Yuunagi Sou no S-kyuu no Kanojo-tachi (夕凪荘のＳ級の彼女たち) Review

Lu Xun once said: Moonstone Cherry is a good company.

They put out a famous series called 妹ぱらだいす!, and that series is the reason this blog ever got any traffic at all — go look at “most popular on the site” in the sidebar, the title’s sitting right there in plain sight.

Course, Manbara Paradise isn’t loved just because it’s a sister-type nukige. It’s the “usability” upgrade. The character designs had nothing going on, but the HCGs went hard. They were already using Emotion ten years ago, plus a “countdown to launch” feature, so you and the heroine can reach each other across the screen in mutual fashion. I’ll say it: that game wore me out back in 2011.

The sequels went two more rounds. Not as striking as the first, but they swapped in the best voice actresses available at the time and kept the old usability tradition. The third one even upped the music quality. Classic, re-pressed.

But apparently Moonstone Cherry figured hanging from one tree wasn’t great, so they stopped making 妹ぱらだいす! and started pushing out games under planner “Wu Lao’er” that look weirder the longer you stare at them…

“Welcome to the sex open world,” “welcome to the sex underworld” — what the hell is any of that. And now we get Yūnagisō no S-Kyū no Kanojo-tachi (夕凪荘のＳ級の彼女たち).

From the name, Yūnagisō no S-Kyū no Kanojo-tachi means “the S-rank hotties of Yūnagi Manor.” The artist seems to be the same one from 妹ぱらだいす!3. The plot is dead simple: our protagonist moves to a new city, rents a place, wanders into this joint called Yūnagi Manor, and finds out not just anyone can live there — you need to hit “S-rank” in certain departments to qualify. Right now it’s all big-titty girls, and our hero is the only “S-rank” male, so it’s like he fell into a brothel and started his pink life.

There are individual routes, but there’s nothing worth saying about them. You chat every day, learn how each heroine lives, and even if you don’t enter a route the heroine will come find you at night to “experience” things on her own — like a massage parlor girl, honestly.

As a nukige I have to roast this one: Yūnagisō no S-Kyū no Kanojo-tachi tanks its usability hard. It actually cut Emotion from the HCGs. The launch countdown is still there, but without the motion the stimulation drops off a cliff. You can drag out all the “intra-cavity camera angles” you want, it still won’t get a guy hard.

And the game has no EDs at all. Finish a heroine’s route and you’re booted back to the route select to pick the next one, until you’ve fucked everybody, at which point the game dumps you straight into a final harem ending.

I did not expect the game to be this slapdash. No Emotion, no per-route ED, dirt-cheap HCG trigger scenes — as an old virgin I feel straight-up disrespected. The legendary Yūnagi Manor, where only S-ranks get in, is more like a low-end parlor. The “S-rank” heroines are just tits. The protagonist’s dick is shorter than mine, and I can’t see what’s “S” about any of it.

Which got me feeling nostalgic for Moonstone Cherry’s old games. In some ways this 2022 release is worse quality than the 2011 original 妹ぱらだいす!.