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Review of Kimi to Kanojo to Kanojo no Koi.

SubjectKimi to Kanojo to Kanojo no Koi.
ByHelpfulness: 2
Vote: 9
primate541 on 2021-01-07 last updated on 2021-01-09
ReviewYOU and ME and HER: A Love Story loads straight to the game's opening scene, within minutes introducing all the main characters in dramatic fashion, making its underlying premise clear with self-aware humour, whilst leaving not a moment of unnecessary exposition. In that time it achieves what other visual novels take many hours to do, and that clear sense of pacing and direction persists until the end.

It's a bishōjo game with adventure game mechanics, including some light exploration and puzzle solving, and a substantial amount of choices presented during the narrative. For the most part though you'll be reading over its roughly twelve hour playtime. It follows the growing relationships between its cast of high schoolers, which include the protagonist Shin'ichi, his childhood friend Miyuki, and a character newly introduced to them, Aoi. Aoi is taciturn with bizarre mannerisms and vocal tics, yet strangely carefree, seeming to exist in her own world. It becomes apparent that she harbours warped beliefs about the nature of the world and her own role within it, which inspires as much curiosity as it does animosity among her more pragmatic peers, driving the conflict in the story. Its initial setup belies a story with numerous elements, blending romance with comedy, drama, thriller and meta-narrative musings.

I liked how well it runs with its premise throughout, being integrated into every part of the game and not simply brought up for the purposes of creating some plot resolution. It uses its premise to constantly create interesting situations, make jokes or to justify changing up the gameplay or visuals. Its humour tends to be self referential in a way that fans of other bishōjo, dating sim or eroge visual novels will appreciate. I also enjoyed how often it defied my expectations on one hand, whilst having outright told me what to expect with the other. At times it felt like the game itself was laughing at me, reading my mind and using my preconceived notions against me, with layer after layer of subversion.

The only criticism I have is that sometimes characters would behave in a contrived manner, in service of setting up a dramatic scene. It would seem plausible that the character could behave in that manner in those circumstances, but the issue would be in the lack of lead up to truly sell it as a genuine moment. It's the one point where I think the game's rapid pace worked against it.

The localisation is great, with a lot of personality to the prose and dialogue, and snappy humour. The art, while admittedly generic grew on me due to the expressiveness of the characters, and I liked the watercolour appearance of the colouring. I wouldn't call much of the soundtrack memorable, being most likely a deliberately old school sounding mix of piano and synthesised sounds, but it fit with and enhanced the scenes.

YOU and ME and HER: A Love Story is a well directed game packed with humour, charm, and creativity, with lean and focused storytelling. It's a twelve hour game that I played in its entirety over a single session, and that was only possible because it's the type of game that was difficult to put down. I highly recommend it, particularly for those well versed in other bishōjo games.
2 points
#1 by pure-spirit
2022-04-10 at 05:24
< report >Great point about its intro. It got zappy right from the start.
#2 by AyanaPOV
2022-05-19 at 02:49
< report >It wasnt really creative considering this has been done before, it was good, but not creative at all.Last modified on 2022-05-19 at 02:50
#3 by pure-spirit
2022-06-08 at 07:40
< report >done before by what?