Genius Inc. has already presented a lot of games in Play Market – I think about thirty, so one can say that they are a well-known developer of romantic visual novels; not to mention that they actually translate their games into Russian, so it is a huge bonus for the Russian-speaking community. Not all of them are good, mind you, and as far as mobile versions are concerned, there is a major problem with choices that require special crystals (that can be either earned, but it will take a lot of time, or bought with real money). I was quite happy to see that one of the games was finally released in Steam, and with no paid answers to choose from! My Maid Girlfriend is one of the titles I have tried on my mobile, so I had the idea of what I was going to see here.
I hope my review will be helpful to you. I cannot but mention that it could have been positive – read the last part to find out why and what happened.
[i]An important note before we start: I played in English and did not have any problems with translation or text display; as far as I know, the problem with Russian text has already been solved.[/i]
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1538056061
[h1]Good, Bad and Neutral[/h1]
This game has a pretty short and generic story, so I am not sure I can include it in the list of good points.
[list][b]However, there is still something good worth mentioning:[/b][/list]
1) Characters’ sprites are neatly drawn and animated; they move, blink and change expressions all the time. The only awkward thing was how their mouth moved while speaking, and I also did not like the fact that animations of speaking continued even after the character stopped talking (I mean, when the voice actor stopped doing it, of course);
2) The CGs are lovely. All of them are pleasing to look at and you will find them in different chapters. Girls can be very cute and there is not much fanservice;
3) Many backgrounds are very good. I am not absolutely sure but it seems to me that they are at least partially hand-drawn. There are lots of pretty places to look at with various details – just see how dirty the kitchenware is in the first chapter!;
4) Music tracks are nothing special but not bad either. They go well with the story and did not distract me too much. However, there are some bad points about them too, and you can read them in the other part of my review (after the neutral points);
5) There are some special choices that will open secret scenes – and I have always loved looking for them.
[list][b]Neutral points include three things:[/b][/list]
1) A pretty generic story with a strange start (in my opinion, of course) – the MC’s father found a huge oil mine out of nowhere, so they became rich. How realistic is that? Oh well, this is not the strangest thing I have seen in a story, so let us just skip this point. Why is it generic? Because all of us who play romantic visual novels know at least dozen titles where a boy suddenly meets a bunch of girls and then they fall in love with each other – this will eventually lead either to 18+ scenes (not in this game) or to the happy ending (our case here). Or maybe to normal or bad endings, if the game has them. Anyway… I cannot say that My Maid Girlfriend’s story presents anything new to the genre, but it is not bland or outright bad too, so I give it a neutral mark;
2) Characters – again these generic personalities for girls. A pink-haired tsundere that is pretending not to be one; a shy girl with a painfully high-pitched voice; and a motherly-type girl that treats the MC as her little brother. The only thing this game is lacking is a yandere to follow the boy everywhere. Oh, wait! There are at least several girls who do it because the MC is rich now. Can they be counted as crazy stalkers?
Now, what do I think about the protagonist? Well, he is nothing to write home about, but at least he does not act like a pick-up master or a complete pervert. He is just a normal boy that can dream about cute girls from time to time – or all the time – and his new rich life is quite new for him.
Overall, despite being common for slice-of-life and romantic visual novels, characters are not annoying and get some actual development through the story. If you want some light-hearted reading, then they will not bother you at all. However, if you are looking for something deep, then this neutral point will become a negative one;
3) Navigation buttons – I do not quite understand why they did not put them in the dialogue box, as usual. The current overlay reminds me of mobile devices, but I am not sure whether the developers were a bit lazy and just did not change the design for the PC release or it was intentionally to save the same look as the mobile version. So I cannot put this issue in the negative points right away. After all, these pink buttons did not bother me too much and looked well with the overall design.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1538057200
[list][b]Speaking about the things I did not like, there are several features that I need to warn you about: [/b][/list]
1) For some reason, if you press F12 to take a screenshot in the main menu or during the opening video, the game will react to it as if you have pressed Enter instead. This is very unpleasant if you want to take a screenshot while the scene is immediately skipped;
2) Looping music in the main menu – to start with, I did not like the track itself. Not my type of music for sure. Secondly, it is pretty short and starts looping with a short pause, so you will always understand when the track has ended and started again;
3) All music tracks are looping, and this would not be a problem if I did not hear when they ended. But I did – there was always a pause before the music started playing again, even though it was a short one;
4) Why does this game, a visual novel, overheats my laptop as if I was playing an RPG title with decent graphics?! Is there some problem with the engine? Is it THAT badly optimized?;
5) Again no idea why this happens, but achievements did not work for me at all.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1538055330
[h1]What do we have in the end?[/h1]
Judging from my experience with My Maid Girlfriend as a mobile version, it is a pretty OK-ish visual novel. It has some very good points, such as characters’ design and artwork in general, as well as a simple story for people who want to read something light. However, the music is nothing special and keeps looping with noticeable pauses between loops (they are short, but you still hear them). The story, as I have already said, is simple, so for some people it might turn out to be boring; and if you do not like tsunderes, meek girls and big mothers, then again you will get bored soon.
Initially I wanted to give My Maid Girlfriend a neutral-positive review while this is definitely not the worst visual novel I have seen. However, because of the performance issues, I had to choose the neutral-negative one. I have played visual novels with good animations and never experienced any problems with them – look at Nekopara, for example. But My Maid Girlfriend is simply killing my laptop! This is very annoying and I think the developers should either address this issue or do something to make it less problematic. I cannot even finish the game properly because I do not like playing on a frying pan. The mobile version of the game did not have performance issues, so I expected the PC one to be of the same quality. And I still think that navigation buttons are oddly placed – more suitable for a mobile version, to be honest.
Because of all these disadvantages, I cannot recommend My Maid Girlfriend in its current state. If they are solved in the future, I will change my review to neutral-positive, as I wanted from the very beginning.
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