I really wanted to give this game a good review, but I just can’t. The game feels unfinished, it feels unrefined, and it's buggy. It feels like a lot of unique elements and ideas smashed together with poor execution on so many levels. Some VNs in the adult genre are just “porn with extra steps,” so a basic story with one-dimensional characters to just hold everything together between the smut is a common theme in the genre… but this game can’t even stand on that. There’s just not enough variety in the routes, or romance / H scenes to warrant the price or compensate for the flaws here.
[h3] TL;DR [/h3]
- Overall art style and quality is highly inconsistent and the game credits indicate multiple artists on the team, so I assume this is why
- There are not enough CGs (3-4 per route, 1 NSFW per route), and again they are inconsistent in style and quality
- Music is upbeat and theme-friendly but repetitive and transitions are jarring at times
- Story is simple, nothing groundbreaking, and definitely not a selling point on its own
- Abundance of spelling and grammar errors that get progressively worse and more frequent as the game goes on
- Gameplay is tedious and repetitive, with little to no changes per route
- Characters are a bit one dimensional, and nothing to write home about
- Stats and Calendar system is a tedious eyesore that requires manually counting and micromanagement with little payoff
- UI is poorly designed and makes the Stats & Calendar system even more annoying to deal with
In short, a lot of things about this game just feel like they are there. The story is just there. The characters are just there. The stats are just there but some of them become a tedious barrier to entry. And what are you getting out of it? A story not worth playing for its own sake with a handful of inconsistently drawn CGs and 1 NSFW scene per route that quickly wraps up the story.
Now, I’ll go into the longer review in case anyone is interested in specifics.
[h3] THE ART / CGs [/h3]
[b] Sprites & Landscapes: [/b] most of them are very beautiful, but they are inconsistent.This makes the game feel like it lacks cohesion at times, when you're encountering mostly beautifully drawn sprites… with the exception of Paul's best friend, who looks distinctly lower quality and out of place, almost as if it were a last minute decision to have him appear in the game at all.
[b] CGs: [/b] Again, nearly all of the CGs look like they were drawn by different people with different styles. I mean, the credits do indicate that there were multiple artists, and it really shows. They do not match the style of the sprites, so it was quite surprising to see beautiful sprites, and then encounter CGs which were distinctly different in style and quality, and then randomly get a blurry and pixelated CG that looks like it was drawn in MS paint. [spoiler] (specifically the sex dream CG.) [/spoiler]
[b] H scenes / # of CGs: [/b] Not enough. Literally. To be honest, I think every route has like ~3-4 CGs total, with only 1 of those being NSFW per route. This is… not enough for a game of this length that makes you work so hard and endure so much repetition to get anywhere.
[h3] THE MUSIC [/h3]
The music aided the atmosphere of the story and themes of importance for many characters Paul encounters throughout the story. However, it became incredibly repetitive and annoying to hear so many of the same songs over and over again, especially if you’re like me, and not really a fan of this kind of music to begin with. I will say, it is a theme in VNs to have somewhat repetitive music or soundtracks for specific areas/days, so it is not unusual for this VN to do the same, however I think it wasn’t as well implemented as it could have been, so it felt a bit jarring for songs to transition into other songs when moving between areas/days.
[h3] THE STORY / GAMEPLAY [/h3]
[b] Story: [/b] the MC, Paul, moves to France to pursue his dream of being a famous painter. Along the way he encounters a cast of characters from musicians, authors, and of course, other painters. He lands a job which includes room & board at a local flower shop, and spends his days cultivating his skills… and… well… finding love along the way. This story is very simple, very plain, not groundbreaking, and unfortunately, it is incredibly one dimensional. Not unenjoyable, per say, but just kinda there. There are also a lot of spelling and grammar errors, they appear more frequently and become worse the further you get into the game.
[b] Gameplay: [/b] it is quite boring and repetitive, to be honest. Every route, and every day the same thing, go to work, go to cafe, go to the river, raise those stats… be forced into clubbing events two days of the week, and have a dead day almost every Sunday. I appreciate what the dev was trying to do with time management here, but unfortunately, it’s just too repetitive and restrictive. The routes you can choose have no effect on this, almost nothing changes between routes, whether it be the things you do each day, or the way other characters interact with you. It is always the same.
[b] Characters & Routes: [/b] they are okay. You don’t really grow to feel close or really love any of these characters… they just… kinda feel like they exist. Bernard was my favorite route, as I felt he was the best suited to Paul… they felt the most organic, but his route did get bugged for me and I had to spam the coffee shop every day until his good end triggered almost a week after the game “ended.” However, most of the routes are buggy, and you can encounter errors with them when playing the game, which will require that you load a previous save to fix. For some reason, if you miss the stats required for a good end, which would place you in the bad end route, the game can also start looping infinitely, which also requires that you either restart, or load a previous save far enough back to correct. So… uhh… save often and pay attention to your stats and pay attention to the calendar.
[b] Stats & Calendar System: [/b] this is literally a headache and an eyesore. The UI of this game is incredibly flawed. You have 40 little squares that tell you what level your stats are… you have to manually count these constantly and it is tedious and annoying to do. There is no indication of what day/week/month it is unless you click into your stat screen and select the calendar tab… so you basically have to manually count these tiny boxes every day while micromanaging your calendar constantly to make sure you are meeting stat and date requirements to progress both Paul’s dream AND certain romances. In addition, there are completely useless stats you earn in abundance that never matter for the game [i] (I’m lookin’ at you, 20+ points in observation, while glaring at my charisma hoping something tosses me those mandatory points in time for an event). [/i]
