/jp/ - Otaku Culture

Also finished 9Haruiro here.

It was okayish, though left somewhat lukewarm last impressions and definitely lowered my expectations for the fourth episode a bit. In general the motivations for many characters were really weak (so far at least), and girls wise this episode’s main heroine simply wasn’t as entertaining as Sora in previous one, but that was to be expected as nothing could realistically beat that banter. Haruka's switcheroo thing didn’t end up getting used in interesting ways either in plot or characterization department. I was originally expecting more differences or even interaction between normal and Queen-mode, maybe even do something akin to a dual-heroine route, but alas. No switches in the middle of H-scenes either, like you quite literally had ONE JOB, guys.

More plot-related complaining: The past bullying thing also felt really weak and the whole murder issue was already executed better in second episode with Ghost who’s an actual character and not just a spriteless extra. Though of course in retrospect she likely doesn’t actually die there. The final stinger was also crappy and it’s not like we haven’t already seen a similar plot element done a million times in this medium. I mean, was that sort of thing really necessary?

At least the one battle scene was pretty great and as one small presentation related point, I really liked the reload-like sound effect accompanying「記憶をインストールする」choices. Though as a general complaint regarding that, if you’re going to incorporate choices as an in-universe plot element I’m really starting to think the game would’ve been much better off as a full title with more choices sprinkled around, rather than episodic. Let’s see how they handle it in the fourth one. The series has been pretty good so far about not endlessly dragging on the re-reveal of previous routes’ stuff and twists, so I’m expecting they’ll have the protagonist understand everything right from the beginning of fourth episode.