Ochiba no Mau Koro 落ち葉の舞う頃 [Noa]

Foreword: Sword apprentice protagonist and two fighting heroines (short swords and bow) were all that it took to lure me to this game.

Title: Ochiba no Mau Koro
Developer: Noa
Date: 2003-10-24
VNDB link: https://vndb.org/v5367
Youtube walkthrough: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuf4kv1b9hg&list=PLs4Gp5VU4Fv--j9jctcdQ0zRtWU4dw7pU

Synopsis: Amami Kouji lost his parents in an accident when he was a child. After that he was adopted by his father's friend Kusanagi Keisuke, the chief priest of the Shinto shrine of Misaka City. Since then he has lived with Keisuke and his daughters, Makoto and Minato.
In the accident he didn't lose only his parents, but his left eye as well. Now he is learning the art of swordsmanship and he's too good for someone with only an eye: even though his left eye can't see anything, it allows him to “see” impending dangers and other people's killing intent as “lines”. He calls them “death lines”.
One day he's having lunch on the rooftop of his school with Makoto, Minato and his friend Kaiji, when he notices a girl, Hirasaka Suzuka, getting bullied by three girls. After rescuing her they make friend.
Two days later he meets a girl, Haruka Lichtenbein, who recently moved from England to Misaka and got lost on her way home, and decides to help her.
As the time passes by, strange events happen in his city. Strange monsters appear and attack girls on night. And a strange blond-haired guy seems to have something to do with all these events...

Game type: School SOL with some demon extermination ancestry
Difficulty: Relatively
Character Design rating: 6/10
Protagonist rating: 5/10
Story rating: 4/10
Game quality: 6/10
Overall rating: 5/10

Rating comments: Story hardly exist here, while composition and shortness deliver finishing blow.

Protagonist: Kouji is supposed to be our great sword fighter, but we never see his face, only yellow hair in a ponytail couple times. He wants to become more powerful to protect everyone... all the usual stuff.

Characters: There are four heroines, but I only played fighter heroines routes - that is main heroine shrine maiden Makoto with a bow and mysterious half-foreigner Haruka fighting with short swords. Haruka is quiet and intelligent, so I at least could enjoy her personality. Makoto is all the usual genki osanajimi way.

Story: Synopsis actually tells the whole short story that happens in the game. There's a transfer student and just two fight scenes at school against the same opponent - not so successful at first, and the final one. That's it, game only takes some 4 hours to beat each route, so there's not enough time for anything more serious. Story is a total sham. All this fighter entourage is just to attract some chunige folks. Game is much more about SOL than action scenes. It shames the whole fight concept and has long ways to go for real representatives of the genre like Heart & Blade. It's sad to see such frauds presented as a real thing.

Technical difficulties: 
Hooking this game is a world of pain. Normal memory threads aren't found, and word-by-word threads differ at different parts of the game. It can go well for an hour with the current thread, but then there is 5-minute scene that needs searching for a different memory thread, and return to the previous one afterwards. As a result, a few scenes in the video remain without hooking.

Overall comments: Everything in this game just scratches the surface and goes on. I really detest such shallow games unable to concentrate on anything. No good story, no good drama, no good SOL, no developed characters. I'm going to rate such fraudery as low as possible.

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