Ichizu na (Shojo→) Kanojo to Koi Shitai ver. Hirohashi Runa (一途な（処女→）彼女と恋したい ver.広橋るな) Review

Honestly I don’t even remember when I played this one. I’ve been way too busy and tired lately — I’ve played a ton of stuff but haven’t had time to write anything up, so I’m just piecing it back together while sorting through screenshots.

As I recall, this is one of those “sold in volumes” little nukige. Most of you are probably already familiar with the racket. The first volume, Ichizu na (Shojo→) Kanojo to Koi shitai, came out last year and I thought it was fine. Apart from me griping pretty hard about how blatantly it panders to otaku, there wasn’t much wrong with it. Its biggest strength was the absolutely gorgeous CG and the stunning, heart-fluttering heroine art — solidly middle-of-the-road as far as visual novels go.

A year and change later, the series put out a second volume, and they couldn’t even be bothered to change the name: 《一途な（処女→）彼女と恋したい ver.広橋るな》

Also, I have no idea if putting the “ver” up front like that is even correct. If you’ve decided “ver” is the prefix for the different volumes, then you didn’t add it to the first one either. Setting aside the inconsistent naming, how does a simple little romance thing like this take you a whole year to develop?

So I was getting ready to give this a quick look, and it turned out to be nothing like what I expected.

I already talked about the first volume’s content — it’s pure romance, and it borrows the setup from a certain light novel by the infamous ero-scenario writer “Hojo Kei,” so it’s actually kind of fun to read. The second volume, though, goes in a different direction. It loses the sweetness of the previous entry and instead feels really off — the heroine just inexplicably has to end up with the protagonist, and they can’t even be bothered to write a simple girl-meets-boy. It seems to assume from the start that the two are already dating. There’s not much to say about the plot: the usual dating, fucking, ENDing.

For a little volume like this that wouldn’t be a big deal, but the problem is this game is not “little” at all — it’s packed with choices. Yes, a ton of choices. Almost every time you go on a date, after just a few lines of dialogue the game starts throwing all kinds of options at you. The style is very similar to that Ore no Imouto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai PSP game I played ages and ages and ages ago — you have to keep picking dialogue to communicate with the heroine and enjoy the immersive romance.

But those choices don’t do anything. During the main story I tried picking several really “malicious” options, and it had zero effect on our protagonist whipping out his dick to bang her.

The only thing it inherits from the previous volume is that “18 touches” minigame on the heroine — you poke a nearly static CG’s boobs, poke her belly button, listen to the heroine’s moans and gasps. I don’t know why anyone would get hard over something that feels like it was made for kids. Maybe Black Shark otaku can.

Basically, the main route is stuffed with piles of useless choices, plus one utterly moronic touch minigame, paired with painfully cheesy dialogue — it’s hard to feel any romance. At least there are some black-pantyhose lewds to console you, but compared to volume one the quality drop is visible to the naked eye.

And just as I was about to complain about the game throwing in a bunch of “useless” choices, I discovered there’s also an After Story, and it’s got a lot going on.

Normally an eroge’s After Story is just filler dialogue plus some HCG, but this one’s different — it gives you 17 questions drawn from conversations between you and the heroine. These 17 questions appear at random, and getting one wrong affects the final ending. Depending on how many you answer correctly, the game unlocks different levels of fanservice. You can tell whether you picked right by whether a “ding-dong” sound plays after the choice.

So then I got curious: what if I picked them all wrong? Would it leave me dying alone in a fandisc, like some Black Shark otaku coming out and becoming a regular at a host club?

Turns out the dev team was one step ahead — three of the questions are mandatory, and whatever you pick counts as correct. In other words you’re guaranteed a baseline 3 points… Honestly those aren’t even real questions, just throwaway options that are adorable no matter what, like asking during a hug or a kiss whether you want a small kiss or a big kiss this time.

In the end I still want to complain about the writing — it’s painfully “hick.” Even though this is the second volume of the series, the production lineup has changed a lot from volume one — both the scenario writer and the planner are different, and they added some baffling new systems. I don’t know how the dev team sees this series. Maybe the original staff just ran off.

So the only real fun in this game is hunting for your different-scoring answers among those 17 random questions. The heroine’s CV this time is Konami Suzu, whom Black Shark otaku loves like Lord Ye who professed to love dragons. In a sense you could call this game “17 questions to prove how much you love Konami Suzu.”

I wonder how many points Black Shark otaku would get.