Strong Desire makes Wishes come True: Review of [131129]Amatarasu Riddle Star

Foreword: So… When this game was announced, I was pretty excited. I mean… It’s going to be the artwork of 2-G and Syroh for goodness sake! Perhaps I got my hopes too high, since this was (in my opinion) another chara-ge.

Despite this, I didn’t find the entirety of the game to be too boring. As with all softhouse-seal games, there’s a certain element that I can’t quite pinpoint that makes the characters all lovable–a pretty damn rare trait in games nowadays…

While I can’t explicitly state what that element is, perhaps reading my review might help you (the reader) what it might be.

So here goes the review of Amatarasu Riddle Star!

Title: あまたらすリドルスター (Amatarasu Riddle Star) [For the reference, it doesn’t seem to be “Little”; it’s “Riddle”.
Producers: Seal-Qualia
Release Date: November 29, 2013
VNDB Link: http://vndb.org/v12992
Getchu Link: http://www.getchu.com/soft.phtml?id=779657
Game Type: Romance Novel revolving around themes of Wishes and Strong Desire

Here’s a rhyme for you, Yua…
Roses are red, Grass is green
I want you in my bed
If you know what I mean ;)

Summary: Takaya is a normal student who finds his life extremely boring. Ironically, he was actually quite the opposite during his childhood, when he would often fantasize about various things, from the bunny on the moon to the locked-up princess in the castle. Regardless of what his fantasies were, he realized a while ago that these were fake; something that can’t happen in reality.

This is why he became a cynical idiot he is right now, and he would rather enjoy his books in silence, not make friends, with the occasional invite from his childhood friend Yua, to go stargazing.

One day, while during these “nighttime picnics”, Yua will urge Takaya to make a wish on a shooting star. As Takaya wishes “Please make my life more interesting”, a huge number of shooting stars start to fall, landing all over the town. Panicking, Takaya decide it is best to return home, but not until he spies a white-haired girl who seems to have bunny ears, a large griffon who chases after them, and a headless maid who throws her head at them.

In a sense, this couple looks like siblings instead… =,.=;;

Story Length: Moderate (20 hours)
Complete Story Clearing Difficulty: Slightly Easy
Comments: While you shouldn’t have much difficulty of getting each route due to the choices being pretty much straight it your face, it still might take a while for non-experienced players. My hint to “unlocking” the routes for Rina (Yua’s older sister), Melody (Adam’s younger sister), and Iru (the Maid), is that you shouldn’t befriend anyone until the end of the school festival (which is also when the main story splits off into heroine routes).

Aw, don’t cry Kokoro! D:

Character Design Rating: 7/10
Story Rating: 5/10
Game Quality: Moderate
Overall Rating: 5/10
Rating Comments: A pretty “meh” game, most of the character design comes from the loli-kyonyuu artwork designed by both 2-G and Syroh; my favorite artists from the softhouse-seal series. A newer artists who goes by the name “Anii” also works on two of the characters (Miu and Rina)

Character Summary:

For the sake of saving time (because I’m lazy like that), I’ll be skipping the 3 sub-heroines and focusing on only the main heroines for this title.

Yua is first. As the childhood friend of Takaya, it’s pretty obvious that this girl is already infatuated to the protagonist from the very beginning of the title; shown by her constant approaches despite the fact Takaya seems to find it annoying. Excellent at cooking and housework, Yua is ranked #1 in their school of the “Most wanted as a bride”. This kind of character is the type that makes other male students cry in hatred and frustration.

Despite her continuous approaches, Takaya originally sees Yua as nothing more than a childhood friend, as her fairytales were quite irrational and, perhaps to the cynical protagonist, annoying. Despite this, Takaya seems to enjoy Yua’s company because she’s the only real friend that he has… That is until the incident.

Yua’s story mainly revolves around Takaya slowly becoming more cheerful with the people around him, and then realizing that his fulfilled life currently may be due to a certain girl who told him all kinds of story in the past. In return, it seems that he and the childhood friend he gets close to, also have a history that strengthens their relationship.

Next is Miu. The first encounter with this character is when her house drops (along with a loud crash presumed to be a meteor), in the forest near the hill where the two childhood friend is stargazing at. She mutters the words “It’s definitely here…” and disappears, and soon reappears at the school–to meet the protagonist for the second time.

One of the two characters I found most favorable, I sincerely appreciated that Miu’s personality was introverted and shy, but when it comes to sexuality, her identity as a “rabbit” was corresponding to the common statement “reproducing like rabbits”. Aside from this, I felt as if Miu’s route was correspondent or accurate to “pure love”, since both Takaya and Miu finds it difficult to transition from being “friends” into being “lovers”. Of course, this is all wrapped up nicely with a certain dream that Miu has, except it happens to connect with Takaya’s. I found this element very pleasing, and along with various other events within their route, Miu’s route was most interesting for me.

