Although I enjoyed Saga Planets’ game from last year, HanaSaki Work Spring! (man, the katakana part of that title is a pain to remember), and considered it a well-rounded game with “no real flaws in the story,” “very entertaining daily conversations,” “cute heroines,” “some standout music,” and “art definitely worth checking out,” I had a bad feeling about the company’s new release this year, Floral Flowlove, from the very start. So, at first it was described as a “ojou-sama-related” game, which already sounded boring to me. After all, when you hear “ojou-sama,” you think of the kind of thing from Note company—gorgeous style, cultured ladies, and the protagonist either infiltrates or lives a luxurious high-society life as a young master. I had no interest in that kind of setup. Then the full title, character designs, and setting were revealed, and I was completely let down… “あの日、俺は天使を見た” “That day… I saw an angel.” And then the story was the usual cliché setup: the protagonist at an elite school surrounded by all kinds of ojou-samas, especially the main heroine who reeked of desperate affection. I saw the scenario was by Tōta, a regular for Yuzusoft, and I even thought about ignoring this game entirely… Later the OP movie was released. Honestly, it was several orders of magnitude worse than HanaSaki Work Spring!’s. Many of the girls didn’t do anything for me; it was pure moege vibes, the simplest and most粗暴 kind of moege. But then I thought, I didn’t want to give up on Saga Planets just yet, so I tried the trial version. It turned out there was some substance there, including quite a bit of religious content. And I suddenly realized that the one who shone in the trial wasn’t the heroine who looked laughably desperate, but the foreign princess, Aa-chan. As for the other characters, they seemed just as dumb as expected. “If the full game digs into this religion and princess theme, maybe it’ll be salvageable.” With that thought, I played the full version, intending to “just do the princess route and stop.” I had zero interest in the other characters, and they didn’t seem to have much screen time anyway. But man, once I started, I couldn’t stop. I did the princess route, then went through all the other routes, and finally stayed up all night to finish the True End. And my opinion of the game during that playthrough was like a roller coaster—low to high, high to low, then low to high again… This is the first game that gave me such a wild ride and made me slap my own face repeatedly. ISLAND was similar, but that was the writer deliberately showing off, so it’s a different type.

Never thought I’d ever have bragging rights, though honestly it just makes me look like a hopeless case. So at the end of the year I thought I’d check how many galge I played this year. Big mistake… 80. Yeah. Bundling the split-up releases together would lower that number a bit. Honestly, I don’t even like galge. I’ve said this more than once: I play them because I hate half-finished anime productions, hate the dumbass plots of light novels, hate the endless circular storytelling of light novel and manga serializations. The only place I can get my Japanese-style fix and a clean, fast story conclusion is a galge—rarely do you see a galge end with “wait for the next volume,” and, bluntly, in a game the protagonist always ends up banging a girl instead of waffling between an ever-growing harem. I hate being called a “landmine checker” and I hate it when people read my impressions and go “I like big dicks and big tits, if you’re playing adult games don’t act all high and mighty”—but somehow I ended up playing this many anyway. So people say: you’ve played so many, you should recommend a few. Thinking back over the year, there really aren’t many that deserve the word “面白い.” Most have janky art and nonsensical stories. Recommending the better ones spreads the gospel and saves people some detours—that’s worthwhile. I’ve already eaten shit; sure, part of me enjoys watching others fall into the same pit, but I’d rather watch the ugly bastards who read my warning and dive in anyway. So let’s go. No particular order, just as they come to mind.

While I was playing Yuzusoft’s Sanoba Witch, I was already aware of HanaSaki Work Spring!, the new release from SAGA PLANETS. Turns out I’ve somehow played two games from this studio already — Hatsuyuki Sakura and Kisaragi Gold Star. The former was pretty good, the latter was a total trap. And it’s worth noting that Hatsuyuki Sakura was good partly thanks to the music and the way the story was arranged; Kisaragi Gold Star is closer to the studio’s actual average. So I hesitated for a moment about whether to play this game that reeked of moege from a mile away — maybe 30 seconds of hesitation — then I saw Sawasawa Sawa in the CV list and jumped right in…