Winter Polaris is a visual novel by the well-known developers stage-nana who developed Narcissu and Ame no Marginal -Rain Marginal-. While the developer’s past successes should be recognized, I was eager to read through their most recent game, Winter Polaris.[noisypixel.net]

In retrospect, it’s difficult for me to put my experience with Winter Polaris into words. Despite seeming zany at first, the game deals with severe and touching topics with added themes of fantasy. Scenarios in the game stay true to its fantasy foundation but had a way of making me think of what it means to actually live.

https://youtu.be/I9PwDDBIAX4

Winter Polaris tells two different stories, Winter Polaris and Sweeper Swimmer. In Winter Polaris, a mysterious event occurred which caused people to vanish randomly, leaving nothing behind beside the clothes they wore. At first, the protagonist didn’t believe in these rumors until he witnessed it himself. In fear, he fled into the mountains to avoid the disease. Years have passed since he entered the forest, as the protagonist emerges to find everyone has vanished. As he returns to a deserted city, he meets a young girl who doesn’t seem to be what you’d consider “normal.” Well, looks don’t deceive in this situation because she claims to be immortal.

Sweeper Swimmer opens with Elena, who lives on a small rustic island and works as a courier by boat delivering cargo. After a storm, when she begins her daily deliveries she encounters a girl in the sea who is lucky to be alive. Not having anywhere to go, Elena takes her in and brings her back to her home island. This girl ends up being in possession of a mysterious object that Elena doesn’t recognize. This mysterious object is only the beginning of strange happenings as they both discover a treasure map, which leads them through a grand adventure.

I enjoyed how the developers merged these two different stories, which are, in some ways, connected. Throughout each story, it’s possible to catch on to these connections, but the predictability doesn’t make the slow reveal less enjoyable. Still, I wouldn’t have minded if the developers made the bonds stronger. Without revealing too much, Winter Polaris is the stronger story of the two, as Sweeper Swimmer doesn’t contribute much more than introducing two new characters.

Something Winter Polaris conveys well is character development. While it was tough to feel a connection in the opening of the stories, the more I got to know about them, the more I found myself connected to their goals. I felt like the developer’s made these characters unlikable intentionally, as the mysterious girl is obscene to the protagonist. Still, as I got to know her, I couldn’t seem to be mad at her for her behavior. Her child-like features make you underestimate just what a vast presence she is in this story, and I enjoyed how the writing took advantage of that. The events and how the characters deal with the situations they find themselves in play on themes of what it means to be alive, which had me eagerly progressing through the episodes to learn where their story ends.

Winter Polaris allows the players to choose which title they’d like to play first. The menu is divided into different episodes, which unlock as you progress the story. However, during various episodes of Winter Polaris or Sweeper Swimmer, the next episode won’t open until you’ve completed a specific episode. This means you’ll experience both stories as you complete the entire narrative. I should also add that Winter Polaris is a kinetic novel, so there isn’t much in terms of player interaction with this story.

I found it difficult to adjust to the game’s art direction of large black borders and limited illustrations. My issue with them is that even though they are so big, the text is tiny, even with all the extra space to make the font larger. This is easily seen while trying to play the game in window mode, which makes the text pretty much unreadable. This just meant I had to play the game in full screen, but the higher resolutions made the game look blurry. Regardless of that, the illustrations and CGs in this story are beautiful, and I couldn’t seem to get enough of them. I would have liked it if the game had a way of distinguishing which characters were talking since there aren’t any avatars displayed.

Winter Polaris tells a touching story that has some fantastic themes of loneliness and existence. While I enjoyed the narrative of Winter Polaris more than Sweeper Swimmer, I left with a fondness for each of the characters. It made it easy for me to want to see where these characters end up, and I was satisfied with how the conclusion played out.

I am sad my journey with these characters is over, and despite my small issues with this some of the game’s features, it didn’t affect my appreciation for the story that these developers were trying to tell. That being said, Winter Polaris is one of the more serious visual novels where the story has a meaning and will hold your attention for the entire story.

What an incredible story. It's left me speechless and I'm not sure how to start this review as i haven't felt this weird after reading something in a while...

Anyways, Winter Polaris (WP) is the latest work conceived by Kataoka Tomo, author of the acclaimed narcissu series. This time, instead of the story of those awaiting their deaths and what they leave behind, we'll apparently take the opposite road to the same end: What should one live for, even if they're somewhat bound to not die. So, you'd better come prepared with some tissues.

