u/garfe

He's out of powers but he's not out of options

First of all ^^She cute

Time to talk about a VN I'm pretty sure not a lot of you have ever read or heard of but I finished it recently and after sitting on it for a while, I wanted to give my thoughts on it because I really felt like I had to write something after all that. There's basically no way to talk about this without spoilers everywhere so you've been warned. This will be probably long and is mostly me spitting about whatever

TL;DR I fully praise the art, soundtrack, and initial eerie atmosphere and note its heavy adult content. However, despite a strong common route and a couple of lovely ladies, the whole narrative falls short as later routes prioritize H-scenes over plot development. Ultimately I express my frustration over numerous weirdly handled plot points, vague lore explanations, and an unsatisfying true ending

So I was horny bored and got it in my mind to check out something I'd never even heard of. And I chose this. Hyakki Ryouran no Yakata(https://vndb.org/v21185) is from Astronauts: Sirius. A studio that doesn't have any of it's titles officially in English but will soon with Labyrinthos. I was drawn to this mainly from the art. It looked incredible. Additionally when I started the game, it blasted with this unbelievable OST that just hooked me in from the sound alone.

The premise sounded pretty typical and there's a good chance you've probably read something with this setup already. MC finds a mysterious mansion which happens to have multiple beautiful women in it. He is offered hospitality and comes across either a mystery or something dark and needs to escape. Along the way, a lot of sexy stuff happens. I've described multiple VNs with that setup and honestly, Hyakki Ryouran isn't that different. Main thing here though is Yoshito, the MC, gets put in a betrothal competition rite against other men for the hand of one of the ladies and the mystery is centered around that

What got me interested was the setup. The story railroads you into a 'common route' of sorts that takes you through a run through of MC's time in the mansion. After finishing this and seeing things go wrong, then you are much more open to pursue heroines. But that common route is very intriguing. It throws a shock at you early on >!with some very very heavy incest going on!< and doesn't take it's foot off the gas with setting up the mysteries of the rite itself. Though, unfortunately, it did sort of spoil its own twists early as in one scene where Yoshito is in the library, he comes across a book >!titled "the dangers of the multiverse" or something like that and anybody with a basic VN knowledge can probably guess where this will be going.!< However, as said, the start route is good and gives the reader motivation to see this through and want to save Ririka who is the true heroine, not like that's a shock.

The biggest strengths in the VN are its creepy vibe, it's lovely art, and how it unravels it's mystery. And the H-scenes aren't too bad either (there is a lot of them. One of them is I'm pretty sure the longest H-scene I've ever seen >!it's the harem route bad ending where MC just takes all the girls for himself. It was so long, it was comical. Like 2 hours or something.!<) I heard Astronauts titles had a thing for the butthole and boy did this title prove it. For the first couple routes of the VN, it excels at this. Namely Aya and Fumika. Oldest sister and mommy, wew lad. They offer some good stuff. Unfortunately, the problems started showing up after these two with Yuri and the subroutes connected to her. These routes drop the vibe, mystery and lore and just go all in on the sex stuff. Tiny hints are tossed here and there but nothing like the reveals of the first two routes. And imo, that was an issue because I was really enjoying what I was getting before. While I enjoy some good H, I am annoyed when something with a narrative gets pushed on hold for it. I was basically kinda drifting through the H-scenes with these routes. However, I pushed though because I figured my misgivings would be solved with the final route.

They were not

Ririka is super cute and all but as I went through the route and finished it, like I realized a lot of questions explicitly didn't get answered. This VN does this thing I hate in some plot-focused VNs where they >!leave the full answer kinda vague but still allude to it.!<>!For example, !<

>!-So was MC looping with the necklace he found or not? They kinda set it up with him remembering his professor talking about multiverses and the necklace that apparently exists in all timelines but they don't go into detail. !<

>!-We don't ever actually see "god" which pissed me off after all that foreshadowing about what's in the cave. We get an idea in one of the bad ends with the guy who goes insane, but not the full thing. !<

