Nekoneko Soft games always leave me not knowing what to say. First off, they usually have a solid scenario, most of the time by Kataoka Tomo. I won’t deny he can tell a story, and most of it is told in an approachable, faintly sorrowful way that slowly gets you tearing up. It’s mostly positive stuff — cherish the people around you, love life and its little beauties, that kind of thing. But the other annoying thing about Nekoneko Soft is the art. They always go to this guy Akino Takehiko, and the characters he draws… sometimes they clear the bar, and sometimes they’re genuinely ugly. I looked at his doujinshi and honestly they weren’t bad, so why does it come out so rough once it’s in a game? Some of the heroines end up with those pork-kidney faces, looking like Zhao Benshan. Painfully awkward. So I kept going back and forth, and I did play some Nekoneko Soft games plus stuff from their sub-brands. The story side is generally fine; the art style is just a bit rough. Probably the coloring’s fault. Anyway, Nekoneko Soft has a new game out. They actually put out a new title this year called Ramune 2, but I didn’t play it. I mean Ruri no Kasane: Imouto Monogatari, which came out last month. Honestly I don’t get the title, especially the “kasane” part. No idea if it means “overlapping” like I think it does. Not that it matters, since the subtitle already tells you everything: imouto monogatari. A story about a little sister.

Alcot is supposedly on its deathbed. First the pillar of the studio, illustrator Yushi Ninomura, up and quit — went home to play gacha games. So this year Alcot put out nothing but a cash-grab FD for LoveREC with a handful of new CGs, plus an even more blatant cash-grab, Clover Days Plus, which is just the HCGs converted to Emote. The Chinese patch shipped same-day, if that tells you anything. But even if the main studio is finished, they’ve still got the sub-label Alcot Honey Comb, which tends to put out bolder stuff. I’ve played plenty of theirs — Shunkai Gentei, Mujikaku Mirai, that sort of thing — and this time we get something with a very different flavor: Satukoi Yuukyuu Naru Koi no Uta. I say “different flavor” because most Alcot games give off a slice-of-life, comedy-heavy vibe. Genuinely sad ones are rare (not that they don’t exist — that Shinigami no Kiss thing at the start probably counts as sad too). So Satukoi Yuukyuu Naru Koi no Uta shows up waving the banner of “a romance between predator and prey.” Everything up to here was made up. I can’t keep it going, so I’ll just be honest: the reason I’m playing a 2014 game is that I was bored listening to music on YouTube, heard the OP, thought it sounded interesting, and picked it up.