VNDBReview: Review

Foreword: Not the type of work I read usually. But game managed to conquer my heart with its opening song, as well as wonderful and various BGM. Actually, I would call it foreground songs rather than background music since those songs shine during the whole course of the game due to the fact that game's not voiced at all. But of course music alone can't be enough to keep attention. Shunpuu Shoujo has very beautiful unique art style and quite intriguing synopsis about celestial girl emerging in human world - such common synopsis was a base for lots of great visual novel stories of the past. But enough preface, let's begin. I'm sorry for the excessive number of screenshots - it's done because game has no CG gallery available online.

Title: Shunpuu Shoujo
Developer: Aquarium
Date: 1998-10-30
VNDB link: https://vndb.org/v15331
Youtube walkthrough: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLENAECnNmAq-u71AkUIovdrTzdPdIL0j9

Synopsis: Takuma Takuma is a college student. One day a girl Sari from another world appears before him. She said that she appeared to purify the conscious body possessed by Takuma and the should live together till that time. Takuma friends and girl classmates aren't really happy about that. Where shall the future take him?

Structure: 13 small chapters.
Length: 3-4 hours
Game type: Celestial beings on Earth comedy
Difficulty: Easy. Game offers a choice from time to time, but those are either flavor choices or additional CG triggers.
Character Design rating: 8/10
Protagonist rating: 7/10
Story rating: 5/10
Game quality: 6/10
Overall rating: 7/10

Rating comments: I always ask myself first whether the game is of masterpiece level or not. And if it's not, it can only get as much as 6. And I've come to a conclusion that it's a masterpiece, albeit minor. Character design is astonishing, but characters don't get too much development. Protagonist is ok, but in the end he's just a passive girlish student. Story is on par with Viper-GTS level, so decent, but nothing too complicated or notable. Game quality gets a huge penalty for absence of voicing and overall small length.

Protagonist: Takuma main feature is that he looks so girlish with his small slender body and long pink hair. That looks a bit weird, but only till HCG come in action. Seeing two small angels on the screen cuddling is quite heartwarming. Overall he's a passive graduating student and can't really move narration by himself.

Characters: Story does not have branches, so there is only one main heroine Seiri there. But there are also two lively side-heroines - childhood friend that attends the same college and lower grade student who looks up to protagonist as a teacher. Yes... even though Takuma is a college student he somehow participates in practice as teacher for lower high school students. It's relations between these four characters that form the basis of the game and become the stage for lots of humorous situations. Apart of those four characters there are also two more heavenly beings and lots of sub-characters.

Story: I rated story the lowest - as 5/10, so I'm not truly content with that. Takuma finds Seiri jumping from the portal and getting to know the cast takes first 5 chapters. Then first celestial being appears and brings some cheap drama followed by bouncing back and merry chapters again. In 10th chapter second celestial being arrives bringing more drama and finishing on Christmas eve sweet date. The very ending is curious though as it gives an answer on the future awaiting protagonists since the default situation is quite sad - Seiri is bound to return to her world and live forever while Takuma has to grow old like any mortal. Happy end is very satisfactory.

CG: CG here are so gentle and cute. I don't think I've seen art style like that anywhere before. It surely is a treat after today's absolutely the same polished art style dominating in both anime and visual novels.

Sound: BGM is an important actor in the game. For the first hour I was just listening to the BGM rather than enjoy character interaction. Soundtrack is especially cool because there is lots of singing in it.

Humor: Humor here is not high quality, but rather in form of funny faces, character sprite emotions, chibi action CG etc. Most of such CG depict someone hitting someone else or such. But same as with CG, even chibi style here is very cute and actually only half-chibi since it's the same body that's deformed and head is proportional to the rest of the body.

Title and Themes: Title can be roughly translated as "spring breeze girl". I don't think there's a special meaning to it, but Seiri is really so pure and shiny that she's like a breeze among other games' heroines.

