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Review of Muv-Luv

SubjectMuv-Luv
Muv-Luv - Steam Edition
ByHelpfulness: 1
Vote: 7.5
rob405 on 2021-11-20
ReviewPretty minor spoilers for the games, even though Unlimited has spoilers if you haven't finished reading Extra. There are two smaller games in this game: Muv-Luv Extra, and its sequel, Muv-Luv Unlimited. I'll review them separately, and really make sure you don't read the Unlimited review if you don't want to get spoiled.

OVERALL for both games - 7.5/10

Muv-Luv Extra - 6.5/10
Well, we start with an extremely basic plot. Shirogane Takeru, the protagonist, is a guy in high school who likes video games, mostly a robot PvP game called Valgern-On, and he has a childhood friend named Kagami Sumika who "secretly" likes him and wakes him up every day for school. In the night of the first day of the game, Takeru goes to sleep, but when he wakes up, he finds out he slept near a girl he never saw before, even though nobody came in his house last day and the door was locked. The girl is Mitsurugi Meiya, a girl who will soon be the head of the Mitsurugi Group, one of the biggest businesses globally. She seems to have met Takeru before and loves him deeply even though Takeru doesn't know why. In his high school, there are also some other girls, Sakaki "Class Rep" Chizuru, the class president, Tamase Miki, the clumsy classmate, Ayamine Kei, a sarcastic quiet girl. There's also Takeru's best friend, a girlish boy, and two teachers, Jinguuji Marimo, an english teacher who helps her students a lot, and Kouzuki Yuuko, a genius science teacher who likes to tease Marimo and other students.

Overall the cast of characters is pretty balanced, even though there are no amazing characters. The protagonist starts pretty bad, being mostly a pervert who annoys people, but throughout the first game, he gets a little better, and he can be pretty reliable on more important situations. The girls are ok, even though some characters shine much more than others, mostly Sumika, Meiya and Yuuko sometimes. The humor is pretty good and it can make you laugh sometimes, but the story doesn't have anything particularly great. It touches some topics like accepting you can't just have everything, ruining things because of your lack of cooperation, and feeling inferior to others. The art is weird, with character hair being very spiky for some reason, but you get used to it after playing for a while. The voice acting is pretty good and it's there for any non-protagonist character. Music is ok, but there's not much variety. It was enjoyable to read because of the humor, so it's ok as a visual novel, even though almost everybody came here just to read Muv-Luv Alternative.

Overall: 6.5/10 - In the end, I've played only Sumika's and Meiya's routes. Not something I would particularly read as a standalone VN, but I didn't dislike it. A decent start to Muv-Luv even though everything after Extra is much better. Still an enjoyable experience so no big reason to skip this if you are willing to accept a douchey protagonist and not a particularly good story



Muv-Luv Unlimited - 8-8.25/10

A little bit of the plot (spoilery so don't read if you haven't played the game yet):

Muv-Luv Unlimited begins with a weird setting compared to the first game, an apocalyptic world, where his entire city seems to be mostly in ruins, and there are almost no signs of vegetation. The protagonist is still Shirogane Takeru, the same one as the one from Extra, with the same memories. He is very confused at first, he thinks that everything is a dream, so he starts wondering around town. He visits his school and he finds out that now it's a military base for making new pilots for robots called TSFs, so that they can fight some extraterestrial beings that are very strong and numerous, called BETA. He meets Kouzuki Yuuko there, and she seems to now be the second person in charge of the base, and she now she is a redeemed physician. He explains to her that he came from another world, even though he thinks it's a dream. He then is recruited by her and put into the cadet unit 207, where every member of his social group from Extra, except for Sumika who is nowhere to be found, trains to be a TSF pilot.

The story follows Takeru becoming physically and mentally stronger so that he can become a good pilot, and also him accepting new moral values from people hit by war. The story is much, much better than the first game and every character has improved mentally and emotionally compared to the first game. Takeru gets a lot of character development, even though some of his flaws remain and some new ones are created. The music also got a lot of improvements because of the military theme of the game. As weak points, we have the fact that you have to get used to this game now being the mecha genre, Mikoto as a character, not as much humor and some new cliches. It was overall more enjoyable than the first game, even though I didn't like some of the last parts of the game.


Overall: 8-8,25/10 - Only Meiya's route done. Pretty good and playing the first game actually made it quite a lot better because of the interesting jump of world perspectives.



OVERALL Muv-luv: I guess a 7.5/10 is my final vote since Unlimited was longer than Extra, and it made a bigger impact on me personally. I haven't finished Alternative yet, but it's better than the other 2 so I guess it's worth it to play the first two games to get to Alternative and feel its full impact
1 point
#1 by lemonov
2021-11-21 at 22:16
< report >An Extra route skipper has a very surface level understanding of the story. Color me surprised.Last modified on 2021-11-21 at 22:16