ToHeart（トゥハート ）

I know almost nothing about the Leaf brand of games because it's smut which I abhor but from what I can gather, they started out with a Mahjong trash smut game on the PC-88 and followed it up with a trash garbage smut RPG after which, they released three heathen trash garbage barf filth visual novels called the Leaf Visual Novel Series.

RPG with memorable cast such as DURK BOLT, who also moonlights as pool cleaner and pizza delivery boy

Of course, I have no idea what most of these games are about and I wasn't able to find any screenshots probably because they were ignored by the wholesome internet community due to the filthy contents. As we all know, the internet HATES porn.

Girls from the Shizuku remake; I have no idea how this image got here.

All three games in the series were later remade with better graphics, full voice, and some with new characters, more endings etc. but unfortunately the first two games Shizuku and Kizuato are PC fap machine only. I avoided looking up anything about them in the fear that I might get inadvertently contaminated. Fortunately, ToHeart, the third entry was cleaned up for the holy rays "Oh Lord, please save us from sins of the flesh" Purestation.

I'm sure God will approve (or your diety of choice)

I'm afraid to say I had actually owned 3 copies of this game at one time until I purged my PS1 copy. Now, I only have the PS2 mega box and PSP limited edition exclusive UMD disc. Whew! Glad for the extra space!

No I don't have Trump tiny hands, this is actually the size of two PS2 games

While I know nothing about the first two games, Sizuku was kinda stupid with the whole denpa sex waves thing and at the same time extremely violent. Kizuato was also very dark and violent but it had a story line that seemed simple at first but actually had many hidden layers. In this game, I guess they were trying to go with something more cheerful and light-hearted or whatever but really it's just about the most vanilla, generic galge you can imagine. Like if DDLC was actually the game it pretends to be in the beginning but add a bunch more girls and you essentially have ToHeart. I could give it some slack if it was the first of its kind for innovation or whatever but no, it came out in 1997.

As dumb as Shizuku was, the music was not bad at all

I don't know if they were trying to ride the simulation Tokimeki/Sotsugyou bandwagon but going through each day of the calendar made the first run slightly more boring than watching grass grow. I'm actually impressed at how many ways they were able to describe getting out of bed, brushing your teeth, getting ready to go to school, etc. The all-ages remake is a lot better than the original 18+ version as it has auto mode but it's still mostly the same game except for a bunch of mini games inside the game. The shooting mini game is actually pretty good but I just wish you could skip it when you replay for all the numerous girls' endings.

Not bad for a game in a game

Once you reach one ending, you can skip all the daily routines (Thank the Lord!) and just go through picking the same girl at one of the 4 locations. The funniest route is definitely Remi due to her crazy American dad that carries a gun inside the house with live ammunition. The characters in this game definitely have a funny image of America probably based on the writer's impressions. After all, there normally aren't any car chases except that one time a car flipped over running away from the cops next to my house. And it's not like Americans all walk around carrying guns and firing them all over the place like fucking idiots... Ok... yeah... I guess it's pretty accurate after all. #ColdDeadHands

No real father would walk around with a dangerous rifle near children (looks up gun death statistics...) Oh.

Overall, I'm glad to be finally done with this yawn borefest. You would think in a setting with fully autonomous maid robots and psychic powers, things would be a little more interesting but nope. The only highlight is the voice acting and 90s anime nostalgia theme songs. My favorite girl was Rio just because she sounded cute. The various radio segments were cool too and bonus Jhipster points as it's not scripted and require near native listening comprehension (yours truly).

Needs more holy rays for the naked shoulders IMO

Score: 2 maybe the original sex scenes would have spiced it up but I guess we'll never know out of 5

While I'll never play the 18+ PC version, I can't help but wonder if Multi and other maid robots have you know... all the parts... for umm... various "functions".

All I could find of the PC version, you have idea how hard it is to find porn on the internet!

Scale
0 - Awful
1 - Bad and not worth your time
2 - Has some flaws but still enjoyable
3 - An average enjoyable experience
4 - A great game
5 - Masterpiece of a caliber only found very rarely

Dancing Blade: Katte ni Momotenshi!（dancing blade かってに桃天使!）

Well, that was quick! While I was going through my customary purge cleaning sessions in a desperate but ultimately futile attempt to make some more space in my Closet of Shame™, I came across a copy of Dancing Blade: Katte ni Momotenshi! (PS1 version). I kind of heard this "game" was short so I decided to pop it in and play through it before I toss it for the Gamestop dumpster divers and I'm now writing this 3 hours later. Even shorter than I imagined (always a plus for the pro reviewer #respectmytime)!

The blue "interactive anime" tag makes this a "game"

I'm not going into the whole hipster debate of what constitutes a game but straight up, this is basically 2 OVAs of about 30 minutes each with minor branching animation paths that lead to 4 different endings. In fact, the PSP version is just a plain interactive UMD Video. I would call this even less of a game compared to other animated adventure games where every other decision results in death (you know which game I'm talking about). It's literally just two anime OVAs with one short clip difference between the endings. Which OVA you "play" depends on your first decision to eat either Kibi dango or go to a restaurant. If you decide to eat Kibi dango, you watch the main story while the other option is kind of a fan service episode around Oinu (big boobs) and Kijime (even bigger boobs)

Aw fuck it, might as well watch

And that brings us to the plot, which is not exactly a Shakespearean masterpiece. You play some guy (voiced by Ogata Megumi-chan) surrounded by hot chicks whom you met by I guess whatever happened as shown in like 3 seconds during the opening song. Basically, it's like Momotaro but the dog, bird, and Momo are hot chicks and the monkey is some robot. Whatever, I'm not some Ebert anime reviewer but as animes go, it's about as unremarkable as you can imagine. At least the animation is pretty good and the transitions were almost seamless. The DC Complete edition seems to have a tiny bit more content but you have to hunt for it.

