The East Tower series is a set of otome visual novels that are different than your standard Japanese otome game. If this review peaks your interest, I would recommend buying the whole bundle as it is cheaper than buying each one individually. ~As a side note there are shounen ai endings for those interested. Only in ET Kurenai though...~

I was surprised at how much I ended up liking game. I think a lot of that has to do as a Otome game addict I was getting a little burnt out on the mobile games. (When I say burnt out, I think I have played the main story line of more than 80 characters on mobile otome games.)East Tower Kurenai is the final installment the series. The order which the game is recommended is Akio, Takashi, Kuon then Kurenai. I would say don't play ET Kurenai first but it wouldn't be too bad if you at least play one of the other characters first to get an introduction to the story first. I would recommend this game even to just VN fans (not necessarily otome fans) because it explores interesting themes and has a great overarching plot.

The story is what got me hooked on this game, I love a different story than your more standard otome game as I feel that there is a good underlying story that nicely ties up at the end. I especially like how this game explores gender related sexuality in a very interesting way and ET Kurenai has the strongest of this theme out of all of the East Tower games. Gender fluidity is something much different to be explored in a VN/Otome game, especially for a Japanese market. Also I really liked how the whole past and ground work for the East Tower is finally revealed.

The voice acting is very nice for an indie game. I liked some of the unique voices in the game (Daiki specifically). I wouldn't say that there is any blaring miscasts in the voice acting. Of course this being an indie game, there aren't the big shot seiyuus (voice actors) to really make the voice acting really shine.

The art has for ET Kurenai has improved over the series of games. I was not big on the art style that ET has, but I grew attached to the characters anyway. I would say the thing that bothers me the most is the roundness of the faces, especially the young versions of the characters. I think of all the VN/Otome games ET has to take the cake on roundness of faces. Of course everyone has the same standing poses but I'm more referring to the CGs. Even though there are a lot of slight variation changes for CGs to bring the count up over a hundred, there still is a lot of CGs for an indie game. In fact it has a lot more than a standard mobile otome game. The new backgrounds in ET Kurenai has improved as well from the starting BGs of the ET series (there aren't a whole bunch more). Also I like Kurenai's character design the best out of the guys in ET. Also I like the character designs for the new characters that enter only in Kurenai's story.

A memory is a beautiful thing, it's almost a desire that you miss. - Gustave Flaubert

Well, here be the last part of the East Tower series, hailing from RoseVerte's collection. It sure is not among the best in their catalogue with questionable art choices and some blatant weeaboo humor, yet still the long wait in the series' completion delivers justly with a wonderful plot twist. We have waited so long for the revelation of our hacker, right? Well, allow me to say that none of us guessed this one correctly - and there were a lot more at stake on this game than we were aware of to begin with.

Well, about the storyline, I'll try my best not the spoil things for the reader, yet I have to warn you priorly. East Tower - Kurenai is the last part of the series, and it is mandatory to play this one, the last. The first game, Akio introduces us to the concept of the VR game and our participants; the second game, Takashi reveals some elements about the past of our protagonist; and the third game, Kuon simply nudges our attention deeper towards the unspoken mysteries of this VR game. This game is where all our prior questions will be answered, and presumable odd repetition of the prior events will be explained. Apparently, our protagonist did indeed participate the game three times, yet she remembers a singular one; and in this last game, it is not even Sakuya that participates alongside Kurenai... Oh, I already said too much. Give it a chance, and all will be revealed.

Paying closer attention to the character of our chosen beau, Kurenai is a sly arsehole to say the least. He is pretty, flamboyant, witty and deliberately cruel on all manners of social interactions. You know the type that you'd love to hate, yet end as hating to love? He is that kind. With his identity explained at the finale of the series, even his character shines under a different light - that is a feat masterfully handled by RoseVerte. Kurenai is different compared to all others, as we may have noticed priorly. This time, we will end up being paired with him, even though such wasn't our choice. Did the hacker succeed in this timeline? Well, you see, Kurenai has a mission to pursue in this odd Dream World - one he'll see through, even if that would be the last thing he'd do.

As you may have noticed, the gameplay takes a different direction in each game, and it has been the hardest for this final one. Our challenges do contain some mini games this time, which would require your attention to detail and even skills on time management. As the game comes to an end, an opportunity for the truth emerges. This is also the longest game in the series, containing both an outlay of the game in the VR world, your usual character interaction process and the end-game revelations that would require some in-depth story elements to be analyzed. It would take one A rated and three S rated playthroughs to see all endings - considering aggressive/passive answer scale presents different outcomes for the nature of the relationship, giving you a total of 6-7 hours of playtime - and also relevant achievements.

