Nagareboshi -a Wish Star- (流る星 -a Wish Star-) Review

This game is a real pain to talk about. If you think Nanakamai’s work on Frontwing titles is “insane” and figured this one at least reaches ATRI or GINKA levels, you’re dreaming. It’s not even half of Corona Blossom. And yeah, the problems aren’t just the art and story… though those are problems too.

The plot is straightforward: you look at the premise and immediately know how it goes, and it actually does play out exactly like that. Pacing is fast, so it never drags or feels like a prison sentence. Downside is it’s boring. From the start I knew the heroine would vanish, and that there’d be a happy ending where she comes back—called it perfectly.

Setting aside the story, the biggest issue is the system, which together with that Lucle cash-grab game forms a real “two legends” duo of garbage. The system is full of bugs: enable scaling and you can’t go fullscreen. Official support says gamepad works, but some options can’t be pressed with a controller, and even gamepad-to-mouse emulation gets hijacked by the game. I had to plug in a mouse.

Even more absurd: there’s a hidden ending, normally you’d unlock a hidden option in a second playthrough, but the genius part is that the hidden option can’t be opened on a second run—you have to use a first-playthrough save. If you didn’t save, congrats, play the whole thing again. The debug credits even say they got Nanakamai’s mom to help test, and this is the result? A Japanese auntie hand-testing like a saint and it still ships like this?

The BGM is cheap, the OP and ED are not good, heavy on repetition, feels AI-made. There are also some “performance” moments that made me lose it—like the ED font flashing like crazy. I thought my monitor was dying, but no, it was intentional flashing to simulate a “shooting star.” I was so mad I laughed. Peak abstraction.

Surprise, there’s an official R18 patch, but the download method is hilarious: the Steam community page links to a Twitter post with a download link, and the official link is a free file host—which has now expired, taking the patch with it. The game’s so niche I have no idea where to find it anymore.

And the patch announcement was posted by Frontwing as a favor, even though they didn’t develop the game—just helped out. Shows how rough this production was. The game got one update to fix some bugs and then went silent. No achievements. Pretty much dead.

Of course, you can still get the R18 content through other channels—like buying the physical version. Considering the 3000 yen price, my advice is: if you have money, go buy Corona Blossom or Ginka instead.

Pros:

• Nanakamai on art, heroine looks great
• Short story, doesn’t waste time
• Cheap

Cons:

• Some CGs are off-model

• Story is cliché

• Too many bugs

• Has an R18 patch, but it’s gone

• No achievements