Norn9 ~Last Era~

So it’s been 4 (or 5?) years since I played the first Norn9 game, and I finally thought to start on the FD for a game I don’t have a good memory of. Guess what? I really don’t remember shit and have some good new takes on this series, and they are not amazing. I started the game in November, but it took me very long to pull my ass through the game I don’t remember the earlier content again I played, so this will be a brief review. The game has a few segments to it, so spoilers under the cut.

Prelude

Prelude is a section which covers the events of the Norn ship setting off from the HQ island, all the way till Koharu & Sorata get on the ship. The stories are separated into each character’s perspective when they get onto the ship, seeing how they got on & how they knew about the summons from The World. It’s a pretty simple story with some good tie-ups to the stories like how Natsuhiko snuck Ron on the ship, along with how certain characters are already friends before Koharu gets on. Not much to say about this segment other than how it ties up some loose ends in the complicated plot, and slightly introduces the game’s new characters.

Fuga

Fuga has all 9 routes, but this time in the guy’s perspective. Here’s the thing about this section, I personally was fine with it due to not playing the game for a long time. It was a good recap on what happened in the first game, and it also gave the developers an excuse to put in the sharpened CGs from the last game because there would be people who didn’t want to play Var Commons, basically the whole of the first game again. However, if I had played this shortly after it came out, I wouldn’t be sure if I would actually have enjoyed it.

Anyway, the Fuga section was good in the aspect that it gave me a good refresher, and some of the guy’s thoughts throughout the route were explained well. It does close some loopholes to some shit, and give dumb reasons to why things happen. For example, how Sakuya deduces that whoever Mikoto hooks up with will probably have the risk of dying LMAO. However, I also felt that it was a good excuse for the writers to shove in extra plot points so they had a story to tell in the after stories. Maybe I don’t remember the last game that well, but they had stuff like Heishi suddenly having a close friend in his travelling musicians group?? Was this in the first game? I don’t remember that well so I’m not sure whether if it was but that was new to me. If I’m wrong this example is invalid haha. This include’s Ron’s memory CG of him killing somone, I’m pretty sure this is the new Var Commons CG but I personally don’t find adding extra details in a following game to give the story more meat to be great cuz it just gets confusing. I’ll talk a little bit more about each character’s Fuga in the below summaries.

Concerto

The actual after stories of the games. These are all technically after the ending of the last game, and I remember some of it’s contents so here are some quick summaries of all the stories. The order how I’m writing is the order of routes I played. I’ll only be doing a quick summary of what happens only because it’s been a while and I only vaguely remember the routes.

Yuiga Kakeru (CV: Kaji Yuki)

Kakeru’s fuga was a good understanding of why he acted like a piece of shit, basically him deciding that there needs to be a mean guy on the ship so people can get things done. He tries to be nice but he really doesn’t know how to express, and I honestly couldn’t like him any better no matter what sadly. Kakeru’s route continues off from them living a house away from town, and starts of with the light story where Kakeru sells flowers to make a living. Gonna be honest, this plot was pretty much Kakeru wanting to bang Koharu but she doesn’t understand lmao. They eventually find this orphanage which is gonna close down because a the landlord demands they pay money or get out lmao.  Koharu finds a big ol’ mine of stones for them to sell the stones so the orphanage can pay the rent lmao, in which they give the mine to the government. The dark side of the story has a government agent visiting them asking Kakeru to be an agent of sorts to help find out about the recent wars going on in a neighbouring country. They find out that Yuiga Shirou’s mercenary group’s been funding the wars, so they decide to sneak into their base to have a conclusion with him, because Kakeru has actual daddy issues in the way that despite how Shirou treated him like a tool, he still feels like Shirou gave him dad love so he wants to talk to him again. ( ´_ゝ｀) Anyway, they sneak into the base and find out his robot body’s been disintergrating so he’s technically, so they talk to him. However Shirou literally has no guilt killing people and using others so he uses his shit to control Kakeru again while trying to talk to Koharu.

