I Hate Winter! Review of [150327]Yukikoi Melt

Foreword: So this time, I actually made a poor choice with my game. My original interest for this game was mostly due to Pure Girl and Innocent Girl, both extremely well made nukige/charage combo from Front Wing, and I honestly expected something similar in this title as well. However, much to my disappointment, the producers made an attempt to make this game actually a serious charage and shy away from the “nukige” classification. Because of this, the game does receive some good scores in some parts, but very low in others.

In general, Yukikoi also had this general atmosphere that the other previous titles had, so if you’ve played the games before and enjoyed them, I’m sure you’ll like this one as well.

The crew celebrating Yuka’s 30th birthday/Christmas!

Title: ゆきこいめると (Yuki Koi Melt)
Producers: Front Wing
Release Date: March 27, 2015
VNDB Link: https://vndb.org/v15064
Getchu Link: http://www.getchu.com/soft.phtml?id=832647
Game Type: Charage involving the theme of “Winter”

Summary: Miharu absolutely hates the cold temperature. No, seriously. He HATES it with passion. He also hates winter for the same reason, since ice all over the place is just begging for people to be slipping on, and with his intolerance to the cold, he’s genuinely angry for being transferred to this school, where the climate is almost always winter.

One day, as he went his way with a meat-bun in his hand to somehow warm himself up, he heard a scream and looking up, becomes a crash landing site for a girl who was trying to do a triple spin on a snowboard. This girl named Kanon soon apologizes, but as Miharu didn’t want to stay in the cold weather for long, he rushes off as the girl’s head is fused with a snowman.

Soon, he becomes a target for the “Fuyubu” (Winter Club) who are a group of people who absolutely love winter. They’ll do anything related to it and even work as volunteers within the shopping center in the town. As they learn that Miharu hates winter, the members start to try to invite him into the club with the reasoning that “It’ll be more fun with you”. Miharu, of course, refuses.

However, the old Asian saying that “ten swings of the axe will make any tree fall” comes into play as Miharu sees for himself the enjoyment and fun that the group is having, and soon decides that he wants to join in that happiness. He still hates the cold temperatures, but as Usagi says, it’s not right to be prejudiced towards something without experiencing it, and as he spends more time with the club members, Miharu find himself slowly changing.

The original Winter Club members!

Story Length: Moderate (20 hours)
Complete Story Clearing Difficulty: Very Easy
Comments: So there are two choices within the entire story, the first choice having an obvious sign that leads to a “joke bad end” and the other continuing through the story. The second choice determines the heroine route, but also contains another, strange joke-route involving Mitsuhashi-san.

Character Design Rating: 6/10
Story Rating: 2/10
Protagonist Rating: 3/10
Game Quality: Low
Overall Rating: 4/10
Rating Comments: So what we have here is a very archetypical and generic charage. Sure, there’s that plot with the winter stuff, but ultimately, that’s only reserved for the beginning of the story and the entire heroine route is filled with random romance and pointless ichaicha that I wouldn’t even care about.

Yeah, a lot of it.

It’s really unfortunate, though, since the beginning started out amazing. Slow but sure transitions to show that Miharu was having a genuine change of heart with each of the heroines’ characteristics clearly defined, the theme of “winter” was kept solidly intact throughout all of this, and the game makes sure that the readers feel affection for some of the characters via multiple events.

Then we get into each heroine route and the quality just dips so sharply that I don’t even have to look up the title to know that there’s a switch of writers at play. (P.S. There are three)

The story does try to make a definite conclusion at the end, but it wasn’t done as well as it was done in the previous titles, ironically compared to Innocent Girl (which was supposed to be a nukige). So in all, I can’t really recommend the game for the middle portion where heroine routes contained pointless ichaicha, but the prologue of the story is something I find to be “very well done”.

They do a really good job at describing the characters to the fullest extent

Protagonist rating is also relatively low, since we have your typical “tsundere” protagonist. Unlike the stereotype, however, he’s more “dynamic” than “tsundere”, in the sense that he makes several monologues within the game describing his change of heart. These, along with the “last push” for him to enter the Fuyubu, are the main things that I found to be “excellent” within the game. Other than that, I really wish Miharu had more action in the heroine routes…

Character Summary:

Let’s get into character summaries!

First is Taruhi, a strange girl who seems to have cat ears and if you continue with her route, cat tails as well. I’ll solve your questions right now that her “cat ears” are never mentioned in the entire game. That’s right. The artist went through drawing cat ears for this character for all the HCG and SDCG, as well as sprites and normal CGs, for absolutely no fucking reason at all! The only time when this is remotely discussed is if you choose to touch her ears for the first choice (which happens to have a skull printed next to it) which kicks you into a bad route.

