Gender: Female
Rank: Ace Attorney
Joined: Wed Aug 08, 2012 2:23 pm
Posts: 9918
PC: Katawa ShoujoStoryThe player character is
Hisao Nakai, an 18 year old student, who experiences a heart-attack one winter day when his crush Iwanako confesses to him. While in the hospital, the cause is found out: Hisao has Arrythmia, a heart-condition he's had since birth but has not shown itself until just then. This gives him a handicap severe enough that he has to move to the Yamaku Academy - a school specifically for handicapped students. Now equipped with 17-pills-a-day-to-take and a frown the size of Texas, Hisao enters Yamaku Academy. He has to adjust to his new surroundings, new view on life and new circumstances. And as any typical Dating Sim game, he has to find a girl to court.
CharactersFive potential girls to court and all have some of the more... well 'normal' handicaps that you find. Some of the handicaps in all the student body range from being painfully obvious, to figured out on a second glance or must be internal like Hisao's because otherwise there is no reason to be in this school. Yamaku, after all, does not take students who are suffering from 'only' a mental handicap.
Lily Satou (Blind)Representative of Class 2-3 and used to belong to the Student Council.
Very polite and calm young lady.
Is best friends with Hanako.
Shizune's cousin and doesn't get along with her well.
Hanako Ikezawa (Burn Scars)Very shy and timid person.
Spends a lot of time in the library or with Lily.
Very good at chess.
Emi Ibarazaki (Legs Amputee/Prosthetics)Star of the track team, despite her handicap.
A very cheerful and upbeat girl.
Looks younger than she is.
Helps Rin out a lot.
Rin Tezuka (Stubby Arms)Kind of an airhead girl, but good artist.
Paints with either her mouth or her feet.
Gives sarcastic comments, but doesn't get them herself.
(Fun fact, her last name is a reference to Osamu Tezuka)
Shizune Hakamichi (Deaf + Mute)President of the student council.
A very stubborn and hard-headed girl, very ambitious and a workaholic.
Hates using pen & paper to communicate, opting for sign language.
Lily's cousin and does not have a good relationship with her.
Shiina (Mischa) Mikado (???)While not an eligible girl, she is supremely important in Shizune's route.
Always with Shizune, serves as her sign language interpreter.
Is a scholarship student to Yamaku, learning to be a Sign Language teacher.
(It's still a fun game to guess what her handicap may be)
GraphicsSome of the graphics in this game are good, others are stunning to look at. The backgrounds in the game are, for the most part, simply photographs altered slightly and pasted in. Yamaku's exterior is actually all from Brown University. The characters drawn in are very nicely done, very smooth lines for the most part and great shadows and highlights in the right places, same with the facial expressions or poses changing. It is noticeable that Emi's lines are a bit more rough, mostly because her appearance was changed once more, shortly before release of the game.
The CGs in this game are absolutely breathtaking! Looking at the CGs you obtain in the game, they are just plain beautiful, it's just... they are wonderful to look at. It's really great art and definitely worth to look at. Especially certain scenes look just beautiful, like the image of sunsets during certain routes is just amazing to look at.
The game also features some short movie clips. The quality of the art isn't as great as the CGs, but still very nicely done and do just what the movie is supposed to show. These clips play once you have passed Act 1 and show you which girl's route you are currently on.
MusicSimilar to the Art, I love the music in this game.
The variations for the various parts of the day are wonderful, I could listen to '
Afternoon' when I'm in a bad mood and feel much better after a while. When the scene currently playing demands a tense or dark theme, it plays, the scene demands a love theme and it plays and it just fits wonderfully. There's even a theme mostly used for when Hisao becomes intimate with one of the girls and even that is fitting. It isn't over the top, it isn't too cheesy... there are only two complaints I can think of.
'
Fripperies' plays several times during the routes and I just don't like it. Mostly because it has a note that just prolongs and gets higher and whenever I hear it, it sounds to me like there's an alarm going off. Still, a carefree music used and fitting to some of the more mundane scenes.
'
To Become One' the love-making theme, is used during an intimate scene which... I thought called for hilarious, goof-up music. Mostly because the scene was depicted and described as very awkward and not that enjoyable. But maybe the developers thought it fit the scene more.
I love a ton of the music played during the game. '
Letting my Heart speak' is the best track in my opinion, but when it comes to the darker themes '
Shadow of the Truth' and '
Cold Iron' are great. Actually, most of the tracks in this game I found very subtle and that was wonderful. It doesn't distract from the game, it has the overall theme and scene's message still playing and the music just underlines it a bit more.
Sex ScenesYes, this game has them. But overall... they aren't that bad. This game is actually far from tons of the other erotic games that involve sex scenes. There is no real male fantasy really made reality in this game, except for two. One of those was merely described vaguely in text and the other was done in a 'modest' fashion. It wasn't very thrilling or arousingly shown or described. Actually, three male fantasies are explored, but the third one is part of the above mentioned sex scene that I thought required the hilarious music. It was not written to be that great of an experience.