Koharu tells him that she wants Kakeru to be a human not a tool  so he reveals the whole plot about his ex-lover dying, and he pretty much gave up reviving her, but when he saw Sorata reappear with the exact same genes he figured that could happen too with his lover! Unfortunately that never happens anyway and Koharu was only slightly close, but he got close to her because she still had the fire powers for him to use. He also pretty much tells Kakeru he raised him so he could use his powers too lmao. Shirou gives up talking to them so he tells them to get out because the base is about to explode, and for some reason they both cry so im just ??? wtf did he do to make y’all feel for him goddamn. In the epilogue, Kakeru gives Koharu a necklace and proposes to her while saying that he’ll save up to get a nicer engagement ring. I honestly have no feels for Kakeru at the end of all of this, and I honestly can’t tell if 4 years ago me liked him or not but I’m gonna put it here – nope I just can’t like him. His route was kind of…bad? There was one CG where Kakeru was half naked & tryna make a move on Koharu but I just sat there like “Holy shit I seriously don’t care lmao” because KOHARU DOESN’T EVEN TAKE A HINT.  ( ´_ゝ｀) This part really felt super forced and I could never get into it. Yes I know they felt some feelings to Shirou for keeping them company for a period of their live – but that doesn’t make him any more human because he still did it to use them eventually. This route didn’t really redeem Shirou in any way or so.

Nijou Sakuya (CV: Saiga Mitsuki)

Fuga actually gave me a better impression of Sakuya he’s genuinely nice & wants to keep Mikoto safe and shit, but ye still didn’t help that the entire route was one giant ass soap opera about them wanting to protect each other. His plan was to have Mikoto hook up with someone else so he can forget about her – but he just gets salty anyway so I really still couldn’t feel that much for him. Anyway, Sakuya’s route shows us some snippets of how the reset goes – probably because they’re the only route where they go on with the reset. This explains the main plot a little in which the reset takes away all memories of violence and destruction from people, but leaves people’s relations and affections for each other so everything’s still the same. There’s more to the reset though, since the people at the world have this long council debate on whether they should control the various governments of them world. Aion throws Sakuya & Mikoto the job, and they go through shit ton of dumb world drama between the people who think they should control all the countries or not. After hearing about how much powers the world has from Natsuhiko (& him hitting on Mikoto LMAO) Sakuya comes up with the idea to educate the people so that they stop starting wars by giving out history books which explain the past world wars that happened.

This ends up with them staying on the island to help Masamune write the books, but this whole part where the romance starts is a whole big soap opera /again/. Firstly, they spend all their time holding back on wanting to bang each other. Yep. That’s it. This is until both of them get a vacation on a deserted island for their contributions, in which they gotta slide in that last shot of angst to make it a 10 min soap opera. Sakuya tells Mikoto that he checked the info that Masamune’s uncle gave him and finds out that he was pretty much chosen by the world to be an ability user. He was just there to be a burden to Mikoto to make sure she kept her sense of duty. He suddenly doesn’t feel he’s worthy of her and shit – lots of angst but Mikoto tells him that she still loves him so they finally sleep together lmao. In the epilogue, they have a kid while continuing their work on making history books with the world. Welp I still felt nothing for him, since I still felt the route was a very, very long soap opera and that final straw in the concerto killed it for me when I thought he was redeemed a bit. Goddamn.

Muroboshi Ron (CV: Sugita Tomokazu)

Ron’s Fuga never redeemed him at all, but strangely I felt a bit more for this route? There were many things he did intentionally which made me feel abit…yeah shitty. He’s a shitty guy what can you do. The plot for him kind of gets better when he starts feeling sorry for her after finding out she was used as a tool, and he decides to kill any of the ability users at the end for Nanami’s sake. I kind of get the reasoning for him wanting to use her powers on him, kind a like to make her feel positive about her powers by “erasing” all the bad from him – but that isn’t a great solution because she just becomes tied down to him. I can’t see why Nanami fell for him, maybe there’s a plot point in the last game but I don’t remember. In his Concerto route, Ron pretty much become a pupper and just goes around beating up people who he finds that will hurt her, while Nanami tries to stop him & find Natsuhiko so he can ask him to make eyes for Ron. They save a pregnant cat from a bunch of cat killers by beating them up, and ends up leaving the cat give birth to her kittens, but they leave them at the house so I’m lowkey confused about what was the point of that.

