The four commandments handed down by God m3rry will be followed.

-Harem size is up to six eight bishoujos. and one household meido.
-Only one bishoujo in an eroge unless she is a twin.
-Eroges with their own anime adaptions are not allowed.
-Each bishoujo must have it’s own individual seiyuu.

Now it’s time for the list in no particular order.

1.) Natsume Rin (CV: 民安ともえ) from Little Busters!

I don’t think anybody’s surprised at her inclusion in the list. Rin is the osananajimi of the group and is probably the best representative of osananajimi to me in general. Unlike most other ones, Rin is not clingy and not ridiculously tsun (really, how can you be tsun to someone for 10+ years then turn all dere in a matter of months or less?). I would invent a time machine to force a child version of me to make Rin my friend.

Download audio file (rin.mp3)

I’ll be your friend, Rin.

2) Higuchi Ririko (CV: 籐野らん) from Sharin no Kuni, Himawari no Shoujo

Ririko would be the onee-chan of the group. Though physically weak, she’s pretty much impossible to break mentally. I would rest easy knowing she would always back me up and no form of torture could turn her. In her world, she would be the (sorta spoiler) spy of the group. When she’s not doing her covert ops, Ririko loves to tease and her reactions to some events are hilarious.

Like this.

3) Unohananosakuyahime a.k.a. Hime a.k.a. Sakuya (CV: 高志麻矢 alias for 伊藤静) from Tenshin Ranman

Sakuya is a god who can make lasers come out of your eyes and her method of removing your bad luck is by kissing. Need I say more?

Okay, okay, Sakuya is mischievous and likes to tease the protag, yet she’s always serious enough to get her job done. When she’s jealous, her powers go out of control and things fly everywhere, which is really cute since she doesn’t even realize it.

Her fake embarrassment teasing is so freaking awesome.

4) Hinaori Kagome (CV: 一色ヒカル) from コミュ―黒い竜と優しい王国―

Download audio file (kagome.mp3)

One of the first scene’s Kagome is alone with the protag made me completely fall for her. She sneaks into his apartment and comes out of the shower completely naked while insulting and teasing the protag, who thinks she’s like a witch and completely tsun. Then she says something like the above line. Holy. shit. I WANT.

Since warum already covered pretty much everything else, I won’t bother repeating it.

5) Kawakami Kazuko a.k.a Wanko (CV: 青山ゆかり) from Maji de Watashi ni Koi Shinasai!

For a change of pace, the imouto of the harem will be Wanko (though she isn’t the protag’s imouto in Majikoi). Unlike the rest of the harem, Wanko is super genki and optimistic. Though she can be a bit dumb, which leads to everyone teasing her, she’s as loyal as a dog and would not kill me for having a harem unlike some of the other girls above.

Maid) Okita Megumi (CV: 夏野こおり) from W.L.O. 世界恋愛機構

Though she’s almost always in a maid uniform, Megumi is not very maid-like since the uniform is part of her waitress job. However, she still watches over and takes care of the protag when needed, so she probably has the skills to be a maid. Hopefully. Else I’d starve and the place would be a mess.

Carefree and lax on the surface,  she’s actually an operator for the W.L.O, making her quite a leader when needed. With her superior social skills, she may prevent a bloodshed within the harem.

So to sum it up, I have:

• Osananajimi to hang out with
• Reliable onee-chan
• Goddess when miracles are needed. Hiding under tables is advised when she’s jealous
• Violent woman who might kill me in my sleep once she sees the harem
• Genki imouto-like girl to hide me when the above characters are hunting me
• Sociable maid to hopefully figure out a way this harem would actually work

Ed over at Faceplate Addict agreed it was low quality when he got his first faceplates from Subcostume. He worked with Subcostume to improve the quality and offered me a replacement. Well, here it is.

Left: official original faceplate, middle: first custom faceplate, right: replacement faceplate

I encourage you to click the picture and look at it in a bigger size. The colors on the replacement faceplate are much better. The faceplate itself is white, unlike the beige of the original. The colors are more vibrant and the details in the picture actually make it to the faceplate. Compare Rin’s hand, foot, and skirt.

Photo taken using flash. Loss of color accuracy, but you can see the differences in detail better.

The faceplate itself is also better. The doors feel more solid, though nowhere near the quality of the original. The IR thing is black, like the original, and actually stays on the faceplate now. I already lost the one on the first faceplate since it was loose.

Same order as before.

As you (might) be able to see, the back of the new faceplate is a lot more like the official faceplate. Everything has sharper and more defined edges, making it seem like like a cheap impression like the first one. Ironically, the new one weighs in at even less. 54.4 g

Though the faceplate is much better now, it’s still hard to excuse Subcostume’s customer service. They advertised a discount and never gave it to me. They ignored all my inquiries about it. They promised to refund my friend but never gave it to him. These are all signs of a company you should normally avoid dealing with.

The only reason I got a replacement is because of Ed’s dedication, and he doesn’t even work for Subcostume. Maybe they should learn a thing or two about communication and customer satisfaction from him.

Since most eroge blogs I follow seem to be pretty quiet right now, I decided that I should try to fill in the gaps.

I’ve been meaning to do this review for a long, long time. I’ve had tons of material ready for this review, but I never got around to it since I never got around to completely finishing the game. And I still haven’t. This review is basically for the material in the original Little Busters! + Saya since I never got around to playing all of the new routes. It’s been at least 6 months since I’ve played the original routes, so my description for most of them will be on the short side.

Warning: Spoilers in this review are actual massive spoilers. Do not read them if you don’t want the game potentially ruined. I don’t think the spoiler function works correctly in a feedreader, so I advise you to visit the actual site if you’re reading this on something like Google Reader and don’t want the game spoiled.

Game: リトルバスターズ！エクスタシー
Company: Key
Release date: July 25, 2008
Related links: Getchu

Such a great OP

Scenario

A group of osananajimi — Riki, Rin, Kyousuke, Masato, and Kengo — go to school together, fight each other, and generally do nothing but mess around with each other. The fearless group leader, Kyousuke, decides that they need to do something new together. His idea? Baseball. And not just baseball for fun. He wants to challenge all the leaders of the sports clubs. The name of the team? Their childhood group name, Little Busters. But they only have five people. They go around asking everyone, and Riki ends up attracting a harem a group of new female friends to the team. Pretty much nobody he recruits has any prospects, but they train for the big day and generally have fun together as friends.

