An average, seriously-cliched visual novel that I somehow found myself enjoying. I’ve been reading it on and off for the past couple of months.

Characters: Lazy, orphaned slightly perverted brown-haired protagonist, always comes to the rescue of the ladies, who treat him like dirt. Lives with his typically violent, tsundere, terrible cook of a  childhood friend/cousin/love interest and her saucy but competent little sister.

I’ve already forgotten his name, but he has an equally perverted loser best friend who may or may not be up to something sinister behind the scenes. Either that or he’s a rapist. Or both. Then there’s a blue-haired loli of mystery and a white-haired not-loli of mystery and some other assorted characters that you’ve already met if you’ve watched even one Japanese anime.

I liked it so much I read it twice. I’ve given up pretending I have good taste when it comes to video games. The simple truth is that I took a shine to the characters, and that’s usually enough to carry me through any game no matter how terrible. In this case it was Kokona, the blue-haired kid in the middle right, that caught my fancy, so I played through twice to try and get her ending. No luck, and I’m too lazy to use a FAQ, so I give up.

What was good: What can I say, I liked the characters, stale as they were. The character designs were generic-cute, and the characters themselves were amusing in an “I already know what you’re going to say, but say it anyway” kind of way. There was also a murder mystery involving strange fires which I found fairly interesting. Thirdly, Aquarian Age is a fast-paced, dialogue-based visual novel and each playthrough barely took three hours, possibly because I got the bad ending both times.

What made me quit: This might be just Kokona’s route, but it’s impossible to get a good ending without a FAQ. There is no affection system and no sound or visual to indicate whether the choices you’ve made are wrong or not. Sometimes you get an insta-end after choosing wrong, but for the most part the game progresses normally until BAM, a bucket falls on your head and sends you back to Day 1. I could have solved that by using a FAQ, but after playing it twice on my own, I didn’t fancy a third run glued to my computer screen. It doesn’t help that the dialogue crawls by at a snail’s pace even on the fastest Skip setting.

…Ah. Now I’m starting to regret deleting the rom. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so hasty. But no. I can get pretty much the same experience by watching any random harem show, and when it comes down to that I’ve gotta better things to do with my time. *toss* It was kinda fun, though…