Overall comments: Game's actually better than description above. It has special charm that can't be felt without seeing for yourself. It has unique magic due absence of voicing and unconventional CG and BGM. I'm really glad that Aquarium recovered from the ugly art of its first works Carrot Time and Pretty Cat ~Lily and Kyle no Daibouken~. But I also like that the company does not forget its roots - just look at the very first screenshot - it's Nyantaru Pu himself from Toki no Moto e! I'm happy to see Aquarium made it in the 2000s and will look forward to seeing its further eleven works.

Psyclone サイクロン [Vanilla]

September 07, 2018

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Foreword: I have not put a 10/10 score in a while. Psyclone is a classic cyberpunk story with sophisticated plot and great cast of characters. For genre fan it's an ultimate treasure. But game's not hookable, so I had to manually copy each line from the script for video playthrough. It was absolutely worth my time and I hope it can be worthy of yours.

Lofty Form [Aaru]

August 30, 2018

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Foreword: This game's synopsis shattered my imagination from the first second and only the rarity of the game stopped me from playing it at once. Did my high hopes of the game come true? You'll know soon enough.

Rougetsu Toshi 朧月都市 [Softhouse Bonbee Bonbon]

August 22, 2018

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Foreword: I was prejudiced towards this game after reading Japanese reviews blaming it for scrapping story in favor of H-events, but in reality the setting, plot and characters left me no choice but to get to the ending.

Liaison リエゾン～liaison～ [Bell-Da]

August 10, 2018

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Foreword: Bell-Da as a company has come a long way in visual novel industry, but prior to Liaison there were only terrible macromedia flash tasteless short games. But Liaison managed to turn the tides by presenting a solid story about working adults that kept my attention for over 4 hours till the end.

Touchuukasou 冬虫夏草 [Petit]

August 03, 2018

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Foreword: Game had hardy any characteristics but "degraded Kizuato" and I did not plan to make a review of it. However, it managed to keep my attention till the end for over three hours. So maybe it's not really bad?

Tsui no Sora 終ノ空 [KeroQ]

July 21, 2018

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Foreword: Game first arouse my interest as alternative version of Subarashiki Hibi. Then I tried to get the glimpse of it by watching hentai OVA... and it was the worst hentai OVA I ever seen, so I was really infuriated since it did not say much about the game. Finally I've picked it up while investigating year 1999 and it struck me as something more serious than a nukige, especially after seeing those demon mind-screw CG. And it's been a while since I enjoyed a visual novel that much.

Kuon no Kizuna 久遠の絆 [FOG]

July 18, 2018

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Foreword: There is a good number of English reviews on this game (1 2 3 4), but those are all kinda short and non-structured. Now I know why and mine won't be an exception. You'll know why soon enough as well.

Title: Kuon no Kizuna
Developer: FOG
Date: 1998-12-03
VNDB link: https://vndb.org/v2773
Youtube walkthrough: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLENAECnNmAq-CHIuWBfnU3DYzNCEcLjcV

Synopsis: This story starts out from the perspective of a high school student. One day a transfer student comes to his school, and tells him she’ll kill him. At the same time, he starts seeing weird dreams and people mysteriously gets killed in his city.
Soon he realizes that them two are incarnated personalities of a man and a goddess that fell in love 1000 years ago. Since then, they have been trapped in a cycle of reincarnation and a battle against an evil god.
Length: Took me 66 hours for all routes.
Game type: ADV with choices and couple easy battles.
Difficulty: I followed walkthrough, so not too sure on difficulty. There are some fake choices, but there are also choices that lead to game over. And there are a LOT of choices, so it must be quite difficult.

Character Design rating: 7/10
Protagonist rating: 8/10Story rating: 6/10
Game quality: 9/10
Overall rating: 7/10

Rating comments: This is one of the most ambitious projects I've ever seen. Just imagine - 66 hours. 66 hours of not raising stats, killing monsters or chasing girls over and over. 66 hours of pure text reading time. There's nothing like that in the 1990s and it won't be beaten till 2000s. You know, in many Japanese reviews of the time volume is a very important factor and there's often such criteria as cost-efficiency. Visual novels cost a lot and compared to solid books they used to lose all the time. But everything changed with Kuon no Kizuna. It became a paragon for both volume and visuals.
I liked protagonist and characters enough, but they don't become cozy. They remain transcendent beings piercing the veil of time in an epic story, not really likable characters who I could respect for their characters or decisions, that's why it's 7/10. The story is indeed epic, but it does not go smoothly. We jump from reality to three periods all the time and the shifts aren't really explained, they just happen. I also did not like it that the first half of the story is pretty much the same for all three heroines and we just have to read it three times with little variation. That makes story only 6/10. But the quality of the game is superb, especially with full voice (excluding the protagonist though). The graphics are stunning and visual effects amazing. No complaints with the quality.

