VN - Others - Completed - KukkoroDays [v1.0.0H] [qureate & iMel Inc.]

Not much of a fan. This game was ok but not very memorable. It was fun to explore a traditional eroge, but there are probably better options. You can tell what the game is about by the pictures alone pretty much, not much to it.

I enjoyed my time playing KukkoroDays. The artwork is high in quality and is what first attracted me to this game. Not a huge number of CGs but given its rather short length they appeared at a decent pace. The title artwork is actually misleading, and the game is nothing but wholesome.

With excellent voice acting in addition to the great art and animated character poses I found myself quickly getting attached to the main female character Cattleya. The story has several cute and emotional moments that left me wanting more once I had gone through the three different endings. The MC is written as a pretty basic character but the story is mostly focused on the girl as it should be.

If you want a visual novel that's short and sweet that feels polished then I'd highly recommend you give KukkoroDays a try.

Those developers never dissapoint with their games. Beautiful reverse isekai VN with a lot funny moments.
The people spit on the story, but what everyone expect(something adventurous with heart taking moments all the time?) of a short game that is set on the light romance.
Also the game has 2 out of 3 amazing endings.
The heroin itself are made captivating and charming, thanks to her lively expressions and the amazing voice acting. The art as whole is on another game level.
With suprice i found out this game was made before The "fantazy tavern sextet" series, because you meet Cattleya(with another MC of course) in the volume 3 there, but after the ending here it made all sence.

The game's alright. It was pretty much on par with what I expected of a short visual novel. Looks great visually, but has no real substance. Generic.

Story: 3 Stars
The story about average in quality. The main heroine had basically all the typical traits of a stereotypical Japanese fantasy female knight. You know, having thrown away her "womanhood" while still wearing a skimpy ass outfit, being only good at fighting to the point that she's basically useless in any other tasks, has no basic common sense whenever comedy or attempts at endearment demands it. That sort of thing. Like all anime female knight types, she secretly likes cute things and thinks that people will make fun of her for it.
Asides from that, the story's pretty incoherent. Like you start off being told that Cattelya passed out from bloodloss, but the way her wound is described, it doesn't make sense how that's the case. As the story progresses, there's a lot of potential setups, but very little or plain disappointing delivery. Just repeat misfires of Chekhov's Gun. Like we find out the dude used to do kendo. Doesn't actually use kendo for anything in the story. And every time he tries to do something, she basically goes like "Naw, I got it. Thanks for the thought though." Dude finds out he's descended from a mage. He... grabs onto her waist while she's running around the battlefield. You know, to act like her magic battery. I'm not even sure how I'm supposed to picture that would look. Like god damn, our MC is pathetic as fuck. If we're getting a generic story anyways, at least make him somewhat useful.

Gameplay: 2 Stars
I picked most of the same choices as everyone else. The couple of things I didn't pick didn't seem to affect my ability to reach the same ending. You don't get a whole lot of dialogue choices and the choices pretty much break down to "be an asshole" vs "don't be an asshole", as if people are going to choose to be an asshole for any reasons than curiosity. I feel like the smarter thing to do would have been to give the protagonist multiple ways to achieve the same result. Like instead of choosing whether to protect her, they should have chosen how you wanted to protect her.

Art: 3 Stars
The art's pretty, I'll give it that. They obviously spent a lot of their budget giving her an idle animation, so I can forgive having not a whole lot of art to look at. But there's a moments of mismatch between dialogue and visuals. Like in the arcade scene, the protagonist mentions the claw machines costing like 1000 yen, but the signs clearly say 100 yen on every single claw machine. Like was it too much trouble to go back and add an extra zero? Or like in the zoo, she mentions feeding the rabbits chopped carrots, but there's no carrot in sight and it looks like one of the rabbits is eating celery. Why not just say she's feeding them celery?
Sometimes the scenes also zoom in on visuals that don't really make sense. Like I get that additional art is expensive, but I'd prefer to have a still scene than to have an incoherent closeup.
Also, from the scene where her armor was removed, it looked like her shirt covered more cleavage than her armor, but seemed to form a gaping hole once she wore armor. They could have passed it off as magic or some other nonsense, but naw, they just left the contradictions as is.

