November games quick review time! At least for the couple I have tried so far, not sure if I'm going to try others or continue the one I still haven't removed from the computer and (hopefully soon) my memory. I'll maybe spend some time at least with Asa Project's Renai x Royal to get a feel for it, usually I figure out pretty quickly if I'm going to like or hate it. Also maybe give Ai Kiss 2 a quick glance, since I did complete one route of the original? Who knows, but for the time being, let's talk about what I have already gone through:
響野さん家はエロゲ屋さん！ (Yui, Yukari): Given the theme, I was a bit cautious but contrary to what one would think it's actually very safe. In fact there's probably less lucky sukebe in this (I think there's like, one?, in the common route) than in standard school-life style games. The eroge-shop theme indeed focuses more on the back-end of things rather than the games' actual content, and so it's all about organizing the shop, setting up supply lines, handling the customer rushes, etc... Overall I liked that but also given the particular product they're selling I think it's treated way too "normally" : shop opened during standard hours, in plain sight, in an area with barely anything of the sort near, I'd think that the shop would stand out a lot. Imagine a sex shop in the very middle of a food court and you'll get the idea. But it doesn't matter here, everyone is polite, there are no pervert customers, no-one cares about the nearly all-female underage staff, the shop is quickly enjoying tons of customers. I appreciated the open and very blunt references to other games in the same publisher family (I guess?), some of them I actually played and maybe enjoyed (Yosuga no Sora, Ninki Seiyuu no Tsukurikata come to mind), as well as the somewhat believable business side of things (last Friday rush, explanation as to why some people still use brick-and-mortar and don't just download). All of it does remain pretty shallow and as usual with eroge this year, there's not even a hint or mention of the actual crisis that shops are suffering from everywhere around the world. You'd think about a year after it started the theme would have cropped in somewhere but I have yet to see it in any production, maybe in doujin circles?
Anyway, romance-wise it's actually not too terrible. It's, as the rest of the game, pretty shallow, but at least and that's important for me : it doesn't stem from perversion or only physical desire (unlike some other game *frowns and looks below*). Things progress very quickly and lead to ecchi rather fast, usually minutes after the confession, but the ecchi scenes themselves are pretty meaty so eh, fine. They remain in mostly vanilla flavor despite some eroge themes being mentioned in the game otherwise (no SM, humiliation, NTR that I could see). The game steers away from romance rather fast to embrace a creative pursuit sort of thing for both the routes I played, and I image the same will be true for the other routes. These pursuits are also rather shallow and any issue is solved pretty quickly and apparently effortlessly (it's not enough to just say "We worded hard, it worked, yay!"), but at least they don't overstay their welcome unlike a certain Hamidashi Creative in recent memory. I may continue on to the others routes at some point, I haven't decided yet.
水蓮と紫苑 (Shion) : Sometimes I hate being right. Some posts ago, and also when the game was announced, I made a few predictions considering the pitch and writer and I'm sad to report that these were spot-on. The protagonist is a spineless sexual monster who only has one thing in his mind : sex. This is also his one way of communication. Apart from sex scenes, about half of his lines are like "... Uguuu", or "...Errr", along with endless monologue about observing the girls' bodies. Never does he actually make a stand for what he thinks and he keeps getting led around by the two heroines, all too happy to provide him with all the sexual relief he could ever need, because it's tough to live with two beauties and not masturbate, you know? While you do as the player get the choice to pick a route relatively early (but not before some ecchi with both girls because gotta try the goods first I guess), the protagonist remains indecisive till the end and the best you can do is hold off on the 3P scenes until later, never does he fully commit to one girl or the other. I hated that. Of course, to allay any guilty feelings the current
love sex interest tells you she's fine if you cheat with her sister, but even if you refuse said sister when she conveniently offers herself few minutes after, the protagonist just tells her to wait a while for things to settle down, and in the rest of the game makes it clear he loves them both and doesn't have the willpower to refuse the other indefinitely. Sigh.
So it's down to the heroines then to actually drive the story, and are they all too eager to do that. I could not stand the big sister Shiren from the start, the way she tries to seduces by acting innocently (but is it? if she's that way with everyone she'd be taken by now, and she fakes sleeping and secretly watches seemingly everything). She multiplies completely out-of-the-question proposals (let's bathe together, let's sleep together, let me take care of your sexuality...) that are out even for a little brother. She kinda reminds me of Maya from
Onee-chan no Yuuwaku, and in fact the game describes her as displaying the very same behavior in Shion route: she's willing to fulfill any of the protagonist sexual requests, except she has no real desire for it on her own. She's all too happy to just be a sex doll as long as she keeps the protagonist close. Shion mostly plays the silent tsundere in her route and keeps throwing signs the protagonist can't understand, resulting in a lot of random sex with no feelings behind it. Even after feelings have been spelled out it's still pretty awful in that regard, with acts and actions that don't reflect any emotion but physical lust and not much else. Communication failure if you ask me. As with the previous collaboration between Iizuki and Taira Norimitsu, the art is good but the text and story is so awful and angering that I just couldn't enjoy any of it, and the game has now been deleted out of spite after playing one route, I don't even care about checking out the rest of the CGs since I know I won't use any of them. I'd rather go back to Lovely X Cation 2 and play Wakoto or Hime and not pollute my mind with these soul-less lookalikes.
