Last year I played the fortissimo series, and my personal feelings about it were complicated. Content-wise, the fortissimo series has a super melodramatic plot. Basically the world gets destroyed, the guy destroying it might be your dad, your dad destroys the world because he’s despairing, so you as the protagonist go fuck up your dad, and after a bunch of cheat-code clashes you successfully fuck up dad and build a new world. No big twists—just cheat vs cheat, yelling matches, forced hot-bloodedness, justice always wins. And one big feature of this game is that fight mode and non-fight mode are two different worlds. In daily life a bunch of people joke around like a normal game, but once a fight starts it’s kill or be killed. Totally inconsistent… Still, as an experience, the fortissimo series is a blast, because there are tons of battle scenes, and the atmosphere during fights is genuinely great. Especially that feeling of “shouting each other’s names then activating cheats and unleashing a finisher”—it’s really hot-blooded, really hype, really satisfying. So for the previous fortissimo games, I think they’re ultimately not bad. I mean, after all… once you’re hyped, you don’t sweat the details.

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.