Suki to Suki to de Sankaku Ren'ai (スキとスキとでサンカク恋愛) Review

Asa Project, a company that used to be pretty damn good.

They’re under Hook, I think. They made a name for themselves with Renai 0 Kilometer, then kept the style going with ひとつ飛ばし恋愛 and later Purumai Wars… and then this year they put out Suki to Suki de Sankaku Renai.

Before I get into the new one, let’s walk through how Asa Project’s games have evolved…

Renai 0 Kilometer is unquestionably a good game. Distinctive, built around a “family swap” premise, taking the usual romance elements and piling on a ton of light comedy, plus a character who served as the designated “face art” mascot. It was fun and easy to play, and on the individual routes you still got some girlish charm and family warmth. Even the later cash-grab PSP route at least told a coherent story, and I think the Asumi Kana character was solid too…

Then came ひとつ飛ばし恋愛. Maybe Asa Project figured the previous game’s好评 was all down to the face art, so this time they wrote an even more unhinged character. Her face art and gag routine never stopped from start to finish—the moment she showed up, the conversation could no longer proceed normally. Obviously that was overdoing it. But thankfully ひとつ飛ばし恋愛’s premise was “indirect romance”—dating someone one person removed, falling for your friend’s friend—and that setup could support a love triangle. The main heroine was voiced by Mizuhashi, and the romance plot wasn’t half bad, so you felt there was still something sweet in there besides the face-art lunatic. Overall a step down from Renai 0 Kilometer (because the face art went too far), but at least it kept the old style. Diehard fans wouldn’t be too upset, right?

Next up: プラマイウォーズ. Maybe Asa Project realized their mistake. Face art is good, but don’t overindulge. So Purumai Wars went back to the “family cohabitation” type—still two families clashing, but this time one side is “refined” and the other is “low-class,” and the humor comes from that. Actually Asa Project held back here; the face-art character is roughly at Renai 0 Kilometer’s Nokia level. The gags, though, already felt a bit forced. The premise itself started to seem unimportant. You’re told one side is refined and the other isn’t, but when you start romancing the girls, you find both sides are the same… By the second half, the “low-class” people aren’t so irredeemable either—everyone’s actually nice, the conflict only exists in the first half of the common route, and after that it’s a normal romance galgame. The face-art character doesn’t stay a lunatic from start to finish like in the previous game, and the protagonist doesn’t get lines like “I’d rather fuck lubricant than fuck you.” Still, that face-art character starts getting weird—after you capture her, she loses all her face art and true nature, turning into a nonstop blushing clown. They wanted to make her “cute” but really couldn’t pull it off… Fortunately Purumai Wars had the real older sister as the main heroine, which saved the romance elements. The sister route is still pretty good, so Purumai Wars does have its highlights…

Then in 2016, Asa Project released Suki to Suki de Sankaku Renai. The premise is suspiciously similar to ひとつ飛ばし恋愛—it’s “love triangles with one person in between.” In ひとつ飛ばし恋愛 you could only romance the person one step removed; the one in between was unromanceable. In Suki to Suki de Sankaku Renai that barrier is removed—the in-between person is also romanceable—and it’s billed as a triangle relationship. There are two little sisters, a childhood friend and her friend, etc., etc…

The story is set in the protagonist’s school club “B-ken,” which is basically a bunch of otaku guys and girls gathering to talk about anime, games, and manga… The focus returns to a traditional school club: doing club activities, chatting, snarking, and then the protagonist picks whoever looks good and romances them…

Suki to Suki de Sankaku Renai also upgraded its system. They got rid of stupid stuff like “Save Load” and “Save Slot” and switched to a Bookmark save system, which is an improvement. It also supports route search and various quick replay queries—that’s progress. But this game, like fucking Purumai Wars before it, doesn’t support touchscreens. I don’t fucking get it. The engine is the same, all your sibling companies are fine, why can’t you do it? I have to use a Surface pen to play, so people watching me think I’m doing art or something. It’s a pain in the ass.

So the system is upgraded, the setting returns to school and clubs. If Asa Project just keeps a steady pace, could Suki to Suki de Sankaku Renai reach the heights of Renai 0 Kilometer?

Maybe. But that premise doesn’t hold, because in this game Asa Project starts experimenting again.

In Suki to Suki de Sankaku Renai, the routes split into “little sister route” and “romance route.” The little sister route is a love triangle between you and the two sisters, and the romance route is a triangle between you, your childhood friend, and her classmate…

But no matter which side you pick, you won’t find any “love triangle,” because once you select the right options, the losing character basically comes out within 20 minutes and announces she’s giving up—faster than Hillary after the election.

Also, the character writing is bad. How bad? The dialogue is stupid. Yes, we know this is Asa Project, the dialogue should be parody and snark, and Suki to Suki de Sankaku Renai’s common route does have some of that. But… this time it’s all “otaku” content. Otaku content is fine—everyone playing galge is an otaku… The problem is the otaku content is limited by the writer. The childhood friend Maho is set up as a fighting game fan, but clearly the writer doesn’t know much about fighting games and glosses over it. The senior Shiona is set up as a female otaku who plays eroge, but hilariously the writer doesn’t describe eroge much either. By the later part of Shiona’s route, she spends 80% of the time drawing doujinshi and 20% playing online games…

So what’s the most common “otaku” topic in the common route? Anime. アニメ. Anime.

