As a brief warning, this game will pop a content warning the first time you open it, and I suggest reading it if you have sensitivity to difficult content. If you skip that warning, you will end up head-first in some shockingly dark content. There is little warning of the harsh tone shift in the moment.
Firstly, this is not a light flighty romance story; this is a character study. Those seeking straightforward [i]fuwa fuwa[/i] sparkly sunshine yuri should look elsewhere. Romance is a factor, but the relationships between the characters and their capacity to grow as individuals is the lynchpin of the narrative.
Briefly; the main character is Eve, a ranger in the National Park Service with a love for nature, disdain for humanity, and a hot, often violent, temperament. The story is about her growth alongside three personifications of National Parks; Yosemite, Yellowstone, and Zion.
While there are episodes dedicated to exploring each of the titular National Park Girls, the overarching story is focused on the relationship between Yosemite and Eve. Yosemite shares Eve's prickly personality, and the heart of the story is finding their emotional well-being. I found the dynamic between Yosemite and Eve infinitely appealing, no matter the context. Their lightly combative dialogue is always fun, and keeps the story from getting too sappy. The voice acting in this is also quite lovely, for all the characters, but particularly in Yosemite and Eve's escapades in Episode 4, which was the highlight of the game for me.
I don't review the majority of visual novels I play, but there is something very strange about this that is inspiring me to write. This story was released episodically, and even with a bumpy release schedule, the first three episodes seemed to maintain a consistent tone: overall light stories with emotionally resonant elements. The two part Eternal Evergreen is where a serious issue emerges.
National Park Girls' flaw is that it keeps trying to claw back a lighter tone, even once the characters start shattering against the realities of the world. If you want my pure speculation: the story of "Eternal Evergreen" underwent some serious rewrites halfway through when the team wisely decided to not try and tackle the trauma of Native American genocide in a game about anime women cosplaying as National Parks. I have [b]no[/b] proof of that, beyond some references in Part I that are not followed up on, but that's my only real explanation for the messy state of Episode 5 "Eternal Evergreen Part II."
Serious Spoilers;
[spoiler]Episode 5 is insane. What began as a Meet Cute™ in the woods ends in shooting a dog at the conclusion of Episode 4. This leads to a split narrative in Episode 5. The weak strand is brokering peace between a Samurai Cowgirl and talking rocks via a rap battle (this is not a joke), meanwhile Best Girls™ are in the middle of confronting a suicidal fugue state. The story leaves Yosemite National Park, and takes all of our characters to Death Valley National Park. Eve has imploded on herself in guilt-ridden anguish and is actively seeking to drink herself to death in isolation. Eve starts imparting to other characters her new found suicidal ideation, and it gets really uncomfortable. The discomfort is intentional, and effective, this wild tone shift is not the problem. We also get a new addition to the cast, Death Valley, who is an angry Samurai Cowgirl in the grand tradition of Gemini Sunrise's alter ego in Sakura Wars: So Long My Love. Maybe not a grand tradition, but I will take any chance I can get to mention that Gemini Sunrise exists. While I am not the biggest fan of her character, she is not the issue in Episode 5.[/spoiler]
I think the source of the conclusion's issues is a need to keep all our characters busy. While Eve and Yosemite go out to discover what they mean to one another and try to piece together their relationship, the remainder of the cast is left to fight it out in an action comedy about anthropomorphic rocks. While Eve and Yosemite's story highlights important moments of character development and growth, combined with a long-awaited resolution to their relationship, the other plot with Zion and Yellowstone story about rocks is frankly worthless. Intercutting between raw emotional scenes of pure despair and a mad cap comedy was not the solution to a shifting tone.
The choice for a split narrative is near incomprehensible to me; Episode 5 begins with those two tones hitting each other like two speeding semis on a freeway. The ensuing crash is the transition, it is messy, it is surprising, and most of all it is effective. It is only after that initial shift that the story splits the group in two, and begins muddying the tone with ill-advised and not terribly funny comedy. Why there was a perceived need to drag a comedy plot line throughout the entire episode is baffling to me; the plot line is meaningless, takes up space, and it leaves a terrible impression. If the goal was to offset the darkening tone, then that was entirely misguided. The shifting tone is the story, pumping the brakes on it is just a creative hedge that gives the reader whiplash.
Despite that, I really enjoyed my time with this. No amount of questionable comedic road bumps will be enough to make me forget the emotional core of this story. Eve's journey is worth reading, and it gets the attention it deserves. The pay-off here is not two cuties kissing, it is leaving a relationship to blossom on its own terms; marching forward arm-in-arm into the infuriating inanities of the everyday with the newfound emotional maturity to meet the world head on, without smashing oneself to pieces against it. Even with its faults, this story is worth your time.