Protagonist: Mikado Takeru is a strong protagonist as he constantly has to protect those who are dear to him and he's the only one who can oppose demonic forces thanks to his demonic heritage. He's a one man army and hardly ever gets any help from the side. He'd be more realistic with voice, but he's quite cool even as he is now.

Characters: There are three heroines who have their own routes.
Takahara Mayou is our mysterious transfer student who greets Takeru for the first time with words "This time I will definitely kill you".
Itsuki Shiori is a childhood friend who Takeru lives with under the same roof.
Tokiwa Saya is the class teacher.

Story: The rant part. So each heroine has her route... but it's the same route, at least for the first half of it. In the second half some periods are developed for each heroine, but still there's a very strong feeling that you're watching the same story and it irritates a lot.
There are four periods: Heian, Genroku, Bakumatsu, and the present. Present and Heian are really the same and those are the most boring parts, especially Heian. Heian focuses on a an ancient period of Japanese history where nothing really happened for dozens of years and that's why it's full of myths and legends - because there was nothing to do there. In Kuon no Kizuna Heian is when beasts invasion starts and it differentiates just a bit in the end depending on the heroine chosen throughout it. I especially liked Bakumatsu period for meeting and fighting alongside Shinsengumi (and sometimes against) and kunoichi.

But there is a great problem with these periods - they aren't really connected to each other. People can die there or love there and in next period everything starts from scratch. That creates the feeling of multiple stories and I really dislike that genre. Nothing really happens throughout those stories, then beasts arrive, the short drama and it's over. Heroines aren't really able to hold attention. But what's worse, the heroine of your choice have play very small role till the very end of each part.
But then comes the fantastic Special route №1 that arrived later with remake as an attempt to tighten the crumbling main story. Special route №1 lasts for some 7 hours, holds a totally new epic story with really great enemies and is a great ending for all the characters, so I can't praise it enough.
The Special routes №2 and №3 are there for comic relief after all that superserious narration.
So overall the story really sucks, repeats itself in routes and has poor tempo. But the great special route makes up for it.

CG: Just fantastic. See for yourself.

Sound: I really appreciated full voicing and beautiful BGM. That kept me from sleeping.

Overall comments: This game was created to surprise the imagination. It has huge length and astonishing visuals, but there still was no culture of such huge coherent stories - thus the multiple periods format with lousy links between them. Dialogues are long and not too meaningful, fights are inevitably dull and poorly written, heroines fail to catch attention and the absence of humor makes it all a real torture. The sudden jumps between periods only add to the confusion. But this game bears a huge importance for the industry as it made long story-driven visual novels without gameplay elements viable while only dating SIMs, charage and nukige governed the ball.

To Heart PSE [Leaf/Aquaplus]

July 09, 2018

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Foreword: It took me a while to get interested in this grandfather of all modern charage and moege. It took even longer to finish all the routes. I doubt I will ever pick a moege for review, but I need to see fundamentals with my own eyes. There are quite many reviews found, but only one of them (7nightstranslations) actually was reviewing a finished game, but still it was too short and only touched a few heroines. I'll have a word about each heroine at least.

