Paca Plus Review

The game I played this time is Paca Plus, known as the “alpaca Love Plus.”

Actually, I first saw this game a long, long, long time ago on Acfun—its promo video, which is really just the game’s OP. Various anime news portals picked it up and wrote about it, and plenty of them got it wrong. Like saying the boyfriend is an alpaca, plus slapping on the “hardcore” label every other sentence.

So yesterday, while I was bored and browsing foreign sites, I found a download for this game, and it had an English patch too, so I grabbed it and played. Then I noticed the installer seems to be some Visual Studio packaging thing, and it force-installs .NET Framework 4.0 or it won’t run. The engine is weird too—feels like it’s built from VB.net forms or something, judging by the jagged font edges. Well, apart from that, the rest is fine.

After finishing it, I’m angry at all the sloppy write-ups online. In an era where even Memories Off has to play the split-personality card, and supposedly pure-love titles need 18+ content to sell to horny gentlemen, this is the most pure-love game I’ve ever played.

“If I turned into an alpaca someday, would you still love me?”

The story is pretty fun and gets you thinking. About love—do you love the person, or do you love how they look?

The protagonist is Kazuma. Whether he’s Hoshino Kazuma I don’t know. The heroine is Izumi Yukari (called yukari in the English version), and from the very start they’re already a couple, showing off their love everywhere. There’s a bit of foreshadowing here: the protagonist keeps going on about how much he loves alpacas, saying his love for alpacas is second only to yukari, that he’d even pick alpacas over food. So on August 30th, yukari’s birthday, he wants to surprise her, take her out somewhere, and when he asks where she wants to go, yukari shyly says:

“Kazuma-kun loves alpacas… so let’s go to the alpaca kingdom park out in the suburbs…”

“But it’s your birthday…”

“No no no, I actually like alpacas too. Whatever Kazuma-kun likes, I like…”

What a beautiful conversation!!!! What pure feelings! And then everything changes after they come back from the alpaca park. In the car, the protagonist realizes yukari is gone, replaced by an alpaca…

The alpaca claims to be yukari, Kazuma’s girlfriend. Kazuma is confused, can’t accept it. He quietly observes this thing and finds her behavior is just like yukari’s, including a love of the violin… But everyone around him, including yukari herself, sees her as human. Only Kazuma sees his girlfriend as an alpaca…

Kazuma finally decides he’s going insane. He starts avoiding yukari, lying that he’s busy every day so he doesn’t have to walk home with her. Then one day, yukari calls and asks him out on a date… (Here there’s an option whether to lie and skip it—lying leads to a Bad End.) While on the date, yukari voices her anxiety.

“Kazuma-kun has been acting strange lately. Is there something you want to tell me?”

“Why do you know that?”

“Because you’re the person I love. I’ve been watching you all this time.”

The protagonist is moved. He feels he should be more accepting of yukari, not push her away just because she looks like an alpaca to him. The current yukari is no different from before, except for her appearance…

Feelings shouldn’t be dictated by looks alone.

Then the school festival begins. Yukari practices the violin every day and tells the protagonist she’ll perform a solo at the festival. She’s also helping with the class maid café, but in the afternoon she collapses, and the protagonist takes her to the infirmary. The violin club members tell him that although yukari practiced desperately every day, her performance was cut from the festival program. In the evening, yukari wakes up and asks to talk with the protagonist on the roof.

“Kazuma-kun, I lied to you… Actually, my violin solo for the festival was cut… it was cut a long time ago. But even so, I kept practicing desperately, and it still wasn’t enough… I can’t do anything right. The maid café too—I collapsed and dragged everyone down… I’m useless.”

Then the protagonist finally understands. What he loves is the yukari who hates okra, loves omurice, always thinks of him, and practices violin every day. It has nothing to do with her looks. Besides, he’s the only one who sees her like this—it doesn’t mean yukari is actually broken. He chooses to accept reality, to accept this yukari.

Then he hugs yukari and tells her the truth: that only in his eyes does she look like an alpaca.

“I know it’s hard to believe, and I don’t expect you to believe me, but it’s the truth.”

The next day, yukari calls him to the roof.

