Title: 夜が来る！-Square of the MOON- Remastered
Developer: Alice Soft
Release Date: 19th April 2024
Age Rating: 18+
Length: 20+ Hours
Links: Official Website, VNDB
One day, without warning, a second moon appeared in the night sky. It was named the True Moon (真月) and shone with a brilliant blue light. However people quickly lost interest and moved on with their lives.
Three years later highschool student Ryuu gets caught up in an incident and is saved by an upperclassman with piercing red eyes – Kagura Izumi. She reveals the truth to him – the true moon’s light has the power to summon strange creatures and corrupt people, and has thus been the cause of various strange incidents around town lately.
As Ryuu is one of the rare people able to sense the true moon’s power, Izumi invites him to join her in trying to save their city from the effects of the moon. And thus his evening escapades have certainly become a bit more thrilling.
Thoughts
Yorukuru is a game that I’ve been meaning to play for a number of years (mainly due to the banger of an opening song) so when Alicesoft announced a surprise Remaster earlier this year for a very attractive price (~2k yen) I figured it was as good a time as any.
I can’t compare the remaster to the original experience but the additional quality of life features (a backlog function, new game+ mode & the option to make gameplay a bit faster) were EXTREMELY appreciated. The new voice cast were also great, although do be aware that the game is only partially voiced. The partial voicing is a bit of a shame but for the price I absolutely cannot complain.
The gameplay loop of Yorukuru involves choosing a character to train with during the week and then heading out to a dungeon on weekends to train and gather items, which can then be used to synthesize new weapons for Ryuu. There is also a very basic shop system.
The dungeon gameplay involves keeping a lookout for traps while exploring, and the fights in game are your typical turn-based combat. Each heroine tends to excel in a different area, though if you want to get through the game quickly on auto mode then keep Izumi on your party for the spread damage on her basic attack.
I overall found the gameplay to be a bit tedious but it was generally fine. There’s never really any areas where you have to really grind or anything, at least on Normal difficulty. The trap mechanic was super annoying so I turned on the ability to see them in subsequent playthroughs because I’m lazy. I never bothered upping the difficulty on subsequent playthroughs so cannot comment on those. The game is fine for casual players like me though.
The one area where gameplay did lack was in dungeon design – there were only like 2 puzzles to solve in the entire game (although to give them their due the musical chord one was creative). The rest of the time it was just trial and error to work your way through the maze-like floors.
Moving onto the plot and it generally follows a lot of the JRPG tropes that we all know and love – there’s a lot about friendship, coming together for a common cause, tragic backstories, etc. While Yorukuru doesn’t do a lot new, it is also still a very serviceable story with plenty of twists and emotion. I definitely found myself pretty engaged with what was happening.
Ironically the place where the story kind of fails is in the ending sections – let’s just say the main plot ends with more of a whimper than a bang.
One thing that surprised me was just how likable the characters were – all of the heroines were interesting and memorable, the villains were varied, and even the male club members had personality. I know the bar sounds low but the characters and their interactions are one of the main reasons to play this game imo.
As far as heroines, while I do like them all, none can compete with Makoto for me. She’s the badass assassin from the same clan as Izumi who happens to move in next door to Ryuu. I’m utterly biased but her route and overall story were actually really good, probably my favourite from the game.
Considering the age of the game (the original released in 2001), the artwork by Karen has aged pretty well. I really like the shading also, it has a kind of softness that’s nice.
Considering I associate Alicesoft games with darker H content I was a little concerned about Yorukuru but it was fine. Interestingly there’s an option to turn H scene CGs off in the menu – I haven’t seen that before. There’s not a lot of H scenes in general but anything non-vanilla is typically involving villains or a dream sequence.
The heroines’ “real” H scenes with Ryuu are all pure-love and pretty sweet. Makoto’s proper H scene (look at my bias showing) was actually really beautifully written and made me tear up.
The OST for this game is composed by Shade – who is very well known for his work with Alicesoft in general. The tracks are all generally good – with Square of the Moon being my personal favourite.
Conclusion
My Score: 7/10
Now this is how you re-release an older game – make it compatible with newer OS, add some quality of life changes while preserving the original and not charging a fortune! Alicesoft have gone up in my estimation significantly after this and I would love to see other companies following suit instead of obscenely priced “remakes”.
As far as the game goes, Yoru ga Kuru is a fairly enjoyable RPG that, while employing some tropes in its storytelling, more than makes up for this with the character writing. The rebalanced gameplay of the remaster also makes playthroughs much more enjoyable and the game difficulty was at such a level as to not be prohibitive to enjoying the story.
I always find myself enjoying eroge with gameplay elements when I do play them but then leave like a year in between these types of games. I really must try and play more. I did purchase a few more Alicesoft titles during their anniversary sale some months ago so maybe I’ll get around to those at some point?
Thanks for reading!
Source
Shine