So yeah, long time no see. Haven’t fallen off the face of the earth yet, just needed to take care of a few projects (my first trad published novel is coming out this year!) and odds and ends. Plus I’ve been in a bit of a hiatus when it comes to dōjin purchases, but I do have some new material on the way so reviews will be coming soon. I know I have a rather… umm, ‘silent’ public XD but stats say people actually enjoy reading this blog, so here we go.
Today it’s a very quick one, a few notes about a visual novel I have actually played years and years ago for the first time, and that I have replayed recently – A Midsummer’s Day Resonancenull (夏の日のレザナンス) by Kagura Saitoh, who in spite of what VNDB would tell you, has actually made more stuff through their semi- professional dōjin circle “Resonance”null, mostly phone games I haven’t played so I won’t comment upon. Inactive since forever and ever but, by now, is that even a surprise? most of the stuff I write about is dead and buried anyway.
Still, A Midsummer etc is definitely worth a play. Without going to much into the details of the fairly light story (one of those “Dandelion Girl”-ish soft scifi slice-of-life thingies Japan loves so much), I will give you a bunch of reasons to bother downloading this little game:
– English localization, in case you don’t speak Japanese. And, should you want, the Japanese version is fairly approachable even by VNs standards.
– A female protagonist- in fact, a fully female cast. There is a touch of yuri but it’s super light, and the focus is more on friendship and ‘senpai admiration’ than love proper.
– The art is simple but effective, just a bunch of backgrounds, a few portraits and a handful of intermission sketches. The indie cred is off the charts.
– Very cute music, and occasional touches of humour. One of the characters is your typical ditz, and she’s used quite effectively here without being overplayed.
– Very short runtime, doesn’t overstay its welcome.
So yeah, reccomended, not only as a product itself, but as a historical piece of VN localization. Like most of Park’s Insani translations, one could add. Because yes, there was a time in which, save for a few happy islands like this one, either you knew Japanese, or VNs were a no go. Crazy, huh?