Characters

Naoe Riki

He has a face AND a voice (when playing from another character’s perspective)

The protagonist of the game, Riki is your typical nice guy. Physically, he’s pretty weak. He has narcolepsy and sometimes suddenly faints. Tired of being so weak, he’s determined to get stronger, both physically and mentally. He wants to catch up to Kyousuke, who’s strong and a good leader.

Natsume Rin

Rin is the main heroine of the game, and the main story essentially evolves around her. And boy, do you have to work to get her. In order to get her true romantic ending, Key decided to make you finish her bad end, every other original characters’ endings, her second bad ending, and a friendship ending. After that, THEN you get her true ending. And it’s quite short. Oh screw you, Key. Make a Rin After instead of one for Kud. I’ll even buy two copies. Rin deserves more. I’m not biased. I swear.

Download audio file (lb1.mp3)

Rin is a cat lover, and she frequently acts like a cat when she’s mad or surprised, as demonstrated above. Now looking at the above line, you’d probably think she’s a typical tsundere or something. Honestly, I’m not even sure I can categorize her as a tsundere. Other than a brief period in the beginning, she’s pretty much always friendly with Riki. They act like what you’d expect close friends to. They help each other, they joke around with each other, they hang out together. They act like, *gasp*, pretty much normal friends that you might find in real life. She doesn’t ever really hit him or get angry with him (though that’s not the case with her other osananajimi — she’s speaking to Masato in that line). There doesn’t seem to be a forced overfriendliness and nosiness of typical osananajimi. It’s refreshing to find a group of friends that (almost) act like how you’d expect a real group of friends to act.

Download audio file (lb2.mp3)

She can be quite tsuntsun toward everyone but Riki.

Like Riki, Rin is also quite weak. But unlike Riki, she’s just socially weak. She has no friends except her osananajimi in the beginning of the game. When she meets new people, she gets extremely nervous and hides behind Riki. Her brother, Kyousuke, is worried that Rin won’t be able to survive when she gets to the real world, so he does everything he can to make her stronger. Constantly unable to cope with the new social situations Kyousuke forces onto her, Rin uses her large collection of cats as an escape. Sometimes I get the feeling she cares about her cats more than anything else.

[[Visit blog to check out this spoiler]]

And there lies the main story of the game. Both Riki and Rin need to get stronger and learn the value of friendship.

Download audio file (lb3.mp3)

She says this after seeing Riki close to another girl, showing a side of him she hasn’t seen. Playing other characters’ paths is painful for me when she says stuff like this. I wanted to skip the rest of the path after she said this.

Even after Riki, Rin, and I(by having to play all the other paths) struggled to get to the end, there wasn’t much left. After Rin and Riki became stronger and learned to support each other by going through numerous trials, there isn’t much focus on the romance between them.

[[Visit blog to check out this spoiler]]

All they get is a rushed relationship. Even though they both got stronger, neither of them know how to act in a relationship. But the game doesn’t really mind. It pretty much immediately rushes toward their making out and sex right after they get together. I think events like what happened in the first bad ending should have been included in the true end. They need to learn what it means to become a couple after being friends for so long. In the first bad end, you get the feeling they’re closer to each other, but they’re still figuring out how to act around each other. One of my favorite scenes was them eating alone together and betting on/stealing each other’s food. They’re getting to be more than friends, and it’s a gradual shift that suits them. It doesn’t make any sense for them to suddenly skip all that and get straight to sex.

Natsume Kyousuke

Kyousuke is Rin’s older brother, leader of the group and a year older than everyone else in the group. He’s quite a spontaneously guy who forces the group to do whatever he thinks of. However, he’s quite dependable and often gives Riki advice. He strongly wants Riki and Rin to get stronger, and he comes up with all sorts of plans to do so.

Inohara Masato

Masato is obsessed with muscles. His only interests seem to be working out and hanging out with Riki. He’s quite stupid, but he’s a good guy who cooperates with Kyousuke to make Rin and Riki stronger. Think of him as the comic relief of the group.

Miyzawa Kengo

Kengo is the most serious person in the original Little Busters group, and if you can’t tell, he’s into kendo. He thinks many of Kyousuke’s ideas are dumb and doesn’t participate in the baseball team most of the time. Even though he has his disagreements with Kyousuke on how to help Rin and Riki, he tries in his own way to make them stronger.

Subcharacters

This might be a bit controversial, but I think all the other girls are subcharacters since they don’t contribute nearly as much to the central story as any of the osananajimi group.

Kurugaya Yuiko

Download audio file (lb4.mp3)

Yuiko is quite a straightforward person as you can tell from her above line.  Being extremely strong and deadly with a sword, she’s the most suited person in the group to play baseball. She’s also quite apathetic and emotionless about most things. She thinks she’s broken as a person since she can’t feel emotions like other people do.

Download audio file (lb5.mp3)

She’s also pretty perverted and into cute girls.

Noumi Kudryavka

Download audio file (lb6.mp3)

Her signature “Wafu~” phrase.

Kud is mostly Russian and part Japanese, and she moves to Japan after living in a foreign country with her grandfather. Because of her foreigness, everyone excepts her to know English (even though her name is clearly not English). But she’s really, really bad at it.

Download audio file (lb7.mp3)

Bad even when compared to a typical Japanese person.

As for her personality, she’s a genki and polite loli who tries really hard at everything. Nothing special. She doesn’t deserve an after story. Lolicon don’t need more encouragement. Give me more Rin.

Nishizono Mio

She’s a quiet, book-loving girl who constantly recites poetry and fantasizes about BL all the time. Unlike many other quiet types, she’s not quiet because of apathy or social issues. She stays away from others because she has something to hide, making her story slightly more interesting than other quiet types.

Saigusa Haruka

Download audio file (lb8.mp3)

If you can’t tell by her line above, she’s the genki and random type — a type of character I usually can’t stand. But surprisingly, I actually like Haruka. Her randomness is less annoying and more entertaining. She likes causing problems that’ll trouble the rule keeping committee thing at school. I don’t really know how to describe why I don’t dislike her. I think it might be because she’s doing it on purpose and isn’t naturally doing it because she’s an idiot. It’s more of a coping mechanism to deal with her family issues.

