Qie Ting Qin Yu (且听琴语) Review

Qie Ting Qin Yu (且听琴语) is a game that Steam’s front page recommended to me while I was in a mood, telling me it was only 6 yuan.

Not that I haven’t seen my share of 6-yuan Chinese-made visual novels. I just never had much interest, because with a lot of them you can tell the route they’re taking at a glance, or you can tell they’re ripping off some Japanese game. I personally have high hopes for Chinese visual novels. It’s just that most of them fundamentally struggle to give off the impression that “we’re seriously making this,” and instead seem to be thinking of nothing more than making a quick buck, stirring up some buzz, and cashing in big. That’s all.

So Qie Ting Qin Yu still felt a bit fresh to me. First, the art style was decent. Second, the setting and the CVs. Never mind the art—the CVs really surprised me. A Chinese-made game, yet almost all the characters are Japanese by setting, and the CVs are genuine Japanese people too. A lot of people probably find it weird for Chinese developers to make a game with a Japanese setting and hire Japanese voice actors. I personally don’t. Look at Japan—they’ve had Germans and French people speaking Japanese for years, and I haven’t seen anyone in Europe protesting, right? Everyone’s still shouting “banzai” at Nordic big-breasted armored knights. Besides, Chinese-made games with a Japanese flavor have actually been pretty good these past few years; some have even been exported back to Japan. Haven’t you seen how many Japanese otaku have learned to say “thanks, eggplant” while yelling “shoot it”? So as long as the game is good, I think either a Japanese or Chinese setting is acceptable.

Plus the art looked decent, the CVs were bound to be better than the cringe-inducing domestic chatter level, and the music seemed to have Japanese outside help too. Even if the scenario was only at the level of a Guo Jingming, I figured it’d still be the peak of Chinese-made stuff…

Of course, after playing the game, I felt… I was still too naive.

Let’s start with the good points:

The game’s biggest strength is probably the CVs. Whether it’s Shiraishi Ryōko, Nonaka Ai, or Tachibana Sakura, they all perform well in their roles—though I suppose that’s only natural. The game displays excellently on high-resolution screens; I tried it on a 2K screen and the output was very crisp, far above the level of most Japanese studios that still tout FullHD support as a selling point. The OP is decent enough, though I couldn’t make out the lyrics. Some of the CGs are drawn really well, with some thoughtful composition. There are still traces of copying Japanese style, but at least it’s at a good level…

The game’s… uh… that… um… and also…

Sorry, I wanted to say more good things, but I genuinely can’t think of any more. Ah! Right, the price. 6 yuan—the cost of an extra topping on a jianbing. Compared to Japanese games that still charge you 2000 yen even after a discount, it’s stupidly cheap.

As you’d expect, now that we’re done with the good points, let’s talk about the bad:

1. The game runs like crap

I was stunned the first time I launched it… a big Unity logo. The Personal Edition, no less.

This is the first time I’ve seen anyone use Unity to make a visual novel. I’ve racked my brain and I still can’t figure out what advantage Unity brings to a visual novel. Maybe it’s easier to port to tablets? And the game doesn’t even have any 3D scenes. It’s pure 2D content, yet it eats system resources like a 3D game. The OP probably uses some real-time rendering tech—my crappy tablet stuttered so badly I couldn’t even see it clearly. Maybe I need to switch to my desktop that I use for PUBG. The game does support high-res screens well, but only for background CGs and character sprites—the game’s menus still don’t scale.

And the game system has all sorts of bugs in weird places. For example, the “Auto” mode doesn’t work. I originally planned to turn on Auto and leave it running while I played Arena of Valor on my phone, but Auto mode would stop after two lines, stop after two lines, and I had to keep clicking Auto endlessly. Incidentally, the game gives no indication of whether you’re in Auto Mode or Skip Mode. Sure, you can probably tell with Skip Mode, but whether Auto Mode is on… good luck.

2. The sprites’ faces are nice… yeah, nice faces

I’d say the art style is at least above second-rate among Japanese visual novels. As an example, it’s about on the level of Kage no Umi no Apeiria, which was pretty popular among Japanese visual novels a while back. The gap between this and first-rate is in the details. The characters’ faces in the sprites look fine—front views are good, most CGs are good, but some detailed expressions look fake, and side profiles look broken. The worst offender is the side profile of the second heroine, Shiratori Yūko—it doesn’t look like the same person.

I know I can’t demand too much from Chinese artists, but still… Chinese artists’ skill levels should have gone up these past few years, right? Where improvements can be made, make them.

The really awkward part of the sprites is the character animation. A lot of the movements are the “head stays still while the body twists” kind. This is even more noticeable with the first heroine, Roi, whose body moves constantly—it looks incredibly awkward. I wonder if it’s because…

(abandoned here) Rewrote it:

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