Puramai Wars (プラマイウォーズ) Review

Playing games, the most important thing is to have fun. You can’t force every new game to be a masterpiece. Finishing a game and feeling like you ate shit—that’s the dev team flexing, and nobody wants that to happen. So hey, I’ve got a title here that’s guaranteed to put you in a good mood when you’re done. Wanna take a look?

Puramai Wars (プラマイウォーズ) is the new game from Asa Project. The studio’s trademark—I mentioned it over here—is messing around plus face gags. It looks chaotic on the surface, but it gives you this happy vibe. I figure plenty of you have played Renai 0 Kilometer and know the deal: surface-level chaos, but the story has a bit of substance, and amid all the noise you can still feel each girl’s full feminine charm.

So the dev team probably figured that formula was popular and went full copy-paste, putting out a brand-new game with basically the same setup: this one, Puramai Wars. As for what the name means, I have no idea. “Puramai” should be Japanese, “wars” is war, and the main premise is a showdown between two families sharing a house. One side is the protagonist’s “good behavior” family; the other is the “bad behavior” family.

The official site’s description is literally “the story begins with a war between the well-behaved family and the ill-behaved family.”

I need to clarify something here: this so-called “war” basically doesn’t exist in the game… It’s mostly pretty harmonious.

If we’re grading this like a school essay, it’s off-topic.

Renai 0 Kilometer’s setup is family member swapping; Puramai Wars is family cohabitation. Pretty much the same. Then for character design, the game likewise has a face-gag, death-seeking girl just like NoKiA: Aisaki. Same traits—dirty jokes, face gags, death-seeking—and the dev team brought us a ton of new face gags.

As for characters besides Aisaki, the one who leaves a deep impression is the protagonist’s older sister, a brocon sis. What’s even rarer is that she’s got face gags too, and she’s just as active as Aisaki, to the point that most of the common route is Aisaki and the sister, Sakiko, taking turns carrying the daily-life comedy.

Most visual novels need a story engine if the daily life isn’t going to bore you—like Suzuki Kana in Daishiryokan, Michiru in Grisaia no Kajitsu, Meguru in Sanoba Witch, Hikari in Hanasaki Work Spring!. In short, during the long daily grind there’s gotta be that one “really interesting” and “good at joking around” character who makes you smile, otherwise nobody has the stamina to keep watching you ramble about stuff unrelated to the main plot.

So throughout Puramai Wars, the daily life is genuinely fun, especially the common route—jokes nonstop, face gags nonstop. At first I felt Maezawa Maru’s Aisaki wasn’t as good as Shimizu Ai’s NoKiA, but after the prologue she starts hitting her stride, and you basically stop hearing any Setsuna vibes. The common route keeps the same high standard as Renai 0 Kilometer—the “omoshiroi” label is well deserved.

But once the game enters individual routes, that height drops off a cliff.

There are 5 romanceable characters: the protagonist’s older sister, his younger sister, and the other family’s three sisters. Aside from the older sister Sakiko’s route, which has good pacing and still uses a bunch of characters to prop up a level of fun on par with the common route, the other side characters’ routes are way too formulaic.

Aisaki’s route could have been good, but it fails to capture NoKiA’s bratty vibe. The moment Aisaki falls in love she completely loses her face gags and death-seeking antics; her entire personality gets thrown out, and she turns into just another girl indistinguishable from the rest. Minori’s route is even simpler and cruder: the protagonist just randomly realizes he likes her, keeps calling her cute, and while he’s praising her she blushes. As for the big sister’s whole “I’ll get revenge for the mistakes you made toward me when we were kids” thing from the common route—after a whole route of spinning around, it turns out it was just the sister having an overactive ego as a kid, unilaterally deciding the protagonist seemed interested in her, and then when the two families moved apart the protagonist didn’t cry, so she felt dumped and bullied.

“All that build-up and drama, and it turns out to be some tiny bullshit”—there’s no better way to describe the big sister’s main plot teased in the game’s OP.

As for the younger sister’s route, it’s even more half-assed: they fuck for no reason, then it ends for no reason.

Story-wise, aside from the older sister Sakiko and the common route being excellent, the rest is basically failing grade. Sure, for a visual novel, having one route and a common route stand out is already pretty good, but my complaints aren’t really there—they’re with the game itself.

At least 9 background images in this game are straight-up reused from Renai 0 Kilometer. You might say it’s a reference, but I don’t see a single trace of self-aware referencing in the game’s setting.

There’s no explanation other than cost-cutting. Oh, forgot to mention: the common route is super long, the individual routes are super short, and even then there aren’t many CGs—most CGs are all crammed into the HCGs, and the HCGs are all the same formula: one at school, one at home, one at the bathhouse, one at a hotel. The actual story parts of the game are heavily formulaic. I know this is a lighthearted comedy game, but at least Renai 0 Kilometer still let you feel some feminine charm and sweet romance in the individual routes. In Puramai Wars, all that’s left is comedy bits—no part showing the characters’ feminine charm and cuteness…

Ah, well, there is one: the older sister Sakiko is this game’s only saving grace.

So how is this game? I’d say it’s still good, just a notch below Renai 0 Kilometer overall—lazy CGs and poorly written individual routes. The comedy still holds the usual standard and is executed pretty thoroughly. As for route stories, don’t expect too much; that’s not what this game is going for. Still, if they’d put in a bit more effort, the characters would feel more complete. The previous game managed it, this one didn’t—kinda a shame.

Of course, if you just want to laugh, this game won’t disappoint.

What? You want to feel pure, sweet romance?

Oh, what are you thinking? Looking at that face, can you even get it up?

By the way, both the ED and OP are super good—another reason to recommend it.