Late-night anime, that is. I don’t know how much the writer fucking loves Girls und Panzer, but there’s a ton of discussion about it, even extending to whether otaku like fanservice shows, whether they like moe shows, whether Girls und Panzer is about “friendship” and “striving” or about “cute girls,” etc…

Honestly, this content isn’t a big deal. But if you frequent Reddit, these conversations feel like they’re missing something… After all, Reddit is full of this stuff. Japanese players even argue about “what makes a hit show”—one says “before we discuss what’s popular, let’s fight about what popular even means.” That conversation existed on Reddit two years ago. And Reddit follows Japan anyway, so if it’s only showing up in a game now, you can imagine how outdated the memes are…

And there’s another awkward situation: I don’t know if anyone else is like me—plays a lot of galge, watches very little late-night anime, maybe hasn’t even seen Girls und Panzer. I saw on ErogameScape that some Japanese players are the same, saying they don’t watch much anime, so even though there’s a lot of related dialogue, they don’t get the references…

Honestly, I don’t get a lot of it either. Some I do get, and those references are old—Genshiken Nidaime from a few years ago had deeper and fresher material than this…

The other huge problem with this game is the massive weakening of the traditional “face art” character.

Asa Project always has one character dedicated to going crazy and being funny. This time it’s probably Shiona, the eroge-loving senior. But her common route performance is really weak (compared to previous games). After her initial appearance where she pitches eroge to the protagonist, she mostly just shows up to snark at high speed and then retreats… Still, Shiona is the engine of this game’s plot, along with two side characters—a fujoshi and a fat girl (former). It’s hard to imagine how miserable the common route would be without these three…

Yes, without these three, the common route would be unwatchable. And beyond the common route, the individual routes are also unwatchable… In Shiona’s route, her personality is portrayed pretty realistically—otaku, doesn’t want to see people, full of fantasies, dirty-minded, talks lewdly… etc.

But that’s exactly what makes otaku disgusting

So ironically, your romance target is like this, and sometimes you feel disgusted too. In her personal route, Shiona completely loses the shameless behavior from the common route and becomes endlessly shy and withdrawn, with a goofy expression so goofy you can barely stand it. This pattern already appeared in the previous game Purumai Wars—the face-art character there was the same… The only romance route that saved that game was the sister’s.

However, the only route in Suki to Suki de Sankaku Renai with any decent romance is the childhood friend Narutaki Maho, the fighting game fan… I can only say Ui did her best. The character is fundamentally flawed—the writer made her a fighting game fan but also a tsundere, which is contradictory. In the end, all that’s left is Maho being tsundere and cute… Orders of magnitude worse than the previous game…

But even so, it’s still the most playable… compared to those two useless little sister routes…

So a Japanese player gave a pretty funny ranking of this game’s routes…

Maho > Shiona »»»»» Uncrossable Wall »»»»» Nana > Suzu

Meaning, aside from Maho and Shiona, the other routes are completely unplayable. And even Maho and Shiona’s routes can’t compete with the previous games. Overall it’s a complete regression.

What? I didn’t mention the little sister routes? Those two sisters are probably the dumbest sisters I’ve ever seen. Their dialogue is idiotic, they’re idiots in the common route, and later they’re like those random extras in late-night anime who pop up to say “まじひくわー” in unison. They’re not main characters at all. Did Asa Project get brain damage and decide to try a “little sister pure love route” and produce this…?

Then I suddenly remembered: Suki to Suki de Sankaku Renai’s premise is supposed to be “love triangle.” I tried to recall—did the game ever actually say “love triangle”? Did it really not…?

You can’t exactly say it didn’t. It’s about the level of apologizing to the other person after you start dating. No inner conflict, no inner struggle, no love triangle drama. Yeah, it’s that harmonious. I don’t think that counts as a love triangle.

Honestly, from ひとつ飛ばし恋愛 to プラマイウォーズ to Suki to Suki de Sankaku Renai, the weight of “planning” and “premise” in Asa Project games keeps getting lighter…

How to put it—they tell you at the start this is “the story of such and such,” then you start playing and find it’s still daily banter plus the face-art character showing off her lower limits. The promised story gets thrown out the window. Maybe that’s Asa Project’s style, but unfortunately, in Suki to Suki de Sankaku Renai even that style is almost gone… I didn’t capture a single reaction image…

So what’s left for Asa Project this time…? Seems like just the OP and ED, which are still listenable…

I think if Asa Project can’t write pure romance well, or doesn’t want to, then don’t. Go back to the ひとつ飛ばし恋愛 style where they go all out with reaction images. Of course, if they want to write pure romance, they can learn from Hook’s early works… But no matter which way they go…

I think it’s time to take your planning department out back, and while you’re at it, bring SMEE’s planning department too.

It’s useless anyway.

What? The planner and writer are the same person? Then just fire the background artist…

As long as we have the family-recipe cafe background, that’s enough, right?