Download audio file (lb9.mp3)

Even she knows she makes no sense.

Kamikita Komari

Komari is Rin’s best female friend. She’s one of those super bubbly types, another type I hate. And unlike Haruka, she has no redeeming qualities to me. In fact, she’s the only character I didn’t have a screenshot prepared. I don’t know what else I can really say other than she’s really annoying to me and she’s obsessed with sweets.

Tokido Saya

Download audio file (lb10.mp3)

Oh the tsun. Saya is a new character added in Ecstasy, and she’s by far the tsundere of the game. And since I just completed her path, she gets more details than most other characters. Saya’s a spy looking for some treasure hidden underneath the school, and Riki accidentally stumbles on her doing so. Being a spy, she can’t let this go and she repeatedly tries to kill Riki. Obviously, she fails.

But hey, Riki’s amazing ability to avoid death will be useful for her mission, so she makes him her partner. Logic like this and her self-hatred mode whenever she fails — and she fails quite a lot around Riki — as seen above makes Saya great for laughs.

Download audio file (lb11.mp3)
As expected of Key, Saya has a bunch of weird… noise expressions.

Playing through Saya’s route is a bit tedious since you have to play a shooting game to get all of her endings, and you’ll be playing it a lot since her route involves playing it from Riki’s perspective and her perspective. In fact, I can’t even seem to get all of her endings despite following a walkthrough. If you can get all of her endings without a walkthrough, you’re either brilliant or extremely patient.

I frankly didn’t find Saya’s personality that interesting, mainly because there’s not much depth or development of her personality. She just pretty much goes from her self-hating tsuntsun mode to deredere. Being an entirely new character, she basically never interacts with anybody but Riki.

H-scenes

Since the original game had no sex, this is definitely not a game you play for the sex scenes. In fact, you might not get a single sex scene until your 5th character playthrough. The scenes that are in the game are nothing special. They do nothing interesting and aren’t important to the characters’ development.

Art

There are some body size consistency problems and art style inconsistencies in the game. Even at its best, the art is nothing to write home about. It’s pretty disappointing for such a high profile game.

System

Unlike every other game I’ve reviewed so far, Little Busters! actually has a system worth mentioning. There are several mini-games that run throughout the story.

Baseball/batting practice

The baseball mini-game consists of just batting practice. You hit balls around and the other characters field them and have their funny responses. Don’t hit the cats or Rin gets mad. The mini-game isn’t very deep since all you can control is Riki’s position and when to swing, but I found it entertaining enough to enable it on all my playthroughs. Whenever you play the baseball game, the characters get stat increases, which helps them in the fighting game and in the final baseball showdown.

Fighting game. Yes. Masato’s weapon is a cat. Versus a gun.

I’m not sure this qualifies as a mini-game since it’s not interactive. But it goes like this: in the beginning of a fight, each side gets a random weapon. They then battle each other with said weapons and gain skill points in those weapons, so it’s a good thing to get the same item multiple times. The winner of the match gives the loser a random weird/funny nickname.

And the fighting system leads to the ranking system.

Ranking system

Every so often, you’re given the opportunity to wander around and exchange items (which you get through the normal story mode) with the girls, get in a fight, or watch another fight. Whenever a fight happens, a potential rank change occurs.

I couldn’t get first in my game because I can’t fight Rin.

All the systems are optional, and I don’t think you lose much from disabling them, except for Saya’s shooting game, which is required to get all of her endings. I recommend the baseball game, but the fighting and ranking games get boring.

Overall

I pretty much went through the gist of the game in Rin’s overview, but for those who didn’t read all of it, this is a game about friendship and growing up. It’s about making Riki and Rin strong enough to deal with the problems they’ll encounter in real life. Romance isn’t a strong point of this game, especially in Rin’s route. The game seems to take for granted that Rin and Riki are going to be together, and they put their relationship aside to deal with other issues. To me, this game is all about Rin. All the other characters were there to support Rin and Riki. If you’re going to play this for any character but Rin, I think you’re going to be disappointed after seeing how much emphasis is put on her for the true ending.

Score

For an overview of my scoring system, look at any of my past reviews. I’m going to do something different for this and give two scores, depending on what you want from the game.

Though I wish Rin’s path had more of a focus on romance, the lack of it didn’t greatly affect my enjoyment of the main story. If you’re looking for a story largely based on friendship, growing up, and comedy that revolves around Rin, I would score it:

5/5

However, if you expect this to be more like a typical eroge, with a stronger focus on romance and all the characters, the game isn’t as great. Most of the characters’ routes, though decent, feel like something tacked onto the main story and are not memorable at all compared to the true route. The art quality doesn’t help.

4/5

I’m going to ask you again, Key. Give me Rin After.

Akatsuki no Goei ~Tsumibukaki Shuumatsuron~

Website: 暁の護衛 ～罪深き終末論～ (foreign access blocked)
Company: しゃんぐりら
Release date: April 22, 2010

This is a continuation of their Akatsuki no Goei series, and now the subheroines have leveled up to  heroines.

The story is about some forbidden zone in a city where the people inside aren’t recognized as humans. One day, police surround the place to execute a plan to capture and deport all of them. The protagonist and his friends live in that forbidden zone, and they’re trying to fight for their lives or something.

The story description is kinda vague, so I don’t really know what to expect, but it doesn’t look too bad. The story sounds different enough and could be interesting. The art is decent and the characters seem sorta interesting.

We start this month off with some hope! Someone who played the previous game(s) can tell me what to expect.

DEARDROPS

Website: DEARDROPS
Company: OVERDRIVE
Release date: April 23, 2010

It’s OVERDRIVE’s newest game. Their previous game, Kira Kira was pretty good, so I’m looking forward to this.

The protagonist, Suganuma Shouichi was a promising violinist in a foreign orchestra until he had to quit one day for a certain reason. His parents got angry with him for leaving the orchestra and disown him. Shouichi ends up working at a live house, meets some people, and learns about the awesomeness of rock and roll.

Since OVERDRIVE has a decent track record, I have some hopes. The story isn’t anything special. It reminds me of Kira Kira a lot, but that was a game where the journey was more important than the originality of the story. Also, I want Riho.

This makes two promising games in a row. How long will the streak continue?

And was I the only one who kept reading the title as DeadDrops?

