Recent reviews by Eriol

Crypt of the Necrodancer meets All-ages Rance?
All I wanted was to feed chocolate pancakes, brew coffee and play turn based strategy games with a demon girl harem and this surely delivered.

I wasn't compensated for this review, but I'm a fan of Konno Asta's works, so I felt I had to write something.

tl;dr: Yet another solid coming-of-age story by Konno Asta and the Pulltop team that lets you reminisce about how life is an adventure, and/or lets you live an Ogasawaran adventure vicariously through the eyes of Hiroki, Emily and Chisa. A bit rough on some edges, a few translation and spelling slip-ups here and there and quite short compared to the others in the series, but overall very solid production values.

Very small spoilers ahead:

Alright, so I was able to read Konno Asta's Miazora back in December of 2015, which eventually also got localized here as A Sky Full of Stars. Maybe someone remembers how frantically I vouched for that work in a certain four-leaved website. I can't vouch for MoeNovel's work in that localization, but as a fan of astronomy and visual novels in general, Miazora really hit the sweet spot on both general technical introduction to astronomy and a story about a bittersweet love triangle. This game, Umikana, mirrors a lot of what made Asta's writing and Pulltop's production so enjoyable in that work in a short package.

When Umikana got announced I knew I had to give Asta's next work a shot, but since I'm far away from Japanese stores this year, I'd have to wait until I got my copy. Luckily I noticed that this localization is relatively early after the Japanese release, so I took the plunge to buy a double copy anyways. In my eyes (and wallet), any Asta work deserves it. I came in expecting another love triangle like in Miazora, and while it probably doesn't compare in impact, I did not come out disappointed in the end.

Besides the usual love story typical of visual novels, Asta's Umikana is a love letter to Ogasawara and diving. Just like in Miazora and the research he put into explaining some points of astronomy, Asta dives into the depths of scuba and snorkeling to retrieve a palatable overview of the practice and blend it into a small adventure featuring his characters. "Adventure of a Lifetime" is a bit of a stretch, but Asta has a way of writing about the essence of his message, Carpe Diem, and combine it with a hobby he's also probably fond of (just like skygliders in Konosora and stargazing in Miazora). His characters are also endearing enough to let you keep interest in their plights and stories until the end. The story itself is quite short, with a grand total of 5 choices across all of the game, and about two or three that are actually route flags. Nevertheless, it finds a good pacing between building tension and exposition with characterization so as to move the story forward.

While Asta's writing pulls the main strings of the game though, Yow-P's directing is spot on. With the help once more of TWOFIVE in music and sound and the programming team in Pulltop, they've implemented various neat bits into the novel that can only be achieved in this medium without flat on making a video out of it: dynamically changing backgrounds. The bubbles flowing besides the backgrounds, schools of fish moving across the screen, and an event with fireworks, these kinds of little details really show the love the team put into this work and not just using the simple background and tachi-e that is standard for the industry. The informative tooltips do not distract you fully from the game and are succint (This was a gripe I had with Chuable's Haretaka). Yashima Takahiro's character designs are refined and expressive as always, and there's a decent amount of Event CG for the length of the game.

Overall, I was satisfied with the work Pulltop did. As for MoeNovel's localization work, I've heard about disastrous things with previous entries in the Pulltop library, but this game was relatively clean of anything like that. There's a few misspellings here and there like with a tooltip that writes the name of an island incorrectly, but overall it's handled like a localization like any other. And yes, it's quite localized in the spectrum of localization versus translation, which might be an important point for some readers. Personally, I think they handled the expressions as good enough as the English language allows them to, as well as the engine's character limit. This can be a contentious point, though.

So yes. I'm not one to assign numerical values to something as subjective as visual novels, but if you like love triangles, learning about new things and decent production values in music and VN engines, this game is a recommendation I cannot say no to. For the price (and considering its an all-ages short game and full length games are usually 9k JPY) I say its a fair deal. I'm happy that Asta is getting exposition outside of Japan as well. Get it.

Gorogorogoro Petting Simulator with a dash of G Gundam.

This hand of mine is burning red!
Its loud roar tells me to pet the catgirls!
ERUPTING!
MASTER!
FINGER!

I went fast in Sanic Kart, a nice pace of change from other Sanics.

Gotta go fast with Fiery Asslides

Build a navy