Spoiler Alert
Thoughts on the First Playthrough#
I finished the first playthrough this morning. Because I was rushing towards the end, I didn't complete a few of Shii's requests. The final boss having three lives felt a bit annoying 😡.
The ending felt somewhat bittersweet. It turns out Aio is a person from the future who came back to the past to create a new future. This creates a cycle where the repetition is necessary to create a new future. However, this repetition is like multiple playthroughs, and it feels like there's a reasonable explanation for multiple playthroughs (lol). I heard that the second playthrough allows you to break free from the cycle, which has motivated me to start the second playthrough.
When I completed the game, I felt a sense of loss, as if this special "summer vacation" had truly come to an end. This is probably the first time a game completion has given me this kind of feeling. It's probably because the story is immersive and aligns well with my taste (I would call this game "Fugu Ecstasy Game").
The character development is done very well. After completing the game, each girl left a deep impression on me. There's the shy but brave Kokoro, the lively Yuuki, the tsundere student council president Rina, the gentle and strong Shiho, the (adjective pending) Hinako (I only found out from the wiki that she was the protagonist of the previous installment), the adorable Kiroro, the gentle sister Mifune, the energetic Haruka, and the conflicted Shii. I found out from the wiki that many of these characters are related to the previous installment, so I want to play the previous one.
The combat system in this installment is a semi-real-time system, like a semi-turn-based system. It was interesting when I first encountered it, and I played on the normal difficulty. Later on, I felt that normal was a bit time-consuming, so I switched to easy and completed the game. However, even on easy difficulty, I still had some difficulties in the final chapter. Also, I never really understood close combat throughout the game. Basically, whenever there was close combat, it was either death or severe damage. But fighting monsters with the girls is not as enjoyable as the JK characters in the game. It would be great if there was an option to skip battles in the second playthrough.
Also, in this installment, every Heart Imaginary Space has a stealth mission, and after playing many of them, it does get a bit annoying, especially in the later stages of the Heart Imaginary Space where you have to run a long distance. If you fail once, you have to start over, and it really messes with your mentality.
I played this game on the Nintendo Switch, and the handheld mode has decent graphics, but some of the text is a bit small. When playing on a larger screen, it's just average. But after playing for a while, I got used to it. If you're looking for better graphics, I recommend buying the Steam or PS4 version.
In conclusion, it's a really good game (in my opinion), and I recommend all Fugu fans to give it a try. However, the price of this game is really high, and it's easy to deceive anime fans (who willingly get deceived).