Kotori Love Ex P

Website: ことり　Love Ex P
Company: CIRCUS
Release date: April 23, 2010

Do I really need to comment on this? This is yet another game from CIRCUS based in the DC world. You know by now whether you want this or not.

Even though I like Kotori, enough is enough. Make something new already, CIRCUS.

The streak was broken for me on the third game. Too bad.

Aichi Muite Koi

Website: アッチむいて恋
Company: ASa Project
Release date: April 23, 2010

The protagonist moves from the city to the countryside and transfers to the school there. However, they screwed up his housing and now he can’t find anywhere to live. So guess what the only place with a vacant room is?

WAIT FOR IT.

The girls’ dorm. Yes. This is another crossdressing game. However, since the protag has already registered in the school as a boy, he must be dressed as a boy there but as a girl while in the dorm. Omg so exciting~~~~

I don’t even have the words to describe how generic and boring this game seems to be. I could be playing this and someone could switch the game on me in the middle and I probably wouldn’t notice.

At least there’s an imouto for Micchi.

Kokoro no Sumika

Website: ココロの住処
Company: Yatagarasu
Release date: April 23, 2010

The protag lives with his older sister and imouto. There’s some complicated love triangle sort of thing between them. Their parents are never home, but one day, a package arrives at their house. It’s full of weird stuff and the protag ignores it. But then one day his father goes to his house and brings a freaking sex doll android to their house. The sex doll android is also apparently made by his parents.

Since the protag lacks the skills to sex his sisters, his parents apparently thought he needed a different form of relief.

What can I say? Another game with a robot you can fuck. Nothing new here. Move on.

Noblesse Oblige

Website: ノーブレスオブリージュ
Company: CLOCKUP
Release date: April 23, 2010

One day, a woman shows up in front of the protag and says she’s becoming his maid. Apparently his fetish-filled grandmother sent her. Other maids show up shortly after. Now the protag wants to find out why these sex slaves maids were sent to him.

Ugh. Maids. Boring. Pass.

Hoshizora e Kakaru Hashi

Website: 星空へ架かる橋
Company: feng
Release date: April 23, 2010

Since Micchi already summarized the mind-numbingly boring plot in February, I won’t bother doing it again.

This game will probably blend in with all the other generic games coming out. You’ll probably forget about it once you scroll down to the next game. The only positive thing I can say is the art isn’t horrible.

Ikusa Megami VERITA

Website: 戦女神VERITA
Company: エウシュリー
Release date: April 23, 2010

Another game in the Ikusa Megami series. Again, you probably know if you want to play this or not already. I’m too lazy to romanize the names in this thing to give a summary. Hemi already talked about the trial.

I haven’t given any of the other games in the series a try, but maybe I’ll finally start with this one.

Makai Tenshi Djibril 4

Website: 魔界天使ジブリール4
Company: Frontwing
Release date: April 23, 2010

So a group of osananajimi are in school one day when two girls arrive with a tentacle monster that used to be their classmate. The protag, Kento, gets stabbed in the chest by a tentacle cause tentacles don’t like guys, obviously. Some loli called Love shows up and gives them the ability to transform into super magic fighting girls and saves them.

BUT THERE’S A CATCH!

Apparently that super transforming power requires constant HAWT SEXING to replenish their power. And now it’s their duty to defend shit. So they must have sex. Kento is somehow alive and gets to be the center of this forced sexing harem. Lucky him.

This game is so ridiculous I might give it a try.

PARA-SOL

Website: PARA-SOL
Company: ROOT
Release date: April 24, 2010

So I read the story outline of this game and don’t understand what the hell it’s about. Apparently it takes place in some sci-fi world where fantasy shit like dragons and werewolves suddenly started appearing. Some random girl texts some unknown person to save her ship (why not just tweet?).

DID YOU REMEMBER ALL OF THAT?

Good. Well, forget it even existed.

Because we suddenly shift to a story about two sisters who lost their parents. Some random guy appears at their door one day and they supposedly let him in. He’s some weirdo that always holds an umbrella. So the natural thing to do it BECOME A FAMILY WITH HIM. This seems like a setup for a rapefest or something.

Anyway, since I don’t understand anything about the story, I’ll have to judge the game by other merits. First of all, all the guys look bishounen. The girls look absolutely boring. Too many girls with short hair. Rejected.

Choujikuu Bakuren Monogatari ~door☆pi☆chu~

Website: 超時空爆恋物語 ～door☆pi☆chu～
Company: プリムローズ
Release date: April 28, 2010

So the protag Yoshitsune lives with his osananajimi  cause his parents are crazy adventurers and left him alone. His osananajimi happen to be two sisters, one who’s a CRAZY black magic user who creates some magic time bending drug. Of course being the super nice guy eroge protag that he is, Yoshitsune becomes the test subject for this black magic.

He ends up summoning a bunch of people from Japanese history into his world. Of course I have no idea who these people are or whether they’re famous cause I don’t give a shit about Japanese history.

BUT.

All these people he summoned happened to be, you guessed it, HAWT BISHOUJO. And apparently he can’t send them back, though I don’t know why he would. So now he’s stuck living with a bunch of sexable bishoujo historical figures.

History class would have been so much more interesting if they taught it like this.

Iro ni Ide ni Keri Waga Koi wa: my deep love shows in the blush on my face.

Website: 色に出でにけり わが恋は
Company: ういんどみる
Release date: April 29, 2010

Another title from Windmill.

The school that the protag of this game, Yuuto,  goes to merges with a noble all girls school to create a trite plot for an eroge for some  reason. I’m sure you all know where this is going.

For some reason Yuuto gets involved in a duel to determine the successor within a noble house, and he ends up living with one of the girls. Blah blah blah, you can guess the rest. There’s nothing original about this game. The characters are as generic as you can get. There’s a rich, proud bishoujo, a quiet bishoujo, a cheerful osananajimi, a maid, and a genki loli (who looks pretty much exactly the same as Ina from W.L.O.).

The art isn’t bad, but I think I’d rather stare at my screensaver than play this game. It’d probably have more unexpected events. By the way, my screensaver is a clock.

Neko Koi! ~Neko Kami-sama to Nekomimi no Tatari~

Website: ねこ☆こい！ ～猫神さまとネコミミのたたり～
Company: Whirlpool
Release date: April 30, 2010

Furries. Rejected.