Pretty much half the game in a nutshell

The only real problem is that you can only skip the intro video. During the game itself, pressing start just prompts you to save and so be prepared to multitask as you wait for the animation to drag on to the next selection. Once you watch two of the endings, the rest of the hour or so will be spent watching minor variations and mostly waiting.

Score: 2 (well at least it's better than more SAO attempted rape scenes but that's just stating the obvious) out of 5

Besides the lack of skip option, there's nothing technically terrible about this anime but there's really no reason for this to be a "game". I will go with a 2 just based purely on the fact that it wasn't broken and the anime wasn't terrible but you can just watch the thing on YT or whatever. This will definitely be purged from my collection and so I have a bit more space to buy more useless shit. I guess onto the sequel!

Mission Accomplished!

The good ol' days...

Scale
0 - Awful
1 - Bad and not worth your time
2 - Has some flaws but still enjoyable
3 - An average enjoyable experience
4 - A great game
5 - Masterpiece of a caliber only found very rarely

Undertale

I learned not to get swept up by internet hype especially since I STILL regret paying even a single cent for "oh look at me cover all the hipster selling points" indie title Gone Home. But as even my nephew recommended it, I guess I had to try Undertale at some point especially since I live in my sister's basement for free #MillennialMinimalistGamer.

What my room looks like minus piles of games, empty dew cans and hentai wall scrolls.

I decided to get this one on (my sister's) Switch during the recent #BLACKFRIDAYKILLERDEALSCLICKNOW!!!! even though I would have preferred to play this on the Vita. I skipped the Vita because digital games are region locked and I didn't want to waste the money and space on a physical copy. I'm not a weeb so I really didn't want to play this in Japanese and cringe at how they tried to translate all the stupid puns nor did I want to have to reset my Vita to NA region. The Switch version miraculously has no region restrictions and even comes with both languages. I'm sure glad I went the English route because the JP version doesn't look like it uses any Kanji. I guess what was an unfortunate technical restriction from the Famicon days is now some sort of weird hipster retro fashion statement. Fuck off.

Speaking of ぎじゅつ, have you heard of fucking Unicode?

Even in English, I noticed a weird usage of singular "they" to refer to the Player, which in our time was a sentence agreement grammar error. I thought it was an easy problem to fix by asking your gender but then I remembered nowadays that would be a PC nightmare with whatever popular genders youngers are identifying with this week. So yeah, I guess they don't have to worry about grammar no more and by "they", I was referring to me. So should I start talking about the game or finish off with another round of old man ramblings?

I feel like every indie game I played has at least one picturesque, scenic road. +1 hipster point?

Given how hyped this game is for reasons I cannot fathom except I guess not everybody has played 30 years of masterpieces that were never translated to English, the question is not if this game is overrated but by how much. After all, DDLC pretty much lived up to the hype for me so miracles do happen. Well, I'm happy to report that Undertale is only very mildly overrated. Unlike other shit hipster titles, this game actually has some substance and is even fun to play. The combat system is challenging and the music is really good all around.

The entire OST is good, which is quite a feat.

As for the story, it was pretty good and yes, I'd hate to say it but for the hipsters, it does have that Mother 3 vibe. I don't know if Toby played Mother but I wish he could have at least added a dash option like Mother 3.

I thought this was gonna be a place for some revelation but no, it's just where the boat takes you back.

To see the true ending, you do have to play the game twice but it's not that much of a chore since the game is pretty short. The characters were charming enough that I did feel bad about deleting the game but hey, what are their lives compared to the extra space so nephew can play the next trendy game?

Not everybody made it in my first playthrough (sorry lesser 🐕)

I think the story had potential to make this a 4 great game but I didn't quite get the narrative about the Player. I don't want to go into spoilers but yeah, I don't understand the reason for why you were still there.

Overall, it was a good game but I'm still glad I didn't waste my money on an overpriced physical copy. At least it's not published by Super Limited "you might need to suck some dick to get a copy" hipster publisher.


Score 3.5 out of 5 (played maybe around 5-15 hours even though the Switch knows the actual FUCKING number and no I'm not going to install stupid parental control app just for record of hours played)

I might have gone for a 3rd playthrough to complete the trophies but oh, Switch doesn't have trophies. How am I going to know I'm fully enjoying a game without trophies? And also, the Switch is fucking heavy to play in bed, portable my ass. Oh I guess I was supposed to stand it up and play with my (non-existent) friends IRL during a trendy party on my urban roof? Thanks Nintendo for making me feel inadequate. Ok, that's it for my mini Switch rant, sorry.


Scale
0 - Awful
1 - Bad and not worth your time
2 - Has some flaws but still enjoyable
3 - An average enjoyable experience
4 - A great game
5 - Masterpiece of a caliber only found very rarely