Recent reviews by VinTJ

a must-have for the game!

I mean literally, the devs designed the game to be a lewd game.
very nice, peak sexy scenes that definitely feel like they should be there, if you just want some straight material.

Wished there were more proper trio/quad action though. as I've said in my main review, sometimes things feel disconnected, and that extends to the H scenes. You still kinda.. focus on one girl at a time? There's potential for Ichinari to use his fingers.. or for them to enter some sort of triangle pose with the two girls sitting on him laying down but hey. I'm not the expert. It's just funny how all the girls love Iori in SoL scenes, and yet they barely do anything with her in these scenes. Nodoka almost practically oozes willingness for it in later dialogue.

Also some of the effects are appreciated; gasps of air from the girl's mouth happen from time to time. Sometimes the moment of release gets shown via some fluid shots. At least it's not as static as it could've been.

Another one joins the pile. Been delving into lots of VNs and narrative games, but I’ll have to preface this review by acknowledging again, this is basically my 2nd JPVN.

With that, I still would like to think that my judgment is correct in that this is passably okay. It’s pretty entertaining and sweet for a slice of life story, and obviously, if you just want to see 2D anime girls be in love with you and call you cute and get overtly horny from time to time, you came to the right place. I also played with the 18+ patch that’s available on steam here, and that’s the selling point.

The LIs all have their own charms, although looking at the proportions, I guess there’s some over-interest in busty breasts. Seriously. Both Nodoka and Akira are almost too big for me. The jelly-like jiggles doesn’t help, although you can tune down the bounciness in settings (thanks, Neko works). The sprite may be fine at times, but wait until you get to the CGs, some of the breasts in these are downright comical in how they're drawn.

It follows that the MC acknowledges the abundance of charm these women have, and when it comes to make a choice and maybe-confess, he chooses to… enter a poly relationship! It interested me a lot since I assume most games will just give you a route select screen one way or another. You will then learn and see them under a warm spotlight; seeing different sides of the manga industry hardships with an abundance of love and care to each other. It’s definitely comforting for the usual target audience, although I expected a bit more out of it!

(•)Playtime: 11.5 hours. This is upon replaying, since my initial playthrough took me 16.1 hours, which was done in a slightly slow pace; since I was hunting for typos/oddities to report, as usual. (I found 46). I also tend to listen to all voice lines until they’re done for first time plays.
(•)Kinetic VN, no routes.

(+) Very lively animations. Not just during R18 scenes, but even normal sprites are often animated with simple movements, handcrafted to fit proper gesticulation for the lines. Even though the sprites themselves might be oddly angled (particularly Iori, she’s almost always facing to the right and standing at the left of the screen most times, lol) in Ch.14 for example, when Akira bursts from even further left to fit where the door is from the background, Iori’s eyes can at least properly move to practically track the fact that Akira is behind her. It shows little thoughtful efforts like these time to time.

Ignoring the fan service, I think it’s worth appreciating the frequency of sprite animations, despite the being slightly awkward and janky at times.

(+) Nice technical polish. I appreciate the little things done in order to make things flow well. I know my knowledge and familiarity with high budget JP VNs may be lacking since this is practically my 2nd, but there’s Ditzy Demons recently as a bar of comparison for me. This VN might be normal in jump-to-previous-line feature (arrow icon), but it’s the first time I’ve seen a “replay voice” button for the current line, both in normal view and within the backlog.

Maybe that’s also normal, sure. But what blew my mind a little bit is that if you open a backlog while a voiceline and sprite animation is playing, the girls STILL continue to read their lines and move sprites. It removes an expected jank; I thought the girls would simply stop moving, or even stop the voiceline in addition. But it doesn’t. You can also open the save / load slots and voicelines will still play. Maybe this is all due to toggling “Don’t skip voice on click” in the settings, but if a voiced line was mid-playing and you forward to the next silent line (Narration/MC), they also continue.

(+) Fine writing (6.8/10).Nothing ground-breaking, but I’ve seen worse. Things still flow to make decent sense, and there’s an ok continuity between scenes. The more hard-to-believe plot points such as what led to the living conditions are at least acknowledged once as ridiculous in dialogue. Perfect amount, really. There’s still ~46 typos or oddities to work through that I’ve spotted, here’s to hoping Fakku actually does updates. Other than that the LIs can feel a bit inconsistent especially Nodoka and Akira, at times being domineering and at times falling down to begging, but hey, nukiges are way too often like that. At least Iori, my favorite, is solid in personality and still seemingly subtly growing and changing for the better over time.

(+) Interesting art (7/10). I’ve rarely seen this style. Sometimes the mouth or eyes can look a bit funny, but it does draw your gaze into it.