Petapeta: linking little fingers to confirm a promise

Website: ぺたぺた
Company: Lime
Release date: April 30,2010

Tooru, the protag, is part of a family that’s well known in the financial world. However, his grandfather chooses his sister Miki as the heir to the company cause Tooru is a worthless child that can’t do anything. His sister has too much work to do so she makes Tooru sometimes act as her body double cause they apparently look so much alike. Maybe the people in their world are freaking blind or something cause they look nothing alike.

Miki

Tooru

Yeah, they’re almost fucking twins.

So anyway, Miki looks awesome. I want to play this game just because of her. She better be sexable. The story seems completely forgettable.

Custard Cream Taiyaki

Website: カスタードクリームたい焼き
Company: アクシス
Release date: April 30, 2010

On his way back from school, the protag, Raikou, encounters someone fighting. Who does it happen to be? His osananajimi Aira who he hasn’t seen in forever. The reason Aira came back is cause she doesn’t want to get into a political marriage, so she’s here to fulfill their promise from long ago. At least she’s straightforward about their childhood promises unlike other osananajimi who hide them until the end.

She transfers to his school and crazy people show up. The end.

The art in this game is ugly. The characters appear to be stereotypical. With a cover like that, I don’t expect much of a story. Why would I ever give this a chance?

Shu ni Majiwareba Akaku Naru

Website: 主に交われば朱くなる
Company: ぐみそふと
Release date: April 30, 2010

Hajime, the protag, is transferred to a school for rich families. *sigh* Where have we seen this before?

For some reason that can only be attributed to the fact that this is an eroge, Hajime must become a servant to one of the female students in the school.

Again, we have a cast of generic characters that you can find in pretty much any game. There’s the cold and strong girl, the super kind girl, the selfish girl, and the quiet, expressionless girl.

I have to admit the art is decent, but nothing else pulls me in. I’ll probably be too busy playing the more interesting stuff to remember this exists.

My top 3 for the month:

1. DEARDROPS
2. Akatsuki no Goei~Tsumibukaki Shuumatsuron~
3. Petapeta

Holy shit. There are games I would play this month. Nothing too great, but still a welcome development.

And Micchi, I admire your dedication to doing these every month. This takes so much freaking time.

The fan disk for the well received Hoshizora no Memoria has finally been released. I’m going to assume everyone who’s reading this review has already played the original game. Now let’s return to the group and join the club in some stargazing.

I don’t really know how to review a fan disk, but let’s give it a try.

And for people who haven’t been following my reviews, spoiler tags hide ero content. There are no significant spoilers unless I give immediate advance warning.

Game:  星空のメモリア Eternal Heart
Developer: FAVORITE
Release date: January 29, 2010
Related links: Getchu

OP

Let’s start with the game system since it’s a fan disk.

Only Yume and Mare have significant routes in the game. All the other heroines have very short paths that are essentially epilogues to their own path in the original game. You must play through either Yume or Mare’s path before you can play the other heroines’ paths.

Download audio file (eh1.mp3)

And using the conventions of my previous review, Kogasaki You will be known as Kogayou.

Yume

Yume’s path fills in the details between her ending and her epilogue of the original game. After Mare is sent back, Kogayou and Yume must search for her meteorite to meet her again. Of course, they have no idea where it landed, making it a ridiculously difficult task.

To alleviate the boredom of their task, Yume and Kogayou do it like rabbits. That is, like rabbits that have sex three times during the span of a year or so.

[[Visit blog to check out this spoiler]]

Of course, you already know the outcome of their search, so it’s not all that exciting. Unless you’re one of those people who get anxious about which side will win in a World War 2 movie or something. Then this is just the thing for you.

Yume molesting a pillow. I liked the SD art in the original game more.

Mare S. Ephemeral

Even though this is technically Mare’s path, it’s more about Ima than anything. Ima shows up and tries to attack pretty much everybody. She lost her memories so they need to get them back and reunite her with her family.

Download audio file (eh3.mp3)

Some bad influence from Isuzu, eh?

Of course the danger to Mare’s life isn’t enough to prevent them from GETTING IT ON. And going on dates and cosplaying and stuff. Mare turns way too deredere in her path for my tastes. She goes down a ranking or two compared to the original.

[[Visit blog to check out this spoiler]]

Asuka Ima

Ima is Asuka Mirai’s brother, and she was sent by the same people as Setsuna. Her job is to send Kosame back, but she discovers Mare and Ren during her job, and she decides she has to deal with them too.

Ima is one of those serious about their job types. You could call her a weaker version of Setsuna.

Hisakaki Komomo

Download audio file (eh6.mp3)

Kogayou really is an uncurable lolicon.
(By the way, people need to learn how to pronounce loli. It’s not “law-lee”. Come on, look at the English word it came from.)

Komomo’s path is just about her and Kogayou gradually being able to say each other’s first name. Yeah, that’s it. Luckily, her deredere mode isn’t as extreme as the others.

[[Visit blog to check out this spoiler]]

The rest of the characters

Since all the characters except Mare and Yume only get new CGs from sex scenes, I’ll just go over their short paths quickly.

Kosame’s path is basically a rehash of her original route, which deals with her anxiety about her existence, requiring Kogayou to reassure her.

Isuzu’s path is about her wanting to work and help Kogayou.

Asuho’s path is about her and Kogayou’s future plans.

Chinami’s path is about her visiting her parents’ graves.

And yes. Chinami is still as annoying as ever. Even with a new voice, which doesn’t seem that different to me.

You can see for yourself by listening to some her annoying catchphrases.

Download audio file (eh7.mp3)

Download audio file (eh8.mp3)

Summary

I’m not sure what to think. Neither Yume nor Mare’s paths were very good compared to the original game, but this is a fan disk. It’s not meant to be that story focused. It  was nice being able to revisit the characters, but I think I liked all of the characters less after playing through this game. They all turn very deredere, and in some cases, way too much for my tastes.

The side stories are very shallow, as you can see in my summaries. They’re basically there to add a sex scene and allow the players to spend a short time with their favorite characters. I can’t help but feel like there should have been a bit more in each of them. Maybe I expected too much since I don’t usually play fan disks, but I was able to rush through some of those side stories in like 30 minutes by skipping the sex scenes and voices.

