Game:

Japanese School Life (2016)

Category:

Review

Duration: 27:23

795 views

3

The visual novel, Japanese School Life, is my newest feature for New Release Friday… I don’t really think I can classify it as gameplay but that’s the best I’ve got. It will be a two part video this week… and potentially continued on the channel if people are interested. Sorry I am a day late; the holiday and an extra day of work has thrown me off. This is my first experience with this genre and I was pretty interested to see if it would make for interesting content or not. I found that it was easy to interact with and make observations, so this is already a million times better of a watch than Mr. Shadow. Seriously, don’t go watch that episode of NRF.
New Release Friday is a series in which (hopefully) every week I will hop over to the “New Releases” section of Steam and pick-up a game to play for a few hours and give a first-thought review on. This series is an attempt to not only keep content fresh and relevant around the channel by covering current games in a concise and genuine fashion, but also to offer exposure to new games via a relaxed review format to inform potential, unsure buyers.
I had some preconceptions coming into Japanese School Life and honestly most of them were correct. Even though I had never played a visual novel prior to this, I had heard and seen enough to ensure that I wasn’t disappointed and destined to give it a bad review. This doesn’t mean to imply that the gameplay MET my expectations though, only that I had a baseline of what to expect. Generally speaking, people expect games of this genre to have heavy fan-service that is all about sexuality and lewd anime girls. I mean, animated or not, who doesn’t love lewd girls? Sadly, this game doesn’t provide a whole lot in the way of lewdness or sexuality.
I don’t think that a visual novel’s quality is defined by sexual gameplay, but I think that that story in Japanese School life is generally shallow and could easily make up for its shortcomings with some more meat in the right places. The game almost presents itself more as an educational tool with added in slice of life aspects and minor romantic undertones. The main character Brian occasionally mentions emotions that he feels towards the characters, but the majority of their time is spent educating the new exchange student on the customs and practices of Japanese culture. I plan to mostly talk about the plot and occurrences in this description and complete my review of all the aspects in the next video.
You’re a male high school student who has come from America to Japan as an exchange student and are going to spend a whole year there in school. You are quickly greeted by a classmate with dark hair and eyes of amethyst by the name Chiyoko Honda. She is the class president and seems very soft-spoken but focused. She seems excited to have met you and offers to show you around the city after school before being interrupted by her friend, Arisa Honda. Outgoing and bubbly, Arisa introduces herself, her auburn hair, and crystal blue eyes before inviting herself to hang out with Chiyoko and I or as she calls her, “Choco.” This is fine with Brian as he seems to have lived a deprived life up until now and potentially has never even seen a female aside from his mother until this day.
Brian is literally an idiot. He seems to have no real grip on any sort of cultural norms in his home country or in Japan and things that are common worldwide seem like completely new concepts to him. As a proud Otaku, he initially seems like the perfect main character for Japanese School Life… but because he is so cringey about it, it quickly becomes frustrating and makes you feel as though that is how YOU are being portrayed. He is a shy guy, and not the cool kind from Super Mario. There is nothing wrong with being shy or socially awkward, but holy shit this guy has no idea how to say anything or act around someone without spewing spaghetti all over their shoes. This is one area where the gameplay really fell short for me, in that I have no control over him as of yet… hopefully this either changes or he gets a damn backbone.
The girls still seem more than happy to drag poor little Brian around to his anime and manga expos as well as to their own activities like karaoke and an arcade. Everywhere they go, he is given some super longwinded spiel about Japanese culture mannerisms that completely blows his mind. Reviewing it for what it is, this is honestly a pretty cool way to teach people about etiquette overseas and I can appreciate what they are doing with it. At the same time, I think that most people will not be buying this game for such a reason and will be expecting more interesting and meaningful interactions. I have learned some sorta cool shit from it though.
We leave off in this episode just before shit finally gets really good, but I also continue to get more and more delirious as the session pushes onward. There is also some “plot” in bound for those of you wondering.

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