(-) Lack of universal VA balancing. I know we have volume sliders for specific LIs, VA as a whole, and music, and that’s the great standard. But despite the fact I’ve tuned things at a certain volume where I felt like it was “fine” 90% of the time and on the daily life scenes; some romantic / R18 scenes later will suddenly have LIs drop down to saying certain lines in an almost inaudible whisper. Even though the text on one occasion says that the LI is whispering things directly to MC’s ear, the muteness makes it hard to believe. This shouldn’t happen if they properly made each line *roughly* be balanced in volume. The difference can get pretty drastic. There’s a lack of balance between line volume themselves, even if this only affects 5% of VA and you can temporarily tune it up.

(-) “Poly”, but still feels a bit disconnected in presenting this theme. Probably a pacing thing? Just don’t expect too much, if you want to buy it for this theme. I mean it’s nice and it’s there, but for a while on Ch10-12, it feels like you still focus on three different girls one at a time, as if they’re strung together one after the other from a single route in a VN. They do interact and reference their situation once in a while and re-mention the fact that they are in a poly relationship, but that’s about it.

Feels like there’s a lost potential in exploring the setting with more depth and interwoven connections. More pronounced differences between LIs and what they think of things, a different balance of jealousy and ways of getting MC’s attention. Or maybe the rotation order is just too formulaic. I don’t know. Ch. 14-16 is slightly better at having them start to interact more with each other though.

(-) Game doesn’t remember which Save/Load page you previously were on. Minor issue, but I’m used to the fact that Renpy VNs often do.

(-) Lacking potential art stills in “cut-in” style. I noticed that sometimes the text describes you kissing Iori (Ch10) or Nodoka (Ch11) giving a boob+blowjob for an extended scene, and yet the art doesn’t show it. At least Akira on Ch11 gets an extra cut-in of licking stuff off her fingers, that’s nice, but it makes me wonder why the rest of them isn’t getting things like it where they could.

I guess technically Nodoka is shown to be “grabbing” via cut-in at the very beginning there, but eh. Again, I don’t have many points of comparison, but Ditzy Demons had a bit more of these. I can understand filling the gaps with imagination, but I expected a bit more of these.

A review from a straight, recently-degenerated-into-playing-nukiges dude:

(•)Pure Softcore content. I guess the store page should already tell you that it doesn’t show genitals, but I could go even further in saying that you also don’t get to see LI nipple/areola at all. Out of the ”Two CGs” written in the store page, one of them is in the store screenshots, cleverly censored with the text box, but un-hiding them would simply show you her tucking up her knees to still cover it. The second CG is a side view with LI’s back turned a bit against the audience., so you still can’t see much either.
I did think there was a potential for a mini-cg cut-in to show the kissing being described, tongue or otherwise, but that didn’t happen either. I guess it's simply meant to be sweet.

(•)Scene happens near the end. A bit after night-time rain. As it should, I suppose, but I thought I’d mention it anyway, for the impatient people.

(+) Clumsy, wholesome love. They’re both inexperienced, so there’s a charming spark in how they interact with caution and delicate care to each other.

(-) Exactly one typo that probably won’t get patched, because steam is annoying and uploading one updated patch build will be a headache, or so I heard. I get it, it’s probably not a straightforward process. yes the typo is on that word let me feel witty

(-) Banter makes fun of gratuitously lewd nukiges and the possible dialogue in them. Particularly words likeslippery and slimy by giving one example of such a line and having the MC laugh at it. I mean it’s fair and deserved really, a lot of lines in the medium are cringeworthy, as I’ve acknowledged in my way-too-long-main review, but it’s still a bit pretentious to choose to point it out. Personally, I did find the dialogue funny in that regard, but a little grating; and I can see why some people are anti-EVNs when examples like these get brought up. It still comes off as putting others down, even when there’s no real need to. The writing is solid enough to stand on its own without doing this, and yet it did anyway.

The Language of Love, another sweet BxG title from ebi-hime, would probably fit your needs better, although obviously an actual Nukige JP VN will work if you want to trade story and decent writing for pleasure.

(If you have to know, in The Language of Love, in comparison, you get:
(•)Three main CGs; one being the classic bath time intrusion from a front view, and another two CGs strung together for the one lewd scene. Even when the 2nd CG uses a side view, art still purposefully showed both her nipples. And for the 3rd, it's MC POV insertion from the front, with a slight variation on "pulling off" afterwards and a little expression change. Doing the math, you see +6 girl nipples in TLoL compared to the 0 here.)