Could I recommend this one, knowing that it lacks a lot in display quality? I surely can, considering its story elements and character progression is handled wonderfully. If you are patient in your discovery, series do deliver by the end. If this is the worst title in RoseVerte's catalogue, I can wholeheartedly congratulate the developer. Wonderful work indeed!

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The last and biggest part of all 4th parts. The story is so strange and unique, really play the other 3 parts before (Aiko, Takashi, Kuon) and play this all ways, all end (i think it be 8). Sometimes i wish me a bit more connection in the past between all characters (like Takashis part) but i am very fine with this game.

I make it short this time. If you like Visual Novel and unique stories you be right here, if you dont like VN you are wrong here. I enjoy the hours and give the game 90 % for fans but only in reaction with the 3 parts before. So buy the Complete Edition and try to get a discount of 50 % or higher. Dont forget how many months (time) this 4 games eat even if you play them fast trough. I hope someone enjoy this game like me and i can bring together what should be together. Real gamers and a good story game from a very friendly developer. Thank you for reading. I hope i can/ could help someone to a buy that no one regrets.

Given the fact that East Tower: Akio, East Tower: Takashi, East Tower: Kuon and East Tower: Kurenai share the same universe, even if East Tower: Kurenai is way more complex than the mentionned title, a majority of this review will be identical to what I've written for the them.

Sakuya is a woman wishing to be a man since an incident in her childhood. She makes everything in her power to look like one. Her cousin Daiki works for Dreamworld and needs her help to try a new virtual attraction called West Tower, reserved for women. However, Sakuya managed to convince him to let her try the East Tower, reserved for men. She ends with four other testers, trapped in the virtual world, though she's happy to see that she's a man in it...

This is the same beginning in each Each Tower game. Once in the virtual world, Sakuya will team up with one of the guys. In the first of the series, she's Akio's partner, whose virtual form is a child, in the second, she's Takashi's, a boy admiring so much his sister that he took her appearance, in the third, she's Kuon's partner, who prefers to be a cool adult than a shy teen. East Tower is an attraction that will confront everyone to their own insecurities and fears.

I will go straight the point: this is a visual novel, where you have choices to make. Each stage must be cleared to advance in the story, you don't have any skills or relationships to improve/destroy. However, choices are mattering: you can get a bad ending immediately where you have to begin the stage again (not the entire story), a best friend ending (by scoring A on each stage) and a romance ending (by clearing each stage with a S). If you follow the romance route, you'll end up with an extra chapter. However, some stages don't have a A rank, only a S one - in that case, for the best friend route, it's considered as if it was a A.

Choices are generally made during the challenges proposed for the team. It's much rare to see them outside of them, before or after them. True, without skills or anything to worry, the game is easier than any other visuel novel I've already played (apart Shan Gui, which is more an interactive book), even the first Heileen was more complex and even Blue Rose was more complicated. I don't mind at all this lack of difficulty. However, in Kurenai, there are many endings and achievements, that strategic saves are required if you don't want to do a complete playthrough again. Indeed, for the romance route at least, you have 6 endings depending on your choices (aggressive and passive answers, choice of final gender and choice of Kurenai's fate): a harem aggressive/passive one, a male aggressive/passive one and a female aggressive/passive one. And depending on the animal you chose as best friend for the fox, you will pair Sakuya with Akio, Takashi or Kuon. Because, yeah, you'll be playing Sakuya and another character, if I may put that like that without revealing the whole truth about East Tower, the why it's existing and what's really happening. In that aspect, the game is more fitting into the visual novel world, where you have to do many playthroughs to achieve all endings (and unlock achievements on Steam).

I find very interesting the fact that the guy will be your best friend at the end, as the bad ending isn't a "you're alone", "you're killed", etc.. However, should you choose to pursue him, it means that your character is also evolving and accepting herself more.

Let's speak about Kurenai. He's mysterious and arrogant and ends up forced to partner with Sakuya (in the first three novels, he's always alone). His interrogations hint that he's not a participant or the hacker in question but another entity. Besides, some stuff happening in reality tend to show that he's not controlling himself. I didn't really like him because of his arrogant nature and even in the end, I couldn't warm up to him.

Also, the other character that appeared at the end of the last stage isn't really someone I managed to like too. Maybe because of the look or because I was so used to Sakuya's personality that it's not really matching what I've known.

Indeed, the visual novel has voice acting... in Japanese. I don't understand a thing but as the subtitles are in English, I could follow the story. The only character not voiced is you. However, I find it really good. It's always fun to hear something in a foreign language, it's reminding me some good memories with some anime.

As for the style, it's really in a manga style, reminding me of The Rose of Versailles or anything directed to girls - because it's clearly stated in the official website that it's a visual novel for them (but everyone is welcome to play it). I loved it. I also loved the HUD, kinda hi-tech and with a good shade of green.

The music is very good too, very adapted to each scene. I really liked it. If there is anything I really liked in the whole series and in Kurenai, it's that OST.

