Lonely Yuri – Not So Lonely Anymore

In a medium dominated by sex, tentacles, tentacle sex, sex without tentacles, and everything else revolving around sex, it’s not common you find a cute story that can draw you in without any real sex…or tentacles.  Released in the summer of 2011 by Night-Time Sheep, and translated into English roughly 18 months later, Lonely Yuri is a short read that explores the budding relationship between an unlikely combination of characters, but is it worth the two hours?

This is a spoiler-free (and tentacle-free) review.

Review – Some Short Sci-Fi OELVNs

Like a good science-fiction short story? OELVNs might have some in stock for you.
The games I read for this month were all very short ones, so I’ll run through the three of them in one review. Today’s menu: space-opera (at least an embryo of one), androids and time-travel. A fairly classic yet exciting program, if I may say.

Shinikiss, or “Why Shizuku is a God”

A shinigami, translated as a “Death God,” is tasked with guiding the souls of those who have recently died. Typically, if one is able to see a shinigami, it means that their life is quickly coming to a close, and they too will be given the choice to go to the afterlife with no regrets…or remain on Earth and roam indefinitely, plagued with regret for the rest of their miserable existence. This would typically strike fear in many people, but not Amamiya Makoto – to be honest, he couldn’t care less. This is his story.

Will the shinigami come and take his soul? Does anybody really care? Probably not.

This is a spoiler-free review.

School Days

Have you ever wanted to put yourself in the shoes of the protagonist in an anime and make the choices?
Have you ever wanted to read a harem story that puts a little spin on the genre?

Well tough shit, I have yet to find a game that does it well.

If you’re a little bit knowledgeable about anime or visual novels, chances are you’ve already heard about the infamous School Days. Hated with a passion, regarded with disgust or liked “ironically”, nobody really starts School Days with the hope of finding a good piece of fiction. I myself am not a fan of watching/reading something because it’s “so bad it’s good” or because there’s worth to be found in its filth.

However, since it seems to be solidbatman’s idea of a Christmas present to make me review this VN, I’ll give you a detailed report of why it is terrible and why you shouldn’t play it.

Magical Diary – A Romantic Fantasy

Released in 2011, Magical Diary: Horse Hall is an indie otome visual novel created by Hanako Games.  This story is about a High School Freshman going through her entire first year at a school for witches and wizards.  Magical Diary has a good story with plenty of replay value, but does it have enough actual content to make people want to take the time to play the game in the first place?

Warning:  This review may contain very minor spoilers.

Kikokugai – The Cyber Slayer

This is a spoiler-free review

Kikokugai – The Cyber Slayer is a visual novel developed by Nitro+, telling a tale of revenge and featuring plenty of action, swords, cyborgs, and kung fu. Published in 2002 and developed on a shoestring of a budget, Kikokugai still remains a title worth visiting.

Sunrider: Mask of Arcadius

Sunrider is a multi-part, English-language visual novel filled out with segments of tactical RPG gameplay.  You assume the role of Kayto Shields, captain of the starship Sunrider, as he embarks on a mission to avenge his home planet of Cera and stave the galactic threat of the People’s Alliance. But does Sunrider read like a love letter to the space operas it tries to emulate or does it fall short and come across as a shallow imitation?

Warning: This review contains spoilers for the first 10 minutes of Sunrider.

Cho Dengeki Stryker – A Damn Good Superhero VN

In the superhero Visual Novel sub-genre where a vast majority of superheroes are “Get that Girl!” Magical Girls, Cho Dengeki Stryker is a breath of fresh air to an otherwise pretty bland sub-genre.  While the story does follow a very generic pattern and can be easy to guess at times, OVERDRIVE’s keen attention to virtually everything, as exemplified through the top-notch voice cast and animated cut-scenes, make Cho Dengeki Stryker a title that deserves to be played.

Warning:  This review is for the expansion of the Dengeki Stryker Visual Novel and may contain spoilers for the original Dengeki Stryker.

Cartagra

This review is spoiler-free.
Preceding the previously translated Kara no Shoujo, Cartagra is a story of gruesome murders in a post-war Japan.

Kara no Shoujo is one of my favorite visual novels. Even taking into account the inescapable bias toward the first few visual novels you read, even looking back on its flaws, it had me so spellbound that I have to recognize it as one of my best experiences in the medium. You can thus imagine how impatient I was to be able to read Cartagra. This also serves as a forewarning that I will inevitably venture into comparisons between the two games during the review.

To put things back into their context, despite the fact that up until a few days ago only Kara no Shoujo was available to english readers, Cartagra was actually released in Japan by Innocent Grey three years before it. It is thus sensible to read Cartagra before reading Kara no Shoujo.

Cartagra is set in 1951, in a slowly recovering post-war Tokyo. Shugo is a former police officer freeloading at a brothel, mostly unemployed but occasionally handling detective work. One day he is asked to investigate on the disappearance of Kohzuki Yura, a girl with who he had an intimate relationship before being sent to war. 
In parallel of his investigation, a series of brutal murders occur in the city.