The Grand Ball is a visual novel set in 1882. You play the oldest son of a noble family that has fallen on hard times, and you accept an invitation to a Grand Ball in the hopes of finding a wealthy match to restore your family’s fortunes.

And… the plot doesn’t really stray much beyond that premise.

The Grand Ball does a good job with its historical setting. Aside from a few comments that hint at the future, it felt pretty grounded in the time period, with characters behaving accordingly.

It wants to make sure you know certain attitudes are historical accurate, too. The game begins with a large, unskippable disclaimer about how it features a historical setting and the characters’ views don’t necessarily represent those of the diverse developers, and one of the bad endings mentions the historical context before repeating the entire disclaimer.

Did they really think we would forget in the time it takes to reach that ending? The entire game is less than two hours long!

Anyway, that’s only a minor thing. The bigger issue with The Grand Ball is that it just lacks depth. It starts out with an interesting premise, since you’ll need to properly navigate social situations at the ball to make a good impression, but that never becomes as complex as it sounds.

There are basically two types of choices: choices that will increase your favor with a particular romantic interest, and choices that can lead to a bad ending or alternate ending.

At one point it looked like the plot was headed in an interesting direction, but it didn’t really.

Then there’s the romance, which basically amounts to having a few conversations with the love interest of your choice and showing you have things in common. It doesn’t even make good use of the premise that you’re there for financial reasons, since it claims you find true love despite each route being too short to have any real romantic build-up.

I liked the idea of The Grand Ball’s historical setting, but ultimately this one just ends up feeling bland.

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.

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.