Cute & fun bonus story for the fans! (7/10) Another fine addition to the whole series. If you already love the girls, this gives you another peek into their lives, from what I gather to be roughly 6 months before V1 and maybe 1 year before V4. (Correct me if I’m wrong, Nekopara loreheads, I’m still split on whether or not the timeline of Extra -> V4 is exactly 1 year or exactly 2 years). Although I am tempted to say it’s more tangible and is slightly better than Nekopara Vol 0 ; if you have to choose to play only one bonus game outside of main titles and didn’t actually get the bundle, I’d recommend this a bit more. Not only because MC is involved in them or me having a slight bias on favoring loli charas (I admit, those play a part); but also because the scenes actually feel like they try to depict decent dialogue and characterization at times and feels a bit less disjointed. Vol 0 was more of a train of fun hijinks more than anything. While in this, for example, the Azuki & Coconut scene was pretty sweet and show their bonds nicely. Though there’s a slight clashing relationship progression, if you remember the fact that they suddenly became childish at fighting each other at the start of V2. Nevertheless, it’s still a bit for the freaks , because there’s still some amount of fan-service here, with Coconut, Vanilla and Chocola looking much smaller than you ever saw them. It’s still all very SFW and acceptably cute , but I’ll elaborate later on these. I think there’s some added value for the real freaks. Worth noting that I can’t even tell any growth differences for Azuki and Maple though. Maybe Cinnamon to a lesser extent is a bit smaller? If those 3 are your favorites and you expected to see them in smol loli form; dream on. Information: (•)Playtime: 1h49m59s . Mostly in auto mode and fully listening to all voice lines, clicking thru non-voiced stuff. Of course, I still feel like there’s a noticeable, unnecessary 1 sec delay in auto-mode that might not be on the level of V4’s snappiness yet. Also worth noting that my steam playtime is longer because I was trying to farm the steam card drops. Somehow even after 2 hours I only got 1 card out of the starting potential of 4. I got the short end of the stick. (•) Fully voice acted & Animated sprites. Generally the same level of features & Tech on V3 I’d think. Thankful that the petting features are temporary too and getting out of them reverts expressions. (•) Play Order? The general consensus is that it’s fine to play these games in the release order. That is; V1 -> V0 -> V2 -> V3 -> Extra (This) -> V4. But honestly, I swapped Extra to be played last and I think it’s a reasonably fine alternative. It doesn’t impact anything by much, if at all, but still, since the bonus titles are more forgettable, I’d think it’s easier to notice the tie-ins to V4 if you play V4 first than the other way around. (+) Pros & General Ratings (/10): (+) Writing: 7.1. Mostly elaborated on reasons above; nothing mindblowing and is just cute Slice of Life scenes. The fact that it’s short and has basically nothing going on makes me put this below V2 and any other future main titles, for sure. (+) Art: 9. Not much to say really, still the same level of consistency and cuteness as the other titles. Pretty lovely, and I didn’t notice anything inconsistent. Pretty numerous amount of CGs for what is 2 hours long. Coconut gets a special outfit that I think I’ve never seen before, and I think it’s pretty cute. Should make a return, honestly. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3453067655 (+) For the freaks (good). As someone who played Vol 4 first before this title, some of the lines made me raise my eyebrows. It’s not like they are blatantly putting out lewd innuendos or anything, but there’s a suspicious amount of room to believe that they tried. As a certified freak that I am, I admit I got some extra enjoyment out of these. Some little things said can be tied in to what happens later in the timeline. Promises to be ‘having a bigger and better Christmas party next year’, ‘do it every year’, after Maple talks about the fact that ‘this is a very White Christmas’ just reminds me of the whole Orgy scene in V4 and how they were all wearing Santa Hats and there’s an ungodly amount of white fluids . The gifts that Vanilla asks for (a picture book showing animals) reminds me of her at some point from V2 or V3 being mentioned in dialogue to be watching lewd animal videos and at least ties in enough to make me think ”wow, she’s already interested in this from a very young age” . Heck, even Chocola asking for a toy sounds suspect because of this, even if not tied in to anything particular yet, I wonder if she’ll get H scenes with adult toys in them later. There’s also the leg numb moment and the girls making certain sounds while saying “ don’t touch me there ” to each other. It’s all SFW, but pile enough of these , and it becomes a bit suspicious . Though I won’t criticize them for it, I did enjoy spotting these. There’s also a lot of somewhat suggestive CGs outside of the sweet ones. Specifically, (minor) the girls getting body measurements in underwear, & a bath CG yet again like in Extra, except it’s fogged up . To a lesser extent there’s also them playing on the beach, although their outfits stay the same, looking at the skirt lines and how high up they are raised also compels me to say “ nice ”. (-) Cons: (-) Typos. Even for something this short there’s still three. One instance of “e a” (prob a brainfart of wanting to say ‘a’ but phonetically thinking of how it sounds like one way to say ‘e’), one missing exclamation mark at the end of a sentence, and something else I noticed but didn’t exactly manage to recall. I’m certain there’s exactly 3 typos in this though. (-) ED video can’t be screenshotted, again. Well, not via steam screenshots, at least. Just shows a black screen again. It is what it is. Quite a shame because I thought the chibis were pretty cute. (-) Some of the VA felt a bit slower than necessary. Yes, I get the point of Chocola & Vanilla being young enough to have trouble speaking, but there are moments where I wished they were slightly quicker with it or did it less often. Thankful they kinda stopped after the first half of the runtime. I enjoy it. I’m glad this was included in the bundle!
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