Nanami only has a 1 clue from Sakuya which is a town with a clock tower, so they land up in one where Nanami runs into Ron’s old mercenary boss. This is probably plot from the Ron flashback they gave us in Fuga, but the boss tells Nanami that Ron’s killing instincts will never go away from him, and plans on getting him to join his ranks again to do his dirty jobs. Nanami ain’t having any of that so she tries to get the guy away from Ron, but he soon starts sending his goons to attack them so Ron beats all of them up. Nanami tells him to stop being violent, worrying that he’ll use the fire powers he absorbed. At the end, as they’re about to get shot by the mercenary goons, Ron tells the boss he aint interested in killing ppl and decides to light the boss’ warehouse on fire killing everyone, but they’re stuck so Natsuhiko & Setsu show up to help them. They’re taken to Natsuhiko’s ship to work for him, in exchange for Natsuhiko making Ron some eyes. In the epilogue, Ron gets his eyes made & Nanami is so happy she leaps him and kisses him. I (strangely) enjoyed Ron in the last game from my memory, so I enjoyed this route with a new version of him where he learns right from wrong properly this time, so at least he gets his happy ending.

Kagami Itsuki (CV: Yusa Kouji)

Itsuki’s Fuga made me cry, I must admit, and I liked it a whole lot. He actually didn’t like her at first and his goal was just to break down her walls and that ended up having him fall in love with her. （*´▽｀*）It also had to add that tidbit where Sakuya admits in place of the writers that it’s fated that whoever’s in love with Mikoto will probably get shot one way or another because she’s hella reckless, and why Mikoto’s powers got taken away since Itsuki made a deal with Ron to not kill them in exchange for Mikoto’s shield powers. Anyway, nothing new about Itsuki since he’s a fine man already, so his route first talks about his twin sister, Kazuha. Mikoto & Itsuki are living happily with Itsuki being a teacher in the town they’re living in, while she’s just a stay home housewife. Kazuha shows up in Mikoto’s dreams to talk to her even after she’s dead because she was son in sync with the powers she can stay in dreams after she’s dead!! Anyway all Kazuha wants is to meet the guy who she fell in love with from the world, which is Masamune’s uncle, and warns Mikoto not to tell Itsuki any of this or she’ll take over her body. Masamune’s uncle would show up super often, make friends with her and brought her the fairy tale books which were banned (thats why Itsuki knows about the fairy tales). Kazuha knew he only visited her for her powers but she fell in love anyway with him. Itsuki eventually opens up about his sister & how she fell in love with Masamune’s uncle, he got mad at her for it and then she ran away. They say that she died from the plague, but in truth she was murdered & her body was never found so there’s nothing in the gave. The 2 of them decide to go and visit her grave.

They find Masamune’s uncle at Kazuha’s grave where he reveals he only came to visit cuz Kazuha’s powers were so strong they could let ppl see illusions while they were awake, and Itsuki’s are nothing compared to that, thats why The World never came after them when they ran away. He feels guilty for Kazuha’s death though, which is also one of the reasons why they were never pursued. Kazuha, after hearing all of this and confessing her feelings soon rests in peace. The 2^nd part was the one which made me cry because after a long while of living peacefully, they decide to go back to Mikoto’s town to meet her parents. They run into Sakuya & Kakeru who try to mediate things between Itsuki & his parents by showing that Itsuk is worthy using challenges to show he’s fit & healthy, smart and all that shit, but nothing works out. Mikoto’s parents aint happy with her choice of man when they finally go see them, and her father almost slaps Mikoto until Itsuki takes her place. Grandpa then walks in kicking her parents out and has a long conversation with Itsuki, in which it ends with him giving them his blessing. At the ending, Itsuki proposes to Mikoto in the rain with an actual ring that’s he’s been trying to procure all while doing Kakeru & Sakuya’s challengers, and that’s where I started crying because holy shit, Itsuki’s such a good man he’d do anything for her. (❁´▽`❁)*✲ﾟ* In the epilogue, they get married & Sakuya sends them a painting of them in their western wedding outfits. All I can say, my ove for Itsuki increased tenfold because of this after story.

