Fried Rice Cakes…? Wait no! Review of [140926]Yakimochi Stream

Foreword: Wow… It’s been nearly a month without a review! That’s probably because I finished Amekoi and the fandisc for Tayutama (which was on my Backlog for the longest freaking time), and I’m not really planning on writing up a review for those two because they’re… well… pretty self explanatory. (It’s a Noesis game and a fandisc. What is there to write about? QQ)

I also realized a week ago that my grades were slipping, so I kinda see that I need to cut back on eroge for a while. It’s really sad because my MMO hobbies are near extinct… I sometimes feel like a robot =__=;;
I’ve actually also started AstralAir, but that title’s been rather… boring. It’s actually my first Favorite game too, and people have been saying so many great things about it, but I guess that pumped my expectations too much. Kinda getting slow with it because of how slow it is… I’m hoping it picks up the pace soon…

Well, with my complaints aside, let’s get right onto the review. Yakimochi Stream! I had this title targeted when Getchu changed its banner advertising this, and well, let’s just say that I know the artist, Syroh, pretty well back from Softhouse-seal’s games. Syroh recently seems to have less of an activity in my favorite nukige company, so I was picking this title with hopes that my tissue box will be depleted. (Why didn’t I play Namaiki Delation, you ask? … I don’t know ._.;)

The game itself wasn’t really that good, but oh man, I learned a lesson with this one; that’s why I’m writing this review, and I sincerely hope that this title will also teach YOU a lesson as well.

Title: ヤキモチストリーム (Yakimochi Stream, or “Jealousy Stream”. However, a pun can be made with the word “yakimochi”, into “fried rice cake”, which is what I did with this post’s title)
Producers: Madosoft
Release Date: September 26, 2014
VNDB Link: http://vndb.org/v14888
Getchu Link: http://www.getchu.com/soft.phtml?id=805383
Game Type: Borderline Charage/Nukige with humorous theme of jealousy

Summary: Takumi is a student studying in England, when he receives a message: “Sister serious. Come back immediately”
Being the worrywort brother he is, Takumi immediately catches the next flight he can to return as fast as possible to his hometown. His mom worriedly greets him with an uneasy frown on her face:

“She’s… become a hikkikomori (someone who refuses to come out of their room except for absolute needs)”

Takumi doesn’t believe this: his cute and cheerful younger sister wouldn’t have any reason to become so depressed and reserved, and determined to restore her smile, he enters her room armed with a bag of potato chips.

Through some conflict solving and kunkakunka (?!?!), Sana finally comes out of her room. Although this does mean that Takumi will have to transfer back to the school in Japan, he feels that such is enough of a sacrifice for his younger sister. Meanwhile, he will have no idea that three other girls will brazenly approach him, with their own side of Jealousy.

This CG is absolutely adorable. Period.

Story Length: Moderate (15 hours)
Complete Story Clearing Difficulty: Easy
Comments: Literally 5 choices throughout the game, and while the last one isn’t so obvious, the others should be. Nothing too special here.

Character Design Rating: 6/10
Story Rating: 2/10
Protagonist Rating: 1/10
Game Quality: Low
Overall Rating: 3/10
Rating Comments: So in essence, you have a very crappy game, except the game does live up to its title “charage” by actually raising its quality using the heroines themselves. Very colorful in terms of heroine design, I’m sure every guy player who even touched this game for a split second will have a severe sister complex for Sana, who seems to be the central heroine for the entire game. Frankly, if it wasn’t for her, even the character design rating would have dropped by another 3 points.

As strange as it is, the game actually has some nice transitions. While being mostly comprised up of “small stories”, the game does have a chronological flow and an attempt (while it’s pretty damn crappy) at creating a plot.

Character Summary: Let’s briefly go through the heroine summaries! They’re pretty much the core and point-earners for this game, so I’ll try my best to not botch this part up.

Sana is first, and as obvious as it is, she seems to be the central heroine of the game and probably going to rank first if a popularity poll was held. Her “innocence” *coff* is simply hilarious as the reader is shown that this girl is just head over heels in love with her older brother, and even the trigger for this emotion doesn’t matter with this apparently-Yamato Nadeshiko turning into a masochistic idiot in front of her own brother.

It’s actually rather pleasing to see imouto characters in such a design (as I’ve seen enough tsundere imouto-type characters to last me a lifetime), and it’s definitely true that Sana’s design is made so that she makes another appearance even outside of her routes.

Quite unfortunately, Sana’s route itself was relatively crappy, since this girl who is said to have “120% Jealousy Meter” didn’t really have that many moments of jealousy. The incest taboo added at the end was okay, though.

Next we have a tsundere osananajimi character Kohane. As you can easily expect, this character is also in love with the protagonist, and their “reuniting” involved the stuffing of her groin into the lucky bastard’s face.

What you probably WON’T predict, however, is that Takumi is completely unaware of Kohane being his osananajimi, as the “Koi” that he remembers from his childhood was very tomboy-ish, and got him to thinking his name was Koizumi.