The two main paths were good, but not great. This was probably due to the fact that the ending for Yume’s path is already known and Mare’s path isn’t really about her.

By then again, if you love these characters, more can only be a good thing, right? You get to spend some more time with them, do some sexing, and learn some more about their backgrounds and the background of the town.

So big fans of the characters should give this a go. If you didn’t care too much about the characters, you can probably give this a pass.

It’s also not really worth full price. It should have been like 5000-6000 yen MSRP.

Since this is a fan disk, I have no idea how to apply my scoring system to this, so a score will be omitted.

Stealth announcement: This site will be going into hibernation mode. That means updates will come much less often — only when I really really want to make a post. It’s been about 6 months since I started this blog and I’ve gotten tired of writing it. Also, the amount of time spent updating the site is too great to justify the amount of visitors. To the few people who’ve stuck around for most of this site’s existence, thank you.

Until I can find some more motivation to update, farewell.

Let’s just ignore the fact that the -ge stands for game since a lot of people in the English translated community call them visual novels. I’m going to focus on their properties, not their names.

Defense for “reading”: Eroge have a lot of emphasis on the text, and  basically the only thing the audience does is read. So they’re basically like books or manga — they’re read.

Defense for “playing”: Eroge have text, pictures, sound and usually at least some interactivity, therefore they’re akin to games and are played.

I’m part of the latter group. In case you haven’t read my previous “Thoughts” article, I wrote about the defining characteristics of eroge and why we play them. Voices, in particular, are a significant contribution to my enjoyment of the genre. So if we exclude interactivity for now, including voices, pictures, and text makes eroge close to foreign subtitled movies. Do people say they read them? No. They watch them.

So now let’s add interactivity — choices. If our baseline of text, voices, and pictures equals watching, we already eliminated reading as a potential verb. Adding interactivity would logically bring it closer to  traditional video games, which includes text, voices, pictures, and interactivity. We say that we play traditional video games, therefore it seems to me that we should also say we play eroge.

Some people may argue that the interactiveness is weak, but it’s still there. It’s still an important aspect of the genre. Most people probably want to decide which path they’re going to end up on and the order they play them in.

Yes, there are exceptions to every example I provided. There are movies and eroge without sound. There are eroge without choices. But in general, most modern eroge and movies fit my description. Instead of focusing on the outliers, focusing on the most common example makes sense. And from what I’ve argued, “playing” eroge makes more sense.

I decided to look into what I think are potential reasons for why people play eroge, and then I’ll see where I fit.

Romance. One of the more obvious factors. People could play eroge because they like romantic stories or want a change of pace from typical games that usually feature war and stuff. Or maybe the girls in eroge represent an ideal that players want in real life but can’t obtain. This leads to the second point.

Alternate reality. People want to live a different life. Eroge provide a method to experience different worlds or new relationships. If romance is the key property, this could come from a lack of romance in real life, dissatisfaction with real life relationships, or simply a desire to try something new. Maybe Micchi the player wants a loud, jealous, energetic, and annoying brat imouto that they don’t have in real life. Or maybe the player wants a radically different world with magic and stuff, something that the real world can’t provide.

Story. Maybe romance isn’t your thing. Maybe the reason one plays eroge is for the story. Many eroge have epic stories that can be achieved due to the length of the game. The only other form of media that provide as much of a focus on story are books, which lack many properties of eroge, which I’ll discuss later. Another strength of eroge is providing a slice of life story.

Characters. This can be another part of an alternative reality. Players may find characters they like so much that they want to spend a lot of time with them. People who care mostly about characters enjoy the experience of daily life with a character they like. It’s not necessarily the story that they like, but the process of going through it with a character they really like.

Ero. This may sound self-explanatory, but I think it goes deeper than that. In other forms of media like anime and manga, relationships feel a bit underwhelming because they often move too slowly or don’t develop as much as real relationships do. In real life, people have sex. We wouldn’t be here otherwise. (Did I just make people think of something they didn’t want to? How about now?)  In most anime, you’d probably be lucky if characters ever kissed, let alone have sex. And don’t get me started about shounen romance manga. In eroge, relationships actually move forward, though not all of them do so realistically. Sometimes the ero is forced in the story, but if it’s done right, it can be satisfying and rewarding. Or some people just want sex. And lots of it.

Now let’s move on to the more technical aspects of eroge.

Download audio file (03_intro_ITI.mp3)

Download audio file (sample_ITI_02.mp3)

Since I didn’t have any voices in the Te to Te Try On! review, here are some clips of Ichino from their site.

Voices. Unlike manga and books, eroge have voices, which can add to the immersion of the story. This will obviously help the people who want an alternative reality. Obviously there are great eroge that don’t have voices, but I believe it’s still a very important aspect of the genre. They can make or break a character for me.

Music. Similar argument to voices, except music provides more of an atmosphere than anything else. Can you imagine playing an eroge on mute? It’d be a drastically different experience.

Maybe you really like this. Hey, it’s Shana.

Or this.

Pictures. Another obvious aspect. This puts the visual in the visual novel that the Western market likes to call the genre. Along with sound, this is what allows eroge to distinguish itself from books. Being full color is an advantage eroge has over manga, though eroge doesn’t have the sheer amount of unique images. On a related note, the art style of the game may be very important to some people. Some people may find it had to get into a game with an art style they don’t like, or they may play a game just because they like the art.

Now for some comparisons to other types of media.

Ability to control pacing. One of eroge’s advantages over anime, which has many similar technical properties, is the ability to control the pacing of the story. If you want to slowly go through a part of the game because it’s really enjoyable, eroge makes it easy to do so. If there’s a part of the game that bores you to death, you can hold control or another key and skip through it.

Ability to influence the story. Having multiple girls/paths is probably the biggest fundamental difference most eroge have compared to other forms of media. If the story in an anime, manga, or book features a character you don’t like, you have to put up with it. In eroge, the player has more of a choice of who to interact with. For games that have more life or death situations, the player feels more in control of the characters’ fates.

Gameplay. At least in some games. Some people may enjoy the minigames within eroge, which other forms of media except video games can’t match. And let’s face it, it’s pretty rare for a regular video game to have a good story or good character development.

