Hello Goodbye is a visual novel whose story occurs in a Japan divided into 3 different countries, with the protagonist being a solder from one of them, being tasked to do an important mission in another. To do that, he must infiltrate a school, where he eventually gets to know a few ladies, and the story falls into your cookie cutter romance story after.
I am not a big fan of the plot. I would not say politics and military, and the laidback years of schooling, are not miscible with each other, but I would say the end result in the novel is that they do appear to be so, with either not being well executed, on their own, or together. Little background is provided in how the country broke down, or it eventually became united again in the end, and the political-military side of the story feels more like an afterthought to the romantic school life of a school student that is not even a student to beging with.
Being a harem game obviously the focus is in the romance with the girls, which on its own is decent enough, while not being particularly great. The story does have good character development, but the ladies are mostly monotone.
Then there is the fact almost everyone appears to be overly naive and unaware - i.e. no one knows one of the girl characters is the daughter of an important politician, the same girl cannot differentiate intruders from guests, another girl is yet another soldier/spy from another place supposed to be spying on the protagonist yet easily blurts out secrets in front of him...
The story is relatively straight in that few choices are provided, eventually directing to a romantic route with one of the female protagonists. Do note that a restart will be necessary to complete all 4 routes. There are no bad endings in this game, which is a missed chance in my opinion in a story that is replete of danger material.
The writing itself is decently translated and easy to understand, and the voice acting is well done and enjoyable to listen to.
The artwork is decent and well drawn, with a lot of CGs included. Rather enjoyable to look at, and comparatively speaking much better than the story itself anyway.
There is a good assortment of music, over 30 of them, that are overall well composed. There is also a few voiced and well arranged voiced songs. While they mostly fit with the story at hand, the tracks tend to be on the cheesy, happy or campier side, and a few more to convey dangerous or sad moments would have been appreciated.
Finally, there is a mini game, about finding a hidden cat somewhere in a background image, which would be ok if it were for the fact it is very unforgiving, resulting in being rather tedious and botched just like the story.
For the price and the content offered, I do find it overpriced. I do still give a passing score, but just barely. I do recommend getting it on sale. 6/10.
