Wow, I just have to say that this visual novel has by far, exceeded my expectations. You are not looking at a masterpiece by any means, but believe me when I say, that you if you are a fan of wholesome, fun, cutesy slice of life, you will be doing yourself a disservice by not checking this game out. What is really great is the game is really cheap. For the price, you get a surprisingly long experience. I would estimate that your first route will take approximately 8-11 hours.
Every Day's Different follows a player named protagonist who just moved back to his hometown after living away for a number of years. In typical fashion, the MC transfers into the local school and meets a wide cast of charming ladies whom he quickly befriends.
Yoko is a girl whom the MC has known practically his whole life. She is the childhood friend who is outgoing, kind, a great cook, and very athletic. Like pretty much every childhood friend ever, she is very happy that the MC has moved back in town and of course, would want nothing more than for their friendship to blossom into something more.
Yuika would be considered the typical flirty, pretty, rich girl. While it may be a cliche for a girl that checks these boxes to be stuck up, Yuika is anything but that. She is a very caring, playful, and takes every opportunity she can to help and tease others, always with the best of intentions.
Haru is the shy, more reclusive out of the bunch. She has a passion for art and photography, and is always nervous about becoming a burden on others do to her health, economic, and emotional issues that she struggles with. Despite being shy, as you get to know you, you will see she does have a pretty strong assertive side to her as well.
Katsuki is everyone's favorite trope, the tsundere. She is feisty, mean when you first meet her, quick to react, slow to open up. Despite this, she is very protective of the ones she loves and works hard to better herself and those around her.
Throughout the story, you will encounter various events where you will learn a lot more about the girls. Even on the route that is common to every girl, you will be given ample opportunity to learn about the other 3 girls you are not actively pursing, should you choose to go back after your first play through to experience their route. Some of these common route events are pretty significant and can almost be considered the climax of the girl's story.
While there are decisions that are made in this game, it is really easy to figure out what choices will lead to locking in the route with the girl of your choice. I wish these choices made more of an impact as there are a lot, more than average I would say, and they are, for the most part, fairly insignificant.
For better or for worse, pursing each of the girls really shines when the MC and the girl have their one on one interactions. It is fun talking to the girls, but every event in the game is almost exactly the same, you are just participating in the event with the girl you are pursing in your play through. I would have liked to have seen more unique events that were exclusive to the different girls instead of seeing a lot of the same on each play through. Still, the fluffy conversations were so cute and really give you that cutesy slice of life love fix if you want to see cute young couples fall in love. Each girl is really fun to get to know and learn more about. It is great seeing how each approaches finding their first love.
Speaking of events, while there is a lot of content in this visual novel, it is a little sad how some scenes end a little too early. Sometimes it will be the middle of the day and the story instantly progresses to the following day. Sometimes scenes are not as fleshed out as much as I think they should have been. The worst offender of this in my opinion is in Haru's route where the dance scene towards the end of the game ends in the middle of the dance. Every other girl got the rest of the night written where the MC walks home with the girl but this is missing in Haru's route for some reason. I was really let down in that moment. Moments like this are a common occurance where I just wish there was that slight extra bit of story added to a particular day to really feel like a lot happened in that day instead of constantly moving to the next day. It would have been nice to see these day's added with more unique events. I would have liked to see more girls coming over to the MC's house. The only one that does is Katsuki. I would have loved to see Yoko and the MC's mom catch up again. I would have loved to have seen more interaction with Katsuki at her work. I would have loved to have seen more lovey dovey scenes with Yuika as the MC and her would have had the most physical chemistry.
I say all this just to critique what I wanted more of. What is there is really good and I don't want this to detract from what was truly impressive. There is a lot here and I am still shocked at how much this small visual novel really presents you with. I was fully engrossed into the life of the MC and I loved spending time with the 4 main girls. The events were so good, I just hoped there could have been more as it was so good.
This game is almost entirely fully voice acted which I was really surprised by. Every girl is about 98% fully voice acted with only some occasional lines not voiced for some reason. Perhaps they were lines added later into development, I am not sure why. Side character's voice acting is a little inconsistent. Some side characters are voiced, some are not. Some that are voiced and make appearances later in the story lose their voice acting. Not a big deal, just gotta point it out. Overall, the voice acting is really well delivered with only a few instances where I felt the lines undelivered the impact of the moment. What I will say further though, is it seems like Yuika's audio quality was slightly lower than the other girls' which is a real shame. It is really noticeable since Katsuki's audio quality is easily the best of the 4.
The art in this game, while not 10/10, is really good. it is my understanding that the creator has been really self conscious about their art and I want to assure them that I think, that while not perfect, did its job (regarding the sprites and the early CG's). I think Yuika might be the lowest quality sprite of the 4 and Haru and Katsuki stand out as having the most well drawn sprites. The early CG's certainly are not as pretty as the later ones (as I assume the other CG's were drawn by a different artist), and I do think Yuika gets the short end of the stick yet again as a lot of her CG's are drawn in the less fancy art style (come on, no true kissing CG?!). Yoko has some absolutely amazing CG's and stands out as having the best in my opinion.
The last critique that I have is I would have liked to have seen the MC given more of a facial identity. Likely to make him a self insert, the MC has no face in any of the CG's which looks really funny and out of place in my opinion especially since the CG's look really good most of the time. The MC is very well written, he isn't just some generic MC (while he technically might be, he was very likable to me). He has a lot of issues with his own, and while not fully fleshed out, he has a past that frequently comes up that gives some insight into why he acts and behaves the way that he does. Along with many of the other girls, I really would have loved to have seen some of the plot points regarding him resolved, such as that with his dad, but I do not think it was super necessary (Sequel hopefully?).
Lastly, I do think there could have been a few last minute polishes in the game. At one point, I am pretty sure dialogue from another route creeps in (Mom's note on the fridge mentions going with 2 different girls back to back), scenes going from sunset to mid-day afternoon, sun shining through glass at nighttime, character descriptions not matching sprites, etc.
