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Review of Hello Lady!

SubjectHello Lady!
ByHelpfulness: 0
Vote: 8
cheekyman07 on 2023-06-10 last updated on 2023-07-02
ReviewThis game has a lot of flaws, but despite that I still had a good experience. There were as many moments of brilliance as there were blunders. This will be a long review, tldr at the end.

-Protagonist-
This man is a very love/hate character. I would not be surprised if some people could not stand him because he is the polar opposite of a self insert. Potentially inviting the scorn of the reader since they act far different to what usually would be a more passive and common sense character.

Hating this character is completely justified, since he is akin to a walking disaster in more ways than one, with the most obvious first impression of him even being quoted in the game itself by other characters.
''he's proud, selfish, doesn't read the mood, does things that don't make sense, and is crazy about boobs'' - Hishia
That's just a portion of them. I don't think I have really read a vn that has a protagonist with as many negative traits as this one.

At the same time, he has a number of positive traits with some of them contradicting his negative ones. He has an iron will, and sticks to what he believes in, not letting people stray him from his path. He will have moments of genius be it through how competent he is at confrontations, helping others, sharing wisdom, or general acts of kindness. Which often appear seemingly at random, as if a mask has fallen off to show his real self.

This makes the reader question him. Is he an idiot? or just pretending? does he care? or is it an act? what is he after? why does he act this way?. I think this is a great combination of character traits. I thought he was a fantastic character, and also had some really badass moments that made me crack a smirk similar to his own. I actually enjoyed the grand persona that he would use, and laughed most of the time at the moments where to me he is simply trolling the hell out of people with his nonsense on purpose. I loved every second of it. The voice actor is what sells it, he did a fantastic job.

It was a breath of fresh air to have such an eccentric character as a protagonist, with most of the cast playing as the straightman due to his nonsense. There is still more to him than meets the eye, which does not take too long to come out when the game reaches some key storytelling stages. You may change your perception of this character a lot after experiencing them.

-Common route-
The common route is ridiculous, but the good kind. Here we see Narita's personality in full gear, some of the most unpredictable stuff that honestly just made me laugh quite a lot. If its one thing this game did well in terms of scenarios was finding ways to completely derail scenes in the most comedic ways possible. I enjoyed the game the most during this. And would probably read just the common route alone sometime in the future just to laugh again at Naritas unbelievable antics. Aside from that, you do get introduced to the main plot of the game and the story behind his arrival. That part of the story starts really well, and is genuinely interesting.

-Heroine routes-
Sorako and Tamao's routes were pretty weak. They are the first routes that you play in a forced order. These heroines while likeable don't have very interesting stories behind them, and don't really have the kind of qualities I find unique or interesting. Not only that but the writing is pretty weak in these routes. The heroines act completely out of character at multiple points near the conclusions to each route.

The single biggest issue I have is how the actions that they both take don't match the characters personalities or motives at all. They often do the complete opposite of what would make sense based on every motive they have. The result being that both routes conclusions, and main confrontations end up being completely nonsensical due to all of the previous out of character actions that they took.

Eru's route however is one of the best routes and one of the few routes that was well written. It still contains a few blunders in terms of continuity mainly by failing to explain the before and after of certain scenes, but overall the plot was pretty good here. I thought the buildup and conclusion to this route was clever. There are key plot twists in this route that were written in such a way that they were heavily telegraphed, that it felt too obvious to be true.

The reader knows what is coming, but due to the nature of this routes story and what the twists are it was very effective on an emotional level the closer the story got to these twists. The route forced strong feelings of denial, and overall grief from me at one twist midway through the game. Due to the red herring nature of the twists I felt hope that such things were not true and that it was setting me up for something better, only for it to take that hope away and confirm what was obvious the entire time for both the main story of this route but mostly for one other key part of the route.

All of this was executed well, despite being so simple. One of the twists midway through the game in particular opened my eyes to many aspects of a certain character, within the space of a few moments. It was a fantastic route, though I did feel that the ending could have cut off at an earlier point for a better more dramatic conclusion. It was the only route that managed to make me a bit emotional by the end.

