Review of Hatsuru Koto Naki Mirai Yori
| Subject | Hatsuru Koto Naki Mirai Yori Hatsuru Koto Naki Mirai Yori - 18+ Patch |
| By | Helpfulness: 5 Vote: 8pakku on 2022-05-03 |
| Review | Better than Grisaia from a setting point, which isn't that hard to do. Hatsumira features a fantasy isekai setting and was made during a time the market still wasn't absolutely oversaturated by the genre. This piece could be seen as Frontwing's attempt to scout out new areas to branch out to but seeing now that Grisaia has so many offshoots and there are eight phantom trigger games we can clearly see how that turned out. This is a piece from a bygone era where the studio had not yet degenerated into a full blown cash grab operation beating its one successful dead horse. The fact that all of the character sprites are so eerily reminescent of the Grisaia ones (Yukikaze, Meltyna, Ailah are pretty much rebranded Sakaki, Makise and Amane with new hair and uniformally large breasts) makes me want to label this game as "Grisaisekai" and that's what I'll be using. The writing itself is mostly great and the setting is a well wrapped classic isekai, the comedic timings are honed and don't feel out of place. It suffers from Grisaia writing where reading length is augmented by explaining the same things twice, thrice or four times. And at worst in a row (Take for example Chapter 2 where Ichiro gives out an explanation on the condition of his Wyvern squadron members, he goes through each member, then does it again). Still, Front offers almost a perfect package in terms of production quality, there's no obvious weak point when it comes to the sound or the visuals and it all comes together into a very aesthetically pleasing package. The crude male protagonist might rub off the wrong way and feel obnoxious to some readers but has been a non-issue for me. I've read some grievances about its nationalistic undertones but those are quite frankly mild as all hell. There's no big "Japan whoo go" propaganda involved. Ichiro fights with no honor and with only survival in mind so that he'll be able to go back to Japan. He quite literally makes multiple comments on not to give two fucks about honor, playing fair, having pride or going to war just for the sake of one's country. Righto, tally ho into the some of the negatives then. Frankly, at times the localization lingo kind of grinds away at the experience and the translation work feels and reads cringeworthy. This is unfortunate but this isn't enough for me to reduce any points from the work, it's not its fault. Without heading into spoiler territory, the introduction (chapter 1) has one of the most glaring writing mishaps that stuck with me through the game. I can smell rushed production when I read through one and there is a scene in particular where one of the antagonists happens to attack a location where the protagonist is in, the event hints into an ensuing fight scene but just abruptly ends right then and there. The baddie vanishes with no comment and no context, after which there's a scene change to an after the battle moment. You need to experience it yourself to see how bad it looks. This whole event can be more easily forgiven as it takes place in the beginning of the game instead of the end as you have much more to read and hopefully forget this ever happening. Most routes however also have a major dip in writing quality or feature an illogical skip that at this point of the game like a bad dessert ruin an otherwise savory meal. It feels like the production was rushed and there were lines or whole events cut from the script and with anticlimactic moments a dime a dozen. (From the top of my head I can point out Lyth's big ending fight against Miska and the golem during Ailah's route which completely dropped the ball and Wisla's ship battle against the mermaids during Meltyna's route) I can't personally in good conscience give it a higher rating than 8 and can totally understand frustrated people who feel like it deserves a rating no higher than 6 or maybe 7. The production value is stellar enough to warrant a high score in my mind without a doubt and it's not a boring experience. It however has been an experience nonetheless where I've had a few too many disappointments. It reads like it tries to be a game worthy of an 9 but has too many elementary mistakes that feel quite jarring when the rest of the ride goes smoothly. P.S. Thanks to the industry somewhat using shared SFX libraries, depending on your previous visual novel reading experiences you'll be able to feel an incredibly cursed feeling when Meltyna and Reah unleash their powers as the sound used is the same generic magic effect used in multiple fantasy themed Norn/Miel porn games where said effect plays either multiple times in a row or in each H-scene that occur one after another. |
| 5 points |