Love, Elections, and Chocolate

overall feels paint by numbers, rather dated (as in EXTREME SOL), doesnt hold up, there are far better candidates for your time with this sort of genre. the story is horribly paced, especially early where there are infodumps left and right to force shallow worldbuilding and introductions for like 15 characters. too much packed in without anywhere to breathe = everything becomes simple archetypes, and every scene is just *something happens* --> every single character chimes in with one line, one after another. this sort of thing isn't necessarily a problem if its fun, but none of the characters are particularly interesting, and nothing particularly interesting happens. the character volume sliders dont work. i want to mute the gay *** oboro but its bugged so i cant and im forced to listen to his gay *** voice. the financial aid student stuff is presented as crazy classism but in reality isara isnt poor, she is working class. it is bizarre watching everyone hold their tongues around her when she is basically normal, it all feels forced, and the plot points built from it are also r*** --> "hmm.. what policy could we enact to stop people from calling the financial aid students stinky? hmmm its a mystery, if any policy existed it would surely already be in place.. oh well!" ?????? "bullying is allowed because you cant stop all bullying so why try stopping any" ??????? how about you morons just punish bullies. is japan pro bullying or something? am i missing something here? by the way, none of the routes are interesting. isara is cute, and satsuki is kind of fun, but they have nothing to do because there is no good writing anywhere in this game, all routes suck. "i'll fix your harmonica" (???) "WAAAIT, before you fix her harmonica, fix my harmonica!" (?????) also why does oojima actually win in the only route he has no reason to? the route where he doesnt actually have any unique plans or anything and the election is ellipsis'd over = the only one he wins? WHY. butchered to pieces by localisers. from big bang theory references to multiple lines of ACTUAL american democrat party political propaganda from the obamna era (??? WHY!?) to localisers making a straight female character trans, its all there. they insert fake pronouns in where there is no indication anywhere in any dialogue and use a plot point of an androgynous female journalist character agreeing to wear a male uniform to blend into different situations as WELP, GUESS ZIM/ZER IS TRANS NOW. localisers truly are the scum of the earth. soundtrack is pretty good

You should definitely get the patch from the internet, otherwise you will only be able to play the common route and never have access to the routes of specific girls.

I was really looking forward to reading this because of how much I enjoyed Aokana, but now I see sprite may have gotten lucky by accident there. This is one of the worst "serious" VNs I've ever read. In fact, instead of a positive experience, I feel like I need to check in for some serious therapy sessions. This VN is a trashy romcom with all sorts of story inconsistencies, toxic characters, and a waste of space MC. Here is a long list of complaints that I have against (as spoiler free as I can possibly keep it). A) The main heroine of this VN is one of the most selfish, psychotic characters I've ever had to experience. She literally gave me a nightmare one day while I was reading it. Nobody wants to have that kind of experience. B) Aside from the psychotic main heroine, you also have a toxic, psychotic club advisor and a club full of students who are selfish and on some kinds of drugs. Their behavior is so illogical and toxic at times that I have a hard time understanding why the writers felt this would be entertaining to read about. Well, maybe they wanted to serve up a nice dose of poison. If so, they succeeded! Here's an example of this in one of the routes. Mifuyu's route features one of the most insane storylines I've ever read. In order to protect her psychotic friend, Chisato, she aggressively forces the MC to become her boyfriend despite the fact that the MC doesn't want to do this. But you see she loves him too, so she can't make up her mind about the right path forward. So she has sex with him twice and then pretends that they can just be friends. Eventually the psychotic main heroine figures out about this and slaps the hell out of her. The MC waffles between the two in the meantime before finally choosing her at the end of the route. Despite that, they both still want to be friends with Chisato and forgive her for all of her crazy behavior. NONE OF THIS MAKES ANY SENSE! And that's not the only route that is this crazy!!!! C) A lot of serious issues are raised in this. Discrimination, class issues, bullying, and so on. Do they do anything interesting with it? NOT AT ALL. It's there to hook you into the story mostly, but it's like the writer forgot to do anything with this once the issue is introduced. The first half of the VN does do pretty well with the political angle, but it really starts to lose the plot when the second half of the routes actually deal with the fallout of the election process. Michiru's route in this regard is pure insanity. You have to read it to see what I mean. Instead, the writers sprinkle some of that magic pixie dust and routes often end abruptly on a happy note that MAKES ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE. They can never finish what they start without relying on some terrible tricks (hospitalizations, sudden happy endings) to deal with the problem. D) This JVN continues the tradition of idiotic, indecisive male MCs that mostly come off as a waste of space, and the h-scene writing is beyond goofy. If you like inconsistent, trashy romcom poison, this is your VN, but, if you want something that might actually stick with you and bring some positive vibes in your life, I'd avoid this and just read "Aokana." That is worth your time.