Disclaimer: this review was written under the influence of Quantum Jump (acoustic) Extended playing in the background.
I really like moege. I don't know why. Most of the time they are so shallow and repetitive, but they can be oh so comfy and soothing. These crazy japs know how to create an addictive medium, I'll give them that.
Fureraba is one of those titles that I've always wanted to give a try. It seemed like something totally up my alley: generic high school protag, generic high school setting, generic cute girls, generic friends, generic events, generic plot points, generic everything. The developer, Smee, did an excellent job in taking in all these well-known elements and refining them to the level of art.
So as I said before you are a generic guy named Aoba Kyousuke who is just, well, an average guy. Not too smart, not too stupid. Not to handsome, not too ugly. You know, generic. By the way you can name him whatever you like when you start the game but I don't see why this option even exists seeing how everyone else is still going to call you Kyousuke. Usually this option is present in titles where you are named simply Darling, or, for the degenerates, Onii-chan. But I digress.
But our boy Kyousuke has a dream: before the start of the summer holiday he plans on getting himself a girlfriend. A noble goal if ever there was one. So during the course of the common route you have the option, twice daily, of choosing one of the four girls to approach in order to talk to them and get to know them better.
And here we come to the biggest issue of this otherwise great VN. The interactions that you have with them during these sections don't feel genuine at all. They look and sound more like job interviews than classmates chatting with each other. The most egregious of these lines is the "ask me something about my hobbies" line. Seriously, who asks someone else to ask him about his hobbies, or anything else for that matter!??
The other problem is that during the course of an interaction the girl will ask you a question, and the answer that you give her will determine whether you score a point with her or not. Unfortunately the answers that you're supposed to give are pretty bizare. You'd think that you would be able to guess what the right answer will be based on the personality of the respective girl, but nope. It's nothing but an exercise in trial and error. Unless of course you choose the rational course of action and use a walkthrough like a normal person.
Thankfully every "interrogation" section is sandwiched between hilarious and very well written slice-of-life scenes with your mates at school. In fact there is an "incel" route, as I like to call it", where you can choose to not talk to any of the girls and instead just mess around with everyone else. As far as I understand it, if you want to min-max you can max out favor with two girls before June 30, but personally I just focused my attention on one girl at a time.
Now let's take a look at each of the characters.
Kyousuke, like I said, is a p. generic dude, however he is in general a lot better written that what you would normally get in these types of titles. Not only is he very outspoken and outgoing, but he will generally not be afraid to tease and to flirt with a girl. One thing to note however is that during some routes his personality can take a turn for the worse and he will turn into a beta for no apparent reason. My guess is that this VN had multiple writers for the various routes, which would explain his personality shifts.
The girls range from OK to great. I'm going to talk about them in the order that I read their routes.
Himari is your childhood friend and also your class mate. You two were very close in the past, but over the years you've drifted apart from one another, so her route involves you two rekindling your friendship and perhaps moving one more step froward. Friend to lover, huh? Nudge nudge, wink wink. Honestly Himari can be a bit of a bitch at times, but she and the MC have a good chemistry together. Overall a decent route. PS: she really LOVES hamsters, and she really HATES carrots.
Yuzuyu is a hardcore tsundere if I ever saw one. Both her tsun and her dere sides are very pronounced. The beginning interactions are absolutely hilarious and over the top as her tsun tendencies contribute to many of the humorous slice-of-life sections. During her route she starts to deal with her insecurities and soon becomes the most dere out of all four girls! Definitely a very fun character that I expected to hate at first but ended up loving in the end. The dynamic between her and the MC is also great, with Kyousuke knowing exactly when to push her buttons to maximum effect. Her VA also manages to portray both sides of her personality perfectly.