East Tower: Kurenai is longer than the others and while it's still fun to play it, I must say that for me, it has lost of the charm that I've found with Akio and Takashi. The story became too complex and I understand the warning to play it in order (Akio, Takashi, Kuon and then Kurenai). When I see the price, I understand it as there is more content, however, some visual novels propose the same ammount of it and are cheaper. It's the conclusion of the story anyway. Besides, I do think that East Tower: Kurenai is still a good visual novel, so, yeah, this is a thumb up from me.

Finally played through the last one and now i can review them all together!
I grew to absolutely love East Tower series. When i started out with Akio, i was pretty "okay sure" about it, not really negative, not really positive. It had its nice moments, it had its annoying moments, but mostly it felt casual. A game to play and never think about it again, i suppose.
Then i played second game. And third. And fourth. And i changed my mind.
East Tower Takashi is much better than Akio, and i enjoyed it way more. It felt more natural and balanced drama-humour better than Akio, and i grew to love Takashi as a character. But still, the first two, they're only the beginning.
I fell in love with East Tower during Kuon's story. In my opinion, it's much better written than the first two, and balances out everything surprisingly well, even though plot gets more complicated than in previous games. It completely sucked me in and made me enjoy every second i spent playing.
And then, finally, Kurenai. Now that one is good. I shouldn't be surprised, since there are signs like, you know, order of routes or increasing price, and yet. I still can't believe how Kurenai managed to meet all my expectations and then exceed them.
Kurenai tells you everything you wanted to know and more. It uncovers the whole story, and doesn't leave anybody out. The amount of choices combinations is just stunning, and it took me about half of my play time to hunt everything down. Which is both a good and bad thing (i can now recite some choices order from memory after clicking them repeatedly a couple of times), depending if you like that kind of thing or not. The whole story is actually really interesting and even though some things are predictable i still found myself thinking "but... maybe it's actually not true?". East Tower manages to make you wonder and teases you all the time. I, for one, couldn't resists and beat both Kuon and Kurenai in one sitting.
The best thing in all of the routes is heroine. She isn't your typical shoujo/otoge heroine, oh no, she is a character in her own right and it's impossible to overlook her. I think i loved her the most in Kuon's route - her comments and thoughts were just so relatable! She's absolutely irreplacable and that is a thing many games with female protagonists fail to deliver well.
The other characters are just as good. I guess with Akio and Takashi you just don't spend as much time as you do with Kuon or Kurenai, so naturally they don't feel as developed and complex, but they have their good moments. Kuon is really interesting, and i personally like that sort of character with that sort of plot (avoiding spoilers is so hard!). Same goes for Kurenai, who managed to capture my heart almost instantly. Even the side characters are great and i liked them all.
I know some people make fun of/dislike East Tower's graphics, but i genuinely like them. Although sometimes they look weird/anatomy is wrong, i absolutely love colouring, textures, and how diverse positions/expressions are. I think only in Akio i was frowning at art, but East Tower captures you with its plot and completely overshadows its graphics. It should also be noted that there's a lot of cgs, the winner being Kurenai (117 cgs, although a lot of them are different versions depicting one scene; still, that's impressive!).
The music is also really good, some of the tracks are still stuck in my mind. Music also completes the picture; when i turned it off for a while i felt like something was lacking and playing was less enjoyable.
All the voice actors are good, and i'm so glad we can enjoy japanese voice acting in these games! It feels so right.
So, to sum up my review: East Tower series is really good. I enjoyed every second while playing it and felt it was so worth my money. I recommend it to anyone, whether they like visual novels or not, because East Tower is a good, solid story, that definitely deserves more praise.

There was something off with this game for me. I recently played one of the studio's more recent works and loved that very much, so I was expecting this to be some sort of something like that in terms of quality and style. I was disappointed, sadly.

The plot is intriguing, but there writing doesn't build up to it in a way that highlights the possible intrigue and mysteries hidden down the plot line. You aren't given much of a build up in terms of what could go wrong and what exactly is at stake, besides the 'there's a hacker and it might be dangerous' situation. There are times when the situation of having little information can go well and a long way, but this wasn't it.

The set-up of the setting was also very limited-- we aren't given a clear understanding of how far into the future this is, nor what exactly is different in this scenario. We only get the tidbit of the present having good enough technology for something like the Dream World to be possible, but it doesn't give enough of details for it to be believable.

The characters feel shallow to what I've seen so far, and they seem like they catered to stereotypes rather than explore possible characterizations and aspirations and desires certain general archetypes can have. A cute male wants to be cool, a middle-aged man wants to be young again, etc, etc. It falls short of proper fleshing out and feels very surface-level.

