Viele Jahre mussten wir warten, bis PullTop ihre Tochterfirma diese Fandisk hat übersetzen lassen – doch das Warten hat sich gelohnt.

Die bestehenden Routen wurden erweitert und neue kamen hinzu, der Soundtrack wurde um einige tolle Tracks erweitert; dazu kann sich die Qualität der Übersetzung diesmal sogar sehen lassen.

Meine Empfehlung ist, die Routen von rechts nach links zu lesen. So beginnt man mit einer sehr kurzen Zusammenfassung des Hauptspiels aus der Sicht von Kotori und vollendet das Ganze erst mit einer Zukunfts- und Vergangenheitsstory über den Soaring Club basierend auf der Amane-Route; um dem ganzen zum Schluss mit einer Fortführung der Kotori-Route die Krone aufzusetzen. Obwohl ich im Hauptspiel glücklich war, selbiges mit der Amane-Route abgeschlossen zu haben, finde ich es hier am passensten, mit der Kotori-Route abzuschließen.

Reviewer's Note: I liked the original If My Heart Had Wings (IMHHW) a lot. Kind of a disturbing amount, and I devoted far too much time and energy to running through the routes in that game as many times as humanly possible. Take this as a review from someone who was far too invested in the original to really be able to weigh this game without a good dose of subjectivity.

Intro
If My Heart Had Wings -Flight Diary- is an amalgamation of a prequel, sequel, and copious fan-servicing of the original IMHHW. I had this game on my wish list before a Steam release was even announced, I wandered through the dregs of the internet to "acquire" a copy of the original Japanese release, and have made many attempts to self-translate the thing. Needless to say, I have been looking forward to this game for quite awhile. I feel the best way to tackle this is a quick overview of each route, followed by an overall conclusion. No spoilers for Flight Diary beyond basic scenario explanations, but beware I will be spoiling aspects of the original game. Before we begin I must also mention that the translation job in Flight Diary is acceptable, there are certainly some typos, but nowhere near the atrocity that was vanilla IMHHW, however the trademark Moenovel censorship is back and in an even worse form than before. Let's get on with it.

The Review
While the original IMHHW was a proper visual novel with choices, an overall linear story, and was a rather hefty read to complete, Flight Diary is arranged into six five exclusive and kinetic (no choices) routes. This in itself is not necessarily a bad thing, it gives you the opportunity to quickly get invested in any individual route, and keeps all of them from becoming to bloated. In the original one would often find themselves skipping portions to get to the choices and then see how the story changes, whereas this provides all the options for you out of the gate, options are always good.

Conveniently, the game orders these six five routes in order from best to worst, let's being with the two best; Inherited Wings: Soaring Club Epilogue, and Wings of Dreams: Soaring Club Prologue. Inherited Wings follows Aoi and Kotori post-IMHHW, with them leaving the Soaring Club in the hands of a new generation. The story is quite touching (although it becomes quite cheesy by the end), hitting themes not explored in the original game, particularly the difficulties of moving from one phase of life to another. Leaving behind something that you helped build is always difficult, and got to me more than it rightly should have. The plot in Inherited Wings is the strongest of all the routes, however, it is broken up by some unbelievably blatant moments of censorship, more on that later. Wings of Dreams, while billed as a pure prequel to IMHHW, proves to mirror Inherited Wings instead. Those expecting a route devoted to Amane and Isuka building the old Soaring Club will be somewhat disappointed, it takes up little of the run time, instead focusing on the relationship between Amane, Isuka, and Tatsuya. Initially I was somewhat displeased with this shift, but as it went on I found myself laughing along with the story, and appreciating it for what it is. It is also the least marred by censorship, making it the most consistently enjoyable route.

I will make the case that if you enjoyed the original IMHHW to any extent the presence of these two routes justifies making the purchase, however, that does not excuse the remaining four three routes.