I also found the sound effects to be really annoying, especially during the climactic showdown. The story was already bland and predictable as it was. With the half-second intervals of screeching, I just wanted to click through the scene as quickly as possible. Fortunately, the sound effects stop when you open the text log, so you can just click through a few lines and re-read them without having to turn off sound effects completely.

Pros:

• Good idle animations for talking scenes
• Nice voice actor(not annoying or piercing my ears till they bleed)
• Nice Ending
• Good Art style
• Nice Character design

Cons:

• Bad story and its predictable
• Female Character development is paced badly
• Only one path of chosen options is required to access any good endings
• H Scenes aren't accessible based on options chosen
• Options feel pointless
• No animated H scene
• No logical flow to some scenes

The story is very hard to get into as the first 25min of the game is very cringe(It was kind of hard for me to continue reading) and basically every anime troupe or overreaction which you would expect from a bad anime or manga.
The whole story is bad except the bed talk after the zoo sequence and the 2 endings (bad ending and good ending 1#), the bad ending's story actually seems to get better in quality then it just gets cucked by yours truly the **title screen**.
The options does nothing for the story and also doesn't give you any new scenes or diverge the story away from the main timeline, but the biggest problem is that it locks you away from getting any good ending(penetrative H scene). Some of the options which do lock the endings actually seem interesting and you would expect a decent divergence in the story but no.(this is the biggest killer for the game for me)
I liked the idle animations but that actually built up my expectations for the H scene. Sadly I was disappointed when it came to the H scene as it was not animated nor did it have a satisfying H expression. However it was nice to look at whilst reading the bad story.

GUIDE
If you ware still willing to continue to playing this game make sure to pick these options to be able to see any good endings. There are only 3 endings Good ending 1#, Good ending 2# and Bad ending.

• Try to help her myself.
• Dont pry.
• Does she have a chance against me?
• Look in the bag whether she likes it or not.
• Protect Cattleya.
• Do your best to get it yourself.

Final choice
Good Ending 1#

• You dont want to leave Cattleya.

Good Ending 2#

• She should follow through with her duty as a knight.

Bad Ending

• You can’t make a decision…

Artwork & Voice Acting
Fantastic artwork and voice acting. As always, they have managed to create a really captivating heroine, and the voice actress did a great job bringing the character to life. The subtle movement and reaction as the character is talking is a really nice touch too.

Story
Story-wise it feels too much like a cookie cutter of one of their previous titles. I get that they are from the same studio, but a little more variation would've been nice. Overall, the story is short and sweet, if a bit linear. Though, focusing on a more direct story this way does mean a more concise story. The pacing of the story itself is pretty good, yet there are multiple times where the story skips forward in time. Given the setting, I feel like it is a missed opportunity when it comes to showing Cattleya around the modern world.

Decision Points
The decisions in this VN could use some polish. There are only a couple of decisions that will actually get the player to consider the options, with the remaining ones feeling like a no-brainer. Making a wrong choice, no matter how trivial it seems, may just get you a bad ending. Considering all the events unfolded following the trivial decision, it does feels a bit weird. Consequences in a VN should be tied to player decisions, yes, but in a way that reflects the current progression of the storyline. This ensures that the narrative is easy for the reader to follow, rather than making a bad decision, get good progression, but then at the end getting smacked with a bad end.

Miscellaneous Points
The playtime is relatively short, in total about less than 3 hours, and while a focus on the Heroine gives her a more fleshed out character development, the lack of supporting characters makes the setting feel a bit empty.

Closing
Overall, Kukkoro Days is a pretty enjoyable short story. While there are some improvements that can be made, this is something that can be picked up easily and read though without worrying much.

Beautiful art and she is just plain outright cute at times. The story and expressions were great. I really enjoyed this short story and will not be one I forget anytime soon.

Art: 10/10
Music: 9/10
Story: 9/10