>!-In the first ending for Ririka, despite leaving the mountain, she's still got her universe accessing god powers. So nothing was resolved? I thought the maid which is the final unlocked heroine was going to answer this but she was just there to have a route and a 3P ending (which I liked and all but still)!<

>!-What the hell was that kid the gardener had with him in the end of Fumika's route? I think the implication is it's supposed to be the growth in the basement but it's not made clear how he was able to grow it to full size or even what the significance of it was. Just cause? And why is he a magician?!<

>!-Ririka has a dog. MC comes across this dog many times in the mansion. It's always around when you make a choice to look around in the yard. It feels like a Chekov's gun. The dog does nothing. Why is it here? It even has a detailed character design!<

I have other things too but that's a general idea. I ended the VN having sooooooo many questions, I had to check to see if I really 100%'ed it and yeah. It's really like that. I came away thinking "Am I disappointed with this?" And after all that, I think I am. There was some good to it but I finished it extremely frustrated. The nicest I'll give it is a 6/10 for the art, the character designs, the vibe, the lore and the debauchery. But I have to take off points for not developing it's own damn lore properly, ignoring it for half the title and not knowing when to focus on sex vs story.

Ririka is cute though. They nailed her

I finished Natsu no Ame the other day and I wanted to share my thoughts.

I picked this up looking for a moege with some drama and I remembered I had this in my backlog for a while.

Ultimately, I must say It was quite good. This is the first VN I've read from Cube and I must say it made a good first impression. It had a different vibe than I was expecting as I did not expect some of the drama aspects to go has hard as it did. Rikako, (who is basically the main heroine and route should have been locked before doing the other 3) and her route was unquestionably the most dramatic but it was honestly pretty dramatic through all the routes. I was impressed with how it dealt with the fallout of the two routes with taboo relationships, teacher and half-sister, though the teacher had more consequences to it. Special shoutout to Midori for being a great 'friend that is a girl' even outside her route.

I also especially liked Natsuko, the mom. She was the most interesting character for being honestly really really bad at mother'ing yet being put in the situation she was in. But that was the whole point. Most of the time in VNs, parents are not around, unquestioningly supportive or secretly evil. So it was nice to see a mom being a human being flaws and all.

There weren't any egregious flaws, just some pacing issues from time to time. Sousuke playing soccer is very important to him and is a critical part of his character, but is only relevant for 2 of the routes. Maybe could have used a couple more CG variants in the H-scenes, a few times they would say something happening that couldn't really be happening in the position they were in.

A very minor thing that I liked was the text would sometimes do this thing where it would say a narration from a 3rd-person view but if it was a piece of dialogue, you would actually hear it from the character. For example, if the narration says "Rikako grumbled at Souske", you will hear Rikako make a cute grumbling noise and not "Rikako: *grumbles*

For heroine route rankings, I'd go Rikako>Midori>Misa>Hina, but all 4 were good. None of them annoyed me. Rikako was undoubtedly my favorite though. As I read the VN, I felt like her and Sousuke's dynamic felt like a diet Kazusa/Haruki with the themes of fear of abandonment in a relationship, falling in love despite everything against you, and some very amusing banter between the two. (Rikako and Kazusa have the same voice actress on that note) Midori was great as said already, Misa was an adorable sensei but went pretty deep in the drama and Hina was just okay. (I was surprised that the drama in Hina's route did not have to do with MC's friend having feelings for her) Speaking of which the male friend was also a good character

I give it a strong 8/10. If you want some SoL with slightly heavy drama, give it a look. Also, keep some donuts on standby. IYKYK.

Shoutout to Dat Boi Translations for fanTL'ing it.

I came to realize my favorite heroines are the ones that have some kind of back and forth with the protagonist. Be it gentle ribbing, amusing banter or downright antagonistic. Here are just a few that come to mind

Feel free to add more

Imagine having 3 new enhanced versions of the best games ever, the announcement of a new game in the series and FINALLY HAVING THE KART RACER WE DESERVE, ALL IN THE SAME DAY WE'RE EATING SO GOOOOOOOOOOOD

If you finished the whole VN, you know.