“Why did it end up like this… A perfectly good moe nukige brand, just like that, dead…”

Miagete Goran, Yozora no Hoshi o is PullTop’s release from the end of this year. Honestly I hadn’t really touched this company’s games before — well, that’s not quite right either. What I’d played were mostly works from its sub-brands, like Natsu Iro Recipe, like Koisuru Natsu no Last Resort… The company did have that one pretty impressive game, Kono Oozora ni, Tsubasa o Hirogete, but I never got around to playing it. The marketing angle from the start was “same staff as Kono Oozora ni, Tsubasa o Hirogete,” with the theme being staring up at the stars and astronomical observation. Unlike the earlier plane-building game, this one locks its season to winter, around Christmas, which fit nicely with a December release. Ah — actually I wrote a big long intro for this and then realized I’d accidentally turned it into smut again, so let me just get straight to impressions. Keep going like this and there’s no turning back from the road of filth. Put simply: as a visual novel, this game is very good. But as a game “about astronomical observation,” it falls a bit short.

There’s a line literary types like to throw around: “Life should include a trip you take on a whim—pack your bag, hit the road, get away from the city noise, and find inner peace.” Honestly, that’s not wrong. Most of the time even when we do travel, we lose the fun to planning and second-guessing, so one carefree trip really can be a decent way to blow off steam. Unfortunately, I hate traveling… Or rather, I hate traveling in China.