Despite this, I didn’t like the conclusion of Miu’s route. There’s also an unexplained element within her route, which seems to degrade the quality as well (quite unfortunately)

Right on to Kokoro! This loli character (YEAAAAAHHHHH) is presented during the first day of school, when the entire school suddenly turns into a castle after the meteor shower. Kokoro is always accompanied by a maid named “Iru”, who can launch her head at anyone; this is done first at Takaya, but used often as a running gag against Adam when he steps out of his bounds.

It is revealed very early that Kokoro is a princess of a kingdom. It is not specified which kingdom she came from, or what kind of authority she holds.
Despite this, after her house (castle) lands on the school, effectively replacing it, Kokoro takes the role of the school principal. This replaces the old principal, who happily retires into gardening strange flowers he seems to be able to talk to.

Kokoro may be a princess, but she’s very shy when it comes to Takaya, which suggests that the two may have met before. Her first words to the class is an arrogant statement that she “…will take anyone to become my servant!!”, but this was actually her plea to ask for friends; she simply didn’t know how to ask for friends directly.

As suggested by her looks and various scenes involving her, Kokoro is very young and ignorant when it comes to society. The majority of her route starts with her accepting various requests from students, but some of them are so ridiculous, that Takaya intervenes to try to help Kokoro determine which kinds of requests are acceptable to fulfill and which ones are not. At this point, Takaya becomes Kokoro’s “servant”, which makes the young princess delighted.

Next is Madori. She might be an underclassman while being small, this girl has a bust size of 88cm, and an F cup. Woo~! She often uses this trait to “seduce” Takaya for fun, as well as to ignore a topic she doesn’t want to talk about.

Madori seems to ultimately be insignificant to the overall story, but her route makes it clear of her existence. Despite this, playing through Madori’s route first made me realize how boring her route was, and how it could’ve been okay if this character was completely removed from the entire game.

Despite this, Madori is a well-designed character, being a complete amaenbo (or a heroine that actively seeks the protagonist’s affection) once she becomes attached to Takaya. It’s true that her route sucks, but seeing Madori’s “attachment” to Takaya, as well as her unproportional body size placed in action was quite a sight for me.

Last, but definitely not the least is Ai. Spelled the same way as “Love” in Japanese, this was my second heroine I found very favorable after Miu.

With the CV as Sakikabara Yui, Ai has the “onee-chan” personality, one that is very caring for someone younger; usually a younger brother. She refers to herself as Takaya’s “older sister” despite Takaya not having anyone who could remotely have that role.

Ai’s route was probably the best until the conclusion, where again, unexplained elements take over and ruin the entire story. This mysterious character’s identity is hidden until the very end, where it shows that various elements within the main story all point to her actual identity as someone very close to Takaya (Props to you if you can find these “elements” that point to Ai’s actual identity).

Other than the above factor, as well as the awesome CV, Ai’s route was also largely uninteresting, but climactic. It showed the desperation of the two characters in a climax (even more than other routes), and contained the most of what I would call “drama”.

Yua seems childish, but her mind is very mature–this represents her innocence.

 

Sexual Content: Very High

Comments: Oh man… HUGE amounts of H-scenes. I guess I should’ve seen this coming from what’s originally a nukige producer, but that doesn’t mean you can make 5 H-scenes for EACH heroines and another 2 for each sub-heroines… That totals up to 31 H-scenes in a single freaking game. I’m pretty sure this is a greater number than a lot of their other games designed to be a nukige, even if this game was “longer”.

“Pure-love” brand my ass. This company’s serious about the sexual content in their games–most of the H-scenes were pretty random and unnecessary, and when I say I like Syroh/2-G’s artwork, I want some normal CG too :|

… Okay, I got some normal CG… >.>

Strangely though, the voice recording for this game sounded very fuzzy. Perhaps it’s because it was done in a hurry? I personally didn’t mind it too much (since the CVs were generally my favorites), but it might get annoying to other players… Just a friendly warning.

Affection for the Characters: Moderately High.

Madori also becomes very good-natured in her route. I think this really adds to her attractiveness.

CG Quality: Moderate
Music Quality: Low

Addictiveness: Low

Conclusion: A decent game by Seal-Qualia, which I fully appreciated its advertisement “Pure-love Story with 2-G and Syroh’s artwork!”, but that seems to be it, really… This game is not that superior over any other games. In fact, I’m very hesitant to even label this as a “regular novel” due to the sexual content being so high (it dominates the later portions of the game).

Although I can’t let the artwork slip by… I really like this piece because it seems so angelic–There’s a sense of serenity and grace (aka, it also leads to what Ai truly is).