Speaking of which, I totally forgot to post my 僕ãŒå¤©ä½¿ã«ãªã£ãŸç†ç”± review from vndb here. Also the reason why I may sound a little... tired of romance-centric stories, because this is just packed with em.
For those who knew me, they would know that I have a huge weakness for musical Visual Novels, and thus almost all the Visual Novels from Overdrive had a special place in my heart. First on the list would be of course Kira Kira, and everything else under the same universe (Kira Kira Curtain Call, Deardrops, Cross The Future etc). This is my subjective opinion, but Overdrive has made some of the best songs I’ve heard from Visual Novels, and only losing to one time epics Symphonic Rain (though I thought some Overdrive songs were certainly on par too). So when I saw this came out I immediately made it my first priority to play it just after completing Rewrite.
僕ãŒå¤©ä½¿ã«ãªã£ãŸç†ç”± is a Visual Novel which focuses on the theme †˜Music’ and †˜Fantasy: Angel’. You have a dark-spirited protagonist who seemed to view everything in the worst possible reality due to a terrible past, until one day an angel fell from the sky and changed his life forever. At first sight this wasn’t the best of openings even as a brief synopsis, but surprisingly enough I didn’t feel any skepticism when playing the actual game itself. The writer did well to create a sober enough atmosphere that nullified any †˜meh’ type of feelings when the angel, Aine fell from the skies. At that moment I already knew that this Visual Novel would most likely not disappoint me, for it had certainly caught my attention so fully that I wouldn’t even think to distract myself with other VNs.
So basically, 僕ãŒå¤©ä½¿ã«ãªã£ãŸç†ç”± narrates about the different types of love difficulties we may encounter in life. Each chapter is dedicated to tell one type, and for the common route they are:
Distance + fear of confession, career risk, friendship (triangular) risk, homosexual relationship, age difference, and finally rape.
The individual heroine routes are no different, as:
Naruko suppressing (more accurately speaking, cutting away her love) her own feelings to support the protagonist, as a person who knew the aftermath of his past; Yuri and her obsessive, yandere sister; Minamo and her dreams to become a singer (which requires separation with the protagonist)
. All of these problems were narrated in a condensed, simplified version, but they were definitely entertaining and each provided with a most realistic conclusion regardless of the protagonist’s decision.
Speaking about the choices. The protagonist would make a decision at each turning point of these relationships whether to †˜Return the Broken Piece of Heart’ or not that would decide the fate of these couples they’re trying to help (under Aine’s persistent pressure lol). Hence there are of course two different endings, and they were very realistic that not one – despite the very different outcomes – had a perfect happy/sad ending. It was always a mixture of sadness and happiness, some more than the other, but always a mixture. I absolutely love the VN for this one point alone: there is no perfect happy ending for ANYONE at all, not even in the true route, not even for an angel. Such is the way of life, and the way僕ãŒå¤©ä½¿ã«ãªã£ãŸç†ç”±was so frank about this simple truth is a refreshing breath of the air.
The sub heroines and characters were fleshed out okay – not too good but not bad either. But this is also the only serious VN I know where every sub heroine route ended, regardless of their two separate endings,
with troubling amounts of despair and sadness.
Yuri’s route was the shortest out of all (and in my opinion the worst, but make no mistake, it is still a good read) others, where the two of them attempts to deal with the problem presented by the crazy sister. To put it mildly (without spoilers), the good end puts the protagonist in a miserable state and the bad end utterly broke him and Yuri. THAT’S RIGHT, LET NO ONE BE HAPPY AND EVERYTHING ENDS IN DESPAIR! FUHAHAHAHA – ahem, woops. Inner demon be at peace, at peace~
Heavy Spoilers now on sub heroines’ route PLEASE AVOID!
The fact is, none of the sub-heroines routes’ ended in good note: Minamo’s good end sees the protagonist separating with her so she could continue being a singer and the bad end have them running away and live a life of an extremely uncertain future (since none of them has a job etc); Naruko’s bad end sees them remain best friends forever because otherwise the Red String of Fate would separate/break their relationship, and her good end sees them ignore the warning and become lovers, but one month later they… lose their memories and completely forgot each other SCARY WTF.
So while a devil spawn like this feels super fine and dandy, someone more normal might find it a little too hard and depressing to swallow. No, it’s not as dark as say Yume Miru Kusuri, but the constant bombs of sadness was enough to turn an angel’s wing black. And yet you must complete all the sub heroine routes first before you can progress to the true end,
which is the only happy-ish end you could get
. Damn, I REALLY like this VN for what it is, LET THE DESP *stomps inner demon*
Now, about the system, 僕ãŒå¤©ä½¿ã«ãªã£ãŸç†ç”± offers something new. There are a lot more new functions (which I didn’t use, so won’t make much of a comment here) in the Config section, and the Mouse Settings page is… rather impressive. In the Omake (Extra section), announcements would be made if you have completed a certain heroine’s route to help keep better track of your progress. As long as you’re in the Omake the heroines would make funny jokes on occasion (though you can turn them off by clicking the microphone near the bottom left). For Scene Replays we have the Calendar interface, which organize things better than the conventional when trying to search for a particular scene to replay.
Also, in the Songs and BGM section, there are several new options that I’ve really come to like. Next to the Song List is a Playlist which allows you to, well, make up a playlist of music so you can hear them in any order you like. At the right there are 3 options you can select: Lyrics, Lyrics + Code and er, Slide Mode (Sorry my Katagana kinda fails sometimes)? They are exactly what they mean: Lyrics displays a white board with the song’s lyrics on it, Lyrics + Code adds additional text (again, sorry but I don’t understand what they mean) above the lyrics and finally Slide Mode displays CGs in succession until the end of the song. At the bottom you have a slide bar to control volume, and a number of buttons which symbolized †˜Previous (song)’, †˜Play’, †˜Stop’, †˜Next (song)’, †˜Loop’, †˜Loop Song Once Only’, and †˜Shuffle’. The knob thing actually means that you’re playing the entire Songlist or the Playlist. Finally, click at the chibi Aine portrait and she would make cute noises, though of course like I said you can turn it off if it gets annoying.
What I think about the music in general… let’s just say that Overdrive never disappoints me. What’s more, they actually made an improvement (subjective) by shortening the usual lengthy opening of a song. So yes, I’m both impressed and happy.
Now, about some of the technical faults of I find in the VN:
1) No Autosave function.
2) Interface text in Save/Load page is way, way, waaaaay too small.
3) They grey interface text at the Config section looks blurry.
4) At the Song/BGM replay section, the switching of songs when clicking †˜Next’ and †˜Previous’ is very slow.
5) I’m not exactly sure how to use some of the functions offered in Mouse Settings honestly. The help texts are a pain to read.
The non-technical faults are:
1) Since every single chapter focuses entirely on the topic †˜Love’ despite the difference it can easily get tedious. There were no breaks in between at all and it may stifle some readers.
2) The truth/final mystery+solution is kinda †˜meh, wut’ even though the ending was really cool. Also, I easily guessed all the truth to all the mysteries, so they don't surprise me at all.
3) Too short for me at least. A total of maybe fifteen to sixteen hours maximum if you play through all routes (with skip on common).
And that’s the end of my super lengthy review.