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I haven’t really written anything for a while so I decided that maybe I should write something on what i’ve been playing recently which is the visual novel “Saya no Uta” (Saya’s Song). I’m guessing that most people who read this are unaware of the terms “eroge” and “visual novel” so i’ll just sum it up briefly.

Visual Novel -  A story in electronic format often accompanied by images. You can take out only the text and publish it and it’d be a fictional novel pretty much.

Eroge – Short for “Erotic Game”. Yeah I know what most people would think when they discover this but this generally works hand in hand with Visual Novels meaning the Visual Novels feature sex scenes. I don’t want to get into the whole morality of it on whether you’re pitiful for going through these or not but to sum it up, it’s to guarantee sales to the depraved otaku crowd. MOVING ON

Saya no Uta is about a young man, Sakisaka Fuminori, who is in a car accident where his whole family dies except him. His condition causes him to undergo experimental treatment which turns his whole life upside down cuasing him to see everything as flesh and monsters. However he meets a girl called Saya who is the only person who looks human to him which in turn leads to them living together as he spirals dow into insanity. Plot Premise over, now onto the game itself.

It’s a book in an electronic medium so if your’e looking for exciting or innovative gameplay, you’re definately not going to find it here. It just revolves around clicking through the story (or using the auto-play function if you read slow enough). If this kind of thing appeals to you, then you really need to get a life or something as clicking is hella boring. Being a novel the most important aspect is the story and in my opinion, it doesn’t disappoint. Although it might seem a bit straight-foward it does its job well. The story is pretty dark and grim and definately strays from typical stories you would find in anime’s and the likes (because anime’s are the closest thing to this). While it is quite predictable with alot of plot points that could’ve been seen from 20 hours away, it does a satisfying job of keeping you engrossed even though you knew ____ was going to happen. Being an eroge though, it does have sex scenes and personally I don’t really like having sex scenes in my eroge as it feels a bit demeaning. Luckily they are few and far between and they were kind of integrated into the story but I cant help but feel the story would’ve been almost the same if they weren’t in there. I counted 5 in the 7-8 hours it took to finish this game, which is a pretty adequate length and probably longer then it takes to finish MW2. The characters themselves seem a bit too one-dimensional at times but they do have a bit of depth so they don’t present themselves as being too shallow.

Now onto the minor things. The graphics are quite good but apart from Saya and Ryoko, the character designs seemed a bit crude. The scenery background is decent being able to present the atmospheric mood of the scene but at times it just doesn’t seem as good as it could be. Fuminori’s views upon the world being all blobs of flesh is hardly anywhere near as disgusting as it sounds but in contrast the wild colours of his living room perfectly portray his descent into insanity. Being a dark gritty story, the character designs represent this and avoid the overly large eyes present in moe shows which is also a plus. Since this is a visual novel, the background only serves to supplement the story and it succeeds at doing this but I can’t help shake the feeling it could’ve been drawn a bit better but it’s still good nevertheless.

The soundtrack is fantastic (in my opinion) fitting in perfectly with the atmosphere. The ED song is also good although it still has that typical J-Popish feel. There really isn’t anything negative to say about the soundtrack in my opinion but it doesnt really do much to stand out except at extremely tense times, other then that it sounds pretty mediocre.

So in the end, if you’re looking for a relatively decent gritty story with a distinct anime feel then this would be a pretty good VN to check out. If the sound of clicking through a story and seeing hentai on your screen makes your stomach churn, then stay very very far. I haven’t played much VN’s so I can’t really give this a proper rating until I experience more of the genre however I’d give it an 8/10 as a VN. If comparing other games this would be like a 5 but whatever.

Points for

• - Good Storyline
• - Great Atmosphere
• - Interesting Characters
• - Good character development
• - Strays from typical anime cliches and feels fresh

Points against

• - Storyline quite predictable at points
• - Character design feels a bit wrong at times
• - Ending feels a bit short and incomplete
• - Doesn’t let you feel as empathetic to characters as other VN’s (I’m looking at you Air)
• - Really needs some Mahou Shoujos

So if you’re not accustomed to typical VN games I wouldn’t touch this one just yet. I shall review a more proper VN next time which would cater to a wider audience, until then.

P.S – I know this might fit better in the anime blog but other “games” of this genre would fit here so, this comes in too. = P