The story of Winter Polaris is told in two seemingly unrelated short stories:
There's the main story Winter Polaris and a 'side' story titled Sweeper Swimmer (SS), but that is essential to the world of WP. The first one's tone leans more to the melancholic side, while the latter story is more carefree/captivating. The game will force you to jump between these two stories, by limiting you from progressing in one until the other catches up in certain points, so it might be a bit disorienting switching to a very different scenario every few hours and trying to remember what the hell was happening earlier. But that's required to deliver the story in the best possible way. And when everything falls into place, you come out with this weird feeling. I heard it's the feeling of our souls being cleansed.

Honestly, I went into WP not expecting much out of it, as i'm not too fond of handwaved fantasy elements in my tearjerker VNs (i'm staring at you Ame no Marginal and narcissu Sumire). But the immortality element was handled quite well in a sorta believable way, so it didn't bother me too much. The other fantasy element was magic: spells are used sparingly througout the story, and no silly chuunibyou BS or made up pseudo sciece trying to explain them. WP is thus a huge improvement over Sumire's supernatural and Little Iris' non-modern settings, and this made me quite happy. It truly went above and beyond my expectations, not only for managing those elements properly, but also due to the story itself. It's hard to talk about the story without getting into spoilers, but it's conveyed in a form that doesn't try to hide much from the reader, nor does it exposes them to infodumps.

Speaking of previous games, Stage-Nana once again reuses some assets from older works, like background and music, but it's quite impressive what they've managed to achieve with it, as there's only a handful of times where the image presented would only sligtly differ from what's described, and there's quite a good variety of them.
And much like Stage-Nana's other titles, WP is also a kinetic novel (KN): a visual novel without branching paths; so there are no options, only clicks through the text. Playing a KN is sorta like reading a book with a couple of images and audio. But Kataoka makes the experience a bit closer to that, as the "visual" part of this novel is quite minimalistic: it's mostly composed of static backgrounds cut into wide wide strips, with only a handful of images depicting its anime characters. It doesn't even show character portraits during dialogs, which's a plus for me because i don't have to see the same faces over and over again... But, there's the downside to such approach, in that narrator transitions can sometimes be sudden and unannounced. If you're not paying much attention, it can take a few lines to realize who's now narrating or even talking (when the character is unvoiced), because there's no indication of who's talking and only the log shows the speaker's name.

Can't find many other issues with the game than: a few lines being hard to read, as usual from a japanese writting; Hieronymus voice not fitting his appearance imo; and voice clips having varying levels of volume. Sometimes i could barely hear a character speaking, just to have the next one be loud AF. But i can forgive Mary, the biggest offender, because she's so adorable that i don't mind having my ears bleed from her voice. But the muffled voice clips can cause some confusion when a voiced character is talking to an unvoiced character making it hard to tell who's talking, for the reason previously mentioned. Lastly, it'd be nice if we had an option to read the main route in Tsubaki's POV after finishing the game, because she barely says anything and when she does it comes off as a bit rude. So knowing her struggles better could be a make her character more interesting/suffering, as it's only sorta left to the reader to infer after knowing her circumstances.

Winter Polaris is definitely a true successor to the narcissu series. Bringing a well constructed and heartwarming love story that fills your mind with questions about life and death. Its technical flaws are few and far from interfering you from enjoying the story. Personally, I can't wait to see what they've got stored for the next game. Since now we've got tales of journeys through land (by car and on foot) and sea, i'd suppose the next one's gonna be with a flying broom/vacuum cleaner!

Winter Polaris is created by stage-nana, the same dev who created the famous Narcissu, which I was VN I read 5 years ago, the very first and best one I have read ever. Since I am a reading person, the most noticeable thing is the story. The story has 2 parts, one was written by Kataoka Tomo, the same writer for Narcissu, and the 2nd part was written by another writer he collabed with. Due to what the author said, this is just an experimental work.
First, WP shares a similar style like the previous works, Narcissu and Rain Marginal, from writing style to art style. Even 30% of WP soundtracks are from Narcissu, but I find them very soothing and nostalgic, and of course it fits the story very well.
Secondly, I want to talk about the story. WP is a merging work of 2 stories, you will find them different at first, but only find the connection until the very end. By that time, the story puts you through different perspective of many characters. If you have read Narcissu and liked it, you will find it similar. For some reasons, I find in many works of Kataoka Tomo about the female characters, they are either super dense and timid, or carefree and innocent, or calm and collective. This is his how he mainly describes Japanese woman in his writing.
Again, like in other works of the author, I may spoil a bit, WP has its message about life, but in a fantasy theme. WP in fact with its fantasy theme, in order to convey its message, it is confusing at first. But you should understand that, the story was written not for the sake of logic, therefore somewhere in the middle, it may get incomprehensible. The story goes through lives of immortal people, and from there, it delivers the message about death, then life.
Thirdly, regard all other satisfaction about WP, I am a little disappointed about the translation. Beside some typos here and there, I find the translation a little clunky, even myself not fantastic with Japanese, but with my fairly solid knowledge about Jpanese culture, I feel like some parts were translated incorrectly, or put in a way out of original context. Perhaps it is for the understanding of English speakers, perhaps WP is just an experimental work, still I am disappointed. Compare WP to Narcissu, WP translation's quality is only 50%. I don't see the elegant and delicate English in WP. Maybe I'm asking too much.
In all, Winter Polaris is one of a few works written by Kataoka Tomo that have been officially translated to English, it has some cool views of Japanese culture that you don't often see these days. If you are into Jpnese culture and part of the most idiotic generation, millennials, like me, you may like it. If you haven't read Narcissu, I suggest you read it first before reading this.

