Review of Akatsuki no Goei
| Subject | Akatsuki no Goei Guardians of Daybreak |
| By | Helpfulness: 3 Vote: 7.5bee on 2022-06-29 last updated on 2022-08-27 |
| Review | I'll post my personal review of this visual novel as the translator of the English Patch. I'll try to be as unbiased as I can about it. The first thing I should do it divide the categories I’ll be talking about, so let’s go with story, characters and character progression, art and cg quality, bgm quality and engine quality. Also, important to mention that this review has spoilers. You’ve been warned. *The game progression I categorize is as follows: Game 1 is obviously the first one, game 2 is the fandisk, and game 3 is Shuumatsuron, the direct sequel of Game 1. Story Akatsuki no Goei’s story is divided into three games. It was planned from the beginning that it would be a trilogy, and everything was laid out for it to be. This is clear because in the first game you’ll probably notice little to no progression in the story, even if you play the canon route. There are 5 girls you can romance: Reika, Moe, Tae, Aya, and Tsuki. The true route is located in Moe’s route where you kinda romance Kaoru? But that won’t happen until game 3*, so yeah, that’s that. Almost all of the routes apart from the true route (Kaoru) and Reika's route lead to probably meaningless and not very conclusive storylines, but they should never be taken seriously in the first place, especially because, like I mentioned before, this is a planned trilogy, so anything that doesn’t belong to the main story shouldn’t be really taken into account and should be treated as just flavor content. The best and most enjoyable route of them all? Probably Reika’s route because it’s one of the longest and with the most content along with Tae’s. Though it is important to read them all if you want to understand Kaito’s circumstances and past better. Important to mention that Kaito is the main protagonist and character of the show. While the main heroine in this game ends up shifting from Reika towards Kaoru, it is of vital importance to mention that Reika is ultimately the main heroine of the trilogy, and it is her route in game 3 that should be considered canon (specifically, the bad ending, but I’m getting ahead of myself there). Game 1 makes a point of introducing the world to you and the characters, as well as slight character progression arc inbetween. This game has its strength mostly in the characters more than the setting, which is treated as secondary until well into the third game (classic Kinugasa, if I had to comment about this style of writing. Fuck story progression, I wanna see character interactions). So yeah, what you’ll like most is the interactions between the characters. If I had to give it a rating, the story of game 1 would be pretty weak, rating at a 6, mainly because we barely scratch the surface in this game. You get to know what’s up, but nothing major occurs that’ll keep you on the edge of the seat waiting for the next thing to happen. That’s more of a game 3 thing. So yeah, story is a 6/10. Characters / Character Progression The characters are the most important element of this first game. All of them have distinct personalities, quirks, and things that make them lovable. Yes, even Takanori, for those of you who hate his ass. I’ll mention main characters more and keep the secondary ones super brief so this doesn’t drag on forever. The author does a very good job to try and give you every character’s point of view in life to the point of understanding their reasons for thinking or doing what they do. The best character according to the Japanese audience by general consensus is Tsuki, and for very good reasons. She doesn’t mince words, is honest, and follows Kaito’s antics throughout the game. Her origins are mysterious too, which is important to make the reader stay interested in who she really is. Also her jokes are pretty funny. She’s overall an amusing character. Personally, she’s one of my favourites for sure. I’d rank her along with Reika. Since I mentioned Reika, I guess we’ll go with her next. She’s not a very complex character, and is a tsundere, with a strong emphasis on the tsun part, though the reason I find her to be an enjoyable character is because she feels like an actual person when she speaks. She has certain moments where she speaks like the general “Ojou-sama” antics you see in early 2000s Japanese games, but these instances are rare and most of the times she feels like a girl with somewhat of a functional brain (not always). Her dere part is unlocked later into her route, and it is more visible in games 2 and 3, but rarely. Expect her to be an asshole most of the times, which is completely okay by me. She’s the main heroine of the trilogy as well, if it wasn’t already obvious by the game’s main art and other antics. Reika is definitely my favourite girl along with Tsuki. Moe is the obliogatory dandere insert in the game. At least she knows how to kick some ass, but she’s pretty dumb. Like, really fucking dumb. Though it is argued in the game that the reason lies behind her living in her rich kid bubble. Long route, stupid conclusion imo. Didn’t like it too much. If anything, I’d say her grandfather Dengorou saved it suuuper hard. Tae is a stupid girl, I hate her. Her route is like, okay? It has a lot of content and I like everything that happens in it. I just really don’t fucking like Tae. I get that she’s the airhead to the max character, but I never liked retarded characters. Aya is just… boring. Plus she’s almost non-existent in the entirety of her route. No