“Yesterday I looked in the mirror and checked my body. I still look human… Maybe something’s wrong. But Kazuma-kun, I want to believe you. I want to share this burden with you and find a solution together.”

(If you chose to lie earlier, you get the Bad End here: yukari breaks up with him, the protagonist abducts her, takes her home, kills her, and spends every day grinning at the corpse…)

Next, the two of them run to the alpaca kingdom park endlessly, trying everything, with no results. Finally, the protagonist hears a rumor at the café where he works about the heroine’s grandmother and grandfather…

“They say yukari’s grandmother once looked like an alpaca to someone too. I always thought that was a joke…”

With a clue in hand, the protagonist and heroine search the basement of her house and find the grandmother’s diary, which records the cause and the truth.

When the grandmother was 16 (I can’t remember if it was her father or herself, but the diary is definitely written from the first-person perspective of yukari’s grandmother Aoi), she killed a female alpaca because she thought it was ugly and not cute.

The female alpaca’s mate witnessed this. Afterward, the male alpaca spat at the perpetrator (alpacas really do spit…) and screamed wildly…

Later, yukari’s grandmother Aoi had a dream. A voice told her that what she had done required punishment, and a curse descended.

On the 16th birthday of her and her descendants, the person they deeply love will see them as an alpaca.

So yukari’s grandmother met many seemingly nice men, but every one of them ran away after falling for her… Until one day, yukari’s grandfather appeared and fell in love with Aoi at first sight.

Aoi thought she could never love again, shouldn’t love again, and kept rejecting his feelings. But in the end she fell for him. Just when she thought her feelings would be destroyed by the alpaca curse, yukari’s grandfather said:

“Well… an alpaca, huh. Looks pretty cute to me…”

He didn’t care about Aoi’s appearance; he accepted yukari. And then one day, Aoi’s curse vanished…

The way to break the curse is to find someone who truly loves you—loves you, not your face.

The diary ends there.

Understanding the cure, the protagonist hugs yukari and gives the alpaca-faced yukari a deep kiss…

The curse vanishes, and yukari returns to her human form.

Then the game inserts a really beautiful ED. Very moving.

The final ending needs no explanation—of course they get married!

I think the story is fine as described, and it’s absolutely not hardcore. There’s Zhuangzi’s butterfly dream in ancient times, Shrek nowadays, the Frog Prince, and Saya no Uta—this kind of fairy-tale beautiful love story is completely healing to me. Sure, the OP is a bit deceptive and tries to create hype to sell, but I still have to say the story itself is very healing, very pure love.

The heroine’s CV is probably some unknown person from the doujin circle, and the developers say they’re a doujin group. Even so, the game’s quality is decent. The character designs are fine, the music is OK, and the system, though heavily VS.net-flavored, was at least written by themselves. Way better than some shitty games out there… like this one and this one.

The game should have several endings. I only got two Bad Ends and one Happy End. One Happy End probably has the protagonist turn into an alpaca and run across the steppes with the heroine or something… Another has the protagonist straight-up marry the alpaca… I’d rather believe that’s just bad taste, because the choices are obvious—just don’t lie to her and you get the true ending.

The Bad Ends are well done too. No separate CGs, but the heroine’s monologue is great… like when she finds out the protagonist lied to her…

The ED is great. The melody is similar to Natsuzora Kanata but different. The singer is the heroine’s CV, but I can’t find a download. The doujin group is probably too small; I only recently found out they released a compilation album at C86…

The kicker is, after finishing the English version, I found out this thing already has a Chinese translation… Whatever. English was no problem anyway. The English seems to be officially provided by the game, with a very limited vocabulary—as limited as mine—so I could understand it without trouble. There’s also a sequel and a prequel. The prequel is the story of the protagonist and heroine falling in love, and the sequel is the story of the heroine turning into an alpaca again… I want to say, “Devs, that’s enough!”

Finally, some thoughts of my own:

This is an era that judges by looks. Judging by looks isn’t wrong—appearance is how people form first impressions, and often only with that initial attraction can something start. But once you get to know someone deeply, if you’re still only looking at the face… you can’t really call that love.

Whether you love the person or the appearance is an endless debate. This game can’t settle it either, but it can at least move you a little…