A must-play classic VN. Prepare to be swept away with the crazy amount of anticipation and emotions that this game manages to afflict on you despite how dated it is. In the context of how dated this game is and that it's not a remaster, I give it a perfect score of 10. This is my second playthrough and I skipped through all the routes other than Kasumi's as I have completed this VN on my PS Vita when it was released in 2018, thus my playtime here seems short. The main reason for replaying this series (I don't replay single-player games EVER) is due to the release of photonmelodies. (which includes Altered Fable, the sequel to Alternative.) The other objective was to find out if the 18+ patch and HRTF make a positive impact on the overall experience of the game.

As usual, I will ramble on the technical aspects of the game first. Touch support is alright and works fine. Unfortunately, the game has been resized to fit the 16:9 aspect ratio of modern displays. The original CG's are in 4:3. Thus, the CG's has been cropped to fit in that resolution. On a large monitor and in fullscreen, the game looks kinda bad with black bars at the side with blurry text. I think the game runs at 720p. Recommend to play windowed on a large screen or fullscreen on a smaller display.

Normally, I would describe VN's in greater details, but due to the sheer amount of content present in the VN, I would be skipping it and be giving very general impressions on the good and bad stuff instead. The sequel is no longer a "choose your heroine to romance" kind of VN anymore and the story is linear in design. The HRTF sound greatly improves the immersion in the soundscape of the game and the 18+ patch makes one of the defining moments regarding one of the main heroines very heart-wrenching.

Bad Stuff:
As usual in VN's, the MC does not have voiced lines in the majority of the game. The other routes are also fairly pointless as it was clearly made to be linear. The text and UI are also not scaled dynamically according to your display size, resulting in blurry text at higher resolutions. Quality of life features in modern VN's such as auto skipping read text, highlighting/unhighlighting read text and backtracking to the previous dialogue or decisions are also not present. Since this is a very old game that has just been reworked to run on newer machines, the old anime art style will turn off most people used to the newer stuff.

Good Stuff:
The soundtrack is Evangelion tier. 9/10, with the only gripe being the abrupt change from the different tracks as it changes. Every plot hole in Muv-Luv is answered with this sequel and the ending to the VN is extremely heartbreaking but satisfying. The VN has 3D graphics being generated for a few background scenes, with plenty of sprite and view movement compared to the majority of VN's out there. It makes the VN much more like an anime and complements the emotions of the scene well. The effort put in and the scale of it is done much more in the sequel, although due to the limited amount of things one can do with static sprites, quite a number of the scenes look really lame. In my opinion, it was at least enough to make the player imagine more clearly what it could have been if it had been a full-blown animation.

One of the best JRPG's you can play on the PC. A solid 9/10. Not all of the dialogue has voiceovers and the main male protagonist, Aster, is not voiced at all which is rather disappointing. The 2D character portraits are of lower quality and reused for the background characters. The reasoning for the mid to late game plots also starts to get shakier too as it goes on. Apart from that, this game is still absolutely worth the full price. This is a must play for anyone who is remotely interested in the JRPG genre and doesn't mind the very disturbing themes that are present in some of the main portions of the story. I won't be describing them as it is my policy to never reveal anything about the plot of the game in any of my reviews. The translation work done here is excellent. Couldn't find anything wrong whilst I was playing the game. Except when Gurigura calls you oni-chan, the translation to English is not a direct translation.

Aster is the male main protagonist you play at the start. He is also the best male MC I have encountered in an eroge, an extremely likeable character with a ton of self-control for his insatiable lust. He is not an idiot, is straightforward and very gentle to all of the girls and always asks for their permission before proceeding to do what he wants. He totally deserves the harem and fortunately for him, his wives are good friends with each other as well. It is also super refreshing to see women in H-games behave realistically.

As usual, I will roast the technical aspects of the game first. An unfortunate max resolution of 720p. Touch screen support in this game is superb, just make sure you enable that option in the settings. Great optimization compared to other 2D only games. As a low poly count game, I was able to play it on my potato tablet (X5-Z8350, 2GB RAM, 32GB eMMC) at around 30-60ish FPS on the lowest settings. This is quite good for a 3D game running on hardware like this. 3D graphics wise it looks simple with a decent amount of graphical options to tinker. Normally, games with poor graphics get a beating from me, however, the 3D style they chose befits the 2D graphics and the style is consistent throughout the game, thus I am very happy with the 3D graphics in this game and am unaffected by it compared to many of the other JRPG's out there.

I adore the 2D style and detail of the CG's, character and character portraits in the game. It comes off as simplistic, cute, calming and also manages to portray the atmosphere of the text well. This does also dampen some of the disturbing scenes in the game, which can be positive or a negative aspect of this particular art style. This is the exact same artist who did the art for Senran Kagura, so if you love the art in that series, you will love the art in this too. The game is very stable and well-tested, there was no crashing or bugs experienced when I was playing through the game.

Right off the bat, the story and gameplay instantly hook the player without any grandiose graphics, scenes or storytelling. The story has excellent pacing with a good amount of suspense, with appropriate twists and turns to keep you guessing and has well-thought-out explanations that reinforce the reasons and sometimes adds a flair of comedic value to the story. There were plenty of references to many real-world items and ideas as well. I didn't even bother predicting the plot as the story and gameplay was so intriguing and fun. The difficulty was just right too, with little grinding involved to unlock all of the CG's.

The gameplay is similar to a turn-based JRPG with a unique twist to the typical JRPG mechanics. Levelling is not automatic and requires a level-up ticket or shop to do the levelling. Experience points overfill towards the next level/s. This allows for a tactical play of saving a level or more to heal up your party members HP, saving time when exploring dungeons. Most of the skills are learnt through collecting chests in the game or doing certain battles. This rewards the player much more to explore the environment thoroughly for skills and items, making exploration in an otherwise low detail environment very rewarding.

The sound design in this game is one of the best I have heard in a JRPG. All of the tracks fit the theme of the environment and mood of the text with great mastering. The music used for most of the boss fights are the same, however, the track used is wonderfully done and fits the theme so I don't have anything to critique much. The voice acting and sound effects used are also top-notch, the voices all have good expression and articulation to them. The sound effects used are well done and mastered with an appropriate realism to them, especially for one particular scene which I will not describe. It has something to do with a dragon. A 9/10 score in the sound department.

Now for the lewds, how lewd are they you may ask? There is an option to use censored CG's in the game options and I think this option is unchecked by default, thus the CG's are all 100% pure loods with no pixelation. Using censored CG's basically makes genitals censored. The art style of the artist for the CG's make the girls look kinda thicc so if you like that kinda stuff this game is for you. I am happy to report that even though the game is an eroge, the main focus is not on lewds. The pacing for the story time, play time and lewd time are well executed, so if you are looking for a game to release your inner sin after sin, this might not be the game you are looking for. If you love vanilla stuff, you will like the lewds as the majority of the game has Aster doing it vanilla. There are of course a couple of disturbing H-scenes and not so vanilla stuff, however, Aster does not do any of that nonsense to his partners and its always the antagonists that cause them to happen. There is one exception to this rule though.
If you do the saints side quests, Aster will have anal sex with the saints.

In conclusion, it's a flippin masterpiece of a lood game. Just be careful of who might be watching you while you play. You might just have to start training on your stealth skills to achieve the illusion 100 stat so that you can play this game in broad daylight. Good luck!