Kirameki School Life SP is a bonus game that came bundled with the limited edition of Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai Portable. In-universe, Kirameki School Life is a thinly-veiled parody of Tokimeki Memorial that the characters of the Boku wa Tomodachi anime play in episode 2. The anime itself is just okay, but that episode is a fun watch for anyone who enjoys videogames/visual novels. It’s all downhill from here so you can quit after episode 2.
When the characters played Kirameki School Life SP, it was funny to see them doing the exact opposite of everything you’re supposed to do in a real dating sim (i.e. being nasty to all the girls, focusing on one stat to the exclusion of all others, ignoring events), with predictably bad results. The problem is that the Kirameki game itself, in-universe and in real life, is a fairly serious and totally bland Tokimemo copy. Without the snarky commentary and bad decisions, it’s really not worth the time to play.
To remedy that, the game comes with a Commentary option and a No Commentary option. I wanted to see if the game could stand on its own (psst, it can’t) so I started without commentary. This was a mistake because the writing is so dull and pedestrian it really needs someone poking fun at it to liven it up and keep readers awake. On top of that the game has plenty of other problems, such as:
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Yozora is the sourpuss on the left.
High school is supposed to be three years long, but anime character Yozora forcefully takes control of the game in the first year and chooses the meanest, nastiest responses possible while spending the whole year studying. You only regain control in year 2 with 0 affection from all characters and a high education stat that actually means nothing.
- Even worse, (and I didn’t know this at the time) although there are 7 girls you can romance in-game, you can only get to year 3 with the two main heroines, Akari and Yukiko. Everyone else gets an ending after year 2. In other words most of the time the game only covers one year of high school.
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Good… Mourinho?
This is made worse by the fact that the supporting girls are way more interesting than the main two. Nothing against Akari and Yukiko, but they’re just Generic Nice Girl and Generic Quiet Bookworm respectively. The other girls are much more interesting. For example I discovered during the Christmas party that there’s more to Tsundere Rich Girl Karen that meets the eye. Then there’s some family drama going on with Akari’s little sister Miho that I’d love to learn more about. And Aina’s messed up Japanese is so over the top it’s funny. I’d much rather have had full routes for those girls than for the mains.
I usually like stat-raising sims, but this one let me down. Stats affect events, what answers you can give and what ending you get so it’s not like they’re unimportant, but the raising process is ridiculously boring. You just train, train, train week in, week out on and on and on till the game ends. Stats only go up, they don’t go down. You can’t fail an activity either, you either do well or not so well. Not exciting at all.- MC is also ridiculously fragile so you have to keep his stamina above 75 all the time or he’ll fall sick. A lot of time is wasted just watching Mr. Delicate lounge around in his pajamas. Isn’t there some paint drying that I could watch instead?
So the game wasn’t that much fun to play, and on top of all that I got a bad end instead of the girl I’d been aiming for. I went after Nagata Yukiko (any resemblance to Nagato Yuki of Haruhi is purely coincidental) but failed to get 720 Intelligence before the start of my third year, so the game ended right there and there. The day before I was hanging out with all the girls and we’re all buddies and stuff. The very next day they’re treating me like something stuck on the bottom of a shoe. It’s too cruel, I tell you. So I went and complained to my buddy Masaru and he’s like “Women, huh? Don’t worry, I’ll stick by you. Let’s be FOREVER RONERY together.”
And then Masaru was a real bro.
*snf* Thanks Masaru. I’m sorry I was such a jerk in my first year. After this first run the plan was to replay the game with commentary this time, but now I’m not confident I want to date the kind of girl who would turn on me so coldly and so suddenly. …Although it just occurred to me that maybe Masaru spread rumors about me to kill my popularity so he could have me to himself… or maybe to pay me back for my rudeness in freshman year…? But how could I ever doubt my dear friend Masaru, good old Masaru. Besides, it’s the girls’ fault for believing him even if it’s true. I’m still done.
So Kirameki School Life was a vaguely amusing diversion but not a good game in its own right. And in its defense it wasn’t meant to be anything of the sort, that’s why it was bundled with the main Haganai game instead of being released on its own. I was and still am looking for something relaxing and grind-free after Granblue Fantasy and Stranger of Sword City so this was a good start. Next up, maybe an otome game and then Shiren the Wanderer 5.