Otomaru Heishi (CV: Yoshino Hiroyuki)

I seriously remember finding Heishi really boring, but I seriously don’t remember this section giving anything more about him since his thoughts flow out very easily. That said, one part that sparked me was him learning that he can’t just ignore people’s feelings and just be happy all the time – at least that was a small arc he got. That said, I’m still unsure on how their relationship works so Idk what to feel about this couple. In his concerto, he & Nanami are on their adventure of running from The World, which just made me think about how Nanami really runs the wild life with 2/3 of her guys lmao. They travel around the world making money from the rich guy that hires them to take pics & performances. They eventually hear about Heishi’s old troupe being in the same area, and Heishi wants to find his old bro Seiji so they find the troupe & meets everyone again. This part is super minor, and only gets serious in the 2^nd part where they find a village which is dying cuz the plants cant grow & they cant sell shit. Heishi tries to bring happiness to the place by playing his flute but aint anyone got time for that so they get pissed and throw shit at him cuz he’s aint helping their situation at all. They find out about a church in the village which was torn down by The World because they banned religion, so Heishi decides to help them by fixing the church. Suddenly Seiji shows up saying their plan is a big ass joke & impossible, and teases Heishi about how he’s still a kiddo. Nanami’s suspicious of Seiji, in which she’s right because Seiji reveals himself to be Yasuhiro from The World and he’s here to stop them from building that church, and probably arresting them for running away. He also reveals that he convinced Gramps to take Heishi in only for his powers, to use him to lure Natsuhiko out but that never worked.

He basically lied to Heishi for the years they spent together so Heishi ends up duking it out with him in anger, and Nanami has to yell at him not to lose control of his emotions. This calms him down and he tells Yasuhiro that he ain’t gonna kill him because he believes that their time spent together was genuine and it was what made him who his is now. Yasuhiro gives up and is like “oh well I guess you stopped me im not destroying the church” and disappears lmao. They save the church after getting help from people in the village, who want their church back. As thanks for this, they end up having their wedding ceremony there. They send a picture of their wedding to the rich guy, who just turns out to be Seiji/Yasuhiro tracking what they’re doing because he still cares for him as a bro lmao. I guess it was a good route? I vaguely remembering feeling happy about the bromance part of the route after finishing it, but not much about their relationship. Heck, I don’t even remember is there was any ichaicha but the CGs say there’s one but I seriously can’t recall how or why, which kinda shows how uninterested I was. The only good thing from this route was that at least this one talks about Yasuhiro being nice. Because coming up, he’s a dick to Masamune & Natsuhiko which made me wonder if the bro thing with Heishi was actually real, but at least it shows here.

Ichinose Senri (CV: Shimono Hiro)

Nothing new for Senri, his personality and thought swere just as expected but ye from his Fuga the new thing for me was that he was seriously very easily jealous by everyone else getting close with Koharu. ~ヾ(＾∇＾) His Concerto was honestly the sweetest thing I ever played (and probably the best Koharu route for me here) because they dealt with the sibling thing /and/ Koharu’s problems! Okay so Senri decides that he’s going back to his old town to see if he can get his mother’s wedding ring back & properly face the village assholes. As they’re about to leave though, Akito stops them and tells them not to go back, so they try again another day. On their way on the second day, he reveals to Koharu that his eye tattoo was to make sure that the village could find him easily, and his hikki lifestyle was started so that the townspeople would stop bothering him once his powers had weakened by pretending to be failure. They reach the village, in which the village head starts trying to get him to stay again. Akito shows up behind tailing after Senri, so the village head feeds him bs about Akito taking his powers for monetary gain which caused his suffering, and also reveals that Akito is his brother. Senri confronts Akito on this in which Akito & Nanami do their soap opera thing so Akito doesn’t say anything. Nanami tries to explain taht she’s the one who’s guilty of wiping his memories, and not to blame Akito but goddamn these route has this Nanami couple having to sort their shit out too lmao.