wonder her route is called “Takanori’s Route” in Japan, because you see more of him than her. Honestly though, I do have a soft spot for Takanori. He’s someone who has been abused by his family for a long time, and because of that he’s developed in a horrible way, one where he makes it a sport to ostrasize others if they’re worse than him, and only thinks of his career growth. Though he hates Kaito at the beginning, Takanori is probably one of the characters that evolves most throughout the story, ironically enough, and he eventually becomes a bro. Damn, just noticed I made Aya’s review Takanori’s one. Makes you wonder how much Aya matters in this release. Spoiler alert: almost nothing. Also, her H scenes are weeeeeird, dude. As for the rest of characters, they’re all a super enjoyable and dynamic cast. Raita is a sperg, but he’s the kind of weirdo that exists nowadays as well (just read some of his excerpts in Tsuki’s route and you’ll know what I mean). Kyouka is an ojou-sama archetype toned to the max, but she’s just adorable. Anzu makes a brief appereance. She’s an important character, but she’ll become more relevant later down the line, so I won’t comment much on her. Then we have Kaoru. Personally I hate Kaoru. I get the whole thing about her pretending to be a guy to fit into the academy, but realistically speaking she would’ve been found out in seconds (Kaito does, because Kaito isn’t completely stupid). Apart from that, she’s the serious woman archetype, very straightforward, acts almost like a man (her years in Ren’Ou as a guy greatly influence her attitude) and very rarely does she show weakness, to the point of hating the very act of doing so even before the ones she trusts. She’s the main pivotal character of the true route, but don’t consider her to be an important character overall. I certainly don’t. She’s just Kaito’s friend, and an excuse to move the plot in game 1 and the beginning of game 3, nothing else. Last but not least, we have our protagonist Kaito. Kaito is the main character of the visual novel, and the main reason people are drawn to it. Kinugasa's greatest strength as a writer is making loveble male protagonists, and Kaito is one of the first iterations of this tendency of his. He's rude, doesn't give a damn about what others think of him, is not stupid when it comes to girls (sometimes he is, but rarely does this happen) and he excels at his studies and physical activities, but he purposefully hides his talents to avoid getting people's attention on him. The reason? He's from the Prohibited Zone, that part of Japan's Society where the "undesirables" live. They aren't registered in the census, can't get hired, etc... they aren't even considered humans by many. This will become the major plotline in game 3, but for the time being all we know is that Kaito used to live there, and now he isn't, explaining his attitude towards who he calls "rich kids." Character interactions and progression are certainly what this game’s well known for, and for that I’ll give it the highest score: a 9/10. BGM The BGM of the first game sucks ass. It feels very basic and cheap. It gets progressively better for the other two games, but for me it gets a 4/10 at best. I certainly don’t like it. Makes me feel like I'm in an elevator. ART / CG Quality I’m biased, but Tomose Shunsaku’s art is possibly one of the first things that drew me into learning Japanese in general. Even if this is old art from Tomose, I find it to be way more charming than what he currently does with Classroom of the Elite, or his disgusting ugly bastard doujins. Fuck you, Tomose, do vanilla doujins sometimes. Anyways, 9’5/10 Engine Quality Engine of the trilogy version is simple and goes straight to the point. It’s nothing spectacular, but does the job. 7/10 Personal commentary on the translation and style of writing (biased): There are two things of this game’s writing that posed issues to the translation, those being: - Kinugasa’s tendency to erratically write stuff. Basically, he really likes to change the mood of the story suddenly and without warning, which is hard to properly convey. He also sometimes writes things like shit. - There’s a lot of jokes and references to old shows, and obscure stuff from Japanese culture. For the jokes, I tried to stay as true as possible to the original whenever I could, but you can’t always win. So at many times I found myself with the classic conundrum of: do I keep the meaning and sacrifice the laughs? Or do I adapt the joke so the intention of the original text remains intact? I think I did a 50/50, and most of the jokes I’m very content with. If anything, I’m still not very happy with two particular segments, one of them in Tae’s route when they discuss how to write Kanjis in Japanese, and the other one in Moe’s route, where they make constant wordplay and I had to pretty much rewrite the entire segment while trying to stay true to the core funny parts, like when Moe sings jingle bells. I’ll have my eyes peeled out for those who eventually critisize my decisions. Anyways, as a total score, I’d give the game a… 7,5/10 in the end. I think it’s not a bad game or anything like that, but Game 1 of Akatsuki no Goei is definitely the weakest of the trilogy. I can argue that once you read the other two games the score for this one would get higher for some, but I personally think game 1 is the worst for sure. The fandisk is, in my opinion, way better, ironically enough. That’s pretty much it. That was a long one, but I hope it was good enough to express how I feel towards the game. Have a good one! |
| 3 points |