A decent but barebones dating sim that trades functionality and scope for visual appeal.
"Should've used Ren'py" is a frequent refrain for games that forgo basic functionality in text-driven visual-novel-type games. What do you miss when you don't use Ren'py? Skip-read-text, which reduces monotony. A simple, responsive interface. In Yusetsu, we have a presentation that focuses on animations (sometimes pointless ones, such as a glass being filled) to the detriment of the core experience: a series of generic chats interspersed with occasional unique date events.
Look past the animations and what we have is a very, very barebones dating sim. "Work" is so simplified as a gameplay mechanic that it's essentially just a 30s forced pause between chat sessions. Drink selection similarly becomes quickly redundant; it just wastes the player's time with non-skippable generic dialog and animations. The real "gameplay" here is simply answering the questions correctly to gradually fill up the heart and get the girl's ending.
The "story", told through the chats and date events, is the game's main strength. These do feel like fully-realized individuals and not just moe archetypes to satisfy the player's lust. However, the interactions with them are fairly limited, as you'd expect from a dating sim. There's no real plot here, just gradually building intimacy. That might be ok, but most of the game's time is spent in the same environment chatting rather than doing anything, and as a result the experience feels very samey.
Similarly, the small cast of characters and the infrequent interactions between makes the setting feel narrow and restricted. In the end, the hostess bar concept just feels like an excuse to reuse the same location over and over; Mao's arc makes very little use of it, and almost all of her unique content has little to do with the bar at all. At a certain point it's not even clear why they're meeting at the bar at all; she needs money, but it would be more effective to just *give* her money rather than fritter away money at the bar so she gets her cut. Perhaps this reflects that the concept of "dating" at a hostess bar is fundamentally paradoxical, but more could've been done to integrate the bar into the narrative given that most of the game is spent there.
The ero content is pretty sparse. While that could be ok, more ero--even ecchi light ero--could've helped filled the overall content void.
Overall the game had an interesting concept but didn't attempt to do anything interesting with it. What we're left with is a chat sim with just enough meat to satisfy those looking for a little romance uncomplicated by plot. Those looking for a true dating-sim will likely be disappointed.
"Should've used Ren'py" is a frequent refrain for games that forgo basic functionality in text-driven visual-novel-type games. What do you miss when you don't use Ren'py? Skip-read-text, which reduces monotony. A simple, responsive interface. In Yusetsu, we have a presentation that focuses on animations (sometimes pointless ones, such as a glass being filled) to the detriment of the core experience: a series of generic chats interspersed with occasional unique date events.
Look past the animations and what we have is a very, very barebones dating sim. "Work" is so simplified as a gameplay mechanic that it's essentially just a 30s forced pause between chat sessions. Drink selection similarly becomes quickly redundant; it just wastes the player's time with non-skippable generic dialog and animations. The real "gameplay" here is simply answering the questions correctly to gradually fill up the heart and get the girl's ending.
The "story", told through the chats and date events, is the game's main strength. These do feel like fully-realized individuals and not just moe archetypes to satisfy the player's lust. However, the interactions with them are fairly limited, as you'd expect from a dating sim. There's no real plot here, just gradually building intimacy. That might be ok, but most of the game's time is spent in the same environment chatting rather than doing anything, and as a result the experience feels very samey.
Similarly, the small cast of characters and the infrequent interactions between makes the setting feel narrow and restricted. In the end, the hostess bar concept just feels like an excuse to reuse the same location over and over; Mao's arc makes very little use of it, and almost all of her unique content has little to do with the bar at all. At a certain point it's not even clear why they're meeting at the bar at all; she needs money, but it would be more effective to just *give* her money rather than fritter away money at the bar so she gets her cut. Perhaps this reflects that the concept of "dating" at a hostess bar is fundamentally paradoxical, but more could've been done to integrate the bar into the narrative given that most of the game is spent there.
The ero content is pretty sparse. While that could be ok, more ero--even ecchi light ero--could've helped filled the overall content void.
Overall the game had an interesting concept but didn't attempt to do anything interesting with it. What we're left with is a chat sim with just enough meat to satisfy those looking for a little romance uncomplicated by plot. Those looking for a true dating-sim will likely be disappointed.
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