I personally recommend Kage no Umi no Apeiria because it’s full of surprises and genuinely novel. Unfortunately, despite all my hype, it seems the game didn’t sell well last year — apparently it couldn’t even beat some other game’s FD. Still, Kage no Umi no Apeiria announced a sequel. Except it’s really just an FD, as you can tell from the title and cover art: Kage no Umi no Apeiria Casablanca no Kishi — the suffix is “Casablanca no Kishi” (The Knight of Casablanca). Normally, a fan disc gives you after-stories for the original cast plus new routes for characters who didn’t have one. That’s what I assumed Casablanca no Kishi would be, especially since the cover features those two side characters. Calling them side characters isn’t entirely fair — they did interact a lot with the protagonist in the main game, and one of them is the nurse connected to another main heroine, Mashiro. But in the virtual world, they’re two female knights. After playing it, though, I’d say this is less a fan disc and more an append disc.

Wagamama High Spec (ワガママハイスペック) did pretty well for itself last year. It even got a short-form anime, and a way better one than that princess stray cat got — word is the latter ran out of money entirely. And when a game sells, a sequel is inevitable. So Madsoft sat on it for nearly a year and put out Wagamama High Spec OC. At first I assumed it was a sequel, and Madsoft’s own copy sort of implies that. In this “sequel,” the class rep who wasn’t a route before, April 1st Kanade, the protagonist’s editor-in-charge Takatsukasa Chitose, and his homeroom teacher Iwakuma Yukari all get promoted to heroines — while the original cast stays available too. No trial version. Straight to the full release. Which made me wonder — is this just a fandisk? Then I saw the price. Nearly 10,000 yen. You can’t be that brazen. Booted it up. Holy shit. It’s a fandisk.

I played サクラノモリ†ドリーマーズ last year, and my takeaway at the time was: strong opening, decent premise, peaks early and then nosedives, rushed ending. I remember the promo OP being absolutely insane. The buildup before the OP hits is done perfectly—basically the protagonist falls in love for the first time, confesses to the girl he likes, Madoka, and then the very next moment, because he wasn’t paying attention, she gets killed by a serial killer. His rage, despair, regret—all of it explodes the moment that blazing OP kicks in. Hell of an opening. I won’t get into the rest of the game. It’s a textbook high-open-low-walk. The protagonist starts randomly chasing the killer who murdered his girlfriend, randomly joins a few organizations, solves a few random haunted-house incidents around town, and the plot gets more and more psychedelic. The killer turns out to be a psycho, also bisexual, then the killer himself starts randomly getting superpowers, and the protagonist gets a parasite… This kind of escalation reminds me of a ghost story I read in high school. The mystery setup was solid, then suddenly the protagonist gains Taoist powers and starts having superpowered xianxia battles with all sorts of ghosts. I literally spat out my drink. It went from mystery to melodramatic wuxia, massive disappointment. Same with サクラノモリ†ドリーマーズ. Massive disappointment. Great start, then it turned into a mess. After that, the scenario writer for サクラノモリ†ドリーマーズ, Go Nii… oh wait, Mr. Go, went off to write other games. Still heavy horror stuff, but no longer the “dream diving” of the original サクラノモリ†ドリーマーズ. The game called 仄暗き時の果てより tells a story of aliens and Cthulhu-style time travel. It was actually okay, but I was starting to feel fatigue with Mr. Go’s approach of “not enough plot? add ketchup.” Then サクラノモリ†ドリーマーズ 2 was announced as a sequel. At first I was curious what kind of story サクラノモリ†ドリーマーズ 2 could possibly tell, since the first game basically wrapped everything up. The protagonist’s girlfriend died, killed by a bisexual psycho. By the end, Madoka had ascended to heaven and the protagonist couldn’t even see her ghost anymore. The mastermind, that bisexual psycho, had been taken out by the protagonist. The story had a relatively complete ending. All that was left were some loose threads with the side heroines. I could understand an FD, but a “2”? Are we just calling FDs “2” now? Then the game came out. After playing through it in bits and pieces over two weeks, I’d say as a “2” it holds up.

Waiting, waiting, and at last Spring Festival arrived — and with it, the long-awaited release of the Astraea no Shiroki Towa FD! Astraea no Shiroki Towa was probably one of the first untranslated games I ever played, and it left a hell of an impression on me. Three things stood out above all: The music! The effects! And Nitta Emi! Then Yoshizumi Hina retired, which left any follow-up to Astraea no Shiroki Towa stuck in limbo forever. But FAVORITE isn’t about to pass up a chance to milk a sequel, so pretty soon we got an FD for Astraea no Shiroki Towa with a recast VA — namely Astraea no Shiroki Towa Finale -Shiroki Hoshi no Yume-.