That little “fragile MC” made me think of Sunrider Academy’s (don’t buy it) MC whom I think is quite possibly made from shattered glass.
Outside of standard Fatigue/Stress + sickness mechanics, he also loses random stats every night JUST BY SLEEPING. It’s ridiculously easy to enter a Death Spiral of not being able to maintain low Fatigue/Stress because you can’t earn enough money to pay for those while your stats are dropping like a rock unless you play in a very specific way which kind of takes the fun out of Stat Sims.
Ridiculous. You lose stats when you rest in Tokimemo, but at least you don’t have to rest every day and the stat drop isn’t that severe.
>>Sunrider Academy (don’t buy it)
Don’t worry, I wasn’t going to.
Ｇｏｏｄ Ｍｏｕｒｎｉｎｇ！ I think we know which game developer DIDN’T study English yesterday or any other day.
Anyway, you seem a bit tough to please with these VN style games, otome or not. What VN game do you think is totally awesome and everyone should play? I have a friend that’s into 18+ eroge, but they seem kinda mehhhhh and plot-lite to me. Are the all-ages games pretty much the same?
Welcome back englishsubs4all! It’s an honor to have you here 🙂
I thought that you dissapear from the earth! Thanks for your hard work translating games!! I hope you can come back both gbatemp and youtube!
About your first question, The best VN is Steins Gate IMO! The anime is one of the best ever created and the VN It’s about the same quality! Or anything by 5pb. & Nitroplus.
No idea. I avoid pure Visual Novels as much as possible because I find them incredibly boring. I need gameplay in my life, that’s what I play games for. The otome games I enjoy tend to have a lot to do, whether it’s stat-raising in the Tokimemo games (I recommend both the main series and the Girls’ Side games) or the courtroom battles in the Ace Attorney games or the musical grinding in La Corda d’Oro. I can forgive a lot if the gameplay is fun.
Funny characters help too, but ultimately it’s just not one of my favorite genres. Most of the time I try otome games because I like the art or the premise sounds interesting and end up disappointed.
IMO, I kind of think “recommend me a VN” is a statement along the lines of “recommend me a book/movie” – it’s a medium so what you would recommend to someone really depends on what genres they like to read
Ha! Maybe that’s what you do. I just tell people what I enjoyed and if they don’t like it, tough! My life got a lot easier once I realized I wasn’t responsible for what people liked or hated.
Oh, that statement was more towards people asking for VN recommendations – when they give such vague information on their likes/dislikes, it’s basically asking people to just list out the most popular games and going “play them all and see what you like”
Related small talk – NISA is localizing Criminal Girls 2 and somehow managed to make worse decisions despite the “stellar” public reception that their decisions for first game brought, which kind of makes me think that they’re only localizing these games because the Japanese side of the company forced them to.
What’s funny to me is that the big reason they gave is that they’re really afraid of the ERSB giving them the dreaded AO rating which is basically commercial suicide since retailers won’t stock them, but there are two VNs on Steam with explicit sex scenes that are only rated M.
I suspect the first Criminal Girls game did well for them despite the yelling of the vocal minority. Either that or it cost so little to localize that they made a profit anyway. Don’t forget CG is a pretty good game if you can look past the objectionable content.
On the flip side, Stranger of Sword City is out in English on Steam by the same company and I’m sure it’s a game that’s probably impossible to screw up translating, so yippee?
Outside of the fact that a new version has already been released in Japan, but Cest L’Vie.
I hear the translation wasn’t TOO bad, but they messed up the translation of a few skills and made them a bit harder to understand. So you might read the description of a skill and think “Hmm, that doesn’t sound too useful,” when it’s actually something really useful. Nothing make-or-break AFAIK, but it would be good to cross-check with a FAQ/third-party any time you come across something confusing.
Now, Students of the Round English version when?
R.I.P. My RPG blog :'(
I’m not dead. >_< Just spending too much time playing Granblue Fantasy instead of starting something new.
Well, you could say something 🙁
I was worry 10+ days later from your last post :'(