Saku's route is a complete disaster, probably the worst route in the game. The first half of the route is perfectly fine, because I quite like her character and so the initial sol and character development with her and the protag was nice. But after a certain point it drops into the biggest mess of a story that I have ever read in any vn, and I have seen some messes in my time. Not only that but this route suffers from the after effects of Eru's route, since her route spoils key plot points of Saku's route as well. Which is strange that they would do this considering its an enforced order.

Anyway, this routes second half is awful. Most of the confrontation scenes get bogged down by insane amounts of exposition slowing the story and action down to a snails pace, it was actual torture to get through it all. It's as if they ran out of time or something and needed to find a way to throw the entire story into the last third of a single route. The result was an abomination of an ending where it should have cut off way sooner than it did instead of introducing elements that had no buildup or character development to back them up.

Then we move onto the way better fandisk routes of Hishia and Mitori. Both were pretty enjoyable.

Hishia's route is pretty much saku's route without a portion of her ending through the perspective of Hishia instead. The way this route plays out in terms of pacing and where it stops is much better, more entertaining, and had action that did not get slowed down by exposition. It's pretty much a straight up fixed and better version of saku's route. And how they should have been doing all the confrontations that happen, without out all the badly written exposition to get in the way of the action.

Mitori's route is seperate from the main storyline and was pretty much the best written route in the game. It was a little bit frustrating because I saw the potential here in a fandisk route rather than where it mattered most. The chemistry between the two was funny and charming, and had my fave and funniest scene in the entire game where Narita attempts to cook and feed her something.

This was the only route where the lore and supernatural elements (the halos) were explained well, and were cool and interesting. That was a major reason why the route played out so well, because now I have some worldbuilding and lore to give me the immersion I needed to connect better to the dramatic scenes later on in the route.

-True route-
This to me was basically an attempt at fixing Saku's route. While it was a good attempt, it was not done well. The plot behind it was good, but the writing was too poor to make it interesting. The scenes do not link together well enough to make a cohesive story, the supernatural elements are explained poorly as well.

One of my biggest pet peeves in action fiction is when the narrative contradicts itself, such as describing injuries. For example one character states that both legs arent functioning as well as other parts, only for the narrative to say 5 seconds later that the character gets up and starts walking. This happens a lot in this route for some reason.

The story felt like it was all thrown together in an attempt to bring a better closure. While the ending is a little touching, I was too exausted by the constant lazy and convenient power up asspulls that kept happening over and over again. Most of the characters act completely out of character for the sake of the plot, and at this point the powers of all the characters lost all meaning as they kept being altered as conveniently as possible for the sake of the plot.

The correct fix would have been to cut saku's route short, and make this it's own full route from the start so that they had a lot more time to develop all the characters for this specific storyline so that it all made more sense. The route already pretty much starts near last third of the story which is such a strange way to do it. The protagonist deserved way better writing for his main dramatic conclusion to the grand story, it was such a shame. Taigi however had great moments to shine in this route, and that was the most memorable thing about this route.

-Other Characters-
I found all the antagonist's to be decent but never really getting promoted to anything other than plot tools. I don't really have much to say about them.

Taigi's character on the other hand, is probably the best out of the supporting cast. I enjoyed all of his tense talks with Narita, and his character shines a lot in the true route and has what I consider the best dramatic moment in the game. He also has the most interesting motives behind him, and always acted within his character.

-Writing-
The core issue of the vn that holds it back, it's very inconsistent.
It has it's good points, when it's good its mainly with character interactions. The humor, Naritas grandiose or silly antics or moments of brilliance. There are also times when it does the action well, explains the supernatural elements in interesting ways, and does some of the plotlines well. Some of the routes manage to have all of this in one package, but most of the others don't.

The worst things about the writing; It would go off on huge exposition tangeants. The exposition itself is indeed telling an interesting story, but the problem is when they choose to do it and how long it went on for. There is little consideration to the experience of the person reading.

