UsoNatsu is a game that is beautiful both artistically and technically, with writing that remains consistent throughout the entire story even if it means it never gets too high or too low. It's a perfectly fine game, with issues that don't take too much away from the experience even if it makes you feel like there could have been more behind them. For the positives I believe there's some particularly good things. The voice acting (even if it's biased since I don't speak japanese) is very good. There's not a singular character that I find annoying or whose voice doesn't fit, voice actors will go through and make scenes very intense, funnier due to their delivery or even more cute than what the dialogue already makes them. There's a LOT of CGs, backgrounds and character outfits. You get to see new outfits for every character almost every chapter and they are all lovely. The CGs and characters are fully animated, and while sometimes there are quirks like snappy animations or some animation loops that are a bit unnatural, they are never distracting and they make you wish more games out there looked and felt like UsoNatsu. Really, the art is stellar. There's rollback, playing back lines of dialogues, practically infinite saves, chapter selection that includes a short summary for the events of the chapter, a gallery that lets you see every CG and their variations and more. The game doesn't offer anything particularly unique, but it also doesn't lack anything, offering more than enough for you to be able to replay your favorite lines, chapters, etc. The game's main theme, "Sun Shade" by Yuinishio is amazing and you should check it out as well as the accoustic version. A bit of cheating since it's not a super big thing, but really, go check it out. The side characters are good. In romance VNs or stories it's somewhat easy to forget about them, introduce far too many of them, etc. But UsoNatsu's roster is limited to only a few of them, and that's a good thing. They all have very distinct personalities and are very fun to interact with. UsoNatsu, however, has some things that make me feel mixed about the experience that don't quite let me get too inmersed to fully feel all the things that the story wants you to feel. The music in UsoNatsu is very weak. Some of the most used themes are just fine, but big romantic moments or really intense ones tend to have backing tracks that are either way too dramatic or way out of place, sometimes making you wish there was nothing in there instead of the music they used. There's also no way to listen to it in game which is a bummer, even if I don't particularly like it. While I may praise the game's technical aspects like moving backgrounds, main menu, CGs and sprites it does come at the cost of loading times being a little bit too long, which can add up to a lot of time since loading times can happen in between chapters, loading up saves, in the middle of a transition to a new scene, etc. It gets better the more you play in a single session, but it can be very annoying. Personally, I found that there's far too many moments in which the game fades out seemingly at random, breaking the pace of conversations and narration and leaving you confused over why there's a fadeout where there could simply be another dialogue or a different kind of transition. As for the story, I feel like there are some very good elements. The game has a lot of really cute and fun moments. Kaoru and Shiori are adorable, with their romance being slow but believable. It's tense, it makes you ask the usual will they or will they not, it's sweet and every single moment in which things get intimate is exciting. The pacing of UsoNatsu, however, can be very wonky. The beginning can be very slow, offering you little to get hooked on once the characters actually meet up. This is not that big of an issue since the game picks up very quickly after Chapter 4 and so on. The bigger problem, however, happens at the very end of the game. UsoNatsu picks select topics and conflicts to tackle. Love triangles, the feelings of our protagonist towards their teacher, Shiori's memory tour, Riku's feelings towards Shiori, Kaoru's inner struggles about love, etc. And I can say that, even if the way conflicts are resolved are not particularly stand out, they are still resolved and feel satisfying. But once the game hits it's last act towards chapter 12 it feels like the plot tries to shoehorn some VERY heavy topics like abuse, self-harm and others into the absolute end. This means that the game simply doesn't have enough time to solve these lines that are supposed to be treated with care and need a lot of time to sink in. It's a bit of a shock, it feels somewhat bitter after having seen the end of conflicts that the game actually develops throughout its runtime. Like an epilogue that lasts a little bit too long and tries to do more than what it has to do. Chapter 15 specifically feels like the game is really overstaying its welcome, even if its somewhat saved by a pretty decent post credit scene. Kaoru, for as much as she can be funny at times and well designed, sucks as a narrator. It's even brought up sometimes in dialogue the way that she'll ruin perfectly good moments by throwing in a witty comment, a proverb that she's heard before, overtly stating things that are already implied through the well written dialogue of other character's etc. I found myself annoyed by her at times and kinda wishing there would be less of her talking, especially when other characters simply do a better job at stating the thesis of the game (a very good one at that!) than she is. Ironically, I would argue that two of the best scenes in the game don't have her in game. Lastly, I find it hard to pinpoint issues with the game without spoiling it, but UsoNatsu's story never quite peaked as high as other games I've played, however I never found myself bored by it or wanted to stop playing. I had fun with the game and adored the characters, even if there were flaws that took away from them. It's fun, has some good twists and is overall a decent experience, a bit of a light read that I would recommend in between VN's or games with dense topics and harder to follow stories. It's sweet, it's full of those moments that you're already used to see in Yuri and it plays them out perfectly fine, enough for me to still play and want to see more.
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