StP is one of the must-plays in the indie game scene. I can admit that in my whole life, I’ve always thought that I wouldn’t like horror media, mainly due to the prevalence of mindless jumpscares. That’s no concern here; there’s a few, but StP tries to AVOID doing them by design. The horrors here are atmospheric, at times poetic and abstract, and ultimately beautiful. There’s always a little bit of something to learn, either as a mystery game that slowly unpeels layers of itself, or as life lessons and thought pieces.

When the game gets spooky, it wants you to have fun; to read different perspectives that come to life due to your decisions. And your decisions DO give impact at a level rarely seen in other games. It’s balanced between careful details and huge swings of wildly different branches. A lot of games that market themselves as being choice-driven often lean too much into one or the other, either 1; With a hundred minuscule choices with effects too small to be felt, needing to take form in dialogue choices that simply drive personality stats and hidden numbers and maybe a certain threshold would simply be the dividing line between unlocking a scene or not;
Or 2, with very huge “route differences” that are handcrafted to be different between branches, but by themselves they still feel railroaded and riddled with some plot holes, hinging too much on a couple of huge choices instantly putting you in one box or the other, lacking the nuance of roleplaying inside a major branch itself, limited due to production costs and scope, sacrificing engaging replayability.

This game took the middle ground. It’s efficiently produced, but with very dynamic and numerous art changes. It has big differences shown in routes; majorly different iterations of the premise based on what you’ve done in a Chapter 1, and yet inside such mini-stories and continuations, it still gives plenty of choices and care to small details between the things that settle. It considers what you might want to do, why you might want to do it, and thoughtfully reacts to those considerations through its characters, in fresh ways that makes you feel seen.

It almost feels like it talks to you as a player, but without ever breaking the 4th wall; only in subtle nods and nudges towards common, sensible realizations, verbalized by voiced characters. Sometimes it'll bring an exaggerated personality to balance another, and it justifies having the width of options presented to you.

Through playing for hours you will realize that the game keeps you guessing; between small choices that are nuanced dives into entertaining dialogue and insightful pieces of the puzzle, but also big ending-defining choices that drive you to complete your situation in different ways. It might take a while until it makes sense to you, but it’s very intuitive. You need to keep playing a while to see the differences it offers. And even then, even after seeing something much bigger and feeling like you’ve done the “major ending”, starting a new game will still surprise you with new routes you haven’t seen before. Going back to routes and making different choices might still surprise you with carefully altered profound “major ending” sequences. Entering a route in different ways may give you different voice characters entirely, with ~40% difference in dialogue for the same scenario that you’d think already settled themselves as main dialogue.

You might think something will play out in similar ways and choose to skip things, but you will be entertained for more than you bargained for if you persist. Thanks to Renpy’s default options not skipping new dialogue, you can press the skip button past your first credits roll, but I would still advise against it; so that you can notice how different dialogue line changes can still feel in-place within the game’s continuity. There’s almost certainly still a lot you haven’t seen.

(•)Playtime: ~8-12 hours until credits (5 mini routes + “major ending”), ~22-30 hours completionist. Personally, after the Pristine Cut update, it took me ~34 hours to re-finish the in-game gallery, not skipping voice lines when they’re different.

(•)Achievements: you might need that guide after a while. It’s initially pretty easy to keep seeing new things, but some subtle differences are hidden between some specific set of choices, sometimes requiring you to load further back than you initially thought. It’s pretty common for a trial-and-error attempt to end up with ~10 missing achievements out of ~100.

(+) Brilliant writing (9.8/10). It’s clever, without being grating, personally. You can empathize with the motivations at play on dialogue, and they feel real. Some games that I’ve been told “have a good story” end up feeling like they have something to prove while lacking the substance, but this is different. StP can get witty, but it never feels like it begged approval in comparison. Serious situations are described in evocative, flavorful ways, and they can be somewhat frightening at times, but it still manages to blend in a good amount of humor through exaggerated personalities of the MC voices. It’s sprinkled at appropriate moments to help get you through the experience. It made me feel both melancholy and thrill.

(+) Fantastic Art (9.4/10). Again, the strength is particularly in how dynamic it is. Subtle changes in expressions and movement affirm further that your choices matter, in conjunction with the reactive dialogue. You may leave a blade up on a table, and then see it again simply sitting where you left it when coming back up. This happens across several routes, and in those, there is almost always an alternative background art where the blade simply isn’t there if you took it and are holding it. Pencil drawings in monochrome may not be for everyone, but I feel like the style works very well for what the game is trying to tell. The overarching major point of the game IS a simple premise, after all.

(+) Great music (9/10). Not much to say, but I am a huge fan of how different routes are soulful variations of the main motif. It really pulls you in to the Chapters you’re presented with.