Masamune’s uncle soon appears to catch Koharu, but Akito gets shot protecting them so Senri takes care of him. Akito finally decides to reveal the truth to Senri, and in unsurprising news, Senri’s all cool with him and calls him niisan again. Which leads me to think, if Akito stopped doing his soap opera thing WE WOULD HAVE BEEN COOL ALL ALONG GODDAMN. Akito also reveals that he took their mother’s ring so they can finally cut ties with the shitty village. In the 2^nd half the crew of Norn have decided to help out a festival to earn some money to survive since they’re kind of on their own, so Senri & Koharu are in charge of performing a fire and water performance thing. Koharu worries her powers go ut of control, but Senri practices with her so that he can cover her if it does. It does though, but Senri saves the day and the successful performance finally lets Koharu feel that her powers can be used for something else other than destruction! (≧∇≦)/ Thanks to that performance, they now go to various towns to perform and at the end of one of them, Senri proposes to Koharu with a ring saying that he’ll marry her when he’s bigger. (❁´▽`❁)*✲ﾟ* My love for Senri shot all the way up because he’s such a good boy. Even better with the whole sibling thing solved, Senri can finally get his proper conclusion in his own route as well. Unfortunately I kind of think they decided to go with the innocent end so Senri only gets a proposal and no nekkid CGs probably because he’s a shota lmao.

Shukuri Akito (CV: Sugiyama Noriaki)

The extra things which were explained in his Fuga was mainly about when Aion approached him with the clone asking about his condition. This revealed that Senri’s water powers were too powerful for Akito so that’s why he would always go to sleep at 9pm cuz he would be too exhausted every day just having the powers in him. In Concerto, the group has left the island so the big family of Akito, Nanami, Senri & Koharu move in together, along with Kakeru who’s just there to recover from his brainwashing. Akito’s working as a chef in the same restaurant as Koharu to earn their keep since Senri’s still being a hikki in this route. Basically they’re living their peaceful lives and stuff like Akito helping Senri to realise how good his wood carving talent is. However Nanami’s been hiding to Akito that her dad’s been demanding her to return to the family, until one day they go on vacation to the ocean & sees her dad there threatening to kill Akito if she doesn’t come back, giving her a day to consider. However some high rank elder of the family isn’t convinced she doesn’t have her powers so he decides to set the vacation home on fire. They barely manage to escape, in which the elder tells them to go see her father to prove she doesn’t have the powers. For some reason Nanami’s dad already knew she didn’t have them, but doesn’t like Akito as her boyfriend lmao. Akito tells him that he’s gonna take of her so finally the dad backs off.

The 2^nd half has Nanami wanting to learn how to cook so she can be a good housewife for him but Akito doesn’t want to teach her more than a few simple dishes. Nothing much happens here other than Akito getting attacked by a bird man demanding him to be his live-in chef & Nanami beating the crap out of him, so they decide to not hide things from each other anymore lmao. Akito’s okay with Nanami not doing any cooking since he didn’t want to get used to her cooking for him all the time. In the epilogue they just continue their newlywed life where they’re saving up for their wedding, but this time the house is more quite because Kakeru left, while Senri & Koharu have moved out since he decided to learn under the local wood carving master. Overall I think Akito is really cute and all, but I just never got into him. The couple by itself is really good, but I personally don’t have any strong feelings for them other than  “yeah they’re cute”. Route wise, as per usual it was very good but I found the conflict for the darker story to be very light compared to the rest, probably because they had their shit sorted out in the last game so there was really nothing much left to talk about in the FD.

Toya Masamune (CV: Satou Takuya)

