I'm still studying Japanese but your reviews are very fun to read kzel, they give me some insight as to what I will be trying in the future.
Thanks for posting them here.
Thank you so much for your kind words! I'm amazed my
rants "reviews" could motivate you to pick up any game I've covered since I tend to always focus on the bad points. You could say anything I don't mention was relatively okay though! I wish I had some more to write about, alas I'm not much in a VN mood lately, in no small parts thanks to the avalanche of Valentine events in mobile games sucking up all my time. Speaking of which, here are a few comments on some with a more pronounced VN component :
ぼくらの放課後戦争!-AFTER SCHOOL WARS- : A light school-life with excellent art by a variety of artists and a good CV cast. The battle system is unfortunately entirely forgettable, just put it on auto and forget it even exists. The main/event story are for the most part very readable, sometimes funny. Each heroine actually has their own 12 chapters mini-route which is something extremely rare in the world of mobile games, they usually go straight to the sex scenes after a short introduction. I've grown more attached to these characters than any of the 200+ I have in other games. Unlocking characters doesn't take too much effort thanks to the daily free gacha, and the rare (or pricey) SSR cards only add some extra scenario/H so they're really not worth the money. In fact, considering you can buy a full game with 40+ CGs for the price of one character or two (usually 1-2CGs and 10min of text), I would say none of these games are worth spending any money into. I know I haven't.
あいりすミスティリア!R ~少女のつむぐ夢の秘跡~ : August collaborating with a mobile game, and after a rather long hiatus the game seems to be going pretty strong. The main story is the main appeal, with some good moments (especially the latest chapter) helped by some quality artwork, good sprite/background usage, very good music and a familiar CV cast. Unlocking all characters is very easy to do just by following the main story, each of them has their own mini-story (alas pretty short and skipping any romance transition) and two H scenes. Higher rarity cards unlock some more powerful variants and some mini-scenarios for each of the characters but they're not necessary to complete the main quest. I like how generous the game is with f2p players, with guaranteed SSRs gachas usually exclusive to paying players in other games. Just don't let that lull you into spending money though. The battle system is fairly simple and yet offers a lot of options in what you bring to the fights.
凍京NECRO<トウキョウ・ネクロ> SUICIDE MISSION : Despite having Shimokura Vio at the wheel, the original Nitroplus Tokyo Necro scenario writer, the main story is very lackluster and completely lost the appeal of the original, lacking either its cool animated action parts and its darker reflections on zombification. I also disliked the protagonist's strong presence in the story, considering he's a joke and about the weakest character you can get, not to mention his female magnet enhanced ex-brain of whatever. The battle system is fairly limited, it adds positioning but severely lacks variety of actions : attack, wait, one skill with cooldown, that's it. And yet, the auto AI is too stupid to make even a decent use of it. Since the difficulty is cranked way up in raid battle, it's not unusual to just get one-shot. I stopped playing at the first raid event, the management is way too eager to get players to spend money with an abundance of new 特攻 characters for each event (characters whose effectiveness is multiplied for that event), even for multiplayer competitive ones. 特攻 characters is nothing new in the the world of mobile games, but usually they'll go up to x2~300%, meaning you can cover the lack of one by just doing more runs. Here, it goes up to 1400%...