Review of Sora ni Kizanda Parallelogram
| Subject | Sora ni Kizanda Parallelogram Sora ni Kizanda Parallelogram - Download Edition |
| By | Helpfulness: 7 Vote: 8Mutsuki on 2020-12-30 last updated on 2021-01-09 |
| Review | Ao no Kanata no Four Rhythm (AoKana) is a game about a enthusiastic pink-haired girl who transfers into a school that is at the forefront of a novel mid-air sport. Eager to get started in the sport, she seeks the help of the protagonist, who once had a hopeful future in the sport but stopped playing after losing a match (and various other circumstances). Along with the protagonist's friend and a kouhai, the girl sets off on her rise to glory! Wait. Did I say AoKana? Sorry, I meant Sora ni Kizanda Parallelogram. I know what you're thinking-- "are you saying that this paragraph is an accurate summary of both games!?". Yes my friends, this game's setting is without a doubt a complete ripoff of Aokana... but don't let that fool you, it's actually pretty good. The core themes of this game are motivation, drive and discrimination in sports. When I looked up the EGS page of this game before playing it, I distinctly remember that someone had given a very negative rating to 'This game has a good atmosphere', writing "Actually, it's as bad as it gets" and I brushed it off as haters-gonna-hate, but it turns out they were completely right-- in a different way than I thought. In this game, the Terpischora club has two ability tiers, the 'firsts' and 'seconds', and the difference in treatment to them is shocking and acts as an important driving factor for how characters act. The plot in this game is by no means 'impressive'. The plot itself is pretty shallow (and for the most part it's just match -> training -> match -> training), but don't let that put you off. Where this game shines is the characters and how they feel and act. The depictions of their mindsets and their responses to setbacks are truly some of the best I've read in a VN for a while now. Pretty much every character you see has a backstory and has their emotions described throughout the matches, and all of them have their own unique worries, resolves and motivations. The writing for this game is pretty good on the character development front, but there is a lot-- and I mean a lot of description of what's going on during the matches, so if you're not into that at all, then probably this isn't the game for you. Matches are broken up by player backstories, so it's not all just monotonous. I must add here that this game changes between perspectives (between all the characters in the scene and third person) a lot, and there's no indication given when this happens, so you have to read very carefully to work out who's speaking-- the third-person main heroine isn't helping guys. Heroine routes are all non-canon branches, pretty much all (bar Yuzu's) unimpressive and adding nothing to the story apart from H-scenes, which themselves are pretty average (i.e. bad) for a charage. This game is not about romance, and I really feel the heroine routes have just been thrown in to give an excuse for H-scenes. Also this game has more typos than any game I've seen before. It easily has multiple times more typos than all the other games I've played combined. I had the download edition and I applied the patch but I don't think it had any effect; perhaps it still just has tons of typos. Like did nobody read this at all before going gold? Art is good. CGs don't look dodgy and the overall character design is pretty stellar, but I kinda feel like the main heroines look just a bit too similar (compared to the good diversity of the rest of the cast). Even the male designs are excellent in this, something that I would never have dreamed of praising before playing this game. My only complaint is because of the plot being so match/training centric, the variation in the CGs is pretty damn low. The vast majority of the CGs are either art of each member of the large cast flying or using an ability (which you will become very familiar with considering how often they're using in matches), with the rest being H-CGs (5 per main heroine). Probably this game could have done better with no heroine routes, and instead being a donkan heroine that the other heroines fight for time with to go on dates and stuff between matches-- with that they could have so many more CGs with heroines and give a nice change of pace. Speaking of the protagonist, this dude has so little influence on the plot (because he's not actually a player in the matches) that really this feels like a second-person game, where the 'protagonist' is nothing more than a camera to watch the real main characters (the four main heroines) shine. And shine they do. So in conclusion: - Rubbish plot (in terms of the whole game being just training -> match repeat after the first 2 chapters) - Individual heroine routes suck compared to true end (also are very short compared to true end) - Fantastic character development for pretty much everyone in the large cast - Great character design and diversity - Typos, typos, typos as far as one can see - Art is great, CGs lack variety because of the plot EDIT: okay it doesn't really make much sense me saying the plot is "rubbish" and giving it an 8/10 but what I mean is that even though the plot is uninspired... it doesn't need to be some crazy convoluted surprising plot in order to have the character descriptions that's really what this vn is about. it's not a "rubbish" plot as such, just a very simple one. |
| 7 points |