(+) One very lovely princess. Enough said. Also may be depictions of wildly different forms of toxic relationships, but by god I love basically all of them. It’s never gratuitously vulgar, but you might discover new appreciation for kink-adjacent details. I won’t elaborate. The best forms of art share this quality with it.

(-) Some routes still feel like they could be more. Maybe I’ve simply fallen in love with this game and simply wish for more, but I can admit that certain of the deeper routes at Chapter 3 simply doesn’t give you that many options or variations in how to play it out compared to others. They still often make narrative sense though; due to cause-and-effect, you’ve simply dug yourself into a hole.

(-) Some voiced lines might not match the text. I’d say they cared about details enough and this only happens on like 4 lines out of literally ~15.000 lines of dialogue, but there’s still these little quirks.

I’ve been slowly working my way through ebi-hime games and I keep liking them to various degrees. This one stood out to me because it’s hard to ignore a cute demon girl. This is also the latest(?) and only BxG VN during 2024 releases; and looking at the list of ebi’s BxGs, this is one of the few that I’d like to think is the most Universally-Palatable. Some of the rest might be “grim” or “seemingly-with problematic implications/premise” at first glance (which is rarely true and I wouldn’t mind them otherwise; it adds a spice of freshness to stories; but I’ll tackle at later dates). The only one that comes close in vibes with this is probably The Language of Love (TLoL), a previous BxG of ebi’s that might unnerve some people believing there’s a “gap” between MC and LI due to the art/premise (not true, anyway)

That said, it does seem that ebi is (rightfully) more interested in writing Queer Stories; and I feel like this lack of personal interest towards BxG VNs inadvertently appears in the writing too; while it’s enjoyable enough to recommend, this game isn’t one to linger much in my mind personally. At best, you think about it because Elisa is cute!
It still served its job well as a casual, funny and sweet VN, engaging during my first read and put a smile on my face.

(•)Free R18 patch, but 100% tame softcore. TLoL’s art was more explicit. Both games also only has one scene lol. Thankfully, the writing here is a bit more interesting in comparison. The banter pokes fun at general R18 dialogues, so don’t expect too much indulgent lines like in TLoL!

I agree that seriously-intense R18 scenes elsewhere often have cringeworthy lines, which is probably the reason JP VNs might succeed at being pleasurable to the usual markets; while this VN is grounded in a flatter, fluffier reality of the act through a lens of a naive couple.

(•) Playtime: 7.4 hours personally. As usual, I think my pace is quite slow. I often proofread for typos and livepost to my friends while playing. Maybe ~6 hours on quick read?
(•) Kinetic Novel.

(+) Solid Writing, 7.9/10. I highly respect ebi’s ability to write various genres & themes, and through years of practice, consistency pays off. I feel like the writing is a well-balanced between being vibrant and fresh, but not complicated. There’s always still all those parenthesized and em-dashed explanations out of nowhere to add extra context to lines instead of adding new entire lines, but still, compared to TLoL, it does feel like there’s an improvement in overall writing quality. The pacing is actually good too, in how MC sees the LI. Compared to TLoL which sometimes felt too “jumpy” between being too romantic and then suddenly too abashed/cold/angsty (maybe due to the timeskips), this one takes the cake in being a smooth ride from strangers to something more.

(+) Lovely art, 8/10. Not much to say, I love Elisa’s design, + Chiharu & Nene to some extent. A friend did point out and made me agree later that the grandparents look a bit out of place compared to the others due to art style discrepancies (maybe they’re cameos?), but the CGs, sprite & UI are lovely otherwise. I also heard (& later noticed) from dev posts that this VN uses dynamic lighting effects during some scenes and I appreciated it.
(+) Good Music: 8/10. Sets a nice vibe. 4/11 tracks are pretty oriental, for scenes that prominently feature the grandparents or just to generally affirm you’re staying at a JP countryside, but there’s also some energetic cheer in Elisa’s prominent theme (Strawberry Hibiscus) / Chiharu’s theme (Ceylon Orange).

(+) Decent Cast: 7/10. Pretty standard (part-distant) family, it’s fun to read them interacting with each other. The grandparents almost feel identical in purpose, but the siblings, including Reza, all serve well to drive the scenes where they should.

