How a Girl becomes dependent is up to her: [160226]Review of Amanari

Foreword: As with a good game, there is a bad one. I’ve been pretty absent with GIGA’s games recently, but decided to pick up a random game from them which happened to be this one.

Turns out, it sucks. It’s not one of those “Lump-of-Sugar-annoying-as-hell-on-purpose” kind of suck, but more of “lack of content” suck but in my opinion, it’s not much better. In reality, the entire game was almost quite literally a nukige considering how little content there was in the first place. I’m really not sure if this game was published with such intentions though, since even if were to approach this game as a nukige, it failed to do that too.

Protip: Ignore the heart-shaped cursor on some of the screenshots

Title: 甘えかたは彼女なりに (Amaekata ha The method of dependence is up to her)

Producers: GIGA
Release Date: February 26, 2016
VNDB Link: https://vndb.org/v18335
Getchu Link: http://www.getchu.com/soft.phtml?id=873508
Game Type: Dating Sim Novel

Summary: Hiroto insists that despite being alone most of the time, this isn’t because he “can’t” make friends; he thinks he just never chooses to. Such is the life of our protagonist when a girl named Tomomi approaches him one day and forces him to follow her to the Assist Club, which is known for a variety of notorious events in the school. While he was quite surprised, he soon finds himself at home in this group of people he calls “friends”

Story Length: Moderately Short (15 hours)
Complete Story Clearing Difficulty: Moderate
Comments: Despite being short, the routes may be a bit more difficult to achieve. Either use a walkthrough or trial and error, since the game doesn’t have many choices anyways.
Character Design Rating: 2/10
Story Rating: 2/10
Protagonist Rating: 1/10
Game Quality: Low
Overall Rating: 1/10
Rating Comments: So all in all, this game had almost every flaw I could probably list out, and nothing good about it.

Heroines were extremely generic and boring, only composed up of a few traits which didn’t really make them stand out. Instead, these unoriginal traits made them seem more like cardboard cut outs and was really hard to become immersed in the interactions.

Story is even worse, with literally three pieces of “plot”: Intro -> “Treasure Hunt” Festival -> Heroine Route. There were little to no conflict throughout the entire story and even if there were, it was usually just some really cheap argument that heroines would have with each other then make up the next day. Heroine Routes were almost purely comprised of H-scenes, though the game makes a pitiful effort to create a unique storyline for each heroine.

Protagonist is just as generic, powerless, boring, and ordinary. There is almost no point in having Hiroto as the protagonist as the relationships between him and heroines as well as subcharacters were very poorly explained. It’s as poor of a quality as if you pulled some random dude off the streets to be the main character in a movie; a random person is completely unprepared, untrained, and unfit for such a role, and that was exactly what happened here.

Character Summary:

Tomomi is quite literally “that bitch” who is always cold to everyone including our protagonist. Now I get it; she’s tsundere, right? WRONG

Turns out, this girl is the farthest from being one since she’s actually a “sweet and caring girl”

…
…
…

Are you fucking kidding me?

Absolutely no transition from when she’s treating everyone like shit to when she “softens up”, there’s no background to her cold attitude besides her “past” which didn’t even get a scene (she just talks about it and that’s it), and other routes show this character joking around contrary to what her true personality is.

Frankly, Tomomi as a character annoyed me throughout the game especially with her little “sigh” which was the most retarded thing ever and pretty much occupies like 10% of all her lines in the beginning of the game.

At least a bit more bearable, Kanae is a 3rd year who is essentially in charge of this “Assist Club”, she has that “accepting” aura that’s easily approachable.

Frankly, I thought Kanae’s character was the most bland and generic out of all those available. Basically, think of your “perfect upperclassman” heroine and you get Kanae, so I can’t really say much about her in the first place.

If at all, she’s shown to love helping others (hence founding this strange organization), but often “goes too far” when doing so. The words are in quotations because the game never shows her “exceeding her limits” except for when she faints at one point, since it’s all observations from other characters and nothing explicit is shown to the reader.

