Title: ましろ色シンフォニー SANA EDITION
Developer: Palette
Release Date: 23rd June 2023
Age Rating: 18+
Length: ~10 Hours
Links: Official Website, VNDB
Thoughts
If you’ve ever had the pleasure of playing the original Mashifoni (which you should do, it’s a wonderful romance game) then you will understand the pain of the charismatic side character Sana not having a route. It may have taken them over a decade but Palette finally came to their senses and attoned for their sins – releasing the stand alone Sana Edition of the game which backports her route from the PSP version, adds Live 2D animated H scenes and some extra scenario/CGs in Izumi Tsubasu’s gorgeous updated artstyle. Was this the game fans have dreamed of?
I know there were some complaints from people before the game released about the Sana Edition being a stand-alone. I personally don’t mind this choice as I had read the base game previously but can understand the frustration if you haven’t. Sana’s game did have a considerable amount of content + length to justify its pricing imo. The game also comes with the base game’s common route which both serves as a good refresher to returning players and makes the game a complete stand-alone for new players only interested in Sana, so I appreciated this decision.
Even Izumi-sensei’s older artstyle holds up well imo.
Moving onto the game itself and Sana’s route is that of two halves. The first half is a delicious slow burn showing Sana and our protagonist Shingo growing closer and bridging the gap from frenemies to lovers. This part of the game was honestly close to perfection in a pure romance game – the buildup was so good and there were so many cute moments as Sana realises she can be vulnerable around Shingo. I even don’t normally care for H scenes much but the ones in the Mashifoni series are actually decent (the CG for the first scene was also really cute).
Sadly the latter parts of the game don’t really feel like they go anywhere. The romance remains good but the plot is generally underwhelming and Sana’s main issue didn’t really seem resolved by the end. The actual end of the game was extremely sudden also, which was quite jarring. It felt like they were rushing to get the game out and ran out of time or something.
We do get the addition of the Afterstory, which is a short and sweet bonus scenario unlocked after completing the main story. This section uses some of the new artwork for the CGs which was nice but it uses a mix of old and new artwork for the sprite work which is just very visually jarring when Sana will completely change artstyle when changing pose/expression in the same scene. It’s little areas like this that make the game feel a little unpolished and that makes me sad when so many fans (myself included) have been waiting for this game.
Sana will always be a character I adore and this game didn’t change that, she was a little more tsun than I remembered but honestly she’s pretty funny. It was great to spend time with the other characters again as all of the heroines in the main game are likable. The main subcharacter is Sana’s younger brother Rio and he’s a little brat. The game tries hard to make us feel bad for him but I have no sympathy – he’s honestly just horrible to Sana.
Izumi Tsubasa will always be one of my favourite artists – her style has always been downright adorable but she really hit it out of the park with Sana’s new cgs. It’s impressive seeing how much she’s improved in the last decade and I hope she continues to work on new projects! The SD artwork was handled by Tozakura Nagomi – her style in this game is very simplistic which is fine. Her artstyle had greatly improved as shown in even Saga Planet’s Karumakura Circle so I’m sad we didn’t really get to see an updated style of SD images in-game.
Most of the music was re-used from the original game, which means that it’s pretty good. I do like the new opening song though. There were some scenes where you could tell they were using a newer voice recording but, on the whole, Moriya Misono did an excellent job.
Conclusion
My Score: 7/10
Despite my disappointment with some late parts of the game, the stellar beginning does help greatly to cover for that, making Mashifoni Sana Edition an enjoyable game. Finally getting to see another side to Sana was indeed worth the wait, although I wish Palette had taken just a little extra time to completely polish the game. Overall, not as good as the base game but for people who like Sana then this is worth your time. If you were only going to pick up one game though, I’d say go for the remaster of the original Mashifoni.
Palette continue to be a company that I enjoy – they’ve managed to produce games in varying genres to a high degree, which is something few other companies can say. I’ll be highly anticipating their next project but thankfully have some of their back catalogue to tide me over until then.
Thanks for reading!
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