[b]My Playtime:[/b] 15.1h (100% achievement, finished the game)
[b]Grindy Achievement(s):[/b] No.
[b]Optional Achievement(s):[/b] Yes (~20 achievements).
[b]Difficult Achievement(s):[/b] No.
[h1]Intro[/h1]
[i]初恋日记[/i] / [i]School Years[/i] is a visual novel that tells the love story of a Chinese high school guy. It spans 42 chapters, which can end shorter if you don't fulfill certain requirements.
[b]Pros:[/b]
- Fully voice dubbed
- A lot of new cutscenes that help to portray the scene
[b]Cons:[/b]
- Puzzles can be hard to understand
- Terrible English translation
[b]Specs[/b]
Intel Core i5-9300H 2.40GHz, 8GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650
[h1]Should you buy this game?[/h1]
[i]Unless the translation is improved, it'll be hard to enjoy the story to its fullest.[/i]
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[h1]In-Depth Review[/h1]
[h3]Visuals[/h3]
Characters' portraits are used for most of the game, sometimes with their mouth moved to match the dialogue. Although it's nice to see the animation, sometimes they look weird because only the mouth is moving whenever it happens.
The game also uses a lot of original artwork for the cutscenes. Some of them use different art styles and differ in quality, and sometimes I found the female lead doesn't look similar to how she usually looks. However, you'll still be able to recognize the characters.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2219566692
The decision to use a 3D background for the school setting works great. Since the game takes place in school most of the time, it'll be boring to see the same scenery several times. The 3D background helps with the different camera angles and sometimes gives an animation to properly show what the character is doing.
[h3]Story[/h3]
The story is a slow burn. It tells the story of Qiang, the smartest guy in class, who is trying to start his love story. Being a senior in a high school in China, it means that the whole year is also focused on preparing for college entrance examinations. You'll see the story mixing a lot of daily lives, romances, and math problems. To be honest, I skipped almost all of the math-related dialogues since I have no interest in it, but aside from that, the daily life is portrayed well. I'm never bored with the progression since there is always something new that happens to the story.
However, the bad English translation ruins the immersion. I didn't understand what was happening in the prologue until I tried to translate the text with AI. The day-to-day conversations can be understood better since they use simpler words, but sometimes the translations are still off, making it hard to understand what's happening. I still know what happened, but having to decipher what the sentences mean ruins the immersion.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2045149554
The story will cut off at some points in the game depending on your choice early on. To be honest, I found that the first cut-off point to be the perfect end to the game despite the rushed ending. What happened after that just shows Qiang as a selfish person, and I didn't like how he behaved. I know that he has a lot of self-esteem from being the smartest guy in class and goes into denial whenever things are not going his way, especially in the beginning of the story, but it was getting worse near the actual ending. It's as if there isn't any character development to him at all.
[h3]The Game[/h3]
[b]Gameplay[/b]
Some of the game's functionalities are hidden. You can open the backlog by scrolling your mouse up, and you can make the dialogues go faster, which is similar to the skip option, by holding the Enter button. The rest of the functionalities can be accessed from the UI. You can auto-advance the dialogue, skip the texts, save, and load. However, there are some limitations. Skipping the texts can make the game randomly bug out, and you can't save and load everywhere. As for the auto advance, it seems to have a different timing if you compare when someone is talking and when Qiang is speaking in his mind—the latter tends to be slower, to the point that it's better to advance the text by yourself.
Since the game happens in school, you'll find a lot of occasions where you have to listen to more than one person talking at the same time. The first one is the lecture or anyone speaking in the background, while the other is Qiang's conversation with someone else. While it's obvious that you need to listen to the Qiang's conversations, sometimes the dialogue that was running in the background was brought up to the main conversation. This makes it important to listen to both, although it was hard to read them at the same time. Moreover, the backlog doesn't record the background conversations, making it harder to read everything.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3063444468
The puzzles are confusing. You'll be asked to solve various puzzles from time to time, be it a math problem, an English problem, or even a maze where you need to go to certain classrooms in order. Although the first two are straightforward, the latter one is way too confusing. There wasn't any clue to the actual order, forcing you to brute force the solutions. Moreover, there are a lot of puzzles of this type throughout the game.
[b]Length and Replayability[/b]
I finished the game in 15.1h. There are two new dialogues that you can read when you replay the game, although I don't find them to be worth it for a second replay. Some dialogue will also have variations depending on your choice, but they won't matter much to the ending.
[h1]Conclusion[/h1]
Despite the great start, the ending of [i]初恋日记[/i] / [i]School Years[/i] is quite disappointing. You'll see the desperate attempt of a high school guy trying to get what he wants, which was hard to swallow, especially since the game already has a better ending. The English translation also doesn't help you get immersed in the story, and although I still enjoyed it despite the translation issues, sometimes it can be hard to relate to the characters because of it. Because of that, I'd rather not recommend this game for now, unless you can read Chinese or a better English translation is provided.