(-) 1. Slightly feels “overcorrected off problematic readings” on particular lines, causing new, funny problems. I’ll admit it, this happens across all ebi’s games for me; some games more than others. Context: I often livepost many screenshots from VNs I play on discord; and while maybe I just want to joke around with friends at the end of the day; a common recurring theme is that I often could spot lines that I find particularly funny and weird, and I like to call them “eyebrow-raising”. Sometimes there are lines that feel like they have addendums and clarifications that want to scream “There is nothing suspicious here! Things are normal!”, and yet despite the literal text having that perceived intent, the implementation of the line itself makes it seem more suspicious than if it wasn’t there to begin with. Despite mostly being lines, little things like sprite/scene direction can also be weird enough to warrant an eyebrow-raise, too. I do acknowledge that these are personal and subjective, and they are still funny when it happens so it’s not entirely a con, and maybe my friends were just being polite whenever they echo “that is funny”. Maybe I have much higher expectations & bias against what an EVN’s tone should be like, or I’m just personally biased to fall for Tsundere types and hence I am just projecting my own desires with fictional sisters, but it doesn’t remove the fact that it might unnerve some, so I’m putting it out there.

Exhibit A:
“I say goodnight to my grandparents, stooping to give my grandma a kiss on the cheek, and bid a similar goodbye to Chiharu and Elisabeth, though of course, I don’t kiss them”

Feels like there is a lot to unpack here. I know it’s trying to solidify “of course you wouldn’t kiss your sister (Chiharu)” and it might also be trying to efficiently solidify the romance seeds of “you might want to kiss the LI (Elisabeth) but it’s too early for that”, but tbh, this line just reads weirdly due to cramming 3 different people in one. The fact that the possibility gets brushed on and presented, and for Chiharu to get swept along in the line with it; makes it slightly weirder than if it didn’t say “though of course, I don’t kiss them” to begin with. I can understand wanting to brush up a kiss possibility for the LI, but this is the crux of the issue; it’s too crammed. The following lines do elaborate the separation of intent & reason between Chiharu vs Elisa, but I still think the initial line should be split into two; with the latter simply “I also bid a simpler goodnight to Chiharu and Elisabeth”. If wanting to plant a focus on “kissing Elisa” alone, then she deserves a line of her own after that doesn’t mention Chiharu at all.

The word “similar” in the original line is also one of the main issues that puts the idea of the kiss on the table, which could’ve been entirely avoided with my suggested split.

I can also say that I’m not one of those people who would hate the game for leaving the window of problematic readings open (yes, I admit I’m a freak for siscontent and I should look elsewhere into JPVNs), but I’d like to think that the universal audience, outside of the vocal haters of “problematic anime stuff”, would also prefer less odd clarifications like this. Even my brother who barely knows VNs agrees that this first line is off; though I admit maybe he’s being polite. In the end, this reminds me of the “My human trafficking shirt” joke; sometimes doing less is more.

B: When MC ponders about “never having a relationship with another girl before”, it adds “except my mother and sister” and “(again, my sister doesn’t count)”. Good for him, but acknowledging the possibility twice? hm.

Disclaimers: 1. I played with the 18+ patch. 2. I am not entirely familiar with the JP side of visual novels, particularly the romance ones. This is basically my first “dip” into this space, so I cannot have many fair points of comparison. However, I’ve recently started playing some VNs that are originally in english. On the lewd front, I still pretty regularly read hentai manga, and I have some surface-level manga familiarity with harems, so I feel like I could still speak my thoughts on this game with those as precursors.

That said, I thoroughly enjoyed my time with this game as a dude who enjoys lewd content. For the most part it’s an enjoyable, cute slice-of-life standard romance, but even then, you need to know that this is still a nukige, as per VNDB’s consensus (meaning: it’s a hentai game, and very little thought is put into character development or plot). So the abundance of the H scenes overshadows its other aspects, and I definitely think this game isn’t universally palatable & mostly caters to dudes. Not to mention that some people might find some scenes problematic or questionable, i.e. due to flat body types, some domination scenes, and one scene close to being sleep-assault. There’s also the fact that a lot of the eye expressions during H scenes end up turning into blank, mindbroken ecstasy. If you are familiar with lewd Japanese media in any form, you might be able to stomach these points a bit more or even enjoy it lots like I did, but caution is advised. Even if you enjoy it, binging this game will drain you, because each of the 5 routes has around 6 H Scenes if not more; each H Scene having a climax counter ~3-5 times in most cases. Do the math. Most people can’t exactly follow it to a T within 3 days.

