Reviewed at v1.0.2
I truly cannot believe how much I enjoyed this game. I thought I was going to play a porn game, but in the end I felt that the sex scenes were a secondary (but high quality) interest compared to my interest in the story itself. This is the first Virtual Novel to make me actually care about the characters, and I felt like my choices were truly my own.
This game deals with some seriously heavy themes -- but not heavy as in morally dark, like some other games. Rather, heavy in the way that real life can be heavy. These characters are mostly good people, and when shit happens to them they've been written to react in fairly believable ways. There are some stretches of the imagination in the plot, which I won't spoil, but to give you a sense of what to expect just imagine the kind of hijinks that have to emerge to generate a scenario in which a "regular guy" is potentially sleeping with a lot of different people. These divergences from reality didn't do anything to disrupt my immersion in the story, though.
The art is really high quality. Less time is spent on the sex scenes relative to other games you may have played, but they are exciting nonetheless. More impactful is the day-to-day interactions with the characters, as the modeling has been done in such a way to build your attraction to the girls while also making them seem more believable in your interactions. Their expressions change in subtle but readable ways that make it seem like they're really reacting to what just happened -- a level of talent I have never seen before. There was even one memorable moment without even a line of dialogue, where a certain memorable character merely looked at me out of the corner of his eyes that had me laughing out loud at his implied joke. This moment was possible because the art direction taught me early on to read their body language, to know their personality, so that when it happened I actually got the joke. Truly phenomenal.
The gameplay itself was standard in format, but superior in execution. You make decisions that affect your "score" with different characters. Scores and decisions unlock different scenes and endings based on your choices. The key difference here is that the choices were not bone-headed. Most of the dialogue options seemed reasonable, and I often felt conflicted about what to say next. And no, the author didn't pull the rug out from under you for trying to choose something sensible. I played without the hints, and I strongly recommend you do, too, because it was much more engaging to try to read the characters' reactions and try to learn about who they were so I could make more informed choices.
My only complaint is that in this sea of immersion and meaning, I occasionally felt forced to participate in activities that I just couldn't get on board with. The best example of this is the scene where the main character gets a tattoo. Until then, I felt like I identified with the main character much more than in other VNs. That episode broke that identification quite a bit, but thankfully didn't really interrupt the rest of the story for me. That said, those types of situations were much more noticeable considering how well the choices were delivered overall.
The game has a massive number of potential endings, but in the Fallout style they are different arrangements of outcomes for different variables. So, you get to find out how each character fared by the end, and the combination of each is what gives you that broad range. This is an excellent design choice for this style of game which others should imitate. That said, it did leave me with the one complaint, which was that I really thought I would have an opportunity to somehow get an ending with multiple girls. Since it narrows to just one by the end, I guess that's more realistic, but the pervert in me feels a little let down.
In the end, a touching, immersive, sexually invigorating tale about people I actually came to care about. The use of art in storytelling far exceeds the competition. The variety in scenes and my affection for the characters means I will be coming back to play this story several times -- and you should play it at least once.