, nothing worthy of mentioning.

My biggest shock in this game was... how short it was @_@ legit ended up so surprisingly and at a certain point where it felt like they baited me for a future story arc... I never believed it was over until I made sure it was by searching online... I knew it got a Drama CD that is pretty much a sequel? I tried to search online to find it but I couldn't... tbh? even if I found it, I wasn't going to waste 2 hours of my time on it... I really didn't care about this game, what can a voice-only sequel do? xD

/ourverdict/... 3.2/10~ it wasn't the worst game out there... but... why waste 5 hours of your life here? @___@ just play something good...

Can anyone please share them with me if you've unlocked them? ,_, I think it'll take me quite a while to unlock them myself...

On a side note, to my knowledge, every written piece of text related to her lore can be found in:

• The event story
• Awakener Stories
• The Library (both in the Characters section and the Wheel of Destiny section)
• The radio drama

...Am I missing anything else? @_@