Wanting to look for some more hidden anime visual novels that have CYOA elements and almost rarely get played or shown on the front page, I stumbled across a fairly popular one that came out a few months ago. Naturally reading the reviews first I saw that this would be quite a experience with it also being horror.
Already having watched Corpse party and Higurashi, Im pretty senseless when it comes to these type of things unless the art style in creepy and unnatural like say code geass.
Anyway I'll be putting a spoiler section at the very, very bottom if you don't want to put yourself through this.
Anyway, the story starts out with your average anime Protagonist, who gets greeted by your average caring childhood friend. Shes the average outgoing and cute anime girl that is always caring and binded to you with a smile always on her face, totally kawaii and shit. So with her greetings out of the way and all her beginning character progression out of the way, the central plot starts with her inviting you to a literature club that shes in, because obviously every Japanese Student has to be in some sort of club. She persuades you with cupcakes and being a total slut for cupcakes you take her up on her offer and give the club a chance. The club is the Literature club, which who the fuck would honestly want to join because reading is ew.
Here you are introduced to all the club members in one big spurt of dialogue that gives everyone a hint of their personality.
There's the cool and popular Monika
There's the quiet Edgelord and nervous Yuri
There's the super kawaii and tsundure Natsuki
Finally there's that childhood friend of yours Sayori that most people end up going with first.
Being introduced to everyone the plot progresses with Monika, the club president telling everyone that they would have to produce a poem (weekly?) and to share it with everyone in the class. Here the gameplay starts to get a little unique, with you getting to choose the words of your poem out of a colum and with each selection it provides you with a meter on which girl the word would impress.
It never actually shows you your poems making you have to use your imagination on what kind of person you are. So the poem acts as a progression system on the girl that you wish to romance, although like any harem visual novel everyone wants your throbbing cock. A little to much in this one.
Towards the end of the story (The visual novel itself is pretty short in terms of the main path, not counting the replays with slightly different dialogue.) there is a festival like in any other high school anime and you need to choose on who to help, with the dialogue changing on who you had romanced previously.
You never get to see the festival, as something fucked up happens in every route you pick and you are forced to reset wanting to change the outcome.
This game goes the route of Undertale in concept, in which the game itself is on one "save" and no matter what you delete or how many times your restart the "gamemaster" will remember your decisions and put some stupid ass jump scares to act really edgy.
Not to say that there was no attachment to any of the girls, the writer really was able to plug you in with at least one RO so that you would feel at least some level of sadness. After the end of the main game you keep on resetting with each girl that you previously romanced disappearing until there is only one left. Though you already know who is in control from the beginning if you take the time to read the poems as they give lots of foreshadowing. Didn't read Yuris though, her cursive wasn't easy on the eyes.
The game did give me a few scares, more on Yuris path than anyone else's. Each girl has their own demon and cause of depression which made them join the club in the first place. If you do play this game then I suggest playing the beginning of it in the morning and the middle of it at night, it starts to mess with your heart around those times.
It was a pretty solid visual novel that could have cost something, and I was actually hoping that the length of each path could have increased. Although I see that they put in a tremendous amount of work in this as each path although seemingly similar has different amounts of dialogue depending on the exact specific route and order that you had chosen.
Give this a 7/10 Finish the rest of the paths was a chore much towards the end to be honest. It just started to drag on until I just opened up PUBG in the background and played the rest of the VN during que times. Though the story does give inspiration and has some characters that will leave a lasting impression on me for awhile. Was hoping for sum gud hentai too which was a disappoint. I would have probably rated it higher if I hadn't finished replaying katawa shoujo a week earlier.
I recommend giving it a chance if you're bored and want a experience with some cute visuals and some good characters. Pink haired girl will forever be my favorite.
*SPOILERS BELOW*
So if you don't really want to read this edgy CYOA visual novel then I'll just give the basic premise and my advanced opinion here.
So like each girl ends up killing herself at the end of their path, with the protagonist never able to get into their pants which is such a shame. Though for some of the paths such as Sayori it was really his fault since he didn't check up on her when he was delivering the cupcakes. Of course the Club Leader Monika was behind it all because she wanted you all to herself and started screen tearing the whole game with each girl that got eradicated.
The only real hentai in this shit was the edgy emo fingering herself to one of your poems which doesn't even fucking pop up if you didn't go through her path first. Naturally I went with the childhood friend first because who the fuck would say no to a girl that's totally down with being your slave. Anyway childhood friend hangs herself due to her feeling so much pain since she like she totally hates life and hates love because of it which was really fucking stupid. Though if you read her poems and pay attention to the dialogue then you know that Monika played a big part in her death.
Yuri goes all fucking seppuku on you and stabs herself, never got to read her dialogue on her final moments since I picked her second and it was all blocked out but it was most likely saying that she wanted your BBC or something in that nature. I was actually hoping that Yuri would start to fight for domination over the "player" with Monika and a Micheal Jackson "Just Beat It" knife fight would take place. Like honestly Yuri could have totally fucked up Monika if given the chance let's be real. But Monika was just ew as a romance option so I picked her second just to get her path over with.
The cute Tsundure path I saved for last, since you always save the best for last obviously. BUT I NEVER GOT TO PLAY HER PART BECAUSE BITCHY MONIKA NEVER GAVE ME THE CHANCE. So like she finally confesses to you and breaks all walls saying that she wishes there was a romance option for her and stuff but then you have to delete her to progress and then out of nowhere your childhood friend just takes her place as the crazy bitch. This seems kinda dumb though, does that mean all the girls were self aware even after everything? Wouldn't they all just break the wall at that point? Kind of a plot hole. Well after that it ends with pictures being deleted in the credits.
Replayed one last time just to get the Tsundre girls route and stopped playing all together. Also Yuris just to get the fingering seen for the lulz. The ending wasn't really all that good in my opinion. Everyone was super horny for the Protagonist and because no one could stay friends everyone had to die. All I wanted was cupcakes tbh. Wouldn't have joined the club if given the option but you know.
TLDR All girls want your cock and can't stay friends so everyone has to get super depressed and madness happens. Suicide is badass.
Also totally going to be making a fanfiction of this and posting it on here whenever I get the insiration