23 days total to finish this game. Without spoiler, it’s sufficient to say the two main routes are awesome.

That said, spoilers ahead.

Note that thanks to my awesome Japanese skill (read: barely exists) and memory (read: barely remembers anything), I might’ve understood the story wrong.

Story

Ordered by my completion order.

Route 1: Amane

So I started with Amane route. Mainly by character design preferences. The choice turns out half-correct. I did indeed not really liked the design. Her character is okay but the progressing feels a bit unnatural, e.g. the way Haruma fell in love with her which (I believe) fired off from their first comfort sex. That point is mainly feels unnatural and caused me to go “wtf?”. The second hscene didn’t help much either and the art was pretty much the worst in the second hscene. The other unnatural point is of course Ayana’s revelation which is really sudden and weird.

Story-wise, it revealed a lot of things regarding true nature of Nanoka though they never did find out who Nanoka is. Lastly, the way they brought back Shigure was overly convenient.

Route 2: Karin

The second route I went to. The overall story was much lighter compared to Amane. It’s also the most detached route overall. As I mentioned in previous post, it barely revealed anything related to the main story.

As for hscene, it’s mostly okay (no change).

Route 3: Nanoka

The stormiest route. All the information from previous routes considered, they still managed to deliver new revelations regarding Nanoka’s body which is quite a feat. The way Ayana showed her love towards Haruma was really good. Ayana being a schemer herself, I did cry during in quite a few scenes. The scene where Haruma went to school before(?) committing double suicide and seeing Ayana’s message is probably the one which hit me most.

Best hscene too. No, totally not because I like lolis or something like that.

(let’s just say it hit a lot of my preference).

Route 4: Konomi

The last route which must be unlocked by completing all previous routes. The route which revealed what’s really happened during Haruma’s breakdown. It also revealed the reason why Haruma forgotten everything. It is quite… insane. It practically forms the base of the story. Which explains why this route must be unlocked because otherwise the other routes will become much more boring to pass through.

I didn’t expect the blank to be a whole 11 months instead of just one month. And that he had sex with Konomi after the accident which means Konomi did get something in all routes.

Hscenes are great too thanks to Chikotam \o/

In the end, Nanoka completed her supposed task and how it supposed to conclude in all routes but her own. Poor Ayana ;_;

Revisited

A lot of missing pieces finally reassembled and the nonsense regarding Ayana’s name revelation and Konomi’s relation with Yuuki and Karin in Amane route finally made sense. The way Amane knew about Ayana but didn’t seem to be complete also explained: she knew the situation but never directly involved in. And then the “time-bomb” and “fake world” also finally understood.

Unfortunately, looking back, the last part didn’t actually resolved in Amane and Karin route. It doesn’t apply as much in Nanoka route because in addition to him remembering everything (hopefully?), he also quit school, rendering the problem of school year less relevant.

Characters

Amane

Honest. I think the world describes her quite nicely especially regarding how she handled Haruma’s condition regarding his memory loss.

Karin

A friend. Turned girlfriend by actively attacking yet avoiding Haruno.

Nanoka/Ayana/Haruno

I’m not even sure what to call her now. Sufficiently good at scheming. Also madly at love with Haruma. Her faithfulness brought me to tears during few last final scenes in her route. It’s also really sad when you think what she goes through in all other routes. Especially Konomi’s ;_;

_{She’s also lusting for Haruno’s cock}

Konomi

This is the part where I’m confused. Her devotion to Haruma. Or more like, her desire for Haruma’s affection twisted her love quite a bit to the point of that initial post-accident where everything starts. I’m not even sure where she stands in the “justification balance”. On one hand she kind of deserved Haruma’s rejection because of all what she attempted – faking as her sister, creating a fake world for him, and taking (or trying to take) advantage of the situtation. And on the other hand, her hard work is genuine and I’m not sure it can be done without actual feeling towards him. And as Ayana pointed out in the end of Konomi’s route, Konomi won out in affection longevity.

I… don’t know.

Haruma

The main protagonist. His post-accident (aka most of the story) character is pretty much blank and a bit confusing especially when looking at his inner thoughts. Additionally, the fact that he’s being confessed to making him quite lame. Though it kind of makes sense if you think in way that his only feeling is for Ayana. Having him confessing to someone would inversely makes his character less consistent. His pre-accident character is quite good – devoted and all. The story just unfortunately made his overall appearance quite lame.

Overall Thoughts

This wasn’t what I expected from a Parasol game, actually. At least based on what I heard/read, their main focus is on characters and lolis, etc. But in this game I got story instead. There’s loli but not really the main point. Well it did attract but in the end not that fact is not prominent.

Unfortunately the game plagued with delay and there are hint in few places that there are more routes planned than actually released. They didn’t even remove the hints though hopefully they’ll finish it some time later. Unfortunately that means they’ll charge more for a complete “experience”.

Also Ayana/Nanoka > *

Technicals

Audio

I like the opening video and music. I’ve been looping it quite a lot last few weeks even before the full version release. The BGM are not too bad and matches quite nicely with story atmosphere. I did feel some mismatches but nothing really bad.

Graphics

The not-character arts are quite generic. Also quite lazy as some parts are just a photo with almost no trace of 2D-fying it.

Chikotam a best. Sakana is okay. And Sakura Hanpen, while ok at few places, fell short of the other artists overall. Izumi Yuhina also did quite well in non-SD arts. Her SD art is terrible though, save for the last doll show part which unexpectedly nice.

Program

Basic functionality exists but missing extra niceties available in other game I played. The main problem is it is maxed at 1280×720. Not only in terms of available CGs (at least from what I extracted and looked at) but also the window can’t be resized beyond that. And on full screen, the cursor is locked to that window and no way to get out (on multiple display setup).

Movie playback is also missing. So is character stands.

The backlog navigation is quite nice though by dividing it by days.

Extras

This is the first time I wrote a full(?) review of an eroge. Hello my future self, feel free to cringe when re-reading this :D

Next game: Koi ga Saku Koro Sakura Doki