I seriously thought Masamune’s Fuga section would have given us Koharu’s real name, but it doesn’t even cover that so I’m highly disappointed by this. However, the Fuga section really gives a good insight as to why Koharu’s memory had to be wiped, and made us pity the poor dude having to break up fights and stop drunk people fromt attacking Koharu. Basically he had to wipe Koharu’s memory because she felt guilty for Sakuya’s death and Koharu’s thought of if she  had fought, Sakuya wouldn’t have died. This was the only way he could run with her so he got Nanami to wipe her memories The memories can come back anyway so he swore to return them eventually.  Anyway in the Concerto section, Koharu & Masamune are living peacefully with Masamune trying to learn all of Natsuhiko’s tech, like piloting his ships. They do go exploring, but they find the village Koharu was kicked out from so they run. Masamune gets Natsuhiko to make a gadget with Masamune’s powers to restore Koharu’s memories in the near future. He calls Nanami & Mikoto over to hang out with her, in which Mikoto is against the memory restore because Koharu’s so happy now & doesn’t need to remember her shit past. Right before Masamune can tell her anything though, Koharu runs into Masamune’s uncle who tells her he can restore the memories that she’s missing so she goes along with him. The world has decided to kidnap Koharu back because she’s got high compatibility with the fire powers so they want to research on her more. Yasuhiro throws her in a room where he tries and abuse her but Koharu really isn’t affected by any of that shit.

Masamune aint having any of that shit so he goes to the Island with Natsuhiko & Ron to find his waifu. Hearing the commotion Koharu decides to escape, and subconsciously  burns the doorknob so she tries to find Masamune. Koharu also starts having flashbacks of the war, and runs into Nagisa who she demands to bring her to Masamune since her powers are exploding. Nagisa does so, but ye we just find out this was Masamune’s uncle whole plan about trying to overthrow the organization but to save time he just needed Koharu to burn down the place. ( ´_ゝ｀) Heck, I seriously don’t know what this whole thing was about but ye, they get Koharu back! In the 2^nd half Masamune & Koharu go find a place to setlle down at, and finding this village with an old treetop library owned by a tired & fed up old man. The library is on the verge of closing since no one’s using it and they find it to be a hude waste. Masamune ends up getting ownership of the treetop library, so being the bookworms they are they restore the whole library to be safe enough to be used in the village. The eventually get people to go to the library again, so the old man throws them a wedding before he leaves. In the epilogue, Koharu says she’s finally ready to get her memories back so Masamune uses his powers, and she starts crying & thanks Masamune for protecting her all this while. Ok look I previously loved Masamune a lot, and yes he’s still so good and considerate this game all while being thirsty af for Koharu but, I felt they kind of just dodged all of Koharu’s problems. Okay maybe she could get over her shitty past and the things that happened thanks to seeing Mikoto being happy/settling down but I just felt like they seriously didn’t know what to do to develop Koharu after the incident so they just used this & dodged it. I still like Masamune as a character though, but idk what to say about his route.

Azuma Natsuhiko (CV: Ono Daisuke)

Natsuhiko’s Fuga was cute, but the main thing I liked was how his ambitions really showed right from the start when he was trying to sneak into Aion’s room all the time to try and blow her up lmao. That said, his Concerto has him staying on the island as the researchers there keep begging him to stay & offering all sorts of facilities for him to do his research. Natsuhiko & Mikoto are staying on Norn for now, but they plan to leave and to take Sorata with them to stop The World from being able to revive Aion to do their resets again. Natsuhiko devises a plan with Masamune to get Sorata out, but they end up getting found out so he uses himself as bait while Sorata & co. making the run for it. Seeing the situation out, Nagisa, who is revealed to be Natsuhiko’s sister heres drags Mikoto off to a vacant ship and autopilots the thing off the island to spare her at least. Mikoto ends up regrouping with the people who escaped, and is desperate to save her man so she goes to find Ron and somehow convinces him to help Natsuhiko “as friends”. Ye no shit I have no clue why this works when Ron is still in mass killer gun-loving mode. Basically so with Heishi, Masamune, Ron & Setsu they go back to the island to save Natsuhiko. While looking for him though Mikoto hears Natsuhiko and finds out that the scientists there have wired his brain to their servers so he can do their bidding. Mikoto starts crying in shock but he tells her to enter a passcode calmly so he can try and get himself out.

