The following review is based off my personal experience with playing this Game/Visual Novel... I try to be as brutally honest and detailed as I can, and these are my own opinions and thoughts, from one or more play throughs... The version this review is based on is Complete...
I read this visual novel as a suggestion from someone... This was kind of a strange visual novel, which I'll get into more detail about it below...
The visuals of the characters are pretty decent 2D hand drawn, and very much hentai inspired... Some backdrops are hand drawn, and some look like real photo's that had been put through a filter to make them look slightly splotchy as if painted... All of them looked unique... As in a lot of hentai based visual novels, there's not lots of picture changes during most scenes... You stare at the same picture through a bunch of text, with the picture changes not keeping up with what's going on the entire time... That is one of the things that makes me not like reading hentai based visual novels, the lack of visuals keeping up with the story...
The script was pretty spot on with only a small handful of spelling/grammar errors... The plot revolves around a female protagonist who is an amateur manga creator (mostly an artist)... The strange part of this visual novel is how it plays out... The first half or so is mostly a lot of inner monologue and self dialogue by the protagonist as she talks a lot about her passion for girl on girl manga... The authors go into so much detail that they are constantly referencing different manga titles, drawings, artists, etc... As she goes from her home to her boring job at a funeral company, she just goes on and on about manga this and manga that... For the manga geeks out there, that would probably sound cool and all, but for absolutely anyone else who is not a manga connoisseur, I was feeling a bit out of the loop... After reading for quite a while, I started to wonder where this visual novel was going, because there didn't feel like hardly any plot, besides just talking about her love of manga...
Eventually, after a very long read, she gets setup on a play date of sorts by her father and his corporate boss, to go shopping with the bosses daughter... Here is where the plot actually starts to come into shape and actually go somewhere... The date/outing goes good and the protagonist gets fired from her job the next day... On her way home she runs into the woman she went shopping with, and is offered a job working for a big manga publisher... From there she meets her co-workers and the actual meat of this visual novel actually shows up...
After getting her new job she basically becomes almost like the manager of the office, setting up meetings every day with a chosen character (all female) which includes a 27 year old who looks far younger then her actual age (but she is an adult), a highly creative blonde rocker who tends to be a bit hyper focused and detail oriented, and the boss of the office (the lady she shopped with) who is a little allusive as she's always in a hurry and busy... Once you've had at least 3 meetings with any given girl, the story then begins to sort of focus on a relationship with that character and protagonist... And this is where the erotic stuff finally shows up... Because up until this, way over half way into this VN, you only got one naked picture in the very beginning...
So basically, this Visual Novel eventually becomes sort of like a date simulator, but not for a great length of time... Each of the 3 girls has their own story line, but none of them are all that long... You spend more time just reading this VN up to her getting the job itself, then any one girls story line... Now, the kicker is that once you've replayed this VN through all 3 story lines, then some bonus material is supposed to open up, but I never went for that...
Overall, this VN is written very well, and you can tell that the authors are very passionate themselves about manga, having been so overly detailed about the world of manga itself... But I think that they kind of focused on that aspect far too much, as they could have easily ensured that readers understood her passion and personality in half the time that they took to do it in this VN... In any case, once you got past all that and the actual plot and stories started, this thing started to shine at that moment...
My only wish, was that they had put more time and effort into the length of the ladies story lines, rather then almost boring their readers to death with the lead up to meeting them in the first place... That is the only reason I can't give this VN 5 stars... Because of the hyper focus, Manga geeks will get far more out of that part of the story, then anyone else... It's what I call hitting the nail on the head with 1 ton brick, rather then a hammer (overkill)...
Since the actual ladies story lines are in essence love/romance based, and I'm a sucker for love/romance stories, I enjoyed that part of this VN a lot... Allthough they end extremely abruptly, and they are not very long... I tried out the other two story lines as well, and they are just as short... After all 3 were done I was a bit disappointed, because the bonus material doesn't play, so not sure what that deal it...