Viper-F40 [Sogna]

June 14, 2018

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Foreword: Why review a Sogna game? Aren't those just short mindless animated H episodes? Those were my thoughts as well. And that was actually true for the earlier series. Then something happened in 1994. Instead of the usual numbers alongside "Viper", game Viper-GTS appeared and it was a one-story episode based on earlier V6 short story. Then followed titles with numbers, as usual till Viper-BTR which is a one story game based on short V12 story. But same as GTS, BTR is indeed ero-centered. And that concludes PC-98 era for Viper games. First Windows Viper is Viper-CTR ~Asuka~ which is as usual based on another previously featured short story in V10. And I actually consider Viper-CTR ~Asuka~ "almost" a masterpiece. Its only problem is that it only takes 50 minutes to clear it, but it's stuffed with four H scenes.
So why I'm retelling information that's easy to get from VNDB? It's because Viper-F40 is a totally different game and it's absolutely wrong to measure it by past Sogna experience. First of all, Viper-F40 has only one big story. That's not a new thing, of course, after GTS, BTR and CTR. But it is not based on any previous short story which means the setting and characters are created anew. And now the main part - the game takes almost 4 hours. And that's at least three times longer than any previous Sogna game. And I aspire to prove my point by showing that contents-wise it's also an absolutely new game.

Ai ga Mie Hajimetara 愛が見えはじめたら [C's Ware]

June 10, 2018

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Foreword: I really can't stand multiple stories visual novels. But this is C's ware work and the first story was really sweet, fast (just one hour long) and only included several non-significant choices, so I went for other two stories as well. And I promised myself that I would write a review on any game visual novel that I play to the end and that takes me over three hours to finish. So here it is - my first and hopefully last multiple stories visual novel review.

Rabyni ラブィーニ [C's Ware]

June 04, 2018

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Foreword: A C's Ware game at the mature period of company development, past DESIRE, Xenon and Eve:Burst Error. That's already enough to hook me. It has other attractiveness factors like title mystery that is Russian word Рабыни for "female slave". But why bother with Russian title in a nukige? Another reason is that cover has absolutely no premise for slavery. So mayhaps it's a sly puzzle that the company prepared for us? I'm more than willing to discover.

Angel Halo エンジェル・ハイロウ [Active]

May 26, 2018

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Foreword: Game has a very strong start and intriguing concept which made me play to the end. It differed from my initial expectations, but it's a very original and good-looking game, so I don't regret playing it.

Bounty Hunter Rudy バウンティはんたぁルディ [Scoop]

May 25, 2018

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Foreword: Game's obscure, but it has one absolutely overwhelming Japanese review (giving 8/10 score btw) which claims that the game has references to dozens of media sources. I'm not good with media of 1996 year and earlier, but even I could discern 5 sources. Visual novel is easy to read and it's a great laugh at times while preserving a solid and intriguing plot with lovable characters, tonns of CG and almost full voicing. I say it's a neglected masterpiece.

Shizuku 雫 [Leaf] VS Kizuato 痕 [Leaf]

May 22, 2018

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Foreword: Who does not know of Leaf company? Who does not know that its games Shizuku and Kizuato are considered the first modern type visual novels? But how many of us actually played those? There are some good English reviews of those (1 2 3 4 5 6 7) and I initially only relied on those as well. But the historical significance of Kizuato made me change priorities. Throughout the rest of 90-s and the first half of 2000-s I encountered quite many story-focused visual novels that are described by Japanese reviewers as "degraded version of Kizuato", so I really needed to see the original myself to get the proper idea. As for Shizuku... it came first and is a curious blend of old and new types of visual novels. Why did Leaf bother to make two remakes of it if it's a plain nukige about radio waves? Or maybe it's a dark-themed masterpiece akin to Moon by Tactics? I hope to answer those questions here. And I decided to make a comparative review to spice things up. Screenshots on the left belong to Shizuku, on the right - to Kizuato.

Lilith リリス [Four-Nine]

April 23, 2018

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Foreword: Game's totally obscure and there just one quite shallow Japanese review exists, so I'd probably miss this wonderful game unless saw Four-Nine as developer. And I'm really happy I did!

Fermion ~Mirai kara no Houmonsha~ フェルミオン～未来からの訪問者～ [Silky's]

April 20, 2018

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Foreword: I keep exploring the vast vaults of Silky's games. This time it's even more suspicious work - a full scale yuri game. But it has many SF elements and even has genetically modified mutants - knowing Silky's they would not settle with an ordinary yuri work.

