Amairo Chocolata (あまいろショコラータ) Review

Whenever I tell someone new that I play visual novels, I hear the same thing:

“Oh, galge? Yeah I’ve played those, Nekopara, right? Man, that stuff is something else, heh heh.”

Sure, Nekopara technically counts as a visual novel, but every time someone treats “visual novel” and “Nekopara” as the same thing, I get annoyed. Simple reason: I don’t like Nekopara.

Unlike certain other Nekopara-hating keyboard-warrior otaku, I don’t hate it because the artist flip-flops politically, or because the devs are milking Steam. I hate it because the game just isn’t very good.

First off, Nekopara is a nukige, and a pretty mediocre one. The everyday dialogue and setup have nothing going for them—throw it on DLsite and it’d be one of a thousand. Its only real edge was using Emote, which made it look fancy, and one of the biggest reasons it blew up was that it launched with “official non-Japanese language support.” There are otaku all over the world stuck not knowing Japanese, staring at squiggles with no idea what’s being said, refreshing forums every day waiting for a fan translation—it’s agony. Then suddenly there’s a Steam game with an anime art style, Japanese voice acting, localization support, and a cheap price, and it was the only way to play a visual novel on Steam. So it sold like crazy…

Yeah, if I remember right, when Nekopara hit Steam, the only other thing on there was some Willplus game with an English-only release. It was your only option.

So Nekopara’s success was just timing and circumstance. The era made it, not the quality.

But Nekopara’s success also showed the crusty old Japanese eroge companies the huge potential of Steam and multilingual localization. More and more of them started focusing on Steam, pushing out all kinds of small titles to cash in. Some are honestly okay, but some are just shameless. Take the endless volume-splitting—the greedier they get, the more volumes there are. They’re straight-up using the same playbook they use to sell trashy light novels in Japan. These “Steam-exclusive” games lean harder and harder on moe bait, fanservice, selling the setup, selling stereotypes—all to move more copies, with zero thought given to whether the game could actually sell in the Japanese market. As long as it moves units on Steam, it crushes the domestic numbers, so why not?

I’ve reviewed plenty of these Steam-exclusive games. The “exclusive” stink is obvious, but some still have a few bright spots, and the artists they hire are usually decent. Even as bandwagon products, at least they have something of their own. Then in 2020 a new game came out and it rocked my entire family.

Amairo Chocolata (あまいろショコラータ).

A pure bandwagon title whose very name reminds me of a certain Yuzusoft game.

Apart from the name, this game reeks of imitation from the inside out.

The setup is two heroines, both “beastfolk” hiding among humans—not the beastfolk you’re picturing, just catgirls… and they even pretend to set up a few cat breeds, like American Shorthair, Russian Blue, whatever.

The story is still part-time work and running a shop. Yes, goddamn part-time work, goddamn running a shop. How much do these dumbass Japanese eroge love part-time jobs and shops! And even if you love shops that much, why can’t you make it realistic? This storefront is absurdly huge—a shop like this in Japan would need a loaded owner, wouldn’t it?

Still set in that “semi-fictional Northern Europe” style—supposedly somewhere in Japan, but all the buildings copy Northern Europe. I don’t know if you’re trying to ride Gochuumon’s coattails, but if so, it’s crude as hell. Or do Japanese devs just think “pastry chef” and “cafe” automatically mean Northern Europe?

The character personalities are the same three-hander… no, two-hander: one airhead, one closet tsundere. The route selection is brutally simple—pick who you want, that’s it. As for what the story’s actually about, I honestly can’t remember. Maybe I’ve seen too much of this stuff and built up immunity, or maybe the story is just that boring…

Actually, this game isn’t trying to tell you a story at all.

The art is by two hot artists, Korie Riko and Shiratama. Honestly, they’re popular, but I don’t particularly rate their art, because they always draw the same face, the same pose. Newbies look at it and go “so moe so moe,” but look too long and it gets old.

I’m already tired of it, and the CG quality in this game really isn’t good—maybe the budget was limited.

The cast is just four characters, and only two are romanceable. The other two are supposedly in “the next volume.” Yes, this dumbass game is doing volume sales too.

There’s also a seemingly generous “harem branch,” but it’s just a single 3P HCG.

Then I saw the game launched with Chinese support. I get it. I completely get it… It’s a cash-grab aimed square at Steam.

I know how these games work, as I said earlier: hire a “hot” artist, slap together a simple moe shop setup, fill it with random everyday filler, grab a few second-tier VAs who can’t make it elsewhere, get them to record lines, have someone translate it into Simplified Chinese, launch on Steam, stir up buzz on Weibo, price it at six bucks or twenty, and a bunch of otaku will buy it.

And of course don’t forget the bonus 18+ patch, even though Steam allows straight-up 18+ now.

In setup and formula, this game is clearly imitating Nekopara, just with a bit of Yuuki 2 atmosphere in the worldbuilding—and only atmosphere.

Personally, I don’t think this game will sell that well or even beat Nekopara. Simple reason: it copied all of Nekopara’s tricks except the most important one:

This game doesn’t have Emote.

So by every measure it’s a cheap cash-grab, and I doubt it’ll make any waves. It’s been out almost a week and I still haven’t seen this “Chinese Version” it was bragging about.

Just an ordinary Nekopara clone that ripped off Nekopara, I guess.

Rambling: If this game was made to fund Sakura no Kumo * Scarlett no Koi, then I’ll take back what I said above.