Rensou Relation (恋想リレーション) Review

Renai Relation (恋想リレーション) is the latest release from Lump of Sugar. I already roasted their previous game, Unmei-sen jou no φ, on account of the plot being flat-out retarded.

So does Renai Relation do any better on the story front? Naturally not. Still retarded. Only this time, they’ve gone and built the premise itself as an excuse for it.

The protagonist of Renai Relation is a total loser otaku — a bum who sits at home all day playing eroge, who couldn’t be bothered to study for entrance exams and flunked out, who stares straight at a girl’s tits when he sees one, who talks like a creep and acts like a scumbag. By any measure, human trash.

But don’t forget: this trash is the protagonist. So Renai Relation’s tagline is “Your (romantic) delusions, we’ll make them real.” The game’s later chapters set up a bunch of lucky or scandalous encounters for this useless MC, all to turn his sorry life around.

“Hear that? You loser otaku playing this galgame — this game exists to make the delusions of you shut-in cowards who’ve got the lust but not the guts come true. So don’t whine that the plot is garbage, because you’re garbage. Don’t whine that the MC sucks, because you suck. And as a piece of trash, getting to do the things you want but don’t dare to in this game — isn’t that just su-barashi?”

I figure that’s the planning pitch at Lump of Sugar for this one. Honestly, it’s pretty true to life, and honestly, it’s the right approach. It’s just the delivery that’s off.

I remember Luo Yonghao gave a talk early on about a poster he designed — back before he was making phones:

“Every maverick goes misunderstood, until he comes to Old Luo English.”

That slogan’s actually clever, and Luo explained it: everyone, to some degree, thinks of themselves as a bit of a “maverick.” So whether you’re genuinely one or just another face in the crowd, you always feel like the world doesn’t quite get you, can’t quite make room for your lofty self — so eventually you’ll be willing to come to Old Luo English and find that understanding.

So… even if your game is aimed at loser otaku, please don’t call them loser otaku. Every hikikomori probably secretly thinks that if they’d dropped out, they’d have been the next Bill Gates and made a fortune.

Nobody wants to admit they’re an idiot. Even idiots don’t want to admit they’re idiots.

So this game got torn to shreds on the Japanese boards from the trial version onward…

Didn’t affect me any, though. I just came to ogle Sawasawa Sawa. Plot’s bad, whatever. I’ve seen plenty of bad plots. Besides, judging by the trial, the plot isn’t even bad — just painfully cliché.

Yeah. Painfully cliché. The MC has a little sister. The MC suddenly gets dragged into a school for rich girls. The MC always bumps into girls on the way out the door. The MC always ends up having tea and chatting with girls he runs into… yadda yadda…

Broadly speaking, you can predict 80% of this game’s developments with your dick. The MC flunks his exams, but quickly lucks into a special transfer slot. The MC acts like a lech in class and grabs a girl’s panties, and she doesn’t mind at all. The MC wanders around town and runs into an airhead who’s into him. His little sister loves him too, and even the top-of-the-class student council president keeps flashing him fanservice…

How does any of this happen in real life? To this trash bag of an MC? This game should’ve been called Delusion Relation (妄想リレーション) — that fits way better!

The game carries on Lump of Sugar’s grand tradition of “option systems so complex and flashy it hurts.” Unlike Unmei-sen jou no φ, this time it goes with keyword-plus-branch selection.

What’s that mean? During everyday dialogue, keywords occasionally appear in red, and you hit the search button to add them to the keyword slots — three slots max. Every so often, a big choice comes up, and the options available depend on which keywords you’ve collected…

Basically: the game has a million tiny choices. Only by making the right tiny choices do you earn the right to make the big choice, and only after the big choice can you go fuck a girl silly…

Oh, one thing I forgot: you can’t save during the big choices.

Also, for keywords, apart from a sound effect and the red text, you get no other cue.

Meaning if you’re skipping, you’ll skip right past the keywords — unless you go back and hunt each one down. And once a keyword is missed, your big choice is missing the option you wanted. One misstep, and it all snowballs.

So is there a walkthrough? Sure. Behold:

What the fuck?

There’s also a detailed list below of which events each keyword unlocks. The game has a FlowChart like previous Lump of Sugar titles, but it’s useless.

Also, collecting the right keywords unlocks little interlude scenes between chapters:

Doesn’t help you get laid, though. At each big choice, the game plays out like those old TV “Life: Choose A or B” dramas — pick a different option, get a ratings evaluation. All the little TV sets in the style just keep reminding you you’re watching a drama whose outcome is up to you:

Still doesn’t help.

Now, going by how most galgames work, if you just pick one girl and don’t deliberately screw up, you’ll usually end up on some route. So the first time through, after much labor, I got past the MC’s entrance exam, past the swimsuit episode, past the MC’s public performance at the town’s brick festival, and finally reached the ending, and… something seemed off.

Friend ending? The MC ends up with his friend, and the friend is…

A boy? His CV is Matsuda Risa but he’s definitely a boy! Isn’t this just the bad end from every other galgame? So I went for a second run, and the second run’s ending was even worse:

That’s worse than the bro ending!

So on to the third run, fourth run… fifth run, and that’s when I realized what a clusterfuck this game is.

First, as I said: the route choice happens once per chapter, and during each chapter’s dialogue, keywords pop up. Each chapter gives you three keyword slots, and you fill them, and the options at the chapter’s end branch accordingly — and the options differ depending on the keywords. There seem to be five chapters total. You can’t save during the choices!! Skip ignores keywords.

So either you play through carefully, or you skip and grab keywords to pad your options. And the walkthrough description is wildly inaccurate in places, so one slip and you can’t find the option the guide says — and you can’t save — and you don’t know how to restart — so you pick something at random, and a mismatched route means…

Another bro ending…

At which point the best move after a single wrong pick is to start all the way over… and skipping still takes a good while, and the more impatient you get, the more you forget to pick keywords… and the more you drift toward the bro route.

And even the bro route isn’t that simple. Once, I realized I hadn’t hit an immediate bro end — the route was drifting toward the MC and his friend getting closer and closer, until the MC fucks the friend.

I lost my fucking mind. First time I’ve ever seen a man-fucks-man CG!!!

Then, as if worried you can’t take it, the game says the MC was just imagining it, the friend becomes a girl, and the two fuck.

I’ve already seen the dick, you fuckers. Does changing it back now do anything for me? Huh? Anything???

So I ground through this clusterfuck of a game over and over, and the agonizingly long common route completely wore out my patience. With the appearance of yet another friend ending, I sank into despair.

Around then, people online were still complaining the plot was cliché. For me, cliché was long past irrelevant — I couldn’t even get onto a single girl’s route.

Eventually I gave up and downloaded a 100%-clear save, and found there didn’t seem to be any scene gallery… then found it in the fine print. Turns out it’s just H-scenes — you still can’t see the story. And now I understand why the common route is packed with nudity fanservice: the individual routes are just too goddamn hard to get into!

Perfect. Absolutely perfect!

Sure, you can call Renai Relation’s plot cliché. Sure, you can call its developments retarded. But it has its own premise and it holds together on its own terms. Sure, you can call the system a clusterfuck — but isn’t that exactly the “gameplay in a galgame” I used to flex about chasing? Sure, you can call the branching a tangled mess — though real life, that grand old galgame, branches in ways this thing couldn’t dream of.

End result: apart from fucking one guy, I didn’t score a single girl.

In a word: it’s a hell of a game. I’m just too much of an idiot to handle it.

Yeah. I give up.