Jack ~Haitoku no Megami~ JACK ～背徳の女神～ [Silky's]

April 19, 2018

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Foreword: There is a negative English review, but VNDB voting shows a decent 6.72 score atm and this is Silky's story oriented work, same Silky's that I praised multiple times for Kawarazaki-ke no Ichizoku, Reira Slave Doll, Ushinawareta Rakuen and Koihime. So I decided to make it to the end of Jack ~Haitoku no Megami~ no matter what.

Reira Slave Doll レイラＳＬＡＶＥ（奴麗）ＤＯＬＬ [Silky's]

March 07, 2018

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Foreword: Silky's company and Slave doll in title inevitably make us think it's a nukige, but actually it's a scenario oriented game. Moreover, that's retelling of a classic cyberpunk story about an android hunter - the story that was already told in visual novels by Imitation wa Aisenai and Snatcher. Did Silky's ruin the classic concept or was it able to produce a masterpiece? You'll find the answer in this review. That's actually infamous Raira on the screen.

Gao Gao! 2nd ~Pandora no Mori~ ＧＡＯＧＡＯ！２ｎｄ ~パンドラの森~ [Four-Nine]

March 05, 2018

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Foreword: It would be weird if I reviewed only three games of the serious out of four. So here is the leftover piece - and again a worthy one.

Gao Gao! 1st ~Radical Sequence~ ＧＡＯＧＡＯ！１ｓｔ ~ラジカルシークエンス~ [Four-Nine]

March 04, 2018

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Foreword: I did not expect much of the first game in the series, but was pleasantly surprised. It's a really long scenario-centered game that stands on the same level as Gao Gao the 3rd, just in less intriguing environment. It's well worth a review!

HHG Heart Heat Girls ハートヒートガールズ [Cat's Pro.]

February 23, 2018

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Foreword: This is one of the best masterpieces of the year 1993 and cyberpunk themed on top of that. I could not miss the chance.

3x3 Eyes ~Sanjiyan Henjou~ 3x3 Eyes ~三只眼變成~ [Nihon Create]

February 17, 2018

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Foreword: Game had already couple reviews, but those weren't too specific on the story, so I had to check it out myself in the end.

Gram Cats 2 グラムキャッツ２[Dott Kikaku]

February 15, 2018

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Foreword: I was quite intrigued by original Gram Cats concept - mutated humans fight with aliens and ordinary schoolgirl gets an ability to transform into cat and thus becomes a great spy. But the eternal maze of corridors prevented me from finishing that game. So I thought I'd have more luck with the second part to get acquainted with this SF setting.

Phobos フォボス [Himeya Soft]

February 09, 2018

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Foreword: Himeya Soft and C's Ware are basically the same people, so it would really be a shame to miss their first cyberpunk game, father of Xenon ~Mugen no Shitai~ and grandfather of luv wave. How deep is the story? How much torture does it imply on players? Does it already have mind-screw elements? I'll try to answer all those questions.

Shinjuku Monogatari 新宿物語 [Fairytale]

February 08, 2018

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Foreword: Fairytale is the main experimentation company of the early 1990s. And Shinjuku Monogatari is an attempt to go away from adult games for the sake of games that can keep the interest by the story and atmosphere alone. The history shows us now that it was a failure attempt from the start since adult titles with cute heroines are everything the populus wants. But was Fairytale really wrong in that intention?

Armist アルミスト [Basement]

February 07, 2018

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Foreword: I did not intend to play Armist to the end, but its game system was indeed player-friendly and the story turned out to be quite a serious thing instead of being a bakage, so it's well worth a review.

Eve: The Fatal Attraction イブティーエフエーアトラクション [C's Ware]

December 30, 2017

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Review 2001

Foreword: Again, C's Ware game and EVE on top of that. I actually played it before EVE Zero as a substitute for EVE:Adam Doublefactor, but decided to to keep it for a later time since it has some imminent spoilers for EVE Zero.

