Another month, and another post of me desperately trying to clear my backlog of games that I still need to review. In this episode we have me finally getting through some games from the back end of 2023, with some genuinely solid titles (and one not so good one), as well as more fandiscs of course. But be warned, there’s potentially dangerous levels of sugary sweetness up ahead!
Amairo Chocolata 3
Official Website / VNDB
My Score: 8/10
We’ve finally made it to the end of the Amachoco series, this time the main feature being routes for Mitsuki + new character Kohana. I should probably state here that I don’t research the games I pre-order a lot if it’s a sequel to avoid spoilers so I was actually pleasantly surprised to find that this title also had short afterstories for the five other heroines, as well as the expected Harem scenario (although no Kohana here interestingly). So you’re definitely getting, for lack of a better term, bang for your buck.
I need to say it again – Ichika’s design is S-tier fluffy and adorable >w<
First, the afterstories. These were very short – 2 H scenes + 1 non-H CG per heroine/some fluff – but were genuinely pretty good. It was awonderful surprise and it was nice to spend more time with the heroines, as they are all super cute.
Mitsuki~
Mitsuki, the older sister of Kaguya and the owner of Mochizuki cafe, was the main reason I wanted to play this. She’s so darn cute. Her whole schtick is that she’s the oldest of the group but everyone always thinks that she’s younger due to her appearance, which can lead to funny events like Mitsuki proudly pulling out her drivers licence to show off. Her route was as adorable as I was hoping but my one teensy complaint would be that the latter end of her route seemed a little rushed.
Kohana
The other main heroine in this entry is Kohana, a mysterious girl who has been sealed in a mountain shrine for centuries. Yuzuki partially broke the seal but she needs to remain in close proximity to him otherwise she’ll revert back to her sealed form. Kohana was a pleasant surprise actually, she answers a few niggling questions I had from reading earlier entries and tied up the series nicely. She’s also genuinely pretty funny, and I enjoyed her interactions with Yuzuki.
Amachoco 3 is a great conclusion to the series, with two lovable main heroines, and gives some nice extras to the prior heroines too. It sucks that Kohana isn’t in the harem route but it makes sense plot-wise I guess. As expected, the artwork is also gorgeous. If you liked the other games in the series then I would highly recommend picking this up!
Little Princess Go!
Official Website / VNDB
My Score: 7/10
Little Princess GO is a moege released by Quince Soft, set in a fictional theme park called “Dream Garden”, which is the biggest in Japan and also features an entertainment career-focused school next door (Yumeutsutsu Gakuen). The heir to the park Sumito lives and works in Dream Garden in hopes of impressing the owner (his mother) enough to let him take it over.
One day a princess from a small european country visits the park at the request of her parents. This princess, Mina, is a distant descendant of Snow White. During her visit, Sumito learns that Mina has problems showing emotion, and is always following a “script” that she writes out the day prior. In order to help her find her true self, her parents order her to attend Yumeutsutsu Gakuen and work in Dream Garden for the next few months.
Mina’s transfer coincides with the upcoming school festival – where groups of aspiring performers put on their best show in the form of a parade at the theme park. Sumito and Mina are tasked with winning the festival by the park owner. Just how will they manage to get a group together in a few weeks, and what awaits them at the festival?
Mina
The main selling point of Lingo is its unique setting – the theme park setting is super fun and colourful (despite it basically being disney tokyo lmao). I’m not sure if the school attached to a theme park works well but I respect the attempt. Sadly, I found the common route of this title to be kinda bland – the whole “festival” thing in particular was very rushed. Luckily, the heroine routes were actually pretty good, and filled with a lot of adorable fluff.
Ritsuka
Being a moege, the heroines are important and it’s a good thing that all four of them are absolutely great – full of personality and super cute. I genuinely cannot choose a favourite between the tsundere princess Mina who’s dere side is sugar overload, Ritsuka the kuudere childhood friend who’s job at the park includes looking after Sumito, Alice the younger sister of Sumito who is a dancer at the park and a downright pervert towards her brother, and finally the school Nurse Momo who is like a kind and caring older sister.
Momo
I also need to say that the artwork from newcomer Yoshida Mint was really nice – there was a pleasant softness to the art style that is 100% my preference. There was a decent number of CGs per heroine, although a noticible lack of group images. There are also quite a lot of H scenes in this title, which can be taken as a positive or negative depending on preference. I wish the short after stories for the heroines weren’t just an H scene though.
