Another month brings with it another collective post of mini-reviews. This time it’s mainly low-priced titles, although a game so bad I dropped it makes a guest appearance. Let’s get started!
Maid-san no Iru Kurashi S
Official Website / VNDB
My Score: 4/10
Maid-san no Iru Kurashi S (Meikura S) is the second in the series but features an entirely new cast so can be played independently of the first game. Like the original, it follows the story of a working protagonist suddenly meeting, and then living with, a maid. In this case, Elena claims to be his fiancee as arranged by their families.
This is a super difficult game for me to rate. There are aspects that I enjoyed – the fact that it’s a slow-burn romance being the main one, but I just could not bring myself to like the protagonist. He’s an absolute dickhead towards Elena – continually saying mean things to her under the thinly veilled guise of it “being a joke” that she doesn’t get because she’s foreign. Which could work if her Japanese wasn’t perfect in game (due to her studying for years) and the fact that sarcasm and tongue-in-cheek humour are prevalent in British comedy, where she’s from. It gets to a point where it feels like you’re kicking a puppy or something with how often this “joke” gets replayed.
I think the problem is that Hayase Yuu’s comedic style is usually quite scathing but it works when the heroines have the personality to be able to banter back with the protagonist (see Smee games he’s worked on) but when the heroine is quite passive, it just feels like bullying.
Elena herself is okay, she does feel very one-dimensional though, even for the heroine of a low price game. Her personality is all about being loving, caring and subservient towards the protagonist which is about it. She does have some flashes of actual personality but not enough to make her memorable.
On a more positive note, the production values were nice in this game. Elena’s sprite had live 2d animation and the artwork was overall pretty nice. Buying both of the Meikura titles also gave me access to a digital artbook and soundtrack through Nexton Passport. The artbook is short but has some CG line art which is always nice, and the soundtracks are also decent. I’ll never complain about free stuff lol.
Marotaro’s SD CG’s are always a welcome addition.
In the end, I can’t say I enjoyed or would recommend this game. My issues with the protagonist are very much a personal issue though perhaps you might enjoy the game more than me. Definitely wait for a sale though.
Haru Uso -Passing Memories-
Official Website / VNDB
My Score: 6/10
Haru Uso is the first title in Campus’ four season series, which I’ve been meaning to read for a while. After finding out that Unravel Trigger’s Kudou Keisuke was involved with writing and direction for these games I immediately decided that this was the year I’d play them.
The story follows Souichirou, a young man who was granted the ability to “see through lies” by a magician some years ago. However he needs mana to power this and thus does odd jobs for people at school through the Cat’s Paw Club (猫の手部) in reward for mana, though there is normally a random condition applied to the magic contract. During the spring, the school’s most popular student Satsuki confesses her feelings for him and asks him out. After Souichirou refuses, she later comes to the club and asks for him to pretend to be her boyfriend for 10 days through contract. The condition – to have sex with her everyday (this is an eroge after all).
As you may be able to tell from the story introduction, this game has a high number of H scenes (13 total) considering its total length (~5 hours for me personally), which is probably its biggest problem. The fact that you get 1 H scene per day for the 10 day duration of the main story almost makes it feel like a chore and it definitely got to the point where I was skimming them. Luckily most were short. The worst thing is that once you finish the main story there’s an unlockable afterstory which has MORE H in case you weren’t satisfied yet. Seriously???
This means that, despite the artwork being nice, there’s a lack of SFW CGs which is a real shame.
Aside from that, the game is actually decent. The story was interesting enough and cleverly ties into the game’s title. It also does a good job of introducing all of the future heroines, although Satsuki is ironically the least interesting (I’m looking forward to Eris’ game!).
Who doesn’t want a girl that comes and plays her own eroge on your PC?
Overall, this is a fine game, although nothing particularly standout. I imagine that the rest of the series might be a little more interesting. You can get this game on sale regularly so I would recommend waiting until then.
Despite it not technically being summer anymore, I do plan to play Natsu Uso in the next few weeks.
Edit: I have very recently played Natsu Uso and can confirm it is better. The overall story and pacing of the H scenes were the main improvement imo. It also helps that Aoi is super cute.
