Akash: Path of the Five

not for me

Have replayed for every romance and all are as good as the last.

I have very mixed feelings about this game after playing through almost all of the li "routes", so I guess I'll just do a "good" and "bad" thing to simplify it. The Good: - The voice acting is pretty good throughout. No one sounds like they're va'ing in a tunnel or anything weird like that, everything is very clear and the volume of the voices is consistent throughout. - The cg's are well done throughout. - I generally like the mc and the li's have fairly distinct personalities. - The game is occasionally genuinely funny. The Bad: - The SFX are LOUD, even after turning the volume to 0 (seriously, why even bother having volume control for something when it does absolutely nothing?). This is honestly my biggest complaint about the game because something like that shouldn't have made it past even limited beta testing. Doors opening, magic casting, footsteps, all of it is LOUD no matter how you set the in game volume. - The basic story is nothing special or creative and the game suffers from having no dedicated li routes. Every single one requires you to go through the main story, with a few small variances here and there. I have played some very good games that do a single route, but this particularly story is nowhere near good enough to enjoy playing through five separate times. The fast forward option makes it more bearable, but there are still plenty of repetitive sections that you will not be able to ff through and the game really becomes a slog at those points. Overall I'd probably recommend it on sale (I got it for 3.99), or even regular price if you're really in the mood for an otome/dating sim (7.99 isn't a terrible price). The Bad:

I played through every ending so I suppose that says good things about it if you're looking at it in terms hour of entertainment per dollar. The art style is interesting and I thought it was okay but having 3D backgrounds did nothing for me and certainly weren't worth the slow scene transitions. I think the weakness of this title and the reason I don't recommend it is that there is only one story. Any differences between the LI routes is entirely superficial. It's like reading the same Mad Lib over and over where you just pick a different element and name.

I've played this game on PlayStation and when i finally got my PC i was excited to be able to play Akash on it! god its still amazing as always! :D

Akash: Path of the Five is a fully-voiced fantasy visual novel about Aurora (default name), the first elemental female born in 200 years and her school life as she grows closer to one of her classmates and approaches her coming of age ceremony, where she will transition into one element of the five she is attuned with. The game really only has one "route"/storyline, which is the same for each character but with sprites changed and lines adjusted for their personalities. I didn't make an initial ranking, but post-game my ranking is as follows: [spoiler]Sirocco > Ignatius > Lux > Rowan > Daniel > Caspian[/spoiler] The game features 5 routes and one mini-route with 4 CGs. You do have the otome standard live interests and I do think they were all of varying quality... The first route took me about 2.5 - 3 hours listening to the voice acting but after that the entire game took me about 9 hours. You can view all CGs in a gallery, chapter select to get new cgs/outfits and do other choices, and also view epilogues for each character in the extras menu. The epilogues are short stories with a few cartoon-style CGs which cannot be accessed in the gallery. Rocco's made me cry. The game sprites are all really nice to look at and their positions/faces change, and they do match the CG art quite well. I really like the art style and I like the character reactions but I think there could've been some more creativity when it came to changing the sprite clothing / making them reflect the actions in the dialogue and storyline (like changing clothes to topless when they're bathing or putting on a uniform when a character is dressing up). I thought some of the CGs were really nice to look at and the composition was always interesting and fun, whilst also sometimes being cheeky. There's a "chibi"/fun art style used in some of the scenes which was alright and contrasted well with the game's overall tone and style. The music is simple but enjoyable and of decent quality. I also think the voice acting is of a good quality throughout the game. There are segments of 3D transitions as we move to new areas which felt so 1990s in a fun way. Unfortunately there's no *real* way of skipping these unless you spam tap the Enter key after completing one route, as it will instantly transition into skip-read mode. On this, I do think there could've been some better quality of life changes in the game to make it easier to skip things we'd already seen. Even in some cases, the lines are exactly the same except for one name and so we may skip huge sections to just have one line that remains unskippable and have to read repeated dialogue. This contributed to the shortcomings I felt in some of the routes - the game is generally good about the pacing and structure of the game but there's very little put into the worldbuilding/history and some plot elements are completely irrelevant/dropped partway through the game (for example [spoiler]we never hear about other elemental ruins and other artefacts; there is no explanation about the necklace[/spoiler], I never knew that families sent their children to this boarding school from foreign towns because the main character sees her dad all the time). And some of the LIs miss out on more natural development. [spoiler]Aurora has known all of the LIs since she was young because they all have been studying at this boarding school since they were children[/spoiler], so they're all technically her "childhood friends", however, the boys do have their own tropes: Lux (actual childhood friend), Rocco (flirt), Ignatius (tsundere and also sad emo kid), Caspian (kuudere), Rowan (himbo) and [spoiler]Daniel (the alien)[/spoiler]. When 'childhood friend' is poorly executed, we miss out on seeing the friends-to-lovers transition and I think that was apparent in both Lux and Caspian's routes - Rowan seemed more the childhood friend to Aurora than Lux and Lux kind of remained quite one-note to me in his route, while he was more interesting and nicer to talk to in other routes. Caspian's pacing felt more uneven as, in my opinion, his transition from cold exterior to kuudere felt like a switch being flipped instead of natural romantic development. I didn't really see the moments of him falling for Aurora, but more that he would admit fault more to her. I do wish that a little more had happened in the routes to differentiate them but I understand an indie game and the cost/time that goes into it. This game is good value for money and it has a lot of cute moments. RE the sexual content and nudity - it's all done very tastefully - there are appropriate fade to blacks and some general flowery descriptions of sex. There is one topless CG with frontal imagery but otherwise it's all censored. It's worth playing Akash as it's quite an enjoyable otome and it's very affordable. I really liked it.

I enjoyed this game/story, especially the female main character's dialog/personality. It was a lot more realistic/situation specific than a lot of romance stories write the MC. She's angry in situations that would make a real person mad, sassy when annoyed or embarrassed, polite/reserved when needed, etc. There is a lot of repeated dialog to play through all characters/endings. I don't mind it, but some people might. There was some genuinely funny writing, not all cringe or trope. I wish the character models were more accurate to the story, like wet hair when the person is wet or ripped clothes during a fight and that there was a little more to the bad endings, but small complaints to an overall good experience especially for just a few dollars. I would recommend to anyone that enjoys romance visual novels with male romance options.

the artwork is amazing!

Great writing, a bit of an issue with gender roles if that bothers you but tbh it was written a while back before those discussions were regular. That said, loved it, loved the voice acting, was shocked when the guy I instantly wanted to romance was ProZD but not upset.

Fun VN with lovely art, storyline, and soundtracks. Really enjoyed this one!