Right after this though, Yasuhiro shows up telling Mikoto that Natsuhiko’s some baby with DNA designed to be intelligent because the scientists at The World were slowly marrying into their own families and had no one intelligent being born. Yasuhiro’s basically butthurt that he isn’t as intelligent as Natsuhiko despite being a test tube baby or some shit so he wants to kill him and Mikoto. Before he can do anything though Natsuhiko shows up to punch Yasuhiro, and mentions that he’s deleted the entirety of The World’s servers and their database. Heishi shows up too to guilt punch the fuck out of Yasuhiro, so they start their escape from the island where Natsuhiko explains its thanks to Masamune & Setsu’s hacking which helped him rewire his brain to wake up again. He also explains that he purposely did this so he could have his final revenge on The World and keeps apologizing to Mikoto for making her worry because she’s crying so bad. He ends up thanking everyone for their help.  In the 2^nd half, the story is mainly about Natsuhiko continuing his other passion for Astronomy which he dumped trying to destroy The World. One night while he’s dragged out drinking with Masamune/Itsuki/Ron Nagisa shows up to return Natsuhiko’s Astronomy stuff he left on the island. Mikoto asks why they cant reconcile, but Nagisa plainly says that they’ve grown too far apart so it really doesn’t matter anymore. At the ending, Natsuhiko proposes to her and they decide to continue doing their research on the stars. In the epilogue they have a kid who’s just as interested in Astronomy as they are and they go see the stairs at their observatory together. Honestly this was the best concluding route of the game for me playing it last because they finally get rid of The World concluding the main problem of this game. Natsuhiko is still tsuntsun as every which is extremely adorable. ~ヾ(＾∇＾)

Fantasia

Fantasia is a short section of really funny stories where Sorata devises a plan to make them all chibi-sized & face challenges so they can get along. The challenges has stuff like Mikoto & her mens running away from a gazillion thirsty Setsus, or like Masamune trying not to be thirsty about Koharu while eating his sugar. These sections are really cute and funny, but I have to admit I was quite worned out by all the content beforehand that I was seriously tired trying to playing this so I forced skipped a lot of it esp Nanami’s team so I don’t have much recollections of it.

Extras

There’s a bunch of extra content like short stories and extra voices which you will have to unlock by grinding Norn Quest. I think this was introduced in Var Commons, but it had you palying as one of the heroines walking around talking to people and getting tickets. Gonna be very honest here. I actually grinded this just to unlock everything in the extras for the trophy, but never had the time to read all the content since I wanted to be done and over with the game. That said, Norn Quest was so annoyingly grindy and I personally felt the only way to help the game was to just keep using Nanami and try to get that scene with Ron/Akito and keep getting those 50 tickets. It was really annoying to get enough to unlock everything just for the trophy, as the interactions eventually were the same and became extremely boeing.

~Final Thoughts~

It really took me very long to write this review. Mainly because I had a writers block and really wasn’t doing well during the past 2 months, also probably because I’ve had my head in GBF for a while. That said, this game was very boring to me. Not sure it’s its because I played the first one such a long time ago, I really didn’t feel anything from this game other that tiredness from having to get through so many characters and more questions. This game was less of a fluffy fandisk and more of a sequel to close up all the damn plotholes the writers made in the first one which isn’t a bad choice, but bad for me because sometimes I couldn’t remember shit and I’d be like “ye they said that…i think?” This made some of the routes more of conclusive ends where they settle down, and some were lackluster and was like?? Proposal but not wedding end? Basically the romance was blanded out a bit and with vague memory of the first game, there was no connection between me memory and the plot so maybe thats why I couldn’t get into well. I also had less connection to the characters, and while previously I seemed to like Masamune/Natsuhiko/Itsuki, I ended up liking Itsuki & Senri more in thie route. The other 2 biases were great too, but I didn’t like it that much. I also found that Koharu felt like the worst-developed heroine, and with Otomate’s latest heroines, that was seriously not acceptable which is why I felt 2/3 of Koharu’s routes were really bad and didn’t help her at all. Maybe she had development in the last games, but I don’t remember the last game too well so I can’t say anything. Therefore, this game to me mostly just average. For some reason, I really can’t stand the plot of Norn9 now compared to 5 years ago, but I’m guessing it’s just a change in my taste of things. I wouldn’t say I liked the game, but if you just freshly played Var Commons, maybe this will be better for you because you know what’s going on and can feel something from the sequel. Unfortunately, while I get the charm of the game, I’ll probably not be dabbling in it’s next game anytime soon.

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