Regardless of this weird-ass planning, Taruhi is Miharu’s classmate who, upon even just a couple of minutes of playing, is obviously weak to the cold just like our protagonist. The catch is that she herself is actually trying to hide this fact despite being ridiculously obvious about it, and the first scene involving her begging Miharu for something involves her asking Miharu to not spread this fact around.

Voiced by Yui Oogura (Holy crap she’s voicing so many characters recently), this adorable character is shown to be extremely vulnerable to teasing as well–both Mitsuhashi and Miharu will comment that she has the “ijiri aura” (Teasing Aura) which incites anyone nearby to tease the poor girl. She’s also weak to anything sexual, and often found blushing at the least suggestive phrases.

Her route mostly involves how Taruhi tries to change her views on Winter just like how Miharu makes a determination in the beginning of the game. While this seems to be the main theme in her route, the game goes back and forth between random events to eventually form the two into lovers, and present the crappy ichaicha.

Next is Kanon, the girl who crashes into Miharu in the beginning of the game. The funny thing is that after this “crash”, instead of your cliche and stupid sukebe scene usually involving groin-to-face plot, the girl’s head is slammed into the head of a snowman so perfectly that it seems that her head IS the snowman.

As such

Nonetheless, this energetic underclassman becomes the first one to attempt to recruit Miharu into the Winter Club, and initiates other members to make their approaches as well.

Kanon herself, while being highly energetic and tomboy-ish to a certain extent, also have feminine qualities such as being a skilled cook, as well as strange hobbies such as collecting spices. These never really play a role in the game–it’s just another “design” that was given to the character as an effort to raise the affection for her

Kanon’s route was pretty unique, in the sense that the she and Miharu do develop feelings for each other, but end up actually having sex before anything else. It also introduces a cute little fox-like character who doesn’t really play a big role, so I’d say it was pretty bland.

Third is Yuki, who is at first glance, your fanservice character (being a loli-kyonyuu). The cool thing about her name is that her full name is Tsukumo Yuki, which is written as “白雪姫” which if translated gives you “Snow White” (the Disney Princess). That’s why her nickname is exactly that “Shiroyukihime” by Usagi.

Despite being a fanservice character, Yuki has traits of her own. In addition to her childish mindset which is prevalent throughout the story, she seems to be a peerless expert when it comes to “Winter-like” things, such as nabe (hot pot), ice sculpting, and even tactics for snowball fights.

Arguably with the best route out of the four in terms of story, Yuki’s design to be the complete exact opposite of Miharu put the two in an interesting situation. It’s just a pity how their “opposites” weren’t really clearly defined and never discussed in game. In reality, Yuki’s route also had the two characters randomly falling in love.

Last and probably the least in my honest opinion is Shuri, a 3rd year who is very calm and well-behaved, also a skilled cook who takes care of everyone’s meals for the Fuyubu.

As the game shows, Shuri is very… inefficient, I guess you can say, when it comes to activities of the Winter Club. While there is that fact that she’s not exactly the most physically able, the ice sculptures that she creates end up looking extremely suggestive, that in the past, the town authorities came by themselves and destroyed her masterpieces.

This is why instead of trying to help out with the activities, Shuri would rather create warm soup for the team after a long day’s work. As stated before, her skills as a chef become a great contribution for the club.

In addition, it seems that Shuri is most sensitive to the “romance” in this game, able to detect that Miharu was romantically attracted to another heroine within a short period of time. It’s usually Shuri who drags the disturbances away from Miharu and the respective heroine, so I guess that’s one good trait about her.

Her route was… weird as fuck. It seemed really similar to one of the routes in Pure Girl (remember that Pure Girl is a nukige) and had the atmosphere of it as well. Just… play it if you get the chance and you’ll understand why I’m not able to actually describe it properly.

 I’m sure a lot of you will enjoy Yuki’s “deredere” quite a bit

Sexual Content: High.

Comments: I’ll be completely honest: I really wanted at least a side-story for Usagi (the club leader) and Yuka (the teacher). They both play very big roles (the former being a guidance/counselor and the latter being a source of comedy) and it would have been really really nice to see some story revolving those characters as well. This is especially because Yuka’s design, as ironic as it is, is something that my preferences match up with.

In previous titles, the games would include a Harem route with a separate route for the “trap” heroine too, but those were nukige so… Ugh T_T;

Affection for the Characters: Moderate

CG Score: 6/10. Adorable CGs and SDCGs. But the game really needed more of it.

But some of them are really nice like this one.

Music Score: 4/10. Typical soundtracks. Nothing of interest here.

Addictiveness: Low

Conclusion: A relatively poor charage from Front Wing, the beginning parts were excellent in terms of introducing the characters and defining their relationships with each other, the game also is meticulous to describe the environment that the characters are placed in, which was another plus that I found. However, story dips sharply as you get into a heroine route, and that just ruins the entire game. It would have been better if the company flat out said this was a nukige and added more H-scenes instead.

MRW I’m so busy and have little time to play galge