The best of the unholy trinity of relationship routes (Inexpressible Emotion: Hotaru, Unfamiliar Answer: Kanako, and The Kazato Sisters: A Day in the Life) is a toss-up between Hotaru and Kanako. I'll be giving the dubious honor to Hotaru in this case, but only by a f*cking hair. Literally. Redheads are cute . The most important thing about these routes is that they are so butchered by censorship, it's hard to understand what's happening, never mind how they made it into an ostensibly finished game. Moenovel's stance on censorship is quite divisive in the community, but irregardless of your opinion, it ruins these three routes. Hotaru's is quite cute up until the story collapses into what is essentially an eroge (look it up) with all of the 18+ moments taken out with the gentle finesse of a blind quadriplegic wielding a weed whacker. Kanako's route follows a similar trend, cute moments followed by brutal censorship. Both of these have moments of greatness in them, before the whole experience is butchered at the end. However, it is the Kazato Sister's storyline that suffers the most. Whereas the other routes have substantial content that is not 18+, this story line has little. If you thought wearing a towel in the bathtub was blatant censorship, you ain't seen nothin' yet. The story does pick up a bit more closer to the end of the route, but I was soured to the entire experience early on.

There is technically one more route in this game but I consider it to be the worst, although this must be taken from the perspective of someone who has played the original game for an obscene number of hours. The Day I Found my Wings, is the original game told from Kotori's perspective rather than Aoi's. This may seem quite enjoyable, but there is one flaw. It is presented in walls of text. Now, don't get me wrong, I have nothing against reading, but I paid for a visual novel. Visual . There are background in the route, but most if it is told as if it was an entry in Kotori's Flight Diary *wink* *wink*. The route has its moments, and it is probably the least censored of all of them, but it covers the original story in such broad strokes, that it feels like an inferior retelling. Maybe it's just me but I had to drag my way through this entire route.

The length of Flight Diary was quite surprising, even adding the two hours I spent offline in this game, I was able to finish it in just under 10 hours, whereas IMHHW's first play through would clock in at between 10-20 hours. Which makes Flight Diary's current price point harder to justify.

Conclusion
Overall I did not hate this game. Despite Flight Diary's faults, the epilogue and prologue routes are good enough to carry the weight of the game on its shoulders and if you had any interest in Hotaru or Kanako in the original game, their routes are here, but keep in mind they are butchered beyond logical comprehension, with some cute moments thrown into the mix. The game is incredibly short, but even still the price here isn't obscene at $15. I would recommend waiting till it drops to $10 or less, unless you are already invested in the series, thanks for reading!

pro :
It's a Pulltop's novel

con :
It's a MoeNovel's translation


A Sky Full of Stars Fine Days next?

Once again Moenovel has butchered the routes beyond belief, not that I expected much of 4kids 2.0 anyway. Hopefully a fan re-translation will come along and fix it.

i haven´t finished every route, but think that I´ve played enough for a review.

This Fan Disc is what I thought it would be. Telling us more about the school, history and development of the club, as well as some extra routes. That´s awesome, but I can´t recommend this game as
a) ONE route has been CUT
b) Other routes had to suffer as well, because MoeNovel only allows content fitting 12 year old frnech girls

THIS is unaccaptable!
Wait till a sale and a patch!

If My Heart Had Wings -Flight Diary- is a story about the beginning and the end. If you loved If My Heart Had Wings and wanted to meet your favorite characters just one more time, then here is your chance to experience this love story once again. The setting is as beautiful as before, and the characters will make you cry and laugh again. But let me tell you more about this visual novel.

However, before we start: I have not played the full version, so I have no idea what part of the content was cut off. If you want to know what you are missing compared to the adult version, then this review will be of no help to you. I am judging the game by what I can see right now and I cannot say which scenes or dialogues were removed/changed and how this affected the story.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1685010566


The story is really nice, but it was expected, to be honest. -Flight Diary- is a spin-off and has all qualities of the original game. It is a slice-of-life visual novel with good comedy features and heartwarming romance, which will not be thrown into your face right away, but is still there and blooming. This story is not only about first love; it is also about our fears and dreams, everything that a normal person has to face during their life, and importance of friendship, of course. There a lot of heartwarming moments and even more that will make you cry. Inherited Wings: Soaring Club Epilogue’s ending was so-o-o romantic; and I was smiling like crazy after the Wings of Dreams: Soaring Club Prologue, I swear!

The music is beautiful, inspirational and just amazing. I loved it so much! The very first track I heard brought tears to my eyes for some reason – it is not sad by any means, but it just hit the right spot. Maybe I just missed Aoi, Kotori and Amane more than I was ready to admit? Anyway, the music on this part of the game is as pure and brilliant as it was in the previous one. Look for the collection of tracks to buy in the future, guys and gals! Still, I have one minor complaint: no matter how much I adjusted the background music volume, it still sounded too loud at some moments compared to the voices.

