Story:
The story revolves about a guy named CJ, who comes back to his hometown 5 years after an event separates him from his closest friends, but you do play as multiple characters, to follow their perspectives.
For better or worse, the story gets pretty insane. Lots of ethereal experiences, mind trips, and general crazyness. It helps set the game apart, lots of bits are very creative and interesting, but the game doesn't establish many boundaries to it's setting, or logic to it's events. You kinda just roll with the mystical explanations the game gives to what's happening on screen, and things do get convoluted. It's certainly more artistic than cohesive.
From the character relations perspective, the story is very dramatic. The characters are great, and the highs and lows of their relationships make them more genuine. However, it does go overboard with the drama at times. I don't think I've ever seen a work of fiction with more frequent crying than this one.
Design:
The game is a very linear story. There are some segments when you can choose to have extra dialogue, but not really any story-relevant decisions. The game does have a combat system, but as of the writing of this review, there's only one combat segment, so it's hard to gauge how it will impact the experience as a whole.
Presentation:
The game has very solid visuals, that manage to capture the trippy feel the game is going for. Some of the most unique I've seen from a Koikatsu engine. The battle sequence has fantastic custom animation and camera movement that gives the battle almost a AAA RPG feel to it. But again, so far there's only 1 battle and it's very simple. So it remains to be seen if the technical archievement will translate into fun.
The sound is also fantastic, one of the best soundtracks I've experienced on this site.
If only the same care was given to the lewds... Let me be blunt, there's barely any adult content here, in several hours of gameplay. The sexiest preview pictures actually aren't in the game yet. And the little there is, isn't great. There is no animation for lewds, which is strange, since Koikatsu comes with several standard animations that would be way easier to implement that what the game already has for battle scenes. I like slow burns, and games that put story above the lewds. But in this case, it feels like the adult aspect is more of a marketing choice than anything. So much passion shows into every other aspect of the game, that it's jarring how little goes into the adult content. It's a real shame too, because the girls are absolutely stunning.
Conclusion:
This is a hard game to rate. The characters and off the wall story did manage to keep me interested all the way. The visuals and music are great, the girls are gorgeous, and the battle system archieves things I've never seen done on a Koikatsu engine. As a VN, it has a lot of strenghts.
However, this is being promoted in an adult site, and the preview pictures leads you to belive there's more erotic content than there actually is (I'd advise the dev to remove any picture not yet in game, as to avoid expectations). Fact is, there's barely any adult content here, and when you finally get there, the execution is below average. So I can't really bring myself to give 5 stars. If you wanna go into the game, keep that in mind. It's a pretty good VN, but a pretty poor h-game.
The story revolves about a guy named CJ, who comes back to his hometown 5 years after an event separates him from his closest friends, but you do play as multiple characters, to follow their perspectives.
For better or worse, the story gets pretty insane. Lots of ethereal experiences, mind trips, and general crazyness. It helps set the game apart, lots of bits are very creative and interesting, but the game doesn't establish many boundaries to it's setting, or logic to it's events. You kinda just roll with the mystical explanations the game gives to what's happening on screen, and things do get convoluted. It's certainly more artistic than cohesive.
From the character relations perspective, the story is very dramatic. The characters are great, and the highs and lows of their relationships make them more genuine. However, it does go overboard with the drama at times. I don't think I've ever seen a work of fiction with more frequent crying than this one.
Design:
The game is a very linear story. There are some segments when you can choose to have extra dialogue, but not really any story-relevant decisions. The game does have a combat system, but as of the writing of this review, there's only one combat segment, so it's hard to gauge how it will impact the experience as a whole.
Presentation:
The game has very solid visuals, that manage to capture the trippy feel the game is going for. Some of the most unique I've seen from a Koikatsu engine. The battle sequence has fantastic custom animation and camera movement that gives the battle almost a AAA RPG feel to it. But again, so far there's only 1 battle and it's very simple. So it remains to be seen if the technical archievement will translate into fun.
The sound is also fantastic, one of the best soundtracks I've experienced on this site.
If only the same care was given to the lewds... Let me be blunt, there's barely any adult content here, in several hours of gameplay. The sexiest preview pictures actually aren't in the game yet. And the little there is, isn't great. There is no animation for lewds, which is strange, since Koikatsu comes with several standard animations that would be way easier to implement that what the game already has for battle scenes. I like slow burns, and games that put story above the lewds. But in this case, it feels like the adult aspect is more of a marketing choice than anything. So much passion shows into every other aspect of the game, that it's jarring how little goes into the adult content. It's a real shame too, because the girls are absolutely stunning.
Conclusion:
This is a hard game to rate. The characters and off the wall story did manage to keep me interested all the way. The visuals and music are great, the girls are gorgeous, and the battle system archieves things I've never seen done on a Koikatsu engine. As a VN, it has a lot of strenghts.
However, this is being promoted in an adult site, and the preview pictures leads you to belive there's more erotic content than there actually is (I'd advise the dev to remove any picture not yet in game, as to avoid expectations). Fact is, there's barely any adult content here, and when you finally get there, the execution is below average. So I can't really bring myself to give 5 stars. If you wanna go into the game, keep that in mind. It's a pretty good VN, but a pretty poor h-game.