《Miagete Goran, Yozora no Hoshi o (見上げてごらん、夜空の星を)》— I’ve already forgotten what year it originally came out. Still, that game left a pretty strong impression on me. I remember it was winter, deep winter, around December. I was curled up under the covers and blasted through the game from the prologue to the OP in one sitting. Watching the protagonist finish building the telescope and do that first stargazing session together, with that hype OP playing — man, it hit me. The thing I remember most is the soundtrack and the staging. Most scenes are at night, mostly quiet music, all kinds of shot compositions arranged like a film. The main story is excellent too — it’s nominally about “astronomical observation,” but what it actually is is a love triangle, and the real heroine is Amanokawa Saya with her heterochromia. The game intercuts memories and the present, and lays it all out on a detailed timeline. You can tell they cared. But… when the main game of 《Miagete Goran, Yozora no Hoshi o》 was selling well, they put out a fandisc, and that one felt like it was missing something. First the timeline was gone. Then the cinematic music and staging were gone… and finally the stargazing was pretty much gone too. They call it a fandisc, but none of the strengths of the main game made it over. It’s just an ordinary vehicle for HCGs. Depressing. Fine, whatever, it’s an FD, you can’t ask for too much. But I never expected… that after all this time, 《Miagete Goran, Yozora no Hoshi o》 would get another FD. The full title is 《Miagete Goran, Yozora no Hoshi o Interstellar Focus》. The “Interstellar Focus” part sounds like it means “starlight focus,” but with a hint from Bob I finally saw it — the words are just there to spell out “IF.” IF meaning this game depicts “another story, what if.” And what’s the “if”… When faced with the love triangle between Hikari and Saya, the protagonist says…

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.