Narcissu was my first and one of the best visual novels I read years ago. I was amazed at how much content and heart-wrenching the story was for it being free. Speed up to the current day. I got to say this is personally my favorite work Stage-Nana has done up to this point.I look forward to any future works they have in the future, and they have come to be one of my favorite developers and highly recommend this to anyone who loves a sweet, sad adventure.

From the doujin circle stage-nana that brought us Narcissu, comes Winter Polaris, a two-part story that at first seems to be separate but slowly starts to connect. For those who have read Narcissu, this title may strike a resemblance to it, with the same writing style, art, heavy themes, and relaxing soundtrack.

Full review (including score): https://youtu.be/OfIK73a_g-Y
Written review below!

Pros:
+ Great combination of story themes
+ Decent art
Cons:
- Disjointed writing
- Limited art and music assets
- Numerous technical issues

Remember that game Ame no Marginal and Narcissu? Both were well-received when they came out and the latter was actually popular enough to warrant a PS4, PSV, and Switch port, all of which are currently in-development. So given that, one would expect the studio's next game to at least receive some attention, but oddly enough the game has been out for a month now and has pretty much gone under the radar. It didn't for me though, so I opted to give the game a chance.

Note: had to trim review to fit Steam's character limit, check video for full version!

• Great combination of story themes. Although Winter Polaris may have its issues when it comes to storytelling (which I'll get into later), it at least manages to combine a decent number of themes together in a way that I wasn't expecting. At first glance, if you read the synopsis, you may be expecting some post-apocalyptic drama story with a heavy dose of feels. While that description is technically true, there's much more to it than just that. It's hard to describe exactly what I'm talking about without spoiling it, but let's just say that, while you may have an idea of what kind of genre the game falls under given that synopsis, you really won't get the whole picture until the very end of it.
  
  The game steadily incorporates all of these themes together over the course of the story, giving you the impression of being about one thing, but actually being about something else entirely. By the end of the game, I was suddenly reading through a story that hardly resembled what I had started with. It was quite cool how the game managed to do so, even if it did have its problems.
  
  
• Decent art. Along with the combination of story themes, Winter Polaris also makes use of some rather good art. It's quite unlike what we usually see in the medium, and looks more akin to what I'd expect from a manga or an art book of that sort. The character linework, for example, is rough, yet somehow feels right at home within the game's setting. The colors are also expressive in ways that actually align with the story.
  
  Half of the story is told through one set of characters and makes use of a darker color palette to match the post-apocalyptic world, while the other half makes use of more vivid colors, to match that story's more adventurous tone. This can be seen not just in the environments, but in the characters themselves, specifically their clothing and hair. The art, just like the story, may have its issues elsewhere, but it was still cool in how it helped establish the tone of both stories.

• Disjointed writing. While I can appreciate the combination of themes that Winter Polaris was going for, it unfortunately trips over itself in its own writing. Here you have a story told in two separate parts, both of which do not seem to have any sort of connection at first, but progressively become more and more linked. This is usually fine as a story setup, but Winter Polaris goes about it in a manner that really makes it hard to enjoy. Not only are you constantly flipping back and forth between these two stories and having to juggle all of the characters and events in both, but you're constantly jumping all over the place in each individual story.
  