Artwork. You may think that I am exaggerate things, but I do think that as far as presentation is concerned, If My Heart Had Wings -Flight Diary- is more impressing than some other popular visual novels. It is filled with the feeling of freedom – just look at this beautiful sky. Somebody, teach me how to draw backgrounds like this, please! I love it when the sky is colored in various shades of red and violet, when clouds are lazily swimming across the sea of blue, and when stars are just starting to shine among the moonlight. If My Heart Had Wings is more than happy to show me those beautiful pictures in every chapter. Various locations are also beautifully detailed and different from each other. Well, do I even have to talk about characters’ sprites and CGs (there is a huge amount of them)? I love this artwork; I admired it in the first part, and it is a feast for my eyes once again.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1685015180

So, in the end of the positive part of this review there is just a small note about the user interface. It is pretty simple, but also not annoying or overcomplicated in any way, which is good. Also, you can switch back to the previously seen text by going to the log and choosing one of the lines. I should say it is a very useful feature if you have to stop playing for a while or just want to replay some funny/romantic moment right away.

Speaking about translation…I remember serious issues in the first part of the game for sure. -Flight Diary- has some too. First, I noticed missed punctuation like commas here and there. Second, I am not sure about some words – it is either my English skills are lacking or, for example, the word “housemother” is misused. Third, several sentences looked either out of place or a bit strange, too; some words were either missing or misspelled (example: “She looked like she reliving some fond memories” – the auxiliary is obviously missing here); sometimes “he” all of a sudden turned into “she” and vice a versa and there were several typos, but not many. Last, I cannot but mention one pretty funny mistake: “His closed eyelids had such long eyebrows…” I am 100% sure that Isuka was talking about “eyelashes” and not “eyebrows” because I have never ever seen somebody complementing men for “long eyebrows”. Not to mention the biological issue of eyebrows being attached to eyelids, sheesh!

While I did not have any problems understanding the text, I still noticed those small mistakes – it seems my five years of teaching are finally paying off, huh?

The second issue is more about my own nitpicking but sometimes it is difficult to understand that the protagonist has just switched with another one. For example, in the Soaring Club Prologue Aoi changed places with Isuka, and I, as the reader, could see it only through the context and various pictures, but not by the text itself – maybe some additional color or simple italics would make the situation better?

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1685000821


If you liked If My Heart Had Wings and its cast of lovable characters, then -Flight Diary-, its spin-off, will make you no less happy. This time they did not try to remove or change specific jokes, so the text looks perfectly comprehensible. The sheer amount of beautiful CGs is impressing, the music is perfect, and the chapters are interesting and inspiring.

If My Heart Had Wings -Flight Diary- will be a great addition to you library. I am happy that I have experienced this game for sure.

A lot of contents were cut from the game and censored. As of right now there's no patch for the game, so yeah.

Seriously. Stop cutting content from your games with no possible way to get it back.
Doesn't matter what I think of the game. If I sold someone a pepperoni and cheese pizza without the pepperoni, I deserve ♥♥♥♥ for it.

7.5/10. Really good progression of the main conceit of the original story, along with excellent development of a background, larger-than-life character from the original, are hindered by weak "traditional" fandisc content.

Flight Diary is a "fandisc" for the VN If My Heart Had Wings. For anyone not in the know, a fandisc tends to be fan-servicey (in both non- and sexual contexts) story content for both the main heroines as well as others who didn't have routes in the original VN. As a result, there's really no reason to be interested in this if you haven't played the original. If you have, then read on.

Presentation is basically the same as the original VN. You've got a config window where you can set what seems to be the rendering resolution of the VN (and there are some settings you can't modify that say things like 16K resolution textures, which I'm not sure about). The art is mostly the same as the original, though there are new sprites for new characters, or characters with expanded focus. Most of them are inoffensive; there are a couple I really didn't like for some reason (mainly Kanako's new pose). As far as I can tell there's only one new musical track; I didn't care for it at first, but it kind of grew on me.

Mechanically it's nothing: you select which route you want to take at the beginning from a list, and there are no choices from there. It's effectively the same as most VNs, where you're doing nothing more than picking which girl's route you want to take.