Misaki is the school's idol. She is perfect in every way. A mysterious and highly studious and intelligent girl who lives in a mansion inside in the posh side of town. Or at least that's the impression that you get when you hear her teachers and classmates talk about her. In fact if you dig in deeper you will discover that things aren't exactly the way the seem... Unfortunately her route is the least developed I thought. It's shorter than others, with fewer H-scenes and CG's as well. She almost felt like a side character. Still, she's a decent waifu, if a bit underdeveloped. My only major complaint is... that.... she.... talks.... very.... slowly.......
And last but not least the one that is arguably the main girl of the story: Rina. She is also a class mate at school with whom you occasionally hang out with, but not one that you've ever looked at as a woman before. Until now that is. Friend to lover, maybe? In a way she is the perfect girlfriend, sharing many of the same interests and hobbies that Kyousuke has which means that she would be the perfect match for him. Well, the problem is that for some reason the writer(s?) decided that MC-kun needs a change of pace so they decided to give him a very meek and unassertive personality for Rina's route which had a negative impact on my enjoyment of it. I don't understand why they did this, because his fun and hyperactive personality worked wonder for the other three routes. The route itself is fine though, probably the most developed out all of them, especially since it deals with a bit of drama as well towards the end.
So that's just for the main cast, but the side characters are nothing to sneeze at either. Your two buddies, Genki and Momo, both offer tons of comedic relief during the slice-of-life sections, with Genki's VA doing a stellar job of acting out his over-the-top personality. Momo seems like a normal guy at first, that is until you find out his darkest secret... *shudder* . Your homeroom teacher, nick named Justice, is also a great character, being the goofball teacher who sometimes can give out actual good life advice. Then there are the other female classmates: Himari's perverted friend Tomomi, Rina's best friend Mahiro, and Yuzyu's number one admirer Mako, And then you also have the characters' parents, and uff, the list could go on and on but I'll leave those for you to discover ;^)
The artwork is good, however in my personal opinion the sprites look better than the CGs. Weird right? It seems that the artists who worked on the sprites put a lot more effort than the ones who worked on the CGs. In a way it makes sense because you'll be staring at the same sprites over and over again and if they didn't look good that would be a bad thing, however a CG is supposed to be like an achievement so IMO it should look even better! The backgrounds on the other hand don't look very good at all. They have this grainy and overly saturated look. Maybe they look that way in order for the sprites to stand out even more, but idk, I don't know anything about art. One great thing to mention here however is that during the course of the routes the girl asks you if you want her to change her look, so for example you can have Himari keep her twin tails or to let her hair down, and this stylistic choice will reflect not only in the sprites but also during the CGs! Luckily when you unlock a CG you unlock both variants so you don't have to read the same route twice with different hair styles, don't worry.
The voice acting is very high quality. As I mentioned before my favorites were Yuzuyu and Genki who both were both over the top and stood out the most. The music is background music as you can expect, however the main theme called Quantum Jump is a banger of a track that I've been listening to almost every day. When it started playing at the end of every route it always put in a good mood and it was an excellent way of ending a story!
And now for the moment you've all been waiting for: the H-scenes. Two words to describe them: uncensored and vanilla. Which is exactly how I like them! Now I know some of you degenerates might have wanted something else, but come on, just look at the cover! Does this look like Taimanin Asagi to you? I thought so. Personally I found them really hot. You also get to choose whether you want to coom outside or inside (this is just a CG choice however). The last scene for each girl is also the hottest where you get to coom twice so you can drench her in your milk from head to tow or fill her up till she starts overflowing. So hot.
The VN also comes with a small fan disc with an after story for each of the girls. These short stories consist of a few slice-of-life moments as well as an H-scene.
Overall Fureraba - Friend to Lover is a very well put together visual novel that does almost everything it sets out to do perfectly. The fact that there are so many CG variants is a major selling point and I wish more devs would go this far with their artwork. The only real downside were the aforementioned "interview" scenes, but other than that this VN does exactly what you expect it do do: a fun and pure romance story.
Verdict: generically excellent. Fans of moege and pure love romances should not miss out on it. Everyone else beware because this will probably not make you a fan of the genre.
Total play time: This was quite a long VN clockin in at about42 hours, that is including the "incel route" as well as the fan disc.
