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After almost 2 months, I've finally finished it. Being a visual novel and all, it takes a while since I can usually dedicate at most 30 minutes per night.
This game has quite a seiyuu cast. There's Masayo Kurata (also known as Shinobu and Karinka), Inoue Kikuko (Belldandy), Fumiko Orikasa (Chise), and Nana Mizuki (Nyamo). One of the best things about this game is that it's *fully* voiced. Kiminozo was silent during Takayuki's speech and thoughts. Air is a little better (from what I've played so far as I'm just starting it after this game). In Air, the thoughts are silent, but anything in quotes is spoken by the main character. This game is all voiced, thoughts and speech from all characters.
I only played one of the possible endings. The ending I got was the good ending with the main character, Kaho (pictured on the cover). The story is a little confusing at times since it involves time travel and of course, there's always those unresolved paradoxes (unless you assume parallel universes, but that's another topic).
So the story starts out as you, being Kotaro, going to sleep sometime in July, near the end of the semester and then all of a sudden waking up in September where you find out that Kaho has been killed. From there, you jump around different times trying to find out how you can prevent her death. The fellow characters include Ai, who is the girl next door that you've grown up with together, Takeshi, who's your senpai in the boxing club, Tomo-chan, one of your teachers, Maya, a freshwoman swimmer who somehow manages to get involved in this whole fiasco, and then there's Regen who is a Time Patroller from somewhere who can travel back and forth through time and is helping you solve this mystery. All the characters above are female except for Takeshi.
Like I mentioned, the cast has some heavy hitters. I could recognize Masayo's squeaky voice pretty quickly, but was really surprised with the others. I've never heard Nana talk in soft voice. I'm used to her having that sharp, high pitched, piercing sound. I will always remember Fumiko as the Ultimate Weapon, so I couldn't wrap my head around her playing the happy-go-lucky Regen.
The artwork is okay, but not as good as Kiminozo. Maybe I'm just nit-picking, but the characters just don't seem "right." I think their necks are a bit too long. The music, as I mentioned from the CD review, is enjoyable. I don't particularly like the intro and ending songs, but the tunes are pleasant.
The first edition comes with a trading card and a bonus drama CD w/the intro song. There's three versions of the intro song, a long (full), short (tv-sized) and the karaoke track. The drama CD has Ai narrating an event that happened a year before this current story takes place. Regen arrives in front of Kotaro's house but Ai catches her and takes her around. Regen meets all the girls will be involved in Kotaro's story. However, after talking to them, she realizes that she came a year too early. Doesn't add much to the main story, but it's an interesting supplemental.
During the first part of the game, the story is to figure out that you're involved in this "day-dropping" as they call it. When you go to sleep at night, strange colors and smells come about and that's when you know you've "jumped." The story then moves into you befriending Kaho and eventually making her your girlfriend. Regen arrives and tells you that you need to prevent her death and tells you that she gets in an accident because she wanted to see you and a fellow schoolmate, Mana is involved. So you go and befriend Mana, preventing her from having her own accident. After solving Mana's problems, Regen tells you that Kaho still dies, this time she gets hit by some guy and your teacher, Tomo-chan is in the car. So you help Tomo-chan figure out who's the person that's going to be driving her (turns out to be a stalker). After all that, you're told that she still gets in an accident because she was waiting for you at the train station. You tell her that you don't want to see her until September, thus jeopardizing the relationship but hopefully preventing her from leaving the house on the 8/31st (when the accident will happen). Of course, love has no restraints and Ai accidentally tells her that you want to meet here there...As Kaho is running towards you, a car speeds down the street and the last thing you hear is the screeching of the tires. But of course, you know how this story is going to end. It's a romance story after all.
Rating: 3/4
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