As for the main character... She's not exactly someone I want to be playing as. Her choices are weirdly crafted, there's something oddly annoying about her happy-go-lucky self, and not to mention when you pick the aggressive choices, her lines turn into some sort of thirsty female character's that desperate for Something. That's the kind of main character that I dislike, and it's a far cry from the female lead of How To Fool A Liar King. Female leads for otome games are a hard thing to perfect-- they need to be relatable to most of the audience, but they also need to have substance to them. As someone who's had a tomboyish stage in their life, I thought I would be able to relate to her in wanting to be a boy and/or have boyish features. I had decided to give this a chance even though I was skeptical. But she acted like your typical damsel in distress lead even after showing that she could be capable in the Dream World. It wasn't the kind of vulnerability of 'I'm still a human with feelings,' rather it was the vulnerability of 'I can't do anything without you there!' and it irked me.

The leading man of this route made me cringe. He's the kind of character that teenage girls fawn over with their rose-colored lenses, not realizing their romanticization of this kind of selfish, stuck-up a-hole can turn very dangerous in real life. Kurenai gropes the main character while she's asleep, and even teases her about it-- downright disgusting, by the way. :( No, no, and a hundred no's. It's what made me stop playing the game.

I do have a good thing to say, though-- the creator(s) of this game have improved a lot from this game. They've developed VNs with better writing and style, and the art they've used have come a long way. Play their more recent games-- you'll have fun. Like How to Fool a Liar King and the other game in that series. I really enjoyed HTFALK and am planning to play the prequel soon enough. But this? Not quite, sadly. :(

The final chapter really surprised me! The story is more complex than the other chapters, and at least to me, I found amusing the fact that you can play the game several times, and there’s still something to discover.

Really liked the multiple endings, and the passive and aggressive thingy. Kurenai is also adorable, haha.

10/10!

This review covers all 4 of the East Tower games in one. Simply put, the game isn't very good. The art has occasional good moments but most of it is pretty bad. The story is set up in such a way that it could lend itself to an interesting discussion of gender identity and digital sexuality but it instead chooses to do cliché "oops, I tripped and grabbed your boob" moments. There are dialog options but the game is still very linear; you either die instantly, find a solution, or pick a solution that gives you a bit of extra dialog.

I would not recommend any of these games except for Kurenai (which was admittedly pretty good). However, there are parts of the Kurenai story that won't make any sense without playing at least a bit of the other ones.

The game is also way too expensive. I bought them all as a set with 40% off ($18 total) and I feel ripped-off. There are much better VNs available for much less. Takashi, Kuon, and Akio were each only about 1.5 hours of play time, which is not a great value.

Finally, every time you finish a section (and there are at least 7 sections per game) the game tries to get you to post to social media. That really pisses me off. It takes me out of the moment to try to get me to advertise for a game that I paid for. Dear game devs, please don't do that!

East Tower - Kurenai is the final master part of the series.
Many crosslinks to the prior parts and extended story mode in the chaos world. There you relive your past and university years. Including the ability to change your gender several times. As if it was not enough they also introduced passive / aggressive answers and lateron some nasty minigames which you luckily must beat just once. Looks like resist your emotion levelbar overtime with buttonclicks during you get scared by ghosts and stuff. After you finally managed to playthrough 4! times (1 Rank A and 3 Rank S) you must realize that there are still hidden CGs left where you didn't expect them. The only thing I remember: Once there was a fox talking to me.

Omg where do I start?

I really love this series and definitely recommend it. It's much more than your basic dating/romance VN.
The final instalment is my absolute favourite. It really rounds off the entire experience with a nice big kick.
There's white a few twists, some you begin figuring out and some that might surprise you.
This instalment not only plays with gender identity and roles but also the concept of self identity. It doesn't do it in a hamfisted way that is spoon fed to you, but it reminds me of Serial Experiments Lain in how the concept of your online self may or may not be considered the full you. It's done in a different way but that's all I'll say.

I personally head canon the main character as a non-binary person, although the dev's indicate this wasn't the intention. But by cautiously playing with gender identity and it's place in romance really is a nice thing to see done well (and without crapping on us trans folk).
You do best to play the entire series really to get the most out of it, as the last one in the series really just goes over and above expectations.

The replay value of this instalment is AMAZINGLY big, I got about 4x the amount of play time out of this one, even with the skip function being used! There's multiple endings, between good and bad, and between how aggressive or passively you play your character. There are polyamorous endings, and singular/monogamous endings to be had.
Every play through will let you see a slight different facet of your characters.

The entire thing is hugely charming and I just feel so happy playing it through so many times.

This is a series with so much love and thought evident. I usually pick games for how pretty they like in part, this art style isn't quite my preference but I'm glad I found it and played it through as it's an absolute gem!
Thank you so much devs~
(Oh also the Devs are really good at getting back to you if you're having issues with the games!)