Review of flutter of birds ~Tori-tachi no Habataki~
| Subject | flutter of birds ~Tori-tachi no Habataki~ Flutter of Birds ~Toritachi no Habataki~ |
| By | Helpfulness: 0 Vote: 7.5meirin on 2024-08-06 |
| Review | (You can also watch this review in video format on YouTube if you prefer. This is the link. The content is nearly identical.) Within the visual novel medium, rural towns are a fairly common setting. Having said that, I believe there are two main types of depictions of this sort of locale. One treats it in a more idealistic way, usually portraying it as a place of healing and rest; and a second one treats it in a more realistic way, often not hesitating to show their decadent situation. This later representation was far more common in the early 2000s, when the nakige genre was the bread and butter of this medium, and, personally, I find it to be far more captivating. This was one of the main reasons why I decided to give a shot at this particular VN. Well, me having a weakness for old-school nakige might've also influenced. -Story and Characters If you are familiar with this genre, you might already be well aware of how things work. Basically, the game does its best to present all the characters as charming and cute as it can to make sure that things hit harder when the actual drama appears, usually in an unexpected way. That being said, with this game being mostly set in a hospital, you technically already know what dramatic plot development is waiting for you: which is that most of these girls are suffering from an illness. To be honest, even at the time of this game’s release, this sort of premise wasn’t that uncommon for a nakige, at the very least when it came to individual character routes. Just look at popular titles such as Kanon, the first Memories Off, or Kana Imouto. At any rate, for the nakige formula to materialize, the game obviously needed another sort of tragic twist to make sure it dragged the reader through the mud. In the case of Flutter of Birds, the second twist is knowing the actual illness these girls are afflicted with. The game is surprisingly detailed with both the symptoms and treatments of the illnesses it deals with, often not pulling any punches with some depictions. Another aspect where the game was surprisingly detailed was regarding the medical philosophy of the hospital itself. One of the main themes of this story is the bond of trust between the patient and the doctor or practitioner, where humanitarian policies that value the will and autonomy of the patient are emphasized over cold and aggressive treatments. This theme was handled with care and was also intertwined nicely with the actual narrative and the inner conflicts of the protagonist, as well as the actual relationships between him and the girls. Speaking of which, I think the characterization of said girls needs praising. They all feel very grounded, without falling into the usual character tropes of the medium. This gives the relationships a realistic and believable tone, which further accentuates some of their more dramatic moments. I would say most of them are quite likeable, with one exception—well, technically two. Of all the girls, I found Miama to be rather obnoxious. She has a slightly defiant attitude, which I would usually be completely okay with, but I simply feel it didn’t gel that well with the protagonist’s personality. Funnily enough, this has to do with one of the themes of this game, as in the bond of trust between two people. I’ve seen trust compared metaphorically to a wall between two individuals. The thicker the wall is, the stronger the trust is. So when two people meet for the first time, they have to be careful with that wall, as it is very thin and anything could just break it, but when the two of them know each other really well, one can throw pretty much anything at that wall, like poking fun at each other or even throwing the occasional friendly insult, that you know full well that wall will still stand strong. Going back to the game, it feels to me like in every single interaction between the protagonist and Miama, they both kept crossing the limits of their mutual trust and were always breaking that imaginary wall. As a result, their relationship didn’t feel that satisfying to me. Perhaps for that reason, I actually liked her bad ending more than the good one. The other character that I didn’t like that much was the protagonist himself. For the largest portion of the plot, he was fine, but there were a couple of routes where his dumb decisions nearly ruined those story arcs for me. But outside of them, the rest of the cast was strong and charismatic. I think this is a good moment to talk about the routes and how they work. The game is structured into two parts. During the first, you choose the location you want to go, where you will see a shortish scene that could either be filler or a plot-relevant one for whatever girl you are chasing. Well, that is, if you guess correctly where the girl is, but that is something I will touch on later in this review. The second part of the game is the actual main routes, which, for the most part, are fairly straightforward. However, the ratio between the two might feel off at first. It might take you around four to five hours to enter the routes, but once you get there, they are over in less than two. In most cases, this isn’t that big of an issue, since during the previous scenes there was plenty of character development, but in some routes, the game felt the necessity of including an additional twist that oftentimes felt forced and too abrupt. But I will give it that in those moments, what it lacked in subtlety was made up for with intensity, because some of those moments can get very dark. I would say that among all the routes, the ones that stood out the most were Tsubasa, Mei, and Kotoha’s routes. Tsubasa had a really difficult choice right in the middle of the route, which made it quite memorable. It also helped that she was one of the more likeable characters in this game, in my opinion. Mei, on the other hand, felt a bit detached from the rest of the narrative, but in a good way. It had an overall tender and warm vibe that contrasted nicely with the rest of the routes. And