Recent reviews by natsuki

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

10/10 Recommended. A very holistic and realistic simulation on buying a bag of milk.

A story with interesting premise and good potential. This hooked me fast in the first few chapters, and even got me teared up in that "Homeless" chapter, but the story later developed into a kind-of-awkward direction. The action sequences are also poorly-placed and poorly-paced. For an (in my opinion) better take at this theme, see season 1-2 of "Stranger Things".

I... umm... actually agree with what the final boss said. Can we go home now and just let him save the world? lol

The part I liked most in this title is its main characters. It's like they turned up the character trope multiplier by a few points, but still they bounce off each other pretty well. The main character is quite likable, have clear principles he follows, and is responsible. That's top-tier JRPG protagonist material right here.

A lot of missables. Consult a guide would be a good idea for this title.

Overall, Tales of Vesperia is a fairly slow-burn title, both story-wise and mechanic-wise. Early-game combat is terrible, but late-game combat is fairly involved and pretty fun. And story-wise it is actually a trilogy packaged into one game! The story itself is very shounen manga style. Standard cliche JRPG things. The plot of the final story arc is a bit weak though.

Well... I'm kind of feeling complicated about this one.

The mystery and overall plotline is pretty good and well-executed, and the minigame is fine. The characters are adorable and relatable, with some of the personal routes tread fairly near Nakige realms. As the story progresses, you will get the feeling of progressing that you are steadily going toward solving the mystery and meta-mystery.

However... this story has a lot of comically bad comical relief timings. This killed a lot of tension at wrong times.

Though memories are precious, please keep your sight on the future. No matter what happened, please move on and find your happiness.

Highly recommended. The overall story is sad and cruel—somehow this make the angelicly optimistic messages in this game feel even more heartwarming, realistic, persuasive, and authentic. However, be sure to read the content warning in the store page. Some parts are VERY triggering.

Oh and you should install the 18+ patch even if you don't read H-scenes. There are some censored CGs that are quite important for understanding a part of Ms. Amamiya's arc. You will get confused otherwise.



At times like this, you should take a deep breath.

No, a deep breath cannot prepare you enough for this. Probably nothing can.

There are many contrived elements throughout the whole story, and you will think to yourself "Yeah this is obvious I know where this is going", and you're quite sure the story is designed to break your heart. Nontheless, you're still going to cry like a baby.

I love the messy take of this whole story. Everyone has a messy personality and the world is ichiwaruly unfair. Just like the world we are living in.

There's a huge amount of heart being poured into this visual novel. Just look at the quantity and quality of CGs and tracks. The production quality is ridiculously high. Characters speak with lipsync and there is a lot of subtle animations. Also judging by the voice lines I heard (there is no Japanese subtitle in the Steam version), the original Japanese writing is quite beautiful. I'm definitely going to purchase a Japanese version and read it again.

Today could possibly be a better day than yesterday. Tomorrow could possibly be an even better day than today. As long as you are stepping forward...

Highly recommended. The first tale (this game) is relatively happy. I think this is mainly for preparing the reader for the sad and cruel latter tale. This is only a bit less than half; be sure to go read the latter tale for the complete story.

I'm not sure what kind of magic they used, but the very first scene—the one with the opening credits still showing—evoked a somewhat subtle sad emotion. It was a masterpiece of atmosphere-building. And... I don't know, seeing the young people's messed-up stories from Ms. Amamiya's perspective, I felt some warmth and brightness of heavenly salvation...

Every set of fairy tales—beside the main overarching one—may look just like an average Japanese slice-of-life drama, but as the stories progress, they are actually unexpectedly and profoundly deep and interconnected. Most dialogues have multiple layers of meaning inside; it's kind of philosophical. I mean, Ms. Amamiya has her in-universe reason to speak in that manner, but normal people definitely don't, right?

There's a huge amount of heart being poured into this visual novel. Just look at the quantity and quality of CGs and tracks. The production quality is ridiculously high. Characters speak with lipsync and there is a lot of subtle animations. Also judging by the voice lines I heard (there is no Japanese subtitle in the Steam version), the original Japanese writing is quite beautiful. I'm definitely going to purchase a Japanese version and read it again.

Welcome to The Exit 0 :D

Highly recommended. Despite being short, this is so impressively well-executed. The atmosphere is fairly immersive (and thus horrifying lol), especially when playing with a headphone...

Recommended! A wholesome and educational short tale with high production quality and gorgeous artworks. If we remove the linguistic twist, this is basically a standard cute fluffy Isekai Yuri story—an above-average one at that—with a little bit of drama added. The two main characters are adorable, and the chemistry fairly natural. Vi ĝuos ĉi tiun rakonton!

The pacing is nice; every time I started to feel a bit bored from the slice-of-life parts, the plot would drop something that looked like a foreshadowing and rekindle my interest. It's unexpectedly benevolent, where more honest communication does actually lead to better results. The in-game name of the language Juliamo is a word play that fits the theme of this title quite well. There is also some more discussion in the deeper meanings of language and expression (the whole kotonoha vs. kotoba synonym thing), but I think I'm not good enough in Japanese to really grasp all of that, albeit the Japanese in this title being not difficult to read.

Pri la malavantaĝoj... Around half of the dialogues are in a variant of Esperanto, it's going to be tough if you didn't grasp the Esperanto basics in the initial section of the story. Though it's not a very useful language IRL to begin with (unless you're monolingual, in which case you should try to learn it a bit). Also, Ruka's (the main character beside the protagonist) voice acting is sometimes emotionally a bit off, but her half-broken Japanese does make her super adorable, ĉu ne? Shikashi... sasugani... kotonoha... benkyou... muzukashi... kedo...

Ĝis revido en la blua mondo : )

Ciallo~ (∠・ω< )♥ Be sure to consult an attorney before signing a contract with any kind of magical entities. Specifically, read carefully the fine prints in the "Appendix 5A: Space-time Causality Complications and Potential Implications" section. Trust me, you won't regret it.

Highly recommended. Very high production and translation quality, enjoyable story, good atmosphere, and impressive UI. I'm not entirely sure about the length, since I read it in 2 different languages, but it is long. This title is, for most intends and purposes, a Moege—albeit a very good one at that—in which the main points are slice-of-life, physical intimacy, and cute girls. Thus, the characters and plots in general are stereotypical, with a slightly progressive version of sexism. However, somehow the story is still enjoyable and the characters likable, especially in a certain plot-heavy route that treads a little bit too close to the Nakige realm.

NOTE for Japanese learners: you can press J ingame to switch to Japanese subtitles, and press E to switch to English subtitles. This is very handy when you're reading this as language-learning reading material. Oh and don't learn Togakushi's dirty jokes; most of them are super inappropriate in real life.

This is my first encounter with a Yuzusoft title. I don't usually read long slice-of-life visual novels, but this one is paced and plotted relatively well. Furthermore, I'm a mid-aged non-heterosexual female—definitely not anywhere near the intended target audience, yet I enjoyed all routes beside Shiiba's. Yuzusoft indeed holds up to their reputation of "incredibly saccharine" character arcs, specifically Inaba's route and the later part of Ayachi's route will give you some sugar rush and diabetes. This title is also unexpectedly wholesome, unangsty, and benevolent overall. This would be a good introductory title to Yuzusoft.

On a last note, although there is officially no "true route" in this title, please play Ayachi's route last, as it felt totally like the true route with the longest story, the largest amount of drama, a fairly complete after-story, and... something I will not spoil here but will make playing other routes feel weird after finishing her story.