VN - Ren'Py - Completed - How To Date A Magical Girl [v1.0] [Cafe Shiba]

First off, I bought this on steam and I'm kinda annoyed I paid full price. There are very few games I've played where I felt I wasted my time. I believe all games have some redeeming value, and while this game does have a bit it is not worth it in my opinion.

While the CG art is very nice, the portraits are... underwhelming. The writing and world building is also decent, but it ruins any sort of intrigue or interesting ideas for the sake of cheap shock value. Shock value I saw coming from a mile away, mind you. It attempts to "pull the rug out from under you," but trips over itself and throws up while doing so.


Its directly inspired by DDLC and Madoka Magica, but fails to understand what made them good. There's more going on with both of those besides fucked up shit happening. The dark twists serve the story and themes, rather than the other way around. It feels like the writers gave up halfway through writing and just jumped on the DDLC bandwagon.

It tries to do something interesting with its romance routes, portraying different types of unhealthy relationships. But the many games endings make all of the characters routes completely pointless. The characters, while cookie cutter, are servicable in a game like this. I just wish the characters were fleshed out a bit more and their issues treated seriously, rather than used as shock value.

Going back to the endings, they might be some of the worst I've seen; and I have no idea if the writer was trying to be ironic or sincere with them. I won't spoil them for those that want to play the game, but don't be surprised with the lack of satisfaction.

Also, the fuck the grindy gameplay. Most of my 15 hour play time was spent on that shit in order to get all the endings, which have almost ZERO difference between besides a few different lines of dialogue.

TLDR: It's like Madoka Magica and DDLC had a kid, but they were both first cousins so the baby didn't come out quite right. It looks cute and interesting at first, but then you can tell there might be an extra chromosone in there.

1/5

I need a drink...

Im not the best at writing reviews and I`ve only done 2 of the endings(Also let me just add this whole review is a grammatical mess, Always had good essays but never good grammar). I liked the art and music, I liked the Persona kind of free time events(Reminds me of Persona 4 Golden), and also liked each of the girls for different reasons though I ended up doing the Kaori Route because I have a thing for Tsunderes I admit and towards the end I had the option of doing Satomi which I did and found kinda lackluster. I will say that the story could have been a little less predictable, nothing really caught me by surprise except how much darker it got when I thought It was done with the aspect(I`d chalk that up to my optimism though), Also I wish the calendar was more useful when events were going to happen and me not to have to waste so many potions a day before a event using up the time I would have used it.The ending could have been better and it feels like me who only did Kaori out of the main girls would have basically the same if I did the whole game with the others which feels pretty disappointing. If your wondering about the grade system, I didn`t find it too grindy, I managed to get A`s in all 4 aspects and still found time to get money for gifts and raise relationship score so don`t worry about that. Overall this VN was average but enjoyable all the same. I wouldn`t put it at the level of DokiDoki in terms of twist and surprise but it does top it in my opinion in the gore and horror aspect. Though don`t expect to get nightmares over either of them.

The gameplay elements are solid, easy to understand and to master, too easy in fact, my biggest difficulty was skipping the remaining days because I had maxed my stats with months left.

Graphics are good, the sprites could have used a little extra polish if compared to the CGs, but they are by no means ugly. BGs are store-bought, but they do the job just fine considering the number of locations in the game.

The story was odd, I felt it lacked any subtlety and most big plot points could be seen from miles away, that didn't serve well the horror/mystery side of the game. Even the ending twist didn't do much to me besides disappointment that my choices up until them didn't really amount to much. The girls were nice though, as expect they all had enough charisma to justify grinding the stats for the next date and keep me coming back for more.

Overall, it has good points and an interesting read yet with big flaws, considering the developers seem like beginners, it's understandable. It's also fairly short for VN standards, so I definitely recommend at least a try.