Hakoniwa Logic – Impessions

clip+(2014-11-21+at+07.50.24)And done! With a bit over three weeks to complete, it’s quite fast. And short (or maybe I just gotten faster).

Still one hell of story though. The mystery is quite good and that all routes are intertwined with each other makes thing sufficiently interesting. The key system also kept me from being overly spoiled over the story though it failed to avoid one part, rendering one of the routes a bit redundant.

Sound effects during hscenes were unexpected and made the scene to be quite… something. Unfortunately the closing sound sounded a bit weird but I kind of get used to it after a while.

Its gameplay is probably one of the easiest with chart mode allowing me to jump to (almost) any arbitrary point of the story, saving me effort from bookkeeping branching states. The choices effects are also immediate instead of counted during one point of the game. This is probably the first game I’ve played without “common route”.

Soundtrack is really nice, too. As expected from Manack – the same guy who did Clover Day’s. That reminds me, I haven’t played anything with Tenmon as composer. I’ll also probably skip minori’s next game which means another year without Tenmon unless Makoto Shinkai produces something and go with Tenmon (which he didn’t last year).

Art-wise, it’s mostly nice. As expected from Yukie. Kirika’s (and Moemi’s) confused face are especially cute. Unfortunately sometimes the expression usage are a bit off-timed. Miwa Futaba characters are also mostly good. Unexpectedly good. The sub characters’ design is a bit iffy though. Especially Nichika and Wakui Rei. I can see Cabbit is attempting to avoid sameface problem but they’re just not up to par yet even for sub characters.

As opposite to Clover Day’s where the hscenes are awfully long, hscenes in this game is short. Very short. Which I think is a good thing because there isn’t much point prolonging it – I usually find it tiring* if it takes too long.

In the end, this is a relatively good game. I noticed though that all four games I’ve played are all different types. “Clover Day’s” is character game, “Hare Nochi Kitto Nanohana Biyori” can be safely called crying game, “Onii-chan, Migite no Shiyou wo Kinshi Shimasu!” is clearly extracting game, and lastly, this one, “Hakoniwa Logic” is, uh, “adventure game”? “story game”? Or maybe just plain “visual novel”.

Lastly, I’ll be returning to Your Diary +H (or Sakusaku) until next game (Aokana) is released.

Update: now I’m playing Your Diary +H, I remembered how crappy this game’s base resolution is (1024×576) and that its scaler engine is terrible. Setting the scaler mode to “high quality” actually worsened it.

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