Overall, Little Princess GO more than makes up for its mid opening with some memorable heroines and enjoyable routes, making it a pretty good moege in the end. I wouldn’t say go out of your way to play this but if any of the heroines interest you then I would recommend it.
Alice (Her real name is Yuriko but she normally goes by Alice)
Amase-Jima wa Irokoi Zakari
Official Website / VNDB
My Score: 2/10
I’m not even going to bother writing out a synopsis for Amakoi as it doesn’t deserve the effort. It’s the first game from Liason, under the umbrella of Visual Arts, and absolutely feels like a doujin product. It is an unfinished, half-assed creation that honestly had me questioning my sanity at times.
The story is dull at best, terrible at worst. The game takes place on an island with some sort of “secret”. The secret is that all the routes are bad (BuT oN pUrPoSe) to be explained in the true route, but the true route is also crap so uh good luck?
Heroines aren’t much better, with them all being shallow charicatures of one or two tropes. The “Yamato Nadeshiko but actually a pervert” Yuriko was funny at first but ecchi is literally the ONLY thing she talks about and it gets so exhausting. Himeno the “Tsuntsun Ojousama who now likes the protagonist after she pisses her pants in front of him” is another standout bad character, who I noted as having as much personality as a piece of wet cardboard. Nice.
Himeno also had the worst CGs, I particularly like the photoshop stock grass texture brushes.
Production values were also all over the damn place – there was clearly money spent on getting good voice actresses and nice vocal songs (the OP song by Nao is unironically one of the best things in the game) but then it was like they ran out of cash and had to cut corners. Most scenes have a normal drawn BG but then there’s hastily filtered photos, and sometimes just no BG at all lol. Like this should not be happening in a title you’re expecting people to pay 9k yen for.
The artwork is also such a shitshow that it had me questioning wether there was AI used to edit some of the images in-game. For example, the two sprites below have some strange discrepancies that I just dont think a human artist would make:
If you look at her braid the top of it just disappers???
I don’t think a human would draw a clothes strap through a braid + where did the ribbon come from on the end??
It could just be an oversight, poor editing, or a lack of cash flow but this game is truly just a mess. For fun I ran these two sprites through an AI detection software and the results were unclear (around 50/50 AI or Human) whereas all the game’s CGs were at least 99% likely to be produced by a human. Take that as you will. The CGs themself vary in quality greatly, with Himeno being the standout worst image wise. There’s also not many images themselves but that’s probably not the worst thing to be fair.
Overall, just skip this. It’s genuinely not worth the time nor money to support such a shoddy and lazy title. I think companies need to make an impression with their first titles and well Liason succeeded, but not in the way they probably hoped. For this price, go buy Amakano 2.
Koi ni wa Amae ga Hitsuyou Desu Mini Fan Discs
Official Website / VNDB
My Score: 7/10
These are the fandiscs to Hooksoft’s 2023 title Koi ni wa Amae ga Hitsuyou Desu. The two fandiscs each continue from one of the two heroine routes from the original.
Koiama was one of my favourite games from last year and was a really solid Hooksoft moege, with a fun gimmick and really quirky heroines. I was super excited when the fandiscs were announced and eagerly pre-ordered both. However, I must say that I feel almost a little scammed in terms of price to content ratio. Both fandiscs together cost 10k yen, so as much as a “full priced” title but combined the amount of content is well under 10 hours, with only 6CG per heroine, per game (or 48 total CG across both titles). This was a little overpriced even compared with Hooksoft’s other mini fandiscs (e.g. the Houkago Cinderella ones). I wouldn’t even have minded the same number of images if the game was just longer!
Pricing frustrations aside, I have absolutely nothing to complain about. The same addictive humour and fluffy romance from the original title has been turned up to 11 here and I enjoyed every minute of both titles. Hibaneko is still best girl but Chiwa had some hilarious scenes.
My personal favourite would be the second fandisc “もっとあまえるだけ” as it had the better Hibana ending (+ the ever hilarious dark Hibana) but both were honestly great.
If you enjoyed the original then I would highly recommend the fandiscs, but just probably wait until they go on sale.
氷華び〜む (ﾉ◕ ω ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧
Source
Shine