Generally, the game starts off quite strongly. Insane flash-forward-into-the-sixway H-scene as aside, the game starts introducing the Love Interests via MC’s daily life, which I did find pretty cute and comedic. Everything is mostly as dictated by the store page; you find yourself into a romcom situation with a potential harem brewing at school. Circumstances forces you to live together and help their issues, which leads to lewd scenes. Although the game’s MC Ren rightfully pokes fun into how Emiri’s logic turned into complete nonsense in suggesting that her brocon tendencies will be cured by doing sexual things, I can at least half-suspend my disbelief for the rest. After the introduction of each girl and the reveal of your role in the dorm, you see again the flash-forward scene at the very start, in which 5 LIs give hand service to the MC. Then follows an H scene with each LI on a more individual, personal level, as a trial run, so to speak. The writer still has values of “don’t have sex if you’re not in a romantic relationship”, so before picking an LI, the H Scenes don’t go all the way on that front.

Shortly after the game will then just outright have a “Select Route” screen with all 5 girls on display, in which the UI even reminds you to save. Other than that, the game has basically no choices whatsoever, outside of some (standard in hentai games?) “Where to do it” climax options.

What ensues after clicking a route is MC spending a lot of time with the LI, mostly lewd scenes or scenes building up to it. But the funny thing is, despite knowing that this is a nukige, I still feel like there’s some lost potential in most of the route’s writing. The relationship aspect with the LIs you choose by itself is fine; exploring themes of trust, openness, etc. But it’s hard to believe that other girls almost vanish entirely once you pick a route; exception being Miyabi’s route to an extent, but still so. Despite the common introductory route showcasing that Ren practically has a harem of girls who like him, or the fact that Emiri can be clingy enough to want a text update from Ren every 10 minutes, or Riria feeling dejected and Ren comforting her by saying she will always be a special friend; these two girls still feel like they’re gone if not in their own routes. Riria appears as “friend who gives advice” for Ren in Yuu’s route, but even that only ends up leading into a standard jealousy scene. For the most part, inside a particular route, the other LIs only speak two-liners at a time about their own (implied) jealousy, and only like 3 times per scene. And scenes like these only like 3 times between all the H scenes. I dare say that if you literally count how many lines all the 4 non-picked LIs say to Ren inside someone else’s route (+counting Rin as 5th I guess since she’s a pretty prominent side character), they speak ~40 lines tops. Miyabi’s route is an exception since when I counted, it’s closer to ~100 or ~120.

Meanwhile, one H scene inside a girl’s route probably has exactly ~40 or more intelligible spoken lines too, outside of moaning noises. It’s pretty grave in my eyes, even for a lewd game. Coupled with the fact that there’s 6+ H scenes in each route, that means that the combined appearance of other LIs in picked LI’s routes can equal to practically 15% or less of the runtime since picking the route.

There’s not much to discuss in terms of plot; but after achieving 100% achievements and seeing all the routes, I think the game still did a decently okay job at making each girl shine and appealing. Maybe that just means I am the target demographic among other lonely dudes out there, but despite its shallowness and inclinations towards lewd scenes, it’s sincerely unabashed at exploring what little, special types of quirky romances bloom here. It might be generic and stereotypical, but I find that it’s a good kind.

(•)Playtime: Personally, ~40 hours on all 5 main routes + Afterstory extras, ~46 if including sub-routes. How I play is quite slow though; I try not to cut the VA lines if possible. Sometimes with Arle’s route it’s hard to tell during the H scenes if the noises are manually-recorded or it’s one of the heroine-looping noises, but that’s volume balancing issue. Other heroines, by default, have a much quieter loop sfx so I could instantly tell when the manual voice stopped.
(•)Has minimal choices. As I said, I only think the choices UI really only appear for Riria and Emiri’s route, and only to show some slight difference in H scene peaks. They impact practically nothing, although the second choice for Riria was pretty fun. I really wish the other 3 girls got something like this though, shame that they didn’t. I guess that’s a con.
(•)The “sub routes” outside of the main 5 are short.

(+) Very cute, expressive and dynamic art. I still appreciate the frequency of expression changes. Seeing the kind of options available to us in the in-game Sprite Editor, it does seem like they consider eyebrow, eye and mouth differences separately instead of just making a couple of single-state sprites and swapping between them. It feels lively, and the CGs are great.
(+) Robust options and features. It might be standard in JP VNs (I wouldn’t know), but being able to instantly playback the current VA line is an insane plus on top of the wonderful VA work done. You can also adjust the volume of characters separately, and jump back to a particular line via the backlog; even past scene transitions. At least in my experience with some other VNs and narrative-heavy games this is rarely the case. You’re lucky if you even get a backlog at all if not a VN.
(+) Fluffy, straightforward romance. I might appreciate some LIs more than others due to their character archetype or body type, but for the most part, I find everyone here lovely in being shown as a romantic partner. For a moment, experiencing these routes for the first time almost always feel like a lovely bliss.

