Title: Purely ～その狭い青空を見上げて～
Developer: Rune
Release Date: 28th August 2008
Age Rating: 18+
Length: 15+ Hours
Links: VNDB
Sumisaki Yuuya is an average high school student who lives in a small mountain town. His family owns a hotel in town and he quite often helps out part-time. While working one evening he goes to clean the communal baths at the hotel and meets a strange girl who seems to recognise him, although she calls him by the wrong name. It later transpires that her name is Tsumugi and she that had recently started working at the hotel also.
Around this time he’s also invited to join the onsen club at school, as they’re in desperate need of new members. With friendships new and old being fostered over the coming weeks, just what does the vibrant autumnal season mean for Yuuya?
Thoughts
Purely is one of those weirdly niche games that I picked up for two reasons: the gorgeous vocal songs by Duca & the fact that it’s one of the fairly rare Autumn-themed eroge (for some reason Spring and Summer are by far the most popular settings). I can’t say I really had particularly high expectations for this title but it was actually a bit of a diamond in the rough.
I’ll get the game’s main negative out of the way first – it’s buggy. This manifests in load times being slow, textbox errors, some lines missing voice acting, and even some text errors. This is despite using the update patch so god knows what this game was like on release. That being said, this effects maybe 5-10% of your reading experience so I think it’s possible to get past it. To me this lack of polish and optimisation just screams that the game was rushed at the end of development, which is also apparent in a couple of routes (and is an utter shame).
Moving onto the story and the common route is your classic mid-00’s romcom. It’s comfy, cozy, and fairly bemusing. The colourful cast of characters help the game chug along at a decent enough pace but the heroine routes are what you’re really here for.
Kurumi
There’s four heroines in the game and I’ll begin with Kurumi – the stoic Kuudere who is one of the two original members of the onsen club. She’s not really my type of character (although her dere side is admittedly cute) and I felt like her route was the weakest in the game – I don’t remeber anything outright bad but there was nothing special here either.
Yuu
Yuu is the head of the onsen club and is an outgoing, if a little pushy, girl. Yuu’s route had an interesting base to it but felt a little under-developed. I wish there was a route for the side character that shows up in this route, as they kinda stole the show.
Manaka
Manaka is your typical childhood friend heroine – lives next door so comes and wakes the protagonist up in the morning. Manaka is pretty unassuming and so I expected her route to be much like the other two herioines up to this point. However, her route is actually pretty darn good and a real heart-wrentcher. Easily the best route from this game (it doesn’t suffer with rushed pacing as noticably as the others) and made the time invested in this game worth it for me. It was the only full route written by Orgel (Reaimo & Mashifoni author, amongst others) and it honestly just made me want to play more games with his writing, which I will be doing this year.
Tsumugi
Finally we have Tsumugi, the mysterious girl who mistakenly thought she recognised Yuuya. Handily enough she works at the hotel his family own, and transfers into his class at school. Tsumugi is a calm, kind girl but is a little old-fashioned and struggles with modern technology. If not clear from the cover and synopsis of the game, Tsumugi is this title’s “true route” and must be unlocked by playing the other routes first. Her route is interesting, and I actually liked it for the most part. I do have a problem with the beginning of her route not having the option to branch into a route for another character as it feels not focused on Tsumugi. I could see the end of her route being a little abrupt or rushed to some but I liked the ending personally, it felt fitting in tone after Manaka’s route.
L-R: Manaka, Asuka, CHISA, Tsumugi
(Mild Spoilers for the start of Tsumugi’s route in paragraph below)
There’s quite a lot of side characters in this game, most of them playing a fairly important story role and actually quite likable (Manaka’s mother Akika in particular is a real hoot). But one girl in particular gets done so dirty by this game that I can’t let it slide, and that is Chisa – Yuuya’s younger sister. She’s adorable and should have a route, undoubtably. The game baits you very hard in Tsumugi’s route as there’s a whole plot line where Chisa is crushing hard on the protagonist and is jealous that he’s becoming more friendly with Tsumugi. So she eventually works up the courage to confess to him, in a dramatic kiss scene at school. And he rejects her. It’s heartbreaking and cruel, and then we get to see her crying on her best friend Asuka’s shoulder, which is just mean. I feel like there probably was a route planned for Chisa at some point but it was cut during development but she deserves better.
I’m 100% biased but I actually really like the artwork in this game. The style is completely consistent with the era the game came out in and the colouring/linework is nice. My only complaint would be that there’s not a large number of CGs overall, although this is again an issue due to budget/rushing.
As mentioned earlier, the music in this game is great. The two vocal songs Aozora & Happiness are gorgeous. The BGM contains a lot of instrumental arrangements of the two vocal tracks so those are nice (my favourite would be みんなと一緒に). The rest of the tracks are fine but a little forgettable. Again, there’s not a huge number of BGM tracks but it gets the job done at a minimum.
I’ve not mentioned H scenes in reviews for a while but will just point out that there’s only 7 in the whole game so if that’s what you’re looking for then this is not the title for you.
Conclusion
My Score: 7.5/10
For a random purchase based off an autumnal setting and catchy music, Purely turned out to be an enjoyable experience, tinged with a little melancholy. There’s definitely a feeling of “what if” with this title because it really could’ve been great if given more time and budget. However, the game as is still has two memorable routes (Manaka and Tsumugi) and I can say that I enjoyed my time ith this title.
I’m not sure I would necessarily recommend this game to everyone but if you like the aesthetic and are interested in one of the two above routes then it might be worth a play. Especially as the game goes on sale regularly for 2000 yen, which is a steal.
Thanks for reading!
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