So I finally decided to give this game a full playthrough last night.
Worst.
Game.
Ever.
Let me start off by saying that I’ve played my share of click-thru-text Japanese games, but this has got to be the worst one that I’ve ever played.
There are around 50 disjointed events for each character and only like 5 of them actually do anything. For example, I have Sachiko (the name I gave the main character) go to Matsuri’s house in the morning. Sachiko sees Ana on the street and they go in together. The conversation that takes place is as follows..
Ana: [some stuff], but it’s better than being at school.
Sachiko: You don’t like school?
Ana: It’s not that I don’t like school, but it’s hard not being able to say anything.
Sachiko: Why can’t you say anything?
Matsuri: Ana decided to not speak Japanese while in school.
Sachiko: Why?
Ana: Because I’m from England [blah blah blah], but we can talk in the bathroom during breaks!
Sachiko: Oh…
Screen fades to black and Sachiko is back in his room ready to go out for the evening. There are two things wrong with the above conversation.
1. Anyone who’s ever read/watched Ichigo Mashimaro already knows this.
2. This scene is probably in the top 5% of game events in terms of length of spoken conversation.
Then, of course, stuff like this (below) happens that makes me come back for more.
Matsuri: I think it’s so cute that the baby is trying so hard to drink the milk. Ah, I want a baby, too!
But one cannot rely on such unitentional humor to swallow the $115 price tag for the limited edition of this game.
Deep down, the animosity that I have for this game does not stem from the lack of a storyline. Before anyone says anything, “Matsuri can’t swim” and “Chika bakes cookies” are not good plot devices. They’re not good masturbatory devices, either, so don’t ask.
The game really takes a nosedive when the makers insult the intelligence of the consumer by copying scenes from the manga into this game. This is just baffling because in the beginning of the game, many events that occured in the manga are referenced by the main characters. Then for some reason, they decide to relive the summer festival again.
Yeah, I’m no angel myself. I’ve done my share of corner cutting. I’ve used 1.1 inch margins with 2.25 line spacing and courier size 14 font when writing papers for school. They had the exact same scene in the anime, too. This is worse than plagirism. At least plagirism is free. These people probably had to pay someone for the rights to do this. So sad…
So with that, I’ll end this with a look at Matsuri’s normal ending. I’ll have to play through the game a couple more times to get everyone’s good endings because I need to unlock all the locations in the town before I can pursue them.
So an 11 year old girl can’t even write おにいちゃん correctly on the first try. For those not in the know, think of this as 5th grader who writes the letter “S” the wrong way. So either she’s retarded or she beat up a 4 year old girl and stole the drawing from her. If they made a game out of that I’d buy that shit, for sure.