Recent reviews by natsuki

Recommended. Well maybe slightly less than 7/10 or something. It's a nice and warm all-age story. Low choice and around 10 hours long. It has that classic "Yuzusoft" feeling to it—very good atmosphere and soundtrack, extremely polished, diabete-inducing, light-hearted drama, a specific brand of comedy, and still feeling like a good old route-based moege (despite having no route system and no real romance whatsoever). The story is very predictable, although that really isn't a problem. Oh and both heroines are voiced by the same person. Voice actors are seriously amazing.

If you're training your Japanese reading, this is fine material: Low difficulty, convenient language switch functionality and fairly modern language usage.

The premise and focus of the story is interesting, and perhaps a bit deeper than their average titles. I also like the message the story tries to convey. The antagonist-building is hilariously bad, as expected. The overarching story and the conclusion felt a bit lacking to me though. That after-story part is particularly awkward. Like, if the story ended just before the after-story then it would have been more satisfying; and if the after-story were developed more then it would also have been fine; but the current after-story as it stands sits in an awkward compromise between these two and is somewhat distracting.

Now that you have successfully escaped that horrifying haunted train, you got off at Platform 8 and walked through the ticket gate.

Only thing left is to find Exit 8. No big deal right?

Recommended. It's fun, short, and somehow didn't induce my 1st-person motion sickness. Clearly inspired by Exit 8, albeit a bit easier than that one. And there's an actual slightly heartwarming plot!

RIP Giga.

Recommended. The training data and objection functions for AI systems are very very important. It's literally a matter of life and death for their and our species.

I think it's the first time I rated on vndb a fandisk higher than the original vn lol

The writing is still melodrama-ish, but at least it has proper closures of both the true route and Mare's route, and a lot of other loose threads. Definitely grab this one if you like hoshimemo's overall story but found the ending unsatisfying.

I'm a bit torn on this one. It has many well-paced emotional segments that almost drove me to tears, but the conherence and quality of the storytelling vary dramatically throughout different parts of the story. I guess a way to enjoy the story more is not expecting this to be a romance story, but instead a story about "light" (for lack of better terms), about emotional intelligence, and about the meaning of family. The story actually shines in these non-romance departments.

Hoshimemo is a heartwarming story with splended production quality and atmosphere, with a bit of supernatural element. The music is seriously good here. This actually reads, looks, and sounds like a typical Yuzusoft moege, with a bit more overarching melodrama, half the amount of sugar, and also way more than double the amount of suspension of disbelief needed. Character-wise, most characters are pretty fleshed out but are also extraordinarily terrible at communicating, yet so much of the plot in some routes depends on miscommunication and teenager angsty...

To be honest, I almost dropped this title after finishing my first route, Minahoshi Asuho's. The chemistry is terrible, and the development and resolution have fairly bad pacing. However, my next route, Hisakaki Komomo's, is pretty good. It has solid chemistry development, intertwining well with the unraveling of a supernatural mystery. The immersiveness of the mystery part is also quite good. Like, the story is kind of obvious, with some small twists dropped here and there, but I still enjoyed it.

On the technical side, the HD version has an uncompromisingly huge window size and uncompromisingly tiny font, which makes it hard to read without a big monitor that can handle the HDness. I recommend getting familiar with Windows Magnifier tool to assist reading (Windows 10's magnifier can be set to only magnify a part of the screen).

Well just because it is a Ryukishi07 story doesn't guarantee anything I guess. The characters are unlikable and have pretty unclear motivations, and the storywriting isn't consistent. The amount of head-hopping in POV switch is a bit too much for me...

I was treading along a path through salty multidimensional emptiness while composing what I was going to write in this review with... what again?

I don't remember anything now. I guess it's really good. :D

10/10 would kiss the princess again.

To future gods: please don't employ sentient beings to do deeply personal NPC work

.... Just don't

Stream-of-consciousness writing. And the English translation is quite difficult to read.