For people who've never played Nekopara before Would I recommend this as an entry point to the series? Not at all. I realize it's slightly cheaper than the other games and less risk to try out before going all in on the whole thing (which I assume happened to at least a couple of people(???) In any case, I noticed some of the other reviews of this game seemed surprised at it, and I would assume if you played Volume 1 already you would know what it was about), but this genuinely is just the equivalent of a filler episode in an anime and isn't necessarily a good way to get an impression of the series. Volume 1 actually has a demo (as of this writing, anyway), so that would probably be a better thing to check, and I'd only recommend starting here if they remove the demo from Steam in the future or something, and honestly in such a case Volume 0 still wouldn't be a perfect place to start, but I guess it's better than nothing. For people who have played Nekopara What this game even is is just a random day in the life of the catgirls set before the start of Volume 1, and it genuinely has next to 0 plot and is mostly just an excuse to set up a bunch of gags and obligatory fanservice, and do I think it's important for the sake of understanding the series to play this in any way? Probably not, and I've been playing the games in order of release and so far haven't gotten to the ones after this, but I still cannot imagine that anything that happens in this game will ever come up in a later one in any way, mostly because barely anything DID happen, and I cannot stress to you enough how meaningless it all was (And I really thought Volume 1 had barely a plot when I played it, but in retrospect, a little bit happened there that I would expect future games to remember. Volume 0 really was almost nothing), but despite that, would I recommend playing it anyway? Yeah, because it's still fun, and if you want catgirl hijinks, then this is catgirl hijinks. What even happens in this game? So, partly because this game is really short (It took me 47 minutes to read through it and get all the achievements) and I need something to do while it's running for 2 hours so I can buy things from the points shop for it, here's a list of things that happen in the game: The catgirls' owner gets two of them out of bed in the morning with tickling. Our heroes discover that protagonist guy from the first game is out of the house for the day (Leaving the game in a weird state of limbo, by the way, and without him to serve as vaguely a viewpoint character most of the time, who are we the players supposed to "be" here? Especially because this game added the ability to pat the girls on the head whenever you want, and who are these pats supposed to be coming from?) While protagonist guy is out, two of the catgirls and their owner, who is also protagonist guy's little sister, creep on his futon and roll around in it and sniff his scent and stuff, and I would like to specifically point out that the fully human little sister is fully in on this when she doesn't even have a vague cat instincts excuse for the weird smell thing. Two of the catgirls get in a fight while cooking breakfast. One of the catgirls demonstrates her prowess in catching falling bowls to the delight of some of the others. One of the other catgirls somehow finds a way to make this naughty in her mind and starts getting, err, "excited". The catgirls investigate a new air freshener placed in one of the bathrooms, through general stupidity somehow manage to turn this into a whole "thing", and one of them ends up getting "excited" again. The catgirls get distracted by a butterfly while doing laundry and then somehow end up in a fight because of this. Everyone decides to get takeout for lunch and decides on their orders. Everyone heads out for a walk, they randomly talk about protagonist guy baking cakes, and one of the catgirls somehow gets "excited" about this AGAIN, and then protagonist guy's sister also starts talking dirty too just for good measure. Everyone gets some coffee, some of which has their pictures drawn in it, and some of them burn their mouths, which naturally one of the other catgirls gets "excited" about. And then again about curry literally 7 lines later. Seriously, at what point do you need to start getting your catgirls fixed? This is just unhealthy. I'm joking, obviously, but I do wonder if that's common in this universe, and I could see some attempt to create perma-loli catgirls by breeding them to remain short and have childlike faces and stuff, intimidating them into acting young and cutesy their whole lives, and then having them fixed before they develop properly so that when they're older they're technically legal but--never mind, I'm thinking too much about this. Let's just go before the FBI shows up. Everyone pitches in to make curry for dinner, some of the catgirls peel potatoes, and one of them somehow manages to get excit--never mind, you get it at this point. Why even bother with her? She's impossible. Protagonist guy finally returns home, but it hardly matters because he gets no lines and does nothing and may as well not even be in this game to the minimal extent that he is. Everyone supposes for no reason that protagonist guy might have a girlfriend, freaks out over this for two minutes, suggests a bunch of naughty schemes to remedy the situation that don't even make sense, and then they just clear up that he doesn't have a girlfriend and life returns to normal. During all this, one of the catgirls says out of the blue something about being a masochist for some reason, and little sister also specifically says she'd be cool with protagonist guy having a girlfriend if it was one of the catgirls, which really feels ever so slightly weird and out of place when her whole thing in this situation is that she's into him and wants him all to herself and no one even brought up the catgirls anyway, but I guess it's mildly needed to explain why she didn't freak out in Volume 1 when he starts dating two of the catgirls, and it does line up with her behavior there. Everyone has fun watching TV together. Obligatory bath scene with everyone (and with four different illustrations too, all of which include steam as a convenient censor for the most important parts, but they're still 99% revealing, and there's a picture of Azuki and Maple, a picture of Chocola, Vanilla and Shigure (even though I'm, like, 99% sure she isn't legal, although I don't know if her exact age has ever been said, but she IS "flat" in the illustration. For that matter, I feel like Azuki's technically legal but the game itself said at some point that she doesn't look it), a picture of Coconut and Cinnamon, and then another picture of just Cinnamon this time VERY prominently displaying her, well, "from behind") during which they discuss little sister trying to non-consensually take a bath with protagonist guy. They also discuss how some of the catgirls have very large, err, well, "bodies" let's call them. Yes, bouncy, jiggly bodies. Some of the catgirls play with a pullstring hanging from the ceiling, somehow starting a fight between two of the other catgirls, somehow causing them to start smacking around the aforementioned jiggly body on a third. Everyone goes to bed for the night, and they somehow all manage to spend the night together. Also, I missed the exact moments when I was skimming the game again to write the review, but I'm pretty sure the game can't commit on how it writes the family's last name in English and the spelling keeps changing, and one time there was a minor error and the English text accidentally referred to one catgirl by another catgirl's name (although the spoken line and the Japanese text were correct), but those were minor issues, and the translation is good in general. So, yeah, if all that sounds like fun to you, I guess you should play this.
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