Operation Backlog Completion 2026

Celebrating All Things Romantic: A Kiss for the Petals – Remembering How We Met

 Celebrating All Things Romantic, Reviews, Video games  2 Responses »  Tagged with: ,
Feb 122020
 

The next visual novel I decided to read for this month’s celebration is the first yuri visual novel I’ve read, A Kiss for the Petals – Remembering How We Met.

This is actually part of a series (A Kiss for the Petals) and is set as a prequel to the other stories about Risa and Miya, two girls attending the same school.

The story begins in the present with the two of them together as a couple, but the changing of seasons makes Risa think back to the day she first saw Miya, and then the bulk of the story is a flashback about how they first met and got to know each other.

It’s another kinetic novel, so there are no choices, and it took me a little over an hour and a half to read. Most of it is told from Risa’s perspective, with a handful of scenes from Miya’s. The switch to Miya was sometimes so brief that it was a little jarring, but not too bad. Although the two characters are very different from one another, they’re both likable.

What surprised me the most is that for all I’m counting this as part of our romance celebration, it’s… not really a romance.

Risa and Miya are dating in the present, but the flashback itself really is how they met, not how they became a couple. For all intents and purposes, most of the visual novel is a friendship story, showing how they went from having a rather contentious relationship to being friends.

While this was just a short prequel story, the others in the series are supposed to be more fleshed out.

I enjoyed this one enough that I’ll probably look into the next, so consider checking out A Kiss for the Petals – Remembering How We Met if you’re looking for a cute yuri visual novel that’s mainly focused on friendship.

Celebrating All Things Romantic: KARAKARA

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Feb 102020
 

A while ago, I got a visual novel Humble Bundle that came with a bunch of things I’d probably never have picked up otherwise, including KARAKARA.

Since it’s a romance visual novel featuring catgirls, I honestly expected it to be a lot like Nekopara, which I reviewed a couple years ago: silly, cute, not a whole lot of substance if you aren’t interested in the 18+ version.

There are some definite similarities, especially in regards to how its romance and fanservice are handled, but it’s actually quite distinct. Aside from anime catgirl fanservice, the two visual novels don’t really have much overlap, and KARAKARA has a much more defined plot despite taking me less than 2 hours to complete.

KARAKARA is set in a post-apocalyptic world where an unknown Disaster wiped out most of civilization, and humanity’s efforts to survive resulted in hybrids like our catgirl love interests here.

The main character runs a diner in Sagami Francisco (the result of American and Japanese survivors of the Disaster coming together) along with his friend/employee Lucia, and they routinely deliver food to the people who live in town. One day, as they’re driving, they encounter a girl named Aisia sleeping alongside the road. Since she has nowhere to go, they take her in as a new employee, and the story largely deals with how this changes their lives.

It’s a kinetic novel, so you don’t make any choices, and while it’s mainly focused on romance and comedy, parts of the plot were surprisingly interesting.

Click for major KARAKARA spoilers
I really did not expect this game to involve vampires.

Even when they talked about the vampire rumors early on, I didn’t think that was actually going to become a part of the plot.

Vampires?!

Catgirl vampires?!

I was baffled when I realized it was actually going in that direction.

In short, KARAKARA is a cute, sweet story that has an interesting enough plot across its few hours that I’ll probably pick up KARAKARA 2 at some point to see how the plot progresses and hopefully learn more about the world.

Celebrating All Things Romantic: Moe Era

 Celebrating All Things Romantic, Reviews, Video games  2 Responses »  Tagged with: ,
Feb 072020
 

Moe Era is a free visual novel that just came out recently on Steam, so I decided to take a look at it for our romance celebration.

You start out in a strange room where four girls talk about how your life story is empty and you need to make a change.

Then you wake up from an apparent dream in the real world, where you attend school with those same four girls, three of whom are classmates while the other is your teacher.

For a while, I didn’t know quite what to make of it. It felt like a slice-of-life romance story, albeit with an unusual emphasis on introducing the player to things like classic works of literature and famous composers, but it also had surreal aspects that make me wonder just what was going on.

It was hard not to draw comparisons to a certain other slice-of-life-but-not-really visual novel, except I’d seen the developer explicitly say Moe Era wasn’t horror.

And that is accurate. While it isn’t as simple as it appears on the surface, it is not horror.

Instead, it’s actually quite a motivational story. I won’t go into details, because it’s fairly short and I don’t want to spoil it, but Moe Era left me feeling inspired and motivated.

It has cute moments and funny moments and just a positive message in general. The graphics are good, and it has a surprising number of CGs despite taking less than 3 hours to finish. It also handles its routes in a very player-friendly way, although I’d recommend keeping an extra save to make it easier to see all the content (such as the non-romance route, which is also resolved well in its good ending).

Moe Era is just an all-around nice visual novel, so if you’re looking for something cute and sweet with depth that goes beyond that, Moe Era is available now for the low, low price of free.

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