Imouto Paradise! 3 (妹ぱらだいす!3) Review

Last October in Beijing, when Fengniu Jushi Zhu Niubi treated me to guanchang at the Dongsi Minfang restaurant, he asked me a question:

“Your blog’s pretty badass these days, huh?” “Badass my ass. There’s exactly one badass thing about my blog.” “Where?” “Open Google, search for the keyword ‘妹ぱらだいす2’, and see who’s first.” “Search for what? Ichimoto… what?” “It’s Japanese!”

So I guided Zhu Niubi through searching “妹ぱらだいす2”, and after seeing the first result, even Zhu Niubi couldn’t help but marvel:

“Badass, badass, badass. Truly badass.” “Right? That’s the one badass thing about my blog, though I don’t know how to explain it.”

So thanks to my blog’s inexplicable bond with “妹ぱらだいす”, this month “妹ぱらだいす!3” has also come out. I’m not a siscon, but not playing it would just feel wrong, you know?

妹ぱらだいす!, a.k.a. “Imouto Paradise”, literally means “little sister paradise”. This game is interesting — three generations have come out so far, but all three look… basically identical.

Of course I can’t say that absolutely. What I mean is, the heroine designs across all three are exactly the same.

Here’s the third gen:

Here’s the second gen:

Here’s the first gen:

You can see it’s basically the same colors, even the eye colors haven’t changed, and the personalities don’t seem to have changed either. Pink hair is the gentle one, black hair is the sharp-tongued one, blue hair is the tsundere, blonde is the energetic one, yellow hair is the shy one… wait, what the hell…

I think I’ve said this before:

Whatever, whatever. My assessment of the “妹ぱらだいす!” series is this:

So you get it now, right? What this game basically is? And the dev team seems to have no intention of changing anything — it’s deliberate, if anything. If there’s a “妹ぱらだいす!4”, I bet it’ll be the same damn thing.

You might say the first and second 妹ぱらだいす! are obviously different. Fine, you can say that — the second added a character, gave the visuals and systems a huge upgrade, added lots of funny faces, and most importantly added jokes to the story. The first 妹ぱらだいす! was a pure nukige where the sisters just spout dirty jokes, while the second had more snark, closer in style to the “Left Hand Forbidden” series. So what the hell is this third one?

First, the visuals. I can say there’s basically no improvement.

If the art style evolved 30% between the first and second, then between the second and third they just hired some other artist to trace over the second gen’s characters. Yes, trace. Harshly put, it looks like officially sanctioned fan art. For instance, the heroine’s pose is just flipped, nothing else changed — oh right, the hair ornaments, maybe?

Left is the second gen’s heroine #1, right is the third gen’s heroine #1. The other characters are basically the same too, so I won’t list them all.

Aside from the visuals not improving (let’s call it standing still), the voice cast has clearly regressed. The first game had the great siscon-voiced Kiritani Hana’s good friend Uehara Aoi from Tanegashima, and the second had another great one, Kinoshita Yaya, or failing that, Tachibana Mao. So who’s in the third? The only one who can carry it is Hanazawa Sakura. Speaking of Hanazawa Sakura, she’s finally made it big lately — lots of people have retired, the veterans are washed up, even Sendai Obasan has lost her dominance, so Hanazawa Sakura is rising. Personally I find her voice a bit “annoying”, probably a lingering impression from Kami no Ue Mahou Tsukai, but overall she’s not unlikeable — at least I’d pick her over Sendai Obasan. Still, having only one decent VA in the whole game is unacceptable. Everyone besides Hanazawa Sakura is flat-out reading off the script.

Alright, the visuals are standing still, the voice acting regressed. What about the rest? Systems and script?

The systems are the same as the previous game — a little endoscope view during HCGs (and you can drag it, for fuck’s sake), plus emote effects. But the effects are so stiff, and that little endoscope thing uses the same one for every scene, I think. It’s just a dick pumping away inside, at best from a different angle — feels super lazy. The whole control scheme is standard MoonStone company stuff, no changes at all. Pure copy-paste.

There are also bugs. For instance, “blocks” often appear in the dialogue. At first I thought they were “口” characters, then I realized — these are emojis, but the game’s default font doesn’t support them, and switching to Microsoft YaHei didn’t help either. No idea if Japanese Windows has this problem.

Finally, let’s talk about the script. As a siscon pure-love game, I don’t really get siscon — I’m not a siscon like Arthur Hu — but purely in terms of story, this entry is a massive step backwards.

The first game had lots of hardcore play, the second became a moe work with lots of jokes in the dialogue that were pretty fun. By the third, the game has fully returned to its essence as fap material. Nothing worth seeing.

The basic formula: first all the sisters are introduced, the protagonist says “This summer Mom and Dad aren’t home, I’m gonna work hard and bed my sisters!”, then it branches into routes.

In the branching routes you pick who to see each day, and from the very first choice there’s an HCG (yes, the first choice, no buildup at all). Every time you get a scene, every time you choose whether to creampie, and every time the protagonist finishes he goes again — his stamina is jaw-dropping, better than mine.

Then it’s endless formula: a common event triggers midway — sisters go watch fireworks, attend a festival, go to the beach — then after the common event there’s a personal event where you pick one for a scene (mostly two rounds). Repeat, repeat, repeat about seven times, then enter the individual route.

There’s not much to say about the individual routes — just one big event. If you pick the eldest sister, since she normally cooks and takes care of the family, the sisters make her a meal to comfort her for her hard work. That’s about it.

And then…?

Then one scene and it’s over! I already forgot whether the protagonist announces his relationship to the other sisters. The second game did announce it; the third just skips it, probably. After all, getting the harem route is even easier now — just stay in your room during each choice and you become the harem king.

Overall, Imouto Paradise! 3 is a lazy step backwards, probably a quick cash grab. It’s not terrible quality per se — if you haven’t played the first two, this one will satisfy you fine. But if you know what the first two were like, like I do, this “remaster” leaves you with complicated feelings.

That said, it’s not completely devoid of novelty. The ED is nice to listen to, though who knows if they’ll sell the OST. Buying this game’s OST would still feel like a heavy lift.

I’m not a siscon, but I’ve played plenty of works with siscon protagonists. I wanted to shout “Siscon is the best!” again for this game, but then I thought about it and realized I’d already forgotten the protagonist’s name.

My gut tells me Imouto Paradise! 3 will probably get an anime adaptation too. Maybe then I’ll get to hear the heroine say the protagonist’s name out loud?