VN - Others - Completed - Hashihime of the Old Book Town [Final] [ADELTA/MangaGamer]

9/10 For it is, it's absolutely wonderful. As for what is Hashihime of Old Book Town? It's a novel with BGM and pictures. Strongly reccomend this VN. Unless you just want hot sexy times. Or you actually want gameplay from a VN instead of getting it from actual games that were developed with focus on gameplay.

Pros: A lot of story/lore for you to chew on. There are even helpful pop-ups if you're unclear of the less common japanese terms being used in this VN to further build on your understanding of the setting. Art is beautiful, especially the backgrounds. Characters looked (still look) a little same-y but that's also because of the very consistent style. At no point in the VN will your immersion be broken because a character looks outlandish compared to the rest. BGM is good at building the appropriate tension/atmosphere.

Cons: There is 0 gameplay. 0. Routes are unlocked in sequential order. I.E. Playthrough 1 is for Route 1. NG+ will unlock a choice to go for route 2. NG++ will unlock another choice to go for route 3 etc. X-rated scenes are late into each of the routes. Only one scene for each route. BUT! There's a lot of position changes / CGs within each scene, length-wise those scenes would count for three or more in other eroges.

Hashihime of the Old Book Town is an excellent visual novel with beautiful art, music and a fantastic story rife with just enough references to classic Japanese literature to make you want to start reading them. I'd suggest that if you end up liking it that you buy it.

It's an amazing mix of mustery and some horror. The writing is entertaining as hell, translation tean did a good job too(outside of a few typos) and while the true ending is something I wasn't expecting, I was still satisied with it.
My more deatailed thoughts(may contain some spoilers):
-The art and CHs are very beautiful to look at, most of them are colorful and vibrant
-VA is great too, both main and side characters are well voiced
-Music is fantasrtic, even if you're not going to play this I recommed listening to it
-Not a single time I was bored with a plot, something was constantly happening and the whole thing had a nice flow
-The game is basically a kinetic novel, while playing the first time you won't have any choices, after you'll complete it for a first time, skip text until you'll presented with yur first(and only) choice. Repeat until you het to the true ending
-The romance isn't the main point of the game, but it does drive the plot as a whole
-Not every route is romantic but there's a sex scene for each one
-In the end, there's an impication of pseudo-incest with sime age diffrence, be warned
-There's a few plot points about homosexuality and homophobia, mostly discussed by side characters. That was pretty neat
-The true end can feel confusing at first, so I suggest saving your game during each route so you can come back in case you forgot some story moments.
All in all, great game. Even if you're not into BL I recommend it for the unique story and enertaining characters.