Every SAGA PLANETS game follows the same formula: individual routes scatter the pieces of the main story, then a GRAND END ties all the threads together and walks you to the true ending. They’ve done this in several of their titles, from Hatsuyuki Sakura to Kisaragi GOLD STAR to Hanasaki Work Spring! and Floral Flowlove. Roughly: the character routes screw around, maybe drop a hint about the main plot at the very end, and only after you’ve cleared every route does the game unlock the entrance to the real story, the TRUE END. Honestly the structure isn’t bad. It’s kind of interesting, it builds suspense. But it doesn’t fit every kind of story, and SAGA PLANETS has tripped over this formula more than once, or at least failed to deliver the payoff it deserves. Those games tend to be slice-of-life stuff with a weak main plot, where it feels like “we made a main plot because we need a main plot.” In other words, the route lock is completely unnecessary. It’s a moe game. You don’t need to force-hide a main story and a so-called “truth” behind it. When you finally see it you don’t go “oh, mind blown” — you go “that’s it?” Reverse effect. In recent years SAGA PLANETS’ choice of premises has gotten less and less interesting. Last year’s Floral Flowlove was themed around “ojousama,” young ladies, which made it look like ENSEMBLE had possessed the company (and of course, in the end the story had nothing to do with ojousama). And when this year’s game was announced I felt the same way: it’s called Kin’iro Loveriche, and the theme is “blonde hair.” Every heroine is blonde. At first glance it looks like it exists to satisfy some specific fetish. I personally don’t like blondes, and I haven’t noticed many people who do (silver hair, I’ve seen people into that). Blond-haired men are never any good either. The whole thing felt kind of nonsensical to me — but based on my prior experience with SAGA PLANETS, this “blonde” had to be a decoy, and there’d be a GRAND END at the end, 99% unrelated to gold hair. After finishing the game, I figure I was half right and half wrong.

Tearjerker stories, everyone thinks they’re so moving. So the moment you say tearjerker, naturally someone’s gotta die. There are a thousand ways to kill someone off, but the handiest is terminal illness. Blaming it on terminal illness is super convenient—everyone can just curse how unfair the heavens are. So of course visual novels use terminal illness too. One fairly well-known one was Dekinai Watashi ga, Kurikaesu.. What did I think of that game… one word: trash. So the same staff went and made a new one, still about terminal illness: Inochi no Spare I was born for you. What did I think of this one… still trash. Actually, it’s even worse than the last one…