Nohana would be that “classmate” archetype that we’re familiar with, and does have the energetic trait as well… though that’s essentially the only thing that’s open for her. I personally thought her route had the worst transition since it involves her directly arguing with Hiroto then falling in love with him right afterwards because that makes perfect sense, right?

So I can just go pick a fight with some random bishoujo and get her to like me the next day, right?

Miyuki is the other 3rd year who is immediately shown to be very lazy. In fact, she plays very little role throughout the entire game EXCEPT for when characters have conflicts with each other, when she conveniently becomes the “eldest” member who tries to bring about a resolution.

Not only did this inconsistency make this character less attractive, it also screwed up her route much more considering it was regarding admission to college, which didn’t really suit her original impressions of being lax and passive.

Sexual Content: Moderate

Comments: So for some criticisms (which is the only thing I can offer for this game anyways)…

There’s very little introduction, period. Basically, the game needed to have explained the purpose or history of this “Assist Club” as well as the background of each heroine and protagonist, but there’s none of it. Zero. Nada. Nil. In addition to this, there’s no romance development between characters (heroine and protagonist) leading to the game giving the impression of a nukige even though I don’t think the producers meant it for the game to be seen as such. So yeah, a bit FAT 0 for the stuff you would normally expect from a dating sim/galge. What a lovely start.

Humor is absolutely horrible, centering around the protagonist’s sexuality and I wasn’t even cracking a smile at the “jokes” presented in this game which were repetitive and boring, top that off with scenarios and H-scenes I couldn’t care less about, you essentially have a beautiful formula for a good 15 hours wasted by me and more writing up a review on it.

Like, a lot of these jokes have already been used in hundreds of other games

To be honest, I’m not even mad at this point that this game sucked so bad; it could be that one person spontaneously go up one morning, produced this game within a single day, and decided it was worth the money to publish and there it is. I really would not be surprised if this was the case but… It’s not. Duh.

I can’t really predict what to expect of GIGA’s games now, since I experienced two of their games which were decent or at least good (Parfait and Kono Aozora), but then again those games were from a looooong time ago and said writers are long gone now (I cry). At least based on what I’m seeing with this title and their more recent works, it’s a good idea to avoid GIGA titles if you’re a player wanting a story-focused game. (Maybe I’ll start using GIGA as an example of a company whose quality plummeted just like LoS LOL)

Strangely enough, the game offers a SHITLOAD of options. I mean, if you like playing with this crap and wasting your time be my guest. I sure as hell won’t be spending 80 bucks+ for it. I think a good joke would be that you’d spend just as much time adjusting the settings you do playing the game.

Affection for the Characters: Very Low

CG Score: 6/10. Art is probably the only thing that makes this game valuable, although to be fair, 2/3 of the entire CG are HCGs.
Music Score: 3/10. Very poor and generic tracks, although there is the quantity at least

Addictiveness: Nope.jpg

Conclusion:

Pros:

• Uhhhh, pretty much none. I mean, the art is okay?

Cons:

• Intro is so short that it never sets up the parameters for the readers
• Characters and Protagonist are ordinary, generic, and lack depth
• Little to no character interaction which was also supposed to double up as romantic transition leading to very poor design and made the game seem like a nukige
• Protagonist sucks
• Story is heavily lacking on quality and quantity
• No main theme throughout the entire game
• Humor is terrible
• Feels like I wasted 15 hours for nothing

This game sucks and has essentially nothing good about it. According to what I’m hearing from other communities, it seems that this is the pattern for GIGA at this point, so here’s another review from a relatively profound review writer to support those statements.

Really, the only way we readers can start forcing these producers to make better games is if we stop buying their crappy ones. I’ve had a friend who told me that some Japanese players would still fanboy over games like this, but for my sanity’s sake, I’m going to think this is false when it comes to this game.