(continued in comments due to character limit)

ayep. the suit is cool. literally the only reason I bought this. here's a preview!

the LCD eye goggles practically animate a breathing circle in the center of it, while two more "curved lines" from the left and right sides also expand into the center at the same time when it does that. The outer lines are probably meant to be another, bigger hollowed-out circle coming in from the outside, completing something akin to a bullseye pattern.

What the store page doesn't tell you is that some of the "lit-up blue lines" on the actual suit is also visible from the back, near 47's collars and the lower seams. So even if you are playing normally (often having 47's back turned towards the camera instead of his face), you can still feel cool. And yes, these blue lines on the suit are also animated; for better or worse, they are basically blinking into existence for around 0.2 seconds before being off for like 0.8. Again, I recorded a video so that people could take a better look on the stuff, but personally, I would've preferred the lights on the blue lines being on more often, or even if it was constantly on. It's very ethereal and hard to screenshot while lit, but I guess that makes it a bit more easy on the eyes.

another kind review by K1 also let me know that the Vinyls are a "reskin" of the shurikens. But it's technically almost a brand new item since they count as legal items (unlike most shurikens in the game). The only one that isn't illegal is probably the "starfish" that you find in certain maps like Miami, and they aren't things you can bring as starting gear into missions since they're not in your inventory. It's worth saying that shurikens aren't strictly things to throw, you can use them as a Close Quarters Melee weapon like any other.

Really wish the flash grenade was something else, but it is what it is.

Bought it for the suits and suitcase containers; but the guns suck, because they're based on the default ICA19 that any new player gets for free, instead of the Silverballer (hence not having the "steady aim" perk"). Even though you can get the silverballers pretty easily and early just by playing Paris mission (first mission) a little bit... the guns from this pack aren't something you'd really bring to missions if not for the look or to handicap yourself, in comparison.

I'm not asking for any crazy pay-to-wins here in expecting the guns to have this perk I think. At the very least, if IOI can throw us a crumb, just give it to the red one. Could be a neat idea to make each guns have a slightly different personality or perk difference. We already have the Iceballer for a white silenced gun with Steady Aim, so I'm not too fussed about that.

Oh well. Whatever. Buy it if the suits look cool to you. Don't expect the guns to matter.

I don't normally "hold developers hostage" by "leaving a negative review while asking for a feature", but at the same time... I have to. I feel like this one thing I want and the fact that it's not here is holding this game back. This game doesn't feel like it quite has the oomph of replayability that some other roguelites do.

That's it. That's all I want.


The main gameplay loop is decent enough in most regards, (although I'm not in the mood to elaborate on this) and I think my money was well spent.

But I'm just saying, this isn't a roguelite that quite gives you 100 hours of fun. The "room variance" or amount of handcrafted parts of a level, also leaves much to be desired. I often spot almost-exactly same hallways, especially in the desert biome.
It would be nice if it had workshop support so players could make more chunks, but that's also not here.

So this is both a cautionary review and a feature request at the same time.
I know, I might be a hypocrite when I say this doesn't give me enough hours and yet constantly preach games don't always need to last 50+ hours, but at the same time, it's a roguelite, and it should be the main selling point of these.

As I slowly worked through my (Yuri) bundle of various ebi-hime games, I decided that jumping to a new one was a wise choice after playing one of the most popular (Blackberry Honey). And I’m almost confident that this game, slightly through virtue of being new, is probably among the greatest of the bunch, and her games are already good and enjoyable 3 for 3 with me.

Even as a mostly slice-of-life slow burn, it rarely ever makes me feel like any scene drags on for too long, or repeats similar ideas and intents too often. The variance of how the relationship with the cool nurse progresses, interspersed with Ann’s daily life and musings when working as the assistant teacher in Miss Kayano’s 4th grade class, on top of dealing with Ann’s unique and lively best friend (Runa), all hold the game together in such a wonderful way that there’s not much to complain about; else if you hold a scrutinizing lens like I often do for all the games I review.

Overall, it has equally charming and fun to read banter dialogue, but it’s truly capable of pulling your heartstrings taut with suspense when it really wants to. I may not cry as hard as I could have with other games, but I’m sure the tears that welled up in what may feel like the penultimate scene cannot be attributed to just music.

