AMUSE CRAFT seems like a pretty based company — at least they’ve got several pretty goated game brands under their belt, and a few pretty goated artists willing to work with them, plus they can pull in a lot of famous industry names, Shinjima Yū included. Oh right, this company also loves to open new brand aliases for no reason. Weren’t both of Shinjima Yū’s works released under new aliases that got thrown away after one use? So this time they’ve opened another new alias called CRYSTALiA, and very pretentiously announced that the codename for this new game is: Katana, which means “sword” in Japanese. So the full name of this game codenamed “Katana” is this painfully cringe “Kizuna Kirameku Koi Iroha.” I don’t even know how to translate it into Chinese properly — something like “shining bonds sprouting love,” I guess.

HanaHime * Absolute! was announced back in 2014, then delayed, delayed, and delayed until now. Nobody’s heard of the developer Mira, but if you look at the intro and OP, you’ll get a strong sense of déjà vu. Where have I seen this before? That’s right—Twinkle Crusaders (ティンクル☆くるせいだ). Same artist, same system, same coloring style, same OP animation director, same OP music… basically this is the spiritual successor to Twinkle Crusaders (I’m using “spiritual successor” correctly, right?). And since it’s a spiritual successor, you know Twinkle Crusaders was a game built around its combat system, so HanaHime * Absolute! is also combat-focused. As for the story? Who the hell cares…

I downloaded Koiken Otome (恋剣乙女) ages ago, heard the story was pretty mid, and never finished it. Then recently I was startled to hear that Shimura Yumi is retiring from voice acting for good… Which reminded me that Inoue Hana is also in Koiken Otome, so I grabbed it to wallow in nostalgia for a bit. So how is this game… yeah, exactly as expected, pretty mid. Not that it has zero bright spots. Worth mentioning in passing: Koiken Otome has an FD called Koiken Otome Sainen (恋剣乙女～再燃～). My personal advice is to play both together, because if you only play the main game the story just ends on a wet fart…

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.

fortissimo EXS//Akkord:nächsten Phase is a visual novel developed by la’cryma… I’ve played la’cryma’s early games! I even own physical copies! I’m talking about this one! But then this company called la’cryma apparently took something weird, because they suddenly cranked out a game absolutely dripping with chuuni energy, and they’ve been milking that one game for years. I looked it up—this studio has ties to Circus… so of course they inherited the fine tradition… First came the all-ages fortissimo//Akkord:Bsusvier Then fortissimoEXA//Akkord:Bsusvier, which added two routes and a final boss fight Then fortissimo EXS//Akkord:nächsten Phase, which took the previous version and added 18+ content And recently there’s the PSV version, Kadenz fermata//Akkord:fortissimo, which throws in artificial science-magic and what’s probably new story content Pit after pit, and I should mention I’m the type who gets suckered in by game OPs. If an OP looks good, it’s love at first sight with a girl. So when I saw fortissimo’s absolutely banger OP, I jumped right into this pit.