  The primary story, for example, has you jumping not just from place to place, but across entirely different time periods. You'll read one chapter and then suddenly find yourself in another chapter 100 years in the future, with little in the way of proper transitioning. It does this often enough that it becomes hard to get invested in any one chapter, as by the time you're starting to understand the characters and events, you're somewhere else entirely. It made the overall writing feel incredibly disjointed and did not give the characters the growth that they needed in order to have the impact that the story was looking for by the end of it. For how much the game hangs on its ending, it isn't really doing itself any favors here, leading to an ending that just didn't resonate with me.
  
  
• Limited art and music assets. I may have just praised the art, but I was also disappointed with how little of it was actually present in the game. Most of your time with the game will be spent starting at environments, objects, or other backgrounds that don't really have much going on. The character art, while good, only shows up sporadically and doesn't stick around for too long. By the time you've read three or four lines, you're back to starting at some blank background.
  
  And again, those backgrounds aren't even all that bad, but the game uses them so much that it just becomes boring to look at. It also definitely doesn't help that the same backgrounds are reused again and again over the course of the game. The art is already limited enough being set at such a narrow aspect ratio, so further limiting it in this regard just makes it feel like a lazy effort at times. 
  
  The same can be said for the game's music, of which it felt like I was only hearing the same three or four tracks on repeat for the entire six hour experience. As with the backgrounds, the music isn't that bad, it just becomes boring to hear the same thing over and over. I can understand wanting to cut costs here and focus more on the story, especially given that this comes from a doujin studio, but there's a "visual" side to the visual novel, something that Winter Polaris seems to forget at times.
  
  
• Numerous technical issues. Unfortunately, Winter Polaris is a visual novel that suffers from a wide variety of technical issues. The most notable of these would be with regards the game's font and UI. For example, uf you ever touch the window opacity option, the game adds in a text box at the bottom of the screen, moves the text from underneath the art to this text box, and doesn't allow you to change it back. Even if you change the textbox opacity to be 100% transparent, the text remains at the bottom of the screen and now has a nasty outline that looks really bad in fullscreen. To get the text to display as it was before, you have to actually delete your save file, something I had to do about halfway through my playthrough.
  
  Aside from those issues, I also ran into a few instances of the game freezing up after certain lines. These freezes barely lasted a few seconds, but are noticeable in that any animations stop playing during the time and the music track playing in the background suddenly restarts itself. And when you actually look at the settings menu, you'll find that there really isn't a lot to change there. You have your usuals like text speed and auto speed (which are both reversed in this menu for some reason), but lack any options regarding animations, font effects, cursor hiding, and controls. It's not as bad as some other VNs I've reviewed, but still not on the level I would consider satisfactory.

Although Winter Polaris has a great combination of story themes, it manages to lose itself in its own disjointed writing, making for a story that doesn't allow its characters to grow in the way they needed to. The result is an ending that hardly resonates with the player. And the art, while good on its own, is so limited that it just becomes boring at times, especially when you've seen the same background 10 or so times within just one hour. The technical issues on top of all of that are also not doing the game any favors. It's a VN that could have been good, but has some poor execution holding it back.

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Winter Polaris is a visual novel by the same creators of "Narcissu" and "Ame no Marginal." It follows the same style of storytelling as "Ame no Marginal," where you go by timelines and after finishing one part of the first, you go onto the beginning of the next, and you can only progress after finishing each of the scenarios one by one.
Stage-nana has once again produced another tearjerker that keeps me hooked from start to finish. It doesn't try to accomplish some lofty goal of tackling a difficult subject like raison d'etre (reason to live), like other Japanese visual novels might, but rather it tells a melancholic story from the perspective of someone going through what we are currently experiencing, of a pandemic.
Before buying this VN, the idea of reading a story so close to what we are currently experiencing was a put-off for me since I didn't want to read something that I already know what it would be like, like a story that you already know the ending of, but after reading it, I found that it took a lot of inspiration from what it is like to live in this current part of human history, and turned it into a entertainment medium that anyone can relate to and and appeal to those who have an interest in Japanese visual novels, and that is something I am truly grateful for, for stage-nana to have made such a VN.
Even for a person who doesn't have a lot of time for VNs these days, I was still able to enjoy it and play it at a pace with ease.
I truly hope anyone who previously enjoyed any of Stage-nana's previous works wouldn't hesitate the same way I did on buying this VN, for it was truly a great experience and worth every moment that I played it for.

Winter Polaris starts slow, but it has masterful storytelling and explores interesting themes and ideas. If you liked previous stage-nana works, this is an excellent followup to Rain Marginal or Narcissu. If not, you might be better suited trying the others first; they're a bit more approachable, and also excellent.

7.8/10 Too much water

Love it