The result is certain confrontation scenes that would last the better part of an hour or longer of reading with very little actually happening, just exposition and dialogue. So for me, when I was experiencing this it was an incredibly boring experience that completely failed at being entertaining. They tried to explain too much without being able to back it up with the scenes that were being shown, it all felt so out of place with what was happening. I would say this was because it felt like the game was trying to tell a full story but only at the end portion of a route, trying to pack everything together.

Another problem is the lack of detail when it comes to the main point of interest for the fantasy aspects of this game, very little effort is made to give the reader lore about the special abilities the characters have. Not enough is explained and it's all rather vague. However the writer takes the complete opposite direction when it comes to mundane things that are not interesting, like describing things like common weapons or guns. I dont care about the history of mundane things in reality that I already know about, my interest is in the story and the fantasy elements it has. They focused the lore in the wrong places.

The issue of overly verbose writing is present for most aspects of the writing too, and it can be tiring to read at points. The vn could have done with a lot of trimming in that regard, with effort redirected more to improving its fantasy lore instead. It felt to me like not a lot of thought was put into it, as if the writers simply did a wiki search on a gun and then pasted the description into the vn. Then when it came to explaining fantasy elements it falls short, being unable make enough sense out of it.

It got to the point where if I would see it start to ramble on about something like this I would click a bunch of times to get back to what is actually going on in the story. The worst part is that all of these issues are not actually present in some of the good routes, and Hishia's route in particular has great action because it does not ramble on about these things.

There are actually a fair number of very clever aspects and moments to the writing. It's such a shame because they get overpowered by the large blunders that are made and as a result I feel like much of it goes unnoticed.

-Art-
I like the character art quite a bit, it's clean but also expressive. The characters each have touches that help the traits that they have. Despite having a clean look to them, they don't feel generic to me.
The setting is acceptable, I don't have much to say other than it fits the purpose well enough.

There is not enough art for the action scenes or settings though. This is a visual novel after all, why not take advantage of this and give the reader more to look at? Things like effects, weapons, vehicles, scenes, scenarios, or cg's of characters fighting eachother.

This game has a lot of action scenes, and the lack of assets to make the action scenes cool to look at made it difficult to get immersed. Not to mention how wordy the writing is. There were a lot of things about the art that were immersion breaking, such as not changing anything about the backgrounds according to what was happening.

All the backgrounds being empty despite there being people everywhere, not showing injuries, completely spotless characters despite injuries/blood or fighting. Not showing much of the destruction/disturbing scenes that were happening. So on and so forth.

-GUI/Technical-
The GUI is simple and has all the basic features needed. Scene select and quick and easy options to skip repetitive text when playing new routes. Generally things every vn should have. So this was well done.

-Music-
Not much to say about the music, it was rather average. There was only one good track which was the 'scary enemy appeared' sort of track. Everything else is pretty typical music really.

-E-Scenes-
Just noting this here, I don't really care about E-Scenes unless im picking up a vn specifically for that stuff, so for an opinion on that stuff you will have to find someone else.

-Voice acting-
I wanted to add this here because this game honestly has some amazing voice acting, not just from the protagonist but most of the cast did a really good job to be honest. Even the antagonist's had great voice acting.

Conclusion and TLDR
The main reason to pick this up is the protagonist, and the common route is pretty funny. I found most of the characters to be likeable as well. The writing is inconsistent and most of the endings are poor. I still had an overall good experience though. Despite the long 'frustrated with the writer' ramblings I had.

That was a pretty freakin longwinded review even for me, but yeah Narita is pretty much the biggest reason it still got a decent score out of me to be honest, as well as the common route and a few stand out good routes.
0 points
#1 by anonymous
2023-06-10 at 10:15
< report >I haven't read Hello Lady, what follows is just my take on reviewing "stuff", and the amount of objectivity/subjectivity that "should" comprise a helpful opinion.

From bottom to top:

"-E-Scenes-" - If you have nothing to add, cut that section.

The "technical" aspects should be kept short, so that's a plus here.

"-Art-" - Referring to the art so much is a "rabbit hole". The first paragraph is made of platitudes, the second and third equal tautology. Simply rating the art, and mentioning a lack of assets, when taking into account number of fight scenes, would the trick.