Majority of the sex scenes are written decently... descriptive enough that the player knows what's going on, but not written in a way that it's very arousing. At least to me, I thought it was nicely written and didn't really do anything for me. People might complain that some of them are written very... flowery. But it still fit, the gist of the matter is still explored.
And the sex scenes are actually pretty realistic. Certain scenes are supposed to be awkward, are supposed to be shown as not being very enjoyable to either of the participants and that is shown in both picture and text. I almost want to say these are some of the most modest sex scenes I have seen in erotic games.
For any player who does not want to witness the sex scenes, the game has an Option to Disable Adult Content which will let the game continue up until the sex scene begins, but then skips it in an... awkward fashion and the game continues afterwards. The awkward fashion of skipping... are random-ass pictures thumping a few times and, boom, the scene is skipped. Rather weird... but it does the job.
RoutesEach eligible girl has a route to herself and generally two endings - a Good and a Bad one, although some have a third or Neutral ending added to their rooster. The routes are mainly scenes that play out and sometimes Hisao has the choice of two or three options on how to respond to something or what to do. Even a small decision could lead to a different ending.
The routes are great. Each route you go through for the girls always shows you that the appearances are not what you think they are. Each girl has her own emotional baggage to carry around, whether it deals with their handicap or doesn't really. I actually began to care for the girls as I played through their routes and really felt for them when I got their endings, I cheered when I got the Good Ending or felt bad for them - and Hisao - when I got the Bad Ending.
EndingsAs mentioned, each girl has at least two endings. The Good ending usually deals with them having come to terms with the emotional baggage they had, opening up a little bit or letting go of something that has held them back. It shows the emotional growth that can happen in a relationship, if done right.
The Bad endings are the opposite. The Bad endings are generally a result of what happens when Hisao - or the player - does not know how to deal with emotional baggage from his girlfriend, or even his own. Several of the routes have messages that are important to remember in a relationship.
The Neutral endings are... well, neutral. Parts of the Neutral ending might seem bad, others are nothing more than just life going on and dealing with it. They are kind of blink-and-miss, they generally serve no purpose. You don't even get a CG for them, only another scene added to your Library.
Personally, I rather like the Bad endings. I found them to be emotionally awesome, some are just such a nice punch in the face for Hisao/the player for failing at working on the relationship properly or not figuring out the things needed to make a relationship work. Actually, my two favorite Bad endings are Hanako's and Shizune's. Hanako's was amazing, definitely a surprise to anyone who might have got it by accident and by thinking that their way of picking choices in her route was the right way. And Shizune's was just such an emotional heartwrench for me, I saw that CG I got for her Bad ending and I felt terrible, I felt so sorry for her.
There is one ending that is considered part of the 'Bad Route'.
Basically, this is the ending that you get if you fail to impress any of the eligible girls until the School Festival starts or you started to impress a girl, but managed to push them away from you badly. There are several ways to fall into the Bad Route trap in Act 1 and I think it's great.
The Bad Route involves Hisao and Kenji, his anti-feminist dorm-mate, to go onto the roof of the school during the School Festival and get drunk as sailors. To be honest, Kenji was supposed to be the Gay Option, the Gay Route put into the game... sadly, due to time constraints, it was cut and he is only the Bad Route ending. I did find it hilarious, though, that the Bad Route/Kenji Route had
To Become One playing at one point.
OverallAmazing game, I just love it. This is a Dating Sim game that started out of a one-page idea created by mangaka RAITA and turned into a full game that you can spend hours on and keep you entertained. It really focuses a ton more on emotional stuff than other Dating Sim games I've played and that's just something I love. It's not a pure erotic game, it's not purely a wishy-washy-feely stuff and it's not just 'cripple porn' for those who haven't played the game, but just hearing about it makes them think it's that. I finished the game 100% and I wish I could have more to play.
Sadly, the two DLC characters were part of a April Fool's Joke and never inserted into the game. Ditto on the idea of scrapping Katawa Shoujo 2 and starting immediately on Katawa Shoujo 3, although that might be weird. But if done correctly, I guess Katawa Shoujo 3 could be cool, as long as it isn't a copy-paste of this game's story.
The game has an Extras section that has the Jukebox, Library, Gallery and Cinema sections in it, allowing you to unlock all possible Music pieces and listening to them. You will have to replay some routes a few times - or just Save/Load at the right scenes - to unlock all scenes in the game, and you can view those scenes again in the Library section. Minus the choice options you could pick during a route. The gallery is great to fill up and the movies are nice to look at now and then. Not to mention the sense of accomplishment of getting everything out of this game.
People say that Katawa and Hatoful are having a rivalry going, but now that I have played both games and finished them both 100%... I don't think they can be called rivals. The premise, idea and characters in the games are just so different and the experience you get from the games is also different, you can't really compare them. Katawa focuses a ton on emotional drama, realistic emotional drama. Hatoful, knowing its idea and all, is a lot more goofy and funny, but still has drama and thrilling parts. But those are only in the BBL Route and that just doesn't work to say the entire game is like that.
Score: 9/10
Play this game, it's great!
C-A