EVE Zero [C's Ware]

December 28, 2017

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Review 2000

Foreword: Phew, this game took a while to beat! Command selection was not comfortable after point-and-click EVE TFA that I finished before Zero. Eve Zero is best be played as the third game in the series, after EVE Burst Error and EVE Lost One.

Vist [C's Ware]

November 12, 2017

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Foreword: It's a C's Ware story game so I'm in. I have not read reviews prior to playing the game. I followed three different walkthroughs though - and still failed to get even a single happy ending. You can read about my torments below.

EVE: The Lost One [C's Ware]

November 08, 2017

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Foreword: If you do not know of EVE:Burst Error, you better stop here right now and go watch video playthrough of that gorgeous game. EVE the Lost One is a direct sequel to that game and there will naturally be spoilers on the prequel content. That being settled - I did not pay much attention to the Lost One right away and did not review it properly while observing year 1998. Japanese reviews failed even to give an outline of the plot and were generally not too favorable. Only after playing it myself I found out the perfect answer "why" and that will be covered below.

Refrain Blue リフレインブルー [Elf]

November 06, 2017

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I don't feel eligible to write a full review since I only listened to the voice parts of the game. And the reason for that is that the game is unhookable by any instruments. No threads are found at all. Still I'm confident enough on the grappled content to write my thoughts of it.

Silver Jiken シルバー事件 [Grasshopper Manufacture]

November 02, 2017

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Since there are so many reviews of it, there's no need in full review, so I'm just explaining my choice for this game to be the game of the month October 1999.

Kazeoto, Chirin かぜおと、ちりん [C's Ware]

October 29, 2017

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Foreword: It's a C's Ware game and these guys have not let me down even once. Unlike Re-Leaf which has quite a clear synopsis and multiple endings, this work is much more mysterious. I thought I'd get just another rural slice of life with some side mystery, but what I got was an ancestor of Cross†Channel with a global anomaly and looped story.

Chiruhana ~Kindan no Ketsuzoku~ 散櫻～禁断の血族～ [C's Ware]

October 11, 2017

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Foreword: I've been mesmerized by C's Ware game for quite a long time by now and I could not miss this work even though it's not my type of game at all.

Exodus Guilty エクソダスギルティー [Abel]

October 03, 2017

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Foreword: This is Kanno-san's scenario and I could not miss on it. There are a lot of good English reviews on the game so I'll try to just add some additional thoughts I have on top of those reviews.

luv wave / ラブ・ウェーヴ [C's Ware]

September 27, 2017

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Foreword: C's Ware produced so many good works that I inevitably had to observe each work very thoroughly. luv wave with its 3D half-naked girl on the cover looked more like a 3D adult movie than a cyberpunk game. Who knew then that it would be one of my favorite games.

DiaboLiQuE / －デアボリカ－ [Alice Soft]

September 21, 2017

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Foreword: I don't believe Alice Soft - they can only make eroge and bakage. But this game was highly praised overseas. Who knows, maybe it's the game that can overcome my aversion.

Canaan ~Yakusoku no Chi~ カナン～約束の地～ [Four-Nine]

September 11, 2017

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Foreword: The culmination of the series and the biggest jewel Four-Nine ever produced. I'm late with the review since I wanted to finish video playthrough first.

Gao Gao! 3rd ~Wild Force~ / ＧＡＯＧＡＯ！３ｒｄ ~ワイルドフォース~ [Four-Nine]

August 19, 2017

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Foreword: I've noted the series quite long ago, but only when approached 4th final work decided to play the prequel that's directly connected with 4th part.

Es no Houteishiki / Ｅｓの方程式 [Abodagio Powers]

August 11, 2017

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Foreword: I did not want to review it. But then I watched the hentai OVA of its preuel - Mystery of the Necronomicon (黒の断章 Kuro no Danshō) and it's a total blast. I highly recommend to watch it to everyone. A very memorable and bloody occult detective story. There was no anime version of the sequel, so I rushed in.

