Akash: Path of the Five

Interesting concept, fun to play!

Pick it up for an interesting worldbuilding concept, and to date super boyfriends while being super yourself. Lovely voice acting. Very escapist. HOWEVER: ~the routes, save one, are extremely repetitive (as others have said) ~a few of the LI insufferable (and unfortunately one-note, that's kinda just who they are) ~the plot is skin deep and had me cringing at points with its convenience, obvious devices and underdevelopment (without being campy or self aware.) ~there are a few annoying mini games that aren't skippable and it gets real old on your already repetitive fourth playthrough. Same with the ending shopping montage/scenes ~backgrounds are aggressively meh ~the advance and skip functions are irritating and inefficient ~misogyny baked into world building at points--biological patriarchy imperatives There are lots of other otome style visual novels that just do it better. But go for it at the price point or on sale if the demo intrigues you enough. I'd much rather play anything from Steamberry Studio to scratch the escapist, unique speculative fiction world Western-coded Otome itch. Changeling, When Stars Collide, Gilded Shadows. Writing and characters (love interests, side characters, and unique and badass protagonists) in those games are immaculate.

Приятная, недолгая история. Графика не идеальная, но, хотя бы отличается от вездесущего аниме-стиля. Язык простой, некоторые новеллы в оригинале читаются гораздо сложнее. Есть бонусные рассказы о персонажах после прохождения историй

I thoroughly enjoyed this VN, It had some hilarious funny bits and I really enjoyed one of the character routes(all the character routes were good I just have a big favorite). The biggest shocker was the animated parts, it really made the story feel lively and fun. The only thing I wished was in the game was the option to play the mini game again from the main menu, that mini game was so comical and fun (I couldn't figure out how to trigger it again). I'll definitely keep a look out for more games/VN's from this developer, I really liked this VN!! <3

I've played for 3 hours and I've just finished my first playthrough of the game! I did Ignatius's route and I just loved it!! The game has such beautiful backgrounds that move - gorgeous light shows, trees moving in the background, and even you moving to different rooms (curtains opening to reveal rooms, doors opening) and then you going into the new room! The backgrounds are just gorgeous. And the characters are great too! I dated Ignatius so Lux was my platonic best friend which was really nice and sweet! This game was very fun. I'm definitely going to do another playthrough - maybe Caspian's or Rowan's route next!

This is one of those games that I would give anything to play for the first time again. I love this, I love everything about this. The art, the voice acting, the storyline, the ... spice. Love it. All of it.

8/10

Not the most complex storytelling, but cute and funny. Hit the spot for me. Endorsed.

I liked it so much! It's very cute and funny!

This is one of those times where I desperately wish Steam reviews had more available nuance than a thumbs up or thumbs down rating. I would if I could give this a thumbs sideways. There's a fair amount of stuff in this game that I either didn't like or I could personally give it a pass at least but could easily see why others would not like it. But I don't feel quite negatively enough about it to give it a thumbs down. So, this thumbs up comes with a huge asterisk. [TL;DR it's fun and cute if you're not looking for something extraordinarily deep. It's also repetitive. I would only suggest picking it up on sale.] The love interest characters fill your expected otome archetypes. You got the childhood best friend, the shameless flirt, the himbo, the angry cranky one, and the cold cranky one. The story as you go through it is fine to me. It's nice, even. I do appreciate it when it's the heroine doing the saving in the grand scheme of things. The problem comes from the fact that no matter whose route you choose, it's the [b]EXACT[/b] same story. Like, more intensely than most other otomes I've played. Sure most will eventually get to a similar place in the end, but normally there's a common route, and by the time you lock in a love interest, you are taken in a decently different direction than with the others. But not in Akash. In Akash, the same thing happens. [b]Every. Single. Time.[/b] You just substitute in whichever of the LIs you've deliberately talked to the most. Every story beat happens each time, you just see how each character reacts differently. Which is like? Fine? I guess? I guess I'm not that disappointed about it because I got this on a deep sale. If I had paid the full original price for it when it released, I'd be kind of disappointed to get a 3-ish hour long story told to me 5 times. It's very "what if this specific thing happened, but this dude was there instead of that one?". Once you've done a route or two, the skip function absolutely ZOOMS you through the game for the next routes since you've seen most of it before. Note that it took me only 9 hours to play all 6 routes since the only changes between the routes are basically some dialogue. I can't say the worldbuilding is all that great, but I like the /idea/ of the world they've built. I like the west asian influence. I like the different sorts of magic that the different types of elementals can do. But there's a lot of poorly explained crucial parts of the world. Elementals have to breed with humans since they lack females, yet supposedly no elementals know what the inside of the human village looks like until our MC goes there? And human females never enter the elemental village. So how does this work? Where and how are they doing the do??? And how do the elemental offspring get from the human mothers to the elemental village? Like... huh???? There's several other things that I'm tentative to mention since I'm not sure if I maybe just breezed past the explanations of them. But I don't think I should have had as many "wait, what, how?" moments as I did. So with all that said, why am I still giving this a thumbs up? idk man. I do like the love interests (minus the "secret" one, I don't even want to talk about that one lmao it's not good). We see a decent amount of characterization for each love interest, especially considering the cookie-cutter confines of the story. The love interest I expected to like the least ended up being my favourite route, and I love when that happens in otomes. The voice acting is well done. The art design is quite nice. The CGs are fun/nice/hot(!!) for the most part. I like the idea of the 3d backgrounds juxtaposed to the 2d sprites, though I don't fully see the point when they're so polygonal. I don't hate them -- they do give a sort of dreamy quality to everything, especially when paired with the REALLY pretty soundotrack. But they feel very PS1 graphics. I do, however, love the small cartoony interjections for the comical CGs. They're so cute, I can't help it. Love the lil main character flipping the bird at every opportunity. Overall I think I like the concept of this game more than the overall execution. But for what it was and what I got it for, it was a fun brief time. I'll probably play a bit more just to get the last few CGs for the achievement, since the full achievement list is pretty easy to get.