Even after the groin-to-face incident, the story conveniently places the two in the same class, and while Takumi then starts to wonder why Kohane is relatively friendly with him, this causes the explosion of jealousy from two other characters.

Overall, Kohane’s route was pretty much your typical “osananajimi” route, so there’s nothing too special about it.

Then we have our loli-blonde-kyonyuu who seems to attract a lot of attention from the maniacs around the world including me. (However, I wasn’t really too fond of this trait for a reason for which I’ll explain in a bit).

Introduced a bit later than the rest of the heroines, it is clearly shown that this heroine came all the way to Japan from England just to see our protagonist. If that wasn’t enough, she kisses him in greeting, in front of the other three girls, who all have a shocking reaction of their own.

Being relatively bad at Japanese, this character instead excels at running, which Tania’s route is entirely about. As ironic as it is, the “Jealousy Meter” for this heroine is at its lowest–70%, probably because Tania has various other traits that become her motivation.

…and last is our upperclassman coodere character (character who puts up a tough facade) Mutsuki. Incredibly cliche character design and even more of a cliche route, I honestly couldn’t bring myself to enjoy her route too much. Her theme of “art” and “manga/anime” otakuism doesn’t even play a role in her story, and while she does share her own slice of “jealousy”, it was really short-lived.

Needless is it to say that her route was anticlimactic and sucked.

That Nekomimi is so unnatural, too…

Sexual Content: Dominant in the heroine routes; considered high

Comments: Alright, so let’s get into some details!

So we here have ginormous OPPAI

YES OPPAI.

This is how Syroh draws: “lolis” with a large breast size. This trait was usually held consistent within the softhouse seal games as well (and it would usually be 2G who draws the “hinyuu” characters), and this is actually quite strange considering the previous title, Namaiki, actually had a heroine violating this rule.

Even the blonde loli who is over 25 cm shorter than me literally has boobs bigger than her face, and I find it so unnatural that none of the heroines complain about her shoulders getting tired (with the exception of Mutsuki, who admits it’s because of keeping a stiff posture all the time, not because of her ginormous boobs)

I swear, those melons are like an additional 50% of Tania’s body weight, and she runs that well?
Well, it’s normal for anime boobs to defy physics so…

And now we get to some moral lessons…
Sometimes, bigger is not always better, and if you’ll allow me to make a confession, I could not fap to these H-scenes at all. No, it’s not because I’m impotent: I probably have more sexual endurance than even your above-average guy. It’s just that despite my love for lolis and Syroh’s artwork, it was a miss this time: the boobs just killed it. 

I don’t know about everyone else, but huge breasts that defy physics and seem unnatural are things that are ironically a turn-off for me, to the point my “son” doesn’t even react.

So what did we learn today, guys?
“Bigger is not always better”. Let’s all keep that in mind as we live our humble lives.

P.S. Have you noticed that Getchu gives each character a “grade” depending on the size of their boobs? I’m freaking dead serious: I don’t know if it’s from the main website, but they literally give “grades” with famous-for-their-size mountain names (e.g. Alps Grade) for the heroine’s breast size. Oh my god I laughed so much.

And with all the crude jokes aside, let’s get to some real analysis: I really didn’t like how the game added a “foreign language” factor half-assed. Do they really think that English players do not have access to this, or some Japanese people can read English?

This was probably “ずっと日本にいたいと思う” (I want to stay forever in Japan) run though a Google Translate, which changes the “いたい” (…want to stay) into (…hurts)

Half-assed Japanese is one of the factors that I really hate, and even for a ramen place located near where I live, the staff greets you with “いらしゃいませ” (of which, they sometimes say incorrectly), but don’t know any other Japanese phrases.

Other than that, this is your ideal “light-hearted charage/borderline nukige). Cute characters who display jealousy so obviously that the normal human male won’t have much trouble drooling over them, and just enough humor to keep things interesting as the game displays the 4 heroines’ continuous shy approaches to Takumi.

The heroines often act in the most exaggerated manner such as Kohane in this scene when Takumi asks her out on a “date”

I guess in the end, I enjoyed pretty much everything this game had to offer; the cute characters are perfect for putting a smile on my face, and even though the H-scenes were pretty much “unusable”, it’s not like I absolutely need H-scenes in the first place.

Affection for the Characters: Low (High for Sana o3o)

CG Score: 2/10. Yeah, the boobs killed this score. You can guess?
Music Score: 4/10. Relatively unique tracks with a strange OP movie as well. They never find the right “middle-ground” of seriousness and comedy, though

Addictiveness: Probably will play this game again for Sana.

These “fight scenes” are pretty hilarious too

Conclusion: Other than Sana, who was probably the central heroine and the core theme (jealousy), the other heroines seem to pale in comparison. I also wanted to see a Harem ending or involving some of the subheroines, but I guess I expected too much. Light-hearted charage/nukige for your casual playing, and remember our moral of the day: “Big boobs are not always better”.

Hm? You’re saying that the moral changed? WELL TOO BAD!

-Slightly NSFW, but who cares? This site’s already marked as “mature” already-

Seriously, Japan?
………..Where did my wallet go?