Be-Yond ~Kurodaishou ni Mirareteru~ / ビ・ヨンド～黒大将に見られてる～ [Silky's]

August 08, 2017

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Foreword: I hate bakage. And yet I'm reviewing yet another bakage. Why? Mostly because together with YU-NO, these are the last two works of the Great Elf/Silky's team, after that Elf is going to loose too many staff members and is going to rerelease old works for Windows, stamp eroge works alongside with slice of life works. No more crazy adventure spirit afterwards. It's a historical moment to visual novels industry. Oh and I liked the two hentai OVAs of it immensely back then. I'll assume everyone seen them since I'm going to compare these works.

Ushinawareta Rakuen / 失われた楽園 [Silky's]

August 03, 2017

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Foreword: I erroneously marked this game as eroge and now it's the time to check out what it's really about.

Merry Go Round / メリーゴーランド [Mischief]

August 02, 2017

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Foreword: Cyberpunk erotic action police story made me really curious. I was very skeptical of the Sammies review since he spent too much money to get windows version and turned to hate this work. And so I went to check it out myself...

Xenon ~Mugen no Shitai~ / XENON ～夢幻の肢体～

July 17, 2017

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Foreword: This is Keno-san's scenario. He did not have much experience when we was thrown to produce scenario of the game that we know as Love Potion in two months time. Critics buried the game and that's why there was much more care in producing next game scenario - that was DESIRE, the game that I can't praise enough. The next year Keno wrote scenario for EVE burst error and on the wave of popularity move to legendary Elf company where he kept working on EVE franchise and created another masterpiece YU-NO and then left for Abel company. He created a lot of wonderful scenarios after that but we're interested in Xenon ~Mugen no Shitai~ scenario. It was developed after DESIRE but prior to EVE. So it was the golden age for Keno and he was experimenting a lot, trying to further develop the already complex DESIRE structure. This resulted in Xenon -Phantom Limbs-.

Uchuu Kaitou Funny Bee / 宇宙快盗ファニーBee

July 12, 2017

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Another bakage from Alice Soft. I've no idea how to write reviews of such games. Guess a structured review won't go since there's nothing to discuss - there's no serious story or theme or interesting characters or anything worthwhile. All it has is bakage action, ero CG and lowest quality "variety" humor of stupid illogical events, not even sensible one. So I guess I'll just stuff it with images with some comments.

Demon City / デーモンシティ

July 03, 2017

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Foreword: I've played it in on a whim. Looked into synopsis and just could not believe that Cocktail Soft would do a full-scale fantasy eroge with rapist hero as protagonist. Fortunately, my belief in this old company prevailed.

Prostudent G / ぷろすちゅーでんとG

June 27, 2017

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Foreword: I do not believe in AliceSoft. As for me, they can only do that pornographic rapist Rance series over and over. So any work outside of Rance franchise is of interest to me to support or demolish this statement.

De-Ja 2 / デ・ジャ２

June 02, 2017

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Foreword: I liked De-Ja a lot so sequel was a natural choice.

Title: De-Ja 2

Original Title: デ・ジャ２

Developer: Elf

Release Date: 1992-06-25

Summary: After events of De-Ja you're the winner in life. You have fame, respect, money and the love of pretty Gachako. What else to wish for? New adventures and unveiling new mysteries, of course. You get intrigued by the story of "crystal skulls" and one mad archaeologist knows exactly how to find them...

ELLE / エル

May 11, 2017

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Review 1991

Foreword: I just had to try Elf adventure title. Now I joined the army of Hiruda scenario fans.
Title: ELLE
Original Title: エル
Developer: Elf
Release Date: 1991-06-23

Summary: Postnuclear world last survivors dome city. "Black Widow" organization is trying to obstruct plans for human survival while anti-terror organization along with lady sniper Elle oppose them.

De-Ja / デ・ジャ

April 28, 2017

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Review 1990

Foreword: I've wanted to play this game for a long time. I've always considered it to be the grandfather of all adventure visual novels, but only found time for it while doing year 1990 coverage. So this is Elf's first grand work and the first Elf work to have Hiruda as story writer. Game is amazing but at the same time there aren't that many japanese reviews and as many as zero English ones. How can that even be possible?! I've no answers. My best guess is that work is prior to internet era and Multi-pack (2004) only brought contemporary systems and graphics, so japanese din't really bother to discuss a remake. Let's start already.