I really like moege. I don't know why. Most of the time they are so shallow and repetitive, but they can be oh so comfy and soothing. These crazy japs know how to create an addictive medium, I'll give them that.
Fureraba is one of those titles that I've always wanted to give a try. It seemed like something totally up my alley: generic high school protag, generic high school setting, generic cute girls, generic friends, generic events, generic plot points, generic everything. The developer, Smee, did an excellent job in taking in all these well-known elements and refining them to the level of art.
So as I said before you are a generic guy named Aoba Kyousuke who is just, well, an average guy. Not too smart, not too stupid. Not to handsome, not too ugly. You know, generic. By the way you can name him whatever you like when you start the game but I don't see why this option even exists seeing how everyone else is still going to call you Kyousuke. Usually this option is present in titles where you are named simply Darling, or, for the degenerates, Onii-chan. But I digress.
But our boy Kyousuke has a dream: before the start of the summer holiday he plans on getting himself a girlfriend. A noble goal if ever there was one. So during the course of the common route you have the option, twice daily, of choosing one of the four girls to approach in order to talk to them and get to know them better.
And here we come to the biggest issue of this otherwise great VN. The interactions that you have with them during these sections don't feel genuine at all. They look and sound more like job interviews than classmates chatting with each other. The most egregious of these lines is the "ask me something about my hobbies" line. Seriously, who asks someone else to ask him about his hobbies, or anything else for that matter!??
The other problem is that during the course of an interaction the girl will ask you a question, and the answer that you give her will determine whether you score a point with her or not. Unfortunately the answers that you're supposed to give are pretty bizare. You'd think that you would be able to guess what the right answer will be based on the personality of the respective girl, but nope. It's nothing but an exercise in trial and error. Unless of course you choose the rational course of action and use a walkthrough like a normal person.
Thankfully every "interrogation" section is sandwiched between hilarious and very well written slice-of-life scenes with your mates at school. In fact there is an "incel" route, as I like to call it", where you can choose to not talk to any of the girls and instead just mess around with everyone else. As far as I understand it, if you want to min-max you can max out favor with two girls before June 30, but personally I just focused my attention on one girl at a time.
Now let's take a look at each of the characters.
Kyousuke, like I said, is a p. generic dude, however he is in general a lot better written that what you would normally get in these types of titles. Not only is he very outspoken and outgoing, but he will generally not be afraid to tease and to flirt with a girl. One thing to note however is that during some routes his personality can take a turn for the worse and he will turn into a beta for no apparent reason. My guess is that this VN had multiple writers for the various routes, which would explain his personality shifts.
The girls range from OK to great. I'm going to talk about them in the order that I read their routes.
Himari is your childhood friend and also your class mate. You two were very close in the past, but over the years you've drifted apart from one another, so her route involves you two rekindling your friendship and perhaps moving one more step froward. Friend to lover, huh? Nudge nudge, wink wink. Honestly Himari can be a bit of a bitch at times, but she and the MC have a good chemistry together. Overall a decent route. PS: she really LOVES hamsters, and she really HATES carrots.
Yuzuyu is a hardcore tsundere if I ever saw one. Both her tsun and her dere sides are very pronounced. The beginning interactions are absolutely hilarious and over the top as her tsun tendencies contribute to many of the humorous slice-of-life sections. During her route she starts to deal with her insecurities and soon becomes the most dere out of all four girls! Definitely a very fun character that I expected to hate at first but ended up loving in the end. The dynamic between her and the MC is also great, with Kyousuke knowing exactly when to push her buttons to maximum effect. Her VA also manages to portray both sides of her personality perfectly.
Misaki is the school's idol. She is perfect in every way. A mysterious and highly studious and intelligent girl who lives in a mansion inside in the posh side of town. Or at least that's the impression that you get when you hear her teachers and classmates talk about her. In fact if you dig in deeper you will discover that things aren't exactly the way the seem... Unfortunately her route is the least developed I thought. It's shorter than others, with fewer H-scenes and CG's as well. She almost felt like a side character. Still, she's a decent waifu, if a bit underdeveloped. My only major complaint is... that.... she.... talks.... very.... slowly.......