(•)Patch? Well. I just say when you’re really itching[ebihime.itch.io] for something, you might find something interesting. Let me muse: Whatever could exist for this would be a beautiful addition to the experience that doesn’t distract from the plot; (as is the case for all ebi-hime games, surely). And yet I could say that while the first scene might satisfy me due to the beautiful descriptions and potential art variants, somehow the other 3 leaves me wanting, in visual terms. The descriptions are still wonderful, but the angles and the lack of variants, so to speak; in juices, jolting expressions, or just in the fact that a maid could connect mouth-to-mouth and somehow this was described-but-not-depicted; are quite flaws. The latter very much so when I reminisce about Blackberry Honey and how it differs in seemingly having more visual variance with the trade-off for slightly quality-crude CGs, if memory serves. I do understand that there’s some budget issues that would come with expanding upon this though, so I would enjoy them and recommend them for what they are regardless.
(•)Playtime: 16* hours 40 mins. But I can admit that I probably read 2.5x slower than normal. As usual, I’m not only basically screenshotting everything, but also sharing snippets of it around to friends and commenting on what happens, all the while compiling any potential typos and lines that might need improvements in a neat document. Wanting to share my experience around is quite a testament to how interesting the lines themselves could be; more so when you’re reading between them, or hunt and joke about the innocuous descriptions that has suggestive words (there’s plenty of this if you try).
(•)Kinetic VN, no VA So yeah. Don’t expect choices. Again, I still think it’s fine, but maybe I do need to play more of the medium.
(•)Ages? MC is 20, LI is 28. Earlier parts of the story has a short pre-birthday section for both, but relevant intimacy happens after. I think no one should get up in arms about such trivial “problematic” things in fiction, but here it is if you were curious.

(+) Immaculate Writing. There’s not much to say except I love it so much? I never would imagine that some of the best lines describe how a sandwich seemingly struggles to hold what it contains, or the fact that Runa’s imposing dad is intimidating enough that Ann finally felt her lungs deflating after he leaves the vicinity. It’s all very descriptive and fun to read (with style that sometimes makes me wonder if some grammatical rules have been broken), but generally I could understand the point of everything quite vividly and liken these to things I’ve experienced. God knows this is probably me being traumatized by my junior high Native English teacher, but I’ve met a man like him before.
(+) Really high quality art and CGs. I don’t want to put down other VNs from early careers, both of other devs or ebi-hime in the past, but for the latter case, but this does seem to stand out among the rest visually, even from a glance at the store pages alone. The sprites are all really cute, though I do have some gripe on one aspect for later. I know it’s probably just budgeting and commissioning different artists, of course, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t appreciate the style on display here.
(+) Lovely MC. Ann is quite the typical shy, but you can almost always root for her. That’s not to say that one particular plot point doesn’t constantly make me go ”girl you’re a dumb*ss” (I did), but she’s still someone I respect and I can understand her struggles. It’s easy to fall into writing shy wrecks that seem nauseating to even describe, but that’s not quite the case here.
(+) Very nice characters in general. The LI, Kohaku, has a really fun personality that plays off Ann really well, tempering her into growth and activity, while also being respectfully aware of boundaries and often tenderly checks in with what Ann thinks and feels. While some of her compliments could use some expansive descriptions like the ones in narration, this fact is acknowledged by both characters in dialogue, coming in varied enough ways to keep it fresh.
On the other hand, other characters like the gentle Miss Kayano and pouty, lively Runa might seem stereotypically average; but as a whole, they are great additions to the story. I’ll take the mundane in SOLs any day, over characters that are pompously overbearing.
(+) A beautiful plot about self-worth, intimacy, and forgiveness. On top of the fact that Ann slowly but surely learns to grow as a person, these themes are woven in the game in general. Not only is she relatable to a potentially targeted audience of insecure readers (me, lol), I think it makes for a fascinating read.

(-) One sprite is lacking. Ann has a good expression that shows shocking despair; however I don’t feel like it fits to use this to show that she is crying after whatever upset her. And yet it happens, quite a few times I think. I feel like actually having a general sprite that has tears and less of the blue-faced pale shock that exists here would serve the game well, but alas. At least there’s a crying CG where it counts, but I think it’s slightly different.
(-) Some things are repeated a little too often to my liking. The game is still varied enough in most aspects and tries to differentiate the context and the lines that follows, but Kohaku calling Ann “cute”, and Ann describing various parts of her life as a “fishbowl”; relatable as it may be, somewhat loses its charm after the 5th time. It felt like each of these happened around 7-10 times.
(-) The writing for the big plot is on the wall. This is arguably fine; I’m still of the belief that stories can be good despite predictability. But by the first one-third of the game, you can see Runa complaining about something seemingly minuscule in an exaggerated, almost comical way. And generally, what seems to be the repeated struggle for Ann revolves around her. I just think there could be more substance and reason before this drama, but it is pretty realistic how teens could create problems out of nothing but themselves. To be fair, it ends with managing to make me feel for both characters, and it proves the story succeeded.

(additional con comments)