Title: コイバナ恋愛 ミニファンディスク アフターフェスティバル
Developer: Asa Project
Release Date: 29th March 2024
Age Rating: 18+
Length: 5+ Hours
Links: Official Website, VNDB
Koibana Renai was Asa Project’s 2023 release and was a game that had an interesting concept but failed quite a bit on its exectution, leaving a game with a strong common route yet boring heroine routes. The highlight for me in the original were the sub couples but this was also something not fully explored. Thus when the fandisk was announced for release earlier this year promising a bit of everything for a very reasonable mid-pricing I was skeptical but figured I may as well pre-order. Did this fandisk manage to give some conclusion to the original game?
I should say here that the answer is a bit of a mixed bag. The game doubles down on what it should’ve been doing all along and focuses on the side characters as well as Kokoro. If you’re here for the other 3 heroines then you will be disappointed as they only get a short, underwhelming afterstory that offers nothing but H scenes (although Asa Pro’s H scenes are usually funny/interesting enough to be worth reading). Chii in particularly gets royally screwed as her chapters don’t even focus on the School Festival theme.
Gyaru Tokoyo almost makes up for her lack of presence in the game.
The main meat of this fandisk focuses on the School Festival scenario “After Festival”, which takes place following Kokoro’s route of the original game. I wasn’t the biggest fan of their pairing to begin with but Kanata and Kokoro are in full バカップル mode in the FD which is quite cute actually. I really liked the After Festival scenario and it was much of the same vibe as the common route from the original game. The ending of this episode was SO GOOD too.
My main interest was the sub-couples and how their romances would turn out. Each of the sub-couples have a short chapter dedicated to them with 1-2 H scenes and some other fluff. These are super fun and it was really satisfying to finally see all of the characters “get together”. My one disappointment would be that none of the male protagonists are voiced at all in these chapters which I wasn’t a fan of. I understand that this is a male-oriented game and the male players probably don’t want to hear a man moaning into their ear during an H scene (lol) but they still could’ve been voiced for the other parts of the scenarios, no?
I write in my review of the original that I really wanted a route for Kanata’s younger sister Kanari. And we didn’t exactly get one. She gets one short 3P H-scene. It’s a crumb of Kanari content that I’ll happily devour but my gosh did I wish she get something a bit more substantial.
Considering the lower price point (~5000 yen) I was very impressed by the amount of content (there’s 12 episodes for you to pick from). Unironically there was a comparable amount in this as was in both of Hook’s KoiAma mini FDs put together (yes I’m still salty about that). I kind of wish we got two seperate fandiscs – one for the original heroines + one for sub-couples (and Kanari) but I’m honestly pretty satisfied if this is how the series ends.
Conclusion
My Score: 8/10
Whilst I enjoyed Koibana After Festival, your opinion of this fandisk will likely vary greatly depending on what you liked about the original game. If you loved Kokoro or the sub-couples then this should absolutely be a must-play, but if you preferred the three other heroines then I would either skip or wait for a sale before playing.
I’m glad that I decided to pick this up. Whilst I have a few more Asa Project games in my backlog, I don’t plan on playing any in the immediate future (the latter half of this year looks very busy for me). That being said, I very much look forward to AsaPro’s next title!
Thanks for reading~
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