Home Sweet Homecoming

Pretty good. I liked the MC and the love interests. MC is likable and sociable. Sometimes the relationship between the MC and the girls progressed a little fast after the confession I think, but overall it was okay. Story is slice of life so don't expect anything too unusual.

Home Sweet Homecoming (or E School Life, the original Japanese name), developed by HOOKSOFT who also made I x She Tell, Houkago Cinderella, and Yubisaki Connection, has some things that stick out about it, but ultimately it’s just another light-hearted slice-of-life romance moege with little to no drama. That does make me hit-or-miss on whether I ultimately recommend this title, especially when I think there are better moege out there, but overall I’d say it’s kinda good—with caveats. Quantity Kinda Over Quality Options The main thing that sticks out at first is the number of options Homecoming has compared to most moege. There are 7 love interests—a bit more than the usual 4–5—and thankfully just about all of them are generally pleasant to be around and not too trope-y. There’s also a decent amount of choices in the common route. Not a ton, but more than the usual “modern” moege. Since the title doesn’t have a club gimmick and the heroines mostly don’t hang out with each other, they feel extremely separated. This means you have to deliberately choose to spend time with one, and most of their pre-route screentime comes from the straightforward after-school “who do you hang out with” decisions. There’s also a choice right before bed: how early or late you want to go to sleep. This mainly affects how early/late you wake up the next morning and which heroine you run into. Since it’s hard to predict who you’ll meet and there are only 6 common-route days, you get roughly 15 different morning conversations. They’re short, but they add nice unpredictability if you’re reading blind. Speaking of reading blind, there’s another optional system called “Campus Buzz”: after school you can click on faceless NPC groups and sometimes overhear gossip about a heroine. This alters a handful of lines in the next scene with that heroine. It’s completely optional and never required to enter any route. Ultimately, while there are more heroines and slightly more meaningful choices than average, it’s still very easy to get onto routes for a moege. You just gain noticeably more common-route variety—at the cost of almost zero heroine interaction with each other outside their own paths. Likable But Inconsistent Heroines and Routes Every heroine is relatively pleasant, but that doesn’t translate into consistent quality across routes or even likability. In fact. the VN is shockingly uneven in route length, romance development, and character depth. My personal favorite heroine is Emi Hanzono, the childhood friend and clearly advertised implied “true” heroine. Her route is one I genuinely quite liked. Their banter is goofy with mutual teasing, especially refreshing for childhood friends who were apart for a decade before reuniting. They act like actual friends instead of the usual one-sided simping. I also enjoyed the light conflict around Emi’s lingering self-doubt that formed when Ryoutarou moved away as kids. Misato Suzuyama is the assertive genki girl. She can be selfish, but she’s the most consistently layered heroine while still staying likable, wholesome, and fun. I was worried she would be too much but I enjoyed how surprisingly dynamic she was. Her route feels like a proper arc with callbacks and real growth; her final route event is easily the strongest in the VN to me. Mia Tougane is the one main heroine I just didn’t get at all. Beyond her first-day impression of really wanting to make the MC feel comfortable, her personality is the most forgettable in the cast and her route just feels kinda aimless. Her traits keep shifting—overly accommodating → book nerd → pushover → suddenly assertive in romance—with no clear core. Rikako Jinnai is the definition of “perfectly okay.” Shy track girl in a revealing uniform—that’s about all I got from the route. There are some sweet moments of Ryoutarou helping her open up, but her route stays surface-level and predictable despite being a full length main one. Yuka Karasuma has the most disappo…

E School Life is a moege. Oh that's too short for a review? It's extremely vanilla. The ED is super catchy and I like it. The H-scene writing is a bit subpar in my opinion. But it's comfy and the stakes are really low. Sometimes being able to turn your brain off and read something like this is nice. I can almost guarantee I'll forget about everything in E School Life except the ED within a month though. Misato > Rikako > everyone else.