Title: スタディ§ステディ
Developer: Marmalade
Release Date: 27th September 2019
Age Rating: 18+
Length: ~20 Hours
Links: Official Website, VNDB
Thoughts
Study Steady is a winter-themed moege where the protagonist moves to a new rural town, sound familiar? Jokes aside, Marmalade are a company that pride themselves on focusing on Moe & Ero, which I can respect. This was my first title from them so did it leave the right impression?
They certainly had some ~fun~ options here.
One thing I will say is that Study Steady is very ambitious in its implementation of shiny gimmicks, however I can’t really say that these really made the game better for their inclusion. The Live 2D sprites would be nice but I had just played the ONE. remake prior and the sprites here seemed stilted and clunky in their motions. The option to have the heroines call out a customisable name (similar to the “Lovely Call” system from Hibiki Works’ Cation series) was a nice idea but sounded really, really awkward in practice. There is also an option to choose between two hairstyles for the heroines which would be great but it was at the very end of their routes and affected a handful of CGs. If it was implemented earlier (similar to Smee’s Loverable) it would’ve been better.
The one gimmick I did enjoy though was that during a specific point in each route, the game would ask you to go into the game’s files and read a “Love Letter” from each heroine. This added some interactivity for the reader and was a pretty neat idea, and not something I’ve seen before.
It wouldn’t be right to talk about this title without addressing the fact that many players have complained about the game lagging whilst playing. I personally played on the v1.02 patch and have a fairly high spec PC so had no issues during my time reading Study Steady but it is something to be aware of for those with older devices.
Nanoka – cheerful, kind classmate
Being a moege, the common route is typically one of the better parts. Study Steady’s common route was decent enough, giving the reader a good introduction to the setting and characters. It had your typical eroge humour/interactions but I can’t really say it was that memorable. I will say that it made me crave 豚汁 like crazy though.
My absolute favourite part of Study Steady, and where the game absolutely shines, is the beginning of the heroine routes. These are delicious sugary moe fluff (well except Hazuki’s route but I’ll forgive her because she’s hilarious). Sadly the routes kind of struggle a little towards the latter end because once the H scenes start in a route they rarely stop until some forced drama closes the route out. I’m sure some people would enjoy all those H scenes but I’d prefer them a little more spaced out.
Yuu – cool, mysterious senpai
The heroines are imperitive in this type of game and luckily all four are great. Even the characters that I initially thought I wouldn’t like as much like Nanoka & Yuu really won me over during their routes. Mai is adorable & Hazuki is so much fun, what more could you want?
Mai – sweet, hard-working Kouhai
As I’m sure you can tell, the artwork provided by emily & Kiba Satoshi in this title is great. There were enough CGs per heroine but there was definitely a skew towards ero CGs.
The sound department of Study Steady was fine, none of the BGM stood out either way but it did its’ job. The opening song is gorgeous though but what did you really expect from a collaboration between Ceui & Shimotsuki Haruka? All four heroines have their own ending theme song which was a surprisingly sweet touch, I liked Mai’s the most but they were all decent. The voice acting was also good but nothing standout, the girls all sounded cute though.
Hazuki – a convenience store worker, imagine a dumb male best friend, but a girl
Conclusion
My Score: 7/10
Study Steady is a thoroughly decent moege, even venturing into great territory at parts but in the end struggles a little with the fact that the effort put into its fancy add-ons conbribute little to what actually matters in the game.
That being said the heroines are cute, the early romance is super sweet, the artwork is good and the H scenes are above average so if you enjoy the genre as much as me then you probably will enjoy this game. Is it the best moege out there? No. But it’s a nice, cozy and relaxing read and sometimes that’s all you need on those cold winter nights.
I already own the second game in the series and have plans to play it this summer at some point (hopefully!). Marmalade did definitely deliver on their moe ero promise though and I can’t wait to go through more of their back-catalogue.
Thanks for reading!
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