I really liked how that atmosphere in and of itself was a narrative theme of that route. Although, I have to say, this was the route where the MC nearly ruined it for me, with a couple of really stupid actions on his behalf. Kotoha’s route was strong too. The illness she was suffering from was quite unexpected, and I feel it was treated with proper delicacy. One detail I feel the game unfortunately let slide was the interactions between the girls, as there were barely any. During my playthroughs, most of the girls, outside of the ones I was focusing on, literally disappeared from the story. Although I guess that also has to do with the fact that I was playing it with a guide, intentionally activating only the events that I needed to progress. Lastly, I also want to mention the atmosphere of this game, since I believe it’s one of its strongest aspects. As I mentioned previously, this game is set in rural Japan, but what I find interesting is that despite feeling like it clearly belongs on the idealistic side of rural depictions, especially if you look at its premise, the way it’s written and presented feels like it leans towards a more realistic and, at times, crude approach. This is a town that’s long past its glory, and you get small snippets of that reality. Like a school that no longer has students and is set to be demolished in the not-so-distant future, how most of the characters are only staying there due to their medical circumstances, or how nearly all the sub characters are a collection of old geezers, which, in all honesty, are fantastic. Firstly, they are all voiced, which is not that common considering their age. And secondly, they all have very distinctive and quirky personalities, with all their scenes having a clear humorous tone. It’s true that they don’t bring that much to the actual main narrative, but conversely, I believe that to be a good thing. It just shows that they are having their own lives happen in parallel to whatever is going on with the protagonist and the girls. I also want to briefly talk about the prose and quality of the writing. For the most part, I found it to be rather generic, but during the more melancholic and introspective scene, it suddenly bumped up in quality, creating a great sense of immersion. In some ways, it reminded me of Light’s Boku to Bokura no Natsu, where the day-to-day scenes weren’t anything special, but it occasionally showed those brief moments of brilliance. -System and Mechanics Now onto the game’s mechanics and general systems. And I have to say, this game is straight-up evil. As I said previously, in order to progress, you need to correctly guess where to go. But there are a couple of issues with this. Obviously, map movement isn’t anything particularly new or original, even for its time, but the game has some important plot events that will only trigger randomly. I can only imagine poor Tanaka-kun being at his wits’ end, trying his hardest to seduce his waifu Tsubasa for months, only to realize that the issue was a cheeky event that refused to trigger. It also doesn’t help that the game only gives you ten save slots, which, needless to say, is nowhere near enough to deal with this game’s nonsense. It also only lets you save when you go to sleep, which is a bit annoying, especially at the start where you have to read more than an hour and a half of text before the game even graces you with the opportunity of saving your progress. To say the game’s systems are primitive would be an understatement. Besides all that bull I mentioned, the game doesn’t have other functions like an auto mode, text speed options, or even the possibility of running the game in window mode. You also can’t revisit the H-scenes, but they are terrible either way. This game was released at a time when censorship was hitting the eroge world hard, and it shows. I could probably show you here on YouTube some scenes, and it wouldn’t be flagged since the girls are literally drawn as Barbie dolls, if you know what I mean. That being said, there’s one thing I quite like, which is the album mode. It’s basically a similar idea to a CG gallery, which this game also has, but each heroine will read out loud what was going on during that scene, as if going through an old album of photos. I think it’s a neat idea, and I’m surprised it didn’t catch on. -Presentation As far as the presentation goes, I like it quite a bit, despite having clearly aged in some respects. For example, some sprites look fantastic, but others, I feel, do a disservice to the characters. One thing that did surprise me was the number of sprited sub-characters. There are some of them who only appeared for quite literally one or two scenes, and despite their irrelevance, they received a sprite nonetheless. I also quite like the backgrounds. They’re a combination of 3D renders and handdrawn paintings. As for the 3D ones, I think they look unironically great; they reminded me of early point-and-click adventure games, especially the FMV ones, like “The 7th Guest” or "Myst”. The music was also quite good. The tracks are mostly short loops, some of which are a bit repetitive, but I liked how some themes had downcast variations to better represent the sadder scenes. One nice touch is that whenever a scene ended on a low note, the music that played during the following map movement screen would also have a melancholic tone to have a smoother transition between the two. This is something I wish they also applied with the end credits music, since the theme that played was the same regardless of whether you got a good or bad ending. It was kind of funny how, after a tragically sad ending, the game would suddenly hit you with some sick-ass late 90s disco music. Don’t get me wrong, the track is a banger, but yeah, it was a bit jarring. -Conclusion In conclusion, Flutter of Birds is a visual novel that does admittedly show its age, especially in its gameplay systems, which can at times be frustrating. That being said, if you can put up with those annoyances, what’s left is an earnest attempt at telling an emotional story with endearing characters and a soothing atmosphere that will easily absorb you if you are in the mood for a melancholic narrative. |
| 0 points |