As for me, after looking through a bunch of games the last few days and thinking about what I enjoyed in the last few eroge I’ve played, the main reason I play seems to be the characters. It used to be for the story, but over the last few years, stories have impressed me less and less on their own. Without a strong cast that I like, my enjoyment of an eroge plummets. If I don’t like the characters, why should I care what happens to them?

The second major reason would be for an alternate reality. People in eroge almost always seem to have a more enjoyable life and a better group of friends. Except the ones where they’re all dying or whatever. Sucks to be them.

All the technical aspects of eroge are also important to me. I can’t imagine the genre being the same or my desire to play them to be the same if they weren’t usually present.

Being able to control the pacing of the game is also really important to me. One of the main reasons I quit watching anime (other than the fact they suck now) is that I don’t like following everything at their set pace. I like to slow down and enjoy parts I like. I like to replay scenes/voices that I like. I like being able to skip the voiced lines of characters that I don’t like (Chinami).

Have I missed anything? Agree or disagree with the reasons I listed? Why do you guys play eroge?

Yes, finally. Another review. The game this time will be Pulltop’s Te to Te Try On!.  Technically, this isn’t a full review because I skipped one path, but I played the majority of the game so I think I have a good enough idea of the game. One format change with this review is that NSFW images are now hidden in spoiler tags. There will not be any story spoilers without advance warning, so feel free to click away.

I was also too lazy to do an unboxing, but the first edition comes with a ~15 page full color art book with character art from other artists and the soundtrack.

Game: てとてトライオン!
Developer: PULLTOP
Release date: August 29, 2008
Related links: Galge, Getchu, Walkthrough

OP

Scenario

Washizuka Shinichirou wakes up one day with his father gone. He finds a note from his father that says he’s going to be gone for a while and that he enrolled Shinichirou in a new school. Upon arriving at the new school, he finds nothing but a park with nobody around. He walks around and sees someone in the distance and follows them and finds this.

Orihama Natsumi was changing (though I don’t know where the pantsu comes into play). She doesn’t really seem to mind, and some things happen and she agrees to show him the school. They go back to the park and Shinichirou still doesn’t understand where the school is. After a while, the ground shakes and buildings come out of the ground. It’s the school!

After some more things happen, it seems like Shinichirou has some special ability to control the school’s computer systems, so he’s summoned to the student council, who with a few other people, are in charge of maintaining the school. The student council and maintenance team also happen to be comprised of all girls.

They discover that Shinichirou’s neckband from his father has some special power over the school’s system whenever he’s holding hands with some specific girls, so he’s made to join the student council to help them with their recent problems with the school’s system.

Yes, the game is about maintenance workers. Exciting, no?

Characters

Washizuka Shinichirou

The protagonist of the game, Shinichirou has lived with his traveling father all his life. His father is a researcher, yet he also likes living in the wilderness, allowing Shinichirou to develop survival skills and a strong body. And he’s going to need it with what the student council wants him to do, which is running around. A lot.

Since he’s been living with his father and wandering around all his life, Shinicihirou has never settled down for long and hasn’t gone to school for a while, making him unaccustomed to girls. This makes him the target of frequent teasing by the girls in the story. However, he’s a pretty good guy and dedicated to helping the school. But he’s not particularly interesting or anything. He’s your typical nice guy with girls falling all over him.

Orihama Natsumi

Natsumi is the main heroine of the story. She loves swimming and is often said to be like a fish. Being a carefree girl, she thinks being chased by robots and stuff is fun. I think she’s missing some stuff upstairs. Being a really cheerful and loud girl, she grabs onto Shinichirou pretty much whenever she seems him. In other words, too genki.

Her path reveals the most about the background of the school, and for some reason, the maintenance team suddenly compare her and Shinichirou to Orihime and Hikoboshi — the characters in Tanabata. There’s really no reason for it leading up to that point, so it struck me as odd and forced.

Hasumi Ichino

Ichino is the student council president, and she acts like a dignified and slightly conceited president in front of most people. But put her in front of her roommate Serina, and her act breaks down and she acts like a kid. When Serina is around, Ichino will whine and pout when things don’t go the way she wants. Though I said she’s a dignified president, she’s in no way one of those uptight quiet people. She still fools around a lot while doing her job.

Her pouting.

She loves the school and really tries her best to do the best for the school, and she’s good at inspiring others to do the same, making her a good and respected student council president. Of course she also tries really hard to create and maintain that image.

However, in her path, when Shinichirou finds out about her undignified side, her reaction is soooo cute. Eventually, she’ll stop putting up her act in front of Shinichirou, leading to events like this:

She hates green peas.

In addition, she really loves teasing Shinichirou, but whenever he responds to her sexual teases seriously, she gets nervous and flustered. The way she reacts is really cute. You gotta play it to understand.

Since she’s so close to Serina, people think there’s something going on between them. It doesn’t help Ichino seems to like fostering the misunderstanding.

Maybe it’s true.

Ichino’s path is just more about fixing the school and about Shinichirou finding out what she did in the past that she regrets. There’s no serious story behind it, but I found her relationship with Shinichirou the most entertaining and cute.

[[Visit blog to check out this spoiler]]

Tokura Temari

Temari is a computer whiz and is pretty much the brains of the maintenance operation. She speaks in a soft and pretty monotone voice, making her pretty unexciting. Takako, her roommate, is extremely overprotective of Temari and the biggest obstacle for Shinichirou in Temari’s path. Getting Takako to accept Shinichirou is an arduous and extremely annoying process.

Her SD images are cute.

She can eat a LOT.

Ever play Ever17? Yeah? Well, imagine Yuu’s path in that game. Except absolutely boring. Tenmari has to hack into the school’s central computer that her father helped create in order to take control of it. In the process, she has to solve riddles, including one that involves her name. Sound familiar?

Seem even more familiar? Yeah, that’s the map from Ever17.

However, in contrast to Yuu’s path in Ever17, there’s nothing that’s life-threatening. The solutions involve going to a place and using Shinichirou’s magic neckband. It wasn’t exciting, interesting, or funny. It was just repetitive. Takako made the process even more annoying with her constant overzealous protection of Temari. It doesn’t help that Temari keeps calling Shinichirou, “Darling.” ARGH! STOP THAT. Too much sweet deredere stuff. I’ve never wanted a path to end more than this one.