Maison Ikkoku ~Omoide no Photograph~ / めぞん一刻～想いでのフォトグラフ～

April 09, 2017

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Review 1986

Did you hear anything about Maison Ikkoku? Well, you must have. It had a huge impact on anime and manga of 1980s. It produced manga and 96-episode anime series, three live action films, anime film and 3 anime OVAs as well as this particular game in 1986. It's actually very sad that such ~100 episodes format slice of life warm comedies have not survived to our days. All the modern longterm on-goings are just shounens for kids.

Cross Fire / クロスファイア

March 24, 2017

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Review 2006

Foreword: Cross Fire just hit my comfort zone completely.I prefer profound but few heroine characters. And there are only 5 characters in the game plus the protagonist. A chatty friend classmate, a teacher and three heroines and that's it.I prefer kinetic novels and this one has a forced playing order with just a handful of choices.I like a good story and detest chara-ge. Story here is great - at first it's just Rena who stands out and sets to protect protagonist against the nightmarish monsters. But as the story unfolds mechanized units of mysterious organizations come into scene and main characters reveal inner abilities to fight the aggressors. What's really cool is that there are no school scenes apart of transferred student introduction and frequent lunches on the grass.I really prefer all-age games and this one quite few eroge scenes and only by the end. Those scenes can be easily omitted since they do not become turning points and the story unfolds as usual.How could I rate such a comfortable game low? It turned out I could! And here is why...

Carnival / カーニバル

January 22, 2017

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Review 2004

Foreword: I've still to find medium to large english translated VN without evaluation so current review has nothing to do with it. The review object is VN Carnival made by FlyingShine in 2004, the very same developer who made the best VN ever Cross † Channel in 2003 and the worst screwup in VN history Swan Song in 2005. So where did things go wrong? Why the perfectly reasonable work led to Swan Song where one totally unreasonable decision totally overthrown the sense of reality and then second even more foolish decision killed the story and the game leaving only anger at heroes at the closing lines? I hoped to find the ultimate answer to that question in this midterm work Carnival and I actually found it. Carnival is closer to Swan Song as it is story-based with little to none charage elements, there is a big main plot line with only side character routes and bad ends. Because of this reason it's very difficult to speak about it without spoilers. On one hand, very few readers would take on this virtually unknown and forgotten work, but on the other hand Carnival is plot-based and somewhat mysterious work that's not going to bring any fulfillment if you know the plot twists and with mystery revealed from the start. So I'm making two parts of this review - first spoiler-free and then after red attention sign spoiler-heavy one.

Errant Heart

January 21, 2017

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Review 2013

Foreword: Errant heart is a kickstarter project and despite being finished for 3 months now there's still no review to be found let alone evaluated one. The studio that produced it consists of just two men inspired by Type-Moon projects mostly. There's one article that put hopes especially up claiming this game to be revolutionary among the VNs and that authors did not need to compromise. And i'm going to review this game without holding back.

Anaheim Girl's Love Story / アナハイム・ガールズ・ラブストーリー

January 20, 2017

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Review 2009

Foreword: So this is the second review of the Project get every single medium and long length English VN evaluated. The novel under review is Anaheim Girl's Love Story by short doujin-maker studio Fan-na and it's here only because it miraculously managed to stretch the dialogues to 10 hours and because there appeared a person to actually translate all those talks and because the only review I found is fuwa-fuwa review on yurination with no score given - thus all three conditions miraculously coincided and here I am trying to figure what this game is about. I only appreciate platonic yuri relations, never ever watched anything of Gundam series and greately oppose doujins and nukige - oh, well, that clearly puts me out of target group, but at least it's going to be unbiased.

Cosmology of Kyoto

January 04, 2017

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Foreword: This is the first review of the blog and the first review as a part of the Project get every single medium and long length English VN evaluated. Today's patient is Cosmology of Kyoto. There are quite a lot of English reviews of the game, but although the general idea behind them is overall praising - none actually gave any kind of evaluation score and that's something that i'm going to fix here.