What the hell even was it. This is such a frustrating experience, but there are beautiful parts here too.
(for those who wonder, no, there is no NTR somehow)
Narrative is a MESS. A giant tangled whatever sprinkled with god awful translation and sauced with most of the story told through flashbacks.
Let me give you a picture, we start with one of our 3 protagonists (yeah we will be switching between them) walking wounded at around 70% of the story, he loses counsiousness, we flashback at the earliest point where we are already in the shelter for a while. We walk into couple rooms, click continue, our lad wakes up, goes a bit further and yoinks to neverland again and we continue with the next flashback that is just monthes later. Some half a year later or more, VN doesn't really care. This is how first around 50% of this works, narrative jumps in time for really no reason, we are given pieces of information and context in a beyond asinine order, i don't even know which choices matter and which didn't. Did Lucas matter? Who knows. Did Shadow matter? Who knows.
I also have to warn you, this VN is vile in it's content, in a sense that almost everyone (besides Narumi and mom) is a royal piece of shit, at least in my version of events we shot a pregnant woman to death (she wasn't exactly a saint but you know, morally debatable), let 2 wolves eat a baby (i think, game kinda glossed over it), execute a lot of innocents and not innocents, there is also cannibalism and breeding rape dungeon and it's all very jolly and full of rainbows as you can see, if you are squeamish towards those things you have been warned, it's not only not-pretty but is written in a very tasteless manner.
"so why did you put it at 3 ya donkey?"
Because despite all the madness and nonsense, awful translation, jumping narrative and tasteless "grimdark" tone for the sake of it, Narumi and Koji is an insanely heartwarming, hopeful and loving story that at one point brought me close to tears (not quite, but close enough). It's just such a wonderful little thing, i highly doubt it was the authors intent, but amidst everything hopeless what they had was something so warm and wonderful i almost can forgive this VN a lot of stuff. If you can persevere through honestly awful first half, for true love fans there is something there worth seeing.
Ending is dogshit by the way. In a sense "....wait, are you for real? You wanna end it here? What the hell author? Why?"
It's not a good VN, not good at all. But there is a tiny bit of brilliance in this madhouse and if you are willing to tolerate the rest for this bit, go for it.
(for those who wonder, no, there is no NTR somehow)
Narrative is a MESS. A giant tangled whatever sprinkled with god awful translation and sauced with most of the story told through flashbacks.
Let me give you a picture, we start with one of our 3 protagonists (yeah we will be switching between them) walking wounded at around 70% of the story, he loses counsiousness, we flashback at the earliest point where we are already in the shelter for a while. We walk into couple rooms, click continue, our lad wakes up, goes a bit further and yoinks to neverland again and we continue with the next flashback that is just monthes later. Some half a year later or more, VN doesn't really care. This is how first around 50% of this works, narrative jumps in time for really no reason, we are given pieces of information and context in a beyond asinine order, i don't even know which choices matter and which didn't. Did Lucas matter? Who knows. Did Shadow matter? Who knows.
I also have to warn you, this VN is vile in it's content, in a sense that almost everyone (besides Narumi and mom) is a royal piece of shit, at least in my version of events we shot a pregnant woman to death (she wasn't exactly a saint but you know, morally debatable), let 2 wolves eat a baby (i think, game kinda glossed over it), execute a lot of innocents and not innocents, there is also cannibalism and breeding rape dungeon and it's all very jolly and full of rainbows as you can see, if you are squeamish towards those things you have been warned, it's not only not-pretty but is written in a very tasteless manner.
"so why did you put it at 3 ya donkey?"
Because despite all the madness and nonsense, awful translation, jumping narrative and tasteless "grimdark" tone for the sake of it, Narumi and Koji is an insanely heartwarming, hopeful and loving story that at one point brought me close to tears (not quite, but close enough). It's just such a wonderful little thing, i highly doubt it was the authors intent, but amidst everything hopeless what they had was something so warm and wonderful i almost can forgive this VN a lot of stuff. If you can persevere through honestly awful first half, for true love fans there is something there worth seeing.
Ending is dogshit by the way. In a sense "....wait, are you for real? You wanna end it here? What the hell author? Why?"
It's not a good VN, not good at all. But there is a tiny bit of brilliance in this madhouse and if you are willing to tolerate the rest for this bit, go for it.