[[Visit blog to check out this spoiler]]

Kurumizawa Suzuki

Suzuki is the tsundere of the group, and my least favorite character in the game. Yeah, that’s right. A tsundere is my least favorite character.  She’s one of those tsundere that get really angry and violent at pretty much everything. And then once you go go down her path, she suddenly turns extremely deredere. I just can’t stand those type of tsundere.

[[Visit blog to check out this spoiler]]

Her path is the one I didn’t finish, but from what  I saw from the little bit I played, she met Shinichirou once when they were kids and they confessed to each other and promised to be together when they meet again. Right after she remembered that, she became super deredere and I couldn’t stand it, so I skipped the rest.

[[Visit blog to check out this spoiler]]

Subcharacters

Or at least some of them.

Fujigamine Serina

Serina is Ichino’s roommate and the vice president of the student council. She’s a serious person and often has to keep Ichino in line since she’s often fooling around. When she gets mad, she’s extremely scary.

Hayama Takako

Takako is Temari’s roommate and childhood friend. Like a crazy older sister/mother, she watches over Temari like a hawk and gets extremely mad whenever something potentially harmful or traumatizing is about to happen to Temari.

She’s a nutcase.

Hayama Hatoko

Hatoko is Takako’s twin sister. As the school’s reporter, she hosts the daily news show. And she’s extremely loud. And annoying.

H-scenes

[[Visit blog to check out this spoiler]]

To be honest, I have no idea what most of the sex scenes are like. I skipped through the sex scenes for everyone but Ichino. Ichino’s scenes were actually pretty decent and funny at times.

Every character gets two sex scenes, and there didn’t seem to be anything exciting about them. The only thing out of the ordinary was one anal scene.

Temari’s sex scenes seem forced in order to reach two scenes since her sex scenes come almost right after each other while all the other characters have a significant amount of time between them. Having a second sex scene shortly after the first one just seems to devalue the second one.

Overall

Te to Te Try On is a pretty laid back game about students who are pretty much maintenance workers for their school. Fun. The story for the game isn’t very important, and frankly, it isn’t very good. Romance is also not a strong point of the game. For the most part, the relationships aren’t interesting or well developed.

To make up for this, the game needs to have interesting events and characters. Unfortunately, the game largely fails at this. The events in the game are usually not very funny or interesting and most often revolve around the group trying to fix problems with the school. Stuff like berserk robots, power outages, broken showers etc. Yeah, that’s right. Fixing broken showers.

Fixing things seems to be the theme of this game, and it’s achieved by Shinichirou by holding hands with a girl to activate his special powers, hence the Te to Te part of the title. After they do that, the problems pretty much automagically get fixed. Blah blah blah, holding hands and fixing stuff seems to be an excuse to get him closer to a girl so they can fall in love and whatnot. It helps that whenever they’re fixing things, the neckband somehow makes them become mentally connected.

As for the characters, most of them are pretty typical and uninteresting. You’ve got your stupid genki girl, your quiet sorta-loli, and a (bad) tsundere. Ichino at least mixes it up a bit by less typical and you know, entertaining. And cute.

If I only played Ichino’s route and stopped, I probably would have had a really good impression of the game. Unfortunately,  I had to keep going until I wanted to pound my head into the wall. I couldn’t wait for the game to be over.

At least the game is only of medium length and only requires two choices for each path, though the results of the choices aren’t that obvious.

So let’s end it on a good note.

Score

My scale will probably be a lot different from most other people’s scale. My scores will be from 1 to 5, integer only. I don’t understand why people need to use a 10 point (or shit, a 100 point) scale. Do you really care about the difference between a game that gets a 3 or a 4 out of 10? Can you really tell me the difference between a 8.5 and an 8.6? Decimals are usually assigned purely on a whim. My score also is based on the overall game. My enjoyment of the game is the primary deciding factor. No subscores are given.

I also give games scores based on what they’re trying to be. For example, I won’t ding a slice of life game for not having an epic story. It’s simply not what the game is supposed to be.

The meaning of my scores and their rough equivalent in a 1-10 scale.

5 – Excellent. Must play (9-10)
4 – Good. Play if you’re a fan of the genre (8)
3 – Average. Play if something about the game really attracts you. (7)
2 – Below average. Only play if there’s something about the game that really really interests you. You need to have a die hard fetish for it or something to make it worthwhile. (6)
1 – Crap. Avoid no matter what. (1-5)

2/5

If you think you’d like Ichino, play her path and then quit. Her path alone is worth a playthrough, but the remaining parts of the game detract from the experience.

Where to buy: Amazon (How to), Getchu, Erogeshop (because some people just don’t want to save money)

Name: 赫炎のインガノック -What a beautiful people-
Developer: Liar Soft
Release date: November 22, 2007
Related links: Galge , Getchu, Walkthrough (Japanese)

There’s no first edition of the game, so this is the normal edition.

One of my first side shots in a while. I liked the art at the top. Mm… onigiri.

Instruction manual.

Black and white manual. Boooring.

Game DVD. And… that’s it. Yeah, pretty boring. At least the game is supposed to be pretty good.

The game doesn’t seem to be in print anymore. Meh, what’s the point of translating a game that isn’t available anymore? Oh, right, the translators probably just don’t care if everyone pirates it.

Just had to share my new custom faceplate.

Rin <3. Colors are a bit off though and it feels cheap. Compare the official faceplate with this one below.

Official one is on the left. Custom one is on the right. The IR receiver thing wasn’t put on well and now it falls off on the custom one. Less metal is used and the plastic feels cheaper overall. Trade offs are worth it to have Rin on my 360.

To give another idea about the difference in quality, the official faceplate weighs about 63.8 g. The custom one, 57.8 g. 6 g difference may not seem like much, but that’s equivalent to a typical SD card case. That’s missing. From something that should have the same dimensions.

Mini review/rant of the place I got it from: I got the faceplate from Subcostume for ~$26 shipped, and I really can’t recommend them, which is why I’m not linking to them. They had a $3 discount for new members when I ordered, but I didn’t get it when I paid, so I submitted a ticket and they never replied. The day after I submitted my ticket, the banner mysteriously disappeared from their site. Hm… I wonder why. Tried another ticket and still no reply. My friend got a faceplate too and they replied to his ticket saying they would refund him, but it’s been about 20 days now and still no refund for him. They’re also kind of slow making it. Site says 2-4 business days, but it ended up being 7 or 8 regular days for me.