"-Writing-" - "It would go off on huge exposition tangeants"; "So for me, when I was experiencing this it was an incredibly boring..."; "I dont care about the history of mundane things in reality that I already know about"; "The issue of overly verbose writing is present for most aspects of the writing too,"

Let me be blunt: You are the pot, the writer is the kettle (or the other way around, these "idioms" confuse me, as a non-native speaker). Referring to the writing this much, requires specific knowledge, and if you go like this: "as if the writers simply did a wiki search on a gun and then pasted the description into the vn", I would immediately stop reading your review.

"-True route-" - I have no interest in hearing about true routes, but that is just me, no real criticism there.

"-Heroine routes-" Separating them in sub sections would be helpful. There's still repeated ideas with different words. You don't point out the themes of the route, or significance to the plot. (Eru's route description is good though, more personal feelings, less truisms, they mean zero, to people who haven't read this VN)

Continuing:

"Saku's route is a complete disaster, probably the worst route in the game. The first half of the route is perfectly fine," - And what follows is conflicting information (back and forth), I would stop reading the review at this point, and conclude that you simply didn't like the ending.

"-Common route-" Good description. There's some nonsense, and you like that kind of comedy (me too). You should adapt this "model", for the heroine routes.

"-Protagonist-" - "That's just a portion of them. I don't think I have really read a vn that has a protagonist with as many negative traits as this one." (Try ISLAND). A protagonist with clashing traits, generally has some sort of agenda, and an emotional "quirk" that gives things way too quickly, but if you say he has layers I will believe you. You continue to be "verbose" here, just like you said the writing was, but the fact that you like this character comes across clearly. That's a positive.

TLDR: There's not enough info here to make an opinion on Hello lady. I have no idea what the title is about by reading this (I have my own experience, and can make assumptions, but that's neither here nor there). My suggestion: cut a large part of the subjectivity, and reread what was delivered.

I'm not saying a good review needs to be objective (that's stupid), I'm saying remove a part of "yourself", if the intent is to write a review. What you have here is much closer to very personal opinion, that will only resonate with people who have read the VN.

(if you just want to express yourself, you can disregard all of this.)

(I'm not going to read what I just wrote, so "skim" over the grammar)Last modified on 2023-06-10 at 10:24
#2 by cheekyman07
2023-06-10 at 12:35
< report >Lmao, you are so full of shit that it blows my mind. You never posted that with good intentions, don't try to pretend it was to be helpful.

I will write my review my way. Not yours. You are an arrogant, and vile person. I will definitely disregard all of that 'advice' (insults) that you tried to give me.

The only thing you achieved with this was to make me genuinely angry. If you actually wanted to talk about the game with me maybe it would have been different and I would have been nicer to you. You have not read it and only came here to throw shit at the way I wrote my review and expressed myself.Last modified on 2023-06-10 at 12:38
#3 by AmanoKaze
2023-06-10 at 15:58
< report >I know this is not the place to do it, but i'm glad someone finally talks back to vnreview's very, very intrusive comments on reviews. As if they make the standard for writing a review, while some of their own are just a bunch of points to points. You really need to stop man.
#4 by W3lcum
2023-06-10 at 16:59
< report >I am really surprised that someone is giving a "guide" how to write a review or rather how to write it so it fits their own taste...
Thats a first time.

Imo OPs review seems easy to read. Would have been different if OP wrote this down as just one text w/o any paragraphs but that wasnt the case.
Furthermore they can write it how they want it and include things they think is important. This is not a professional journalism site were everyone needs to follow some rules how to write a review...Last modified on 2023-06-10 at 17:00
#5 by asaki
2023-06-28 at 03:19
< report >#1 I know that you didn't want to have your expectation sullied, but sometime it would help to read the review so that you didn't put too much expectation (Like expect Hello Lady would combined the epicness of MLA and Steins Gate only to be disappointed that it didn't fulfill your insane expectation). That said, I hope that you can read Hello Lady without had your own expectation prevent you to enjoy the VN.