The original VN was the subject of some controversy when it released, due to a poor-to-butchered translation (if you're reading this review before reading the original VN, be sure to use the translation patch), censoring (which is always divisive, but in this case the censuring was more extreme than usual), and the translation company's response to these criticisms--that they were marketing this eroge to "12-year-old French girls." In light of this, some scrutiny of this VN with regards to those first two issues is warranted. I'd say it's mostly fine, however: there are a couple of instances where the translation is clearly wrong to anyone who's been reading VNs enough to recognize a few Japanese words (there're a couple lines where a VO says "American" and "Nihonji" one after another, but the translation doesn't reflect this at all), but there are no moments where you're reading gibberish like Ageha's route in the original VN. Additionally, the censuring is limited to 18+, or possibly 17+ (going by Newton and the Apple Tree's example) content, where nudity is not shown and sex is never implied (and obviously not shown), but dialog that mentions "boobs" is not censured like the original. I see no problem with sex and nudity not being shown; I don't need this content, and it was never meaningful in the original VN. The lengths they go to avoid any implication of it, however, are pretty ridiculous: characters get in the shower wearing bathing suits, girls sit in the bathtub wearing a towel over their body, at one point a scene with Aoi and a girl (in a public location) fades to black and later on he "breaks out in a cold sweat" remembering what he did in a public place - "kissing."

Like most fandiscs, this includes short content with heroines new and old; however, it also includes a prologue and an epilogue to the original VN. The former is mostly poor, while the latter is excellent. I'll briefly critique each one in the order I think they should be played.

Kotori - weak. The idea behind it is nice, but it doesn't advance any plot elements or develop her character. Also extremely short.

Asa & Yoru - very weak. No meaningful story content at all. This feels like nothing more than an excuse for more threesome content, rendered hilarious by the censuring (Aoi spends five minutes kissing each one on the ears and lips to the point that you get a moan and the screen blinking white in an obvious they-just-orgasmed moment, which results in them saying "I want to keep kissing you forever, Aoi-senpai"). Also ridiculously short.

Kanako - weak. Goes into a fair bit more detail that the previous two, as it's a "newly romancable" character, but there's no conflict to make anything feel meaningful, or any real development of the interesting side of her character only generally hinted at in the original.

Hotaru - slightly weak. Like Kanako's it does go into more detail, but also like hers there's no real conflict either. She does show some growth through the story, but it feels somewhat arbitrary in its impetus. It also results in a pretty weird ending that seems to come from left field.

Prologue (Isuka) - very good! This is technically the prologue of the original VN, but it's really Isuka's route (not in the past, but the present). It's longer than any of the previous stories, and goes pretty deep into Isuka's motivations from the beginning of the soaring club's formation, as well as how she responds in the present day to the club's current incarnation and her role in everything (as the impetus for pretty much everything). Has meaningful conflict and accessible themes. Spoiler for the original VN, but in that one Tatsuya liked her, and that relationship blossoms here in amusing and touching ways. This is told from the perspective of Amane's route in the original VN, which means there are a couple obviously censured "heavy kissing" scenes with her (and Aoi).

Epilogue (Kotori / Soaring Club) - fantastic! I mentioned before that there were new characters; this is where they appear--two new members of the Soaring Club. The focus here is on the "passing of the torch" and all that entails, with respect to both the club and the older members (Aoi, Kotori, Ageha) who are soon graduating. This story has the biggest focus on the glider itself, and I'll be honest: like the original VN, I found this the least interesting side of the story. But everywhere else it expands in excellent ways. There's the personal conflict that the characters (mostly Kotori and Aoi) undergo as it relates to their impending graduation from high school, as well as the growth of the younger club members to fill their shoes. There's also the club's status, which expands in interesting ways I won't really detail here, but which totally and completely resolve a couple of the biggest criticisms I had for the original VN. And in the end it provides a definite sense of closure to the story and all of the involved characters. It's honestly really great.

So what we have here is once again a mixed bag. Some pretty high highs for anyone invested in the original VN (which are in some ways better than the original), as well as some in-my-opinion uninteresting fanservice content. Is it worth it on the quality of the good content alone? I think so.

There's talk of Akari's route being added as a DLC, but I don't imagine that'll be anything that different from Kanako's or Hotaru's in design, apart from blue-balling poor Ma-bou.

For some reason it's tagged with sexual content, but this is actually censored. Censored to the point that the stories don't make sense because big important scenes were turned into just a kiss. Disappointing.