Boku to Kanojo no Kojin Lesson
Official Website / VNDB
My Score: 7/10
We have yet another one of Azarashi Soft’s low-price titles here, although this one is technically released under their “+1” brand. As you may be able to tell from the title, it focuses on a teacher heroine. The story is very simple – the protagonist lives alone in one of the school’s dorms and suddenly the new student teacher ends up working with his class & moving into the dorm with him.
I must say that teacher hero(ines) aren’t one of my favourite tropes but I bought this because I wanted to play the second game in the series. However I must say that Misaki was surprisingly adorable. She’s super cheerful, perhaps a little bit of a tomboy and has the problem of running away (literally) from her feelings, which makes her quite endearing.
The romance was decent in this game, with the usual Azarashi Soft fluffiness you would expect. There are an above-average number of H scenes but they’re generally okay – a decent mix of sweet & ero.
Weirdly though this game does lack some of the aspects from a game with a student-teacher romance. The school setting is very minimal and much of the game takes place in the dorm the pair share. Whilst this does create some fun interations (and lucky sukebe moments in classic eroge fashion), it almost takes away from what was promised. Like I’m not saying they needed a forced H scene in the classroom but at least some more scenes of both characters interacting in the school environment.
The production values were a little below average on the music side, voice acting was okay though. The artwork from Hinazuka Ryou was quite nice, although I wish there were some more SFW CGs or SD CGs or something.
If you really like Misaki’s design then yeah I’d say this game might be worth checking out. It’s a short, simple, yet cute romance and a fairly solid pickup but kind of forgets the classroom aspect of a teacher romance so fans of that might be underwhelmed. It’s still good for the price though imo.
Secret Love (Kari)
Official Website / VNDB
My Score: 3/10 *
I will admit here that I dropped this game after playing Kaede and Chiaki’s routes in full. So perhaps the two other routes are slightly better but I doubt it.
Secret Love is a vapid, shallow game with few (if any) real redeeming factors. And I say this as someone who enjoys moege and Hooksoft games. I should’ve known this would be underwhelming when it was the HajiLove staff working on it but even that game managed to have considerably more charm than this pile of crap.
The first area that I disliked was that the gimmick did not work with the set-up of the game. In the common route, all four heroines are openly persuing the protagonist (although Kaede is a bit more subtle) so to suddenly pretend at the start of their individual routes that they want to keep everything all secretive just feels weird. There was also no real reason for most of the heroines to even want to keep their relationships secret. Perhaps Kaede was the only heroine that maybe filled this role due to having her prim and proper ojou-sama personality to uphold at school but for the other three this choice feels awkward, even kinda mean in the case of Chiaki (she’s the protagonist’s childhood friend who has had feelings for him for ages and when she finally manages to get her wish to date him he wants to keep it a secret?! Nah that’s absurd).
Again if the heroines were archetypes where there was consequences for being open about their relationship then I could see the appeal of the secret/open choice. They really missed the mark by not having a sister, teacher or idol heroine, etc.
The two routes themselves are both quite bad, although the “Closed” (relationship kept a secret) routes are worse. They lack even a modicum of plot or character development and feel included only for the inclusion of the heroine sending ero selfies to the protagonist. I liked the idea of the selfies but just not for this game. The Open routes are ever so slightly better, with the more prominent icha icha at least something to offer.
One thing that this game does not lack is number of H scenes, with 12 per heroine. But I did say they lack only in number. The game clearly went for the quantity over quality approach, with most of these scenes being short and honestly pretty poorly written. I know that this game is written for the male gaze ™ but I have never played a game with so little foreplay holy shit, you aren’t convinving anyone the heroines are having a good time when the protagonist is just sticking it in there after 30 seconds of kissing. It’s just so unbelievably lazy lmao. I have nothing against nukige, they put the ero in eroge, but if you want a game with lots of H scenes then you can absolutely do better than this.
Just about the only two things I liked about Secret Love were the opening song & artwork. The K-Ko & Mango Pudding duo from HajiLove were back with some nice character designs and CGs. Shame it wasn’t for a better game.
In my opinion this is the worst Hooksoft game I’ve played, by some margin and I absolutely would not recommend anyone to subject themselves to the utter mediocrity of this title. At least I get to save myself some money if they release fandiscs for this garbage.
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