And last but not least the one that is arguably the main girl of the story: Rina. She is also a class mate at school with whom you occasionally hang out with, but not one that you've ever looked at as a woman before. Until now that is. Friend to lover, maybe? In a way she is the perfect girlfriend, sharing many of the same interests and hobbies that Kyousuke has which means that she would be the perfect match for him. Well, the problem is that for some reason the writer(s?) decided that MC-kun needs a change of pace so they decided to give him a very meek and unassertive personality for Rina's route which had a negative impact on my enjoyment of it. I don't understand why they did this, because his fun and hyperactive personality worked wonder for the other three routes. The route itself is fine though, probably the most developed out all of them, especially since it deals with a bit of drama as well towards the end.
So that's just for the main cast, but the side characters are nothing to sneeze at either. Your two buddies, Genki and Momo, both offer tons of comedic relief during the slice-of-life sections, with Genki's VA doing a stellar job of acting out his over-the-top personality. Momo seems like a normal guy at first, that is until you find out his darkest secret... *shudder* . Your homeroom teacher, nick named Justice, is also a great character, being the goofball teacher who sometimes can give out actual good life advice. Then there are the other female classmates: Himari's perverted friend Tomomi, Rina's best friend Mahiro, and Yuzyu's number one admirer Mako, And then you also have the characters' parents, and uff, the list could go on and on but I'll leave those for you to discover ;^)
The artwork is good, however in my personal opinion the sprites look better than the CGs. Weird right? It seems that the artists who worked on the sprites put a lot more effort than the ones who worked on the CGs. In a way it makes sense because you'll be staring at the same sprites over and over again and if they didn't look good that would be a bad thing, however a CG is supposed to be like an achievement so IMO it should look even better! The backgrounds on the other hand don't look very good at all. They have this grainy and overly saturated look. Maybe they look that way in order for the sprites to stand out even more, but idk, I don't know anything about art. One great thing to mention here however is that during the course of the routes the girl asks you if you want her to change her look, so for example you can have Himari keep her twin tails or to let her hair down, and this stylistic choice will reflect not only in the sprites but also during the CGs! Luckily when you unlock a CG you unlock both variants so you don't have to read the same route twice with different hair styles, don't worry.
The voice acting is very high quality. As I mentioned before my favorites were Yuzuyu and Genki who both were both over the top and stood out the most. The music is background music as you can expect, however the main theme called Quantum Jump is a banger of a track that I've been listening to almost every day. When it started playing at the end of every route it always put in a good mood and it was an excellent way of ending a story!
And now for the moment you've all been waiting for: the H-scenes. Two words to describe them: uncensored and vanilla. Which is exactly how I like them! Now I know some of you degenerates might have wanted something else, but come on, just look at the cover! Does this look like Taimanin Asagi to you? I thought so. Personally I found them really hot. You also get to choose whether you want to coom outside or inside (this is just a CG choice however). The last scene for each girl is also the hottest where you get to coom twice so you can drench her in your milk from head to tow or fill her up till she starts overflowing. So hot.
The VN also comes with a small fan disc with an after story for each of the girls. These short stories consist of a few slice-of-life moments as well as an H-scene.
Overall Fureraba - Friend to Lover is a very well put together visual novel that does almost everything it sets out to do perfectly. The fact that there are so many CG variants is a major selling point and I wish more devs would go this far with their artwork. The only real downside were the aforementioned "interview" scenes, but other than that this VN does exactly what you expect it do do: a fun and pure romance story.
Verdict: generically excellent. Fans of moege and pure love romances should not miss out on it. Everyone else beware because this will probably not make you a fan of the genre.
Total play time: This was quite a long VN clockin in at about42 hours, that is including the "incel route" as well as the fan disc.
