Prima ☆ Stella Review
Well as promised, here’s the
third in my unplanned line up of all girls’ school set game reviews and a long
overdue return to Atelier Kaguya. Though my last review was of an ultimately
second rate game, I can say that I experienced the proper antidote to what I
didn’t like about Harukoi Otome in Prima ☆ Stella, released by Atelier Kaguya’s branch company Atelier Kaguya
Berkshire Yorkshire on June 27, 2008. I hope that bit of hinting from the last
review didn’t give too many people the ideas that I’d be reviewing something else…
Pros: Story does a
pretty good job with its premise, characters are likable, very good artwork,
excellent voice acting.
Cons: Yu is
unwinnable, the common route has a bit of a writing flub, an event in the
latter part of this games can weaken things a bit.
WTF?!: Well that’s
an interesting choice for tug of war…
You
play as Kousuke Sakaki, an all-around nice guy and one of the top members of
the swim team at his school, enough to be considered for an international
tournament. Unfortunately his dreams of competing get cut short after saving a
stranger from an oncoming traffic accident, sustaining injuries that put him
in a coma and upon awakening learns that his body currently isn’t in any
condition to take any real strain. A second chance soon comes however, when a
representative of the all girls’ private academy, Etoile visits on behalf of
the person Kousuke saved. As the school’s students are mainly from rich and
powerful families, it also hosts an advanced program that could help Kousuke
rehabilitate and realize his dreams of becoming an international champion
swimmer and he’s being offered the opportunity to temporarily transfer to the
school to do so. Kousuke accepts and while his arrival is met with much
curiosity from the student body as many of the girls have had limited contact
with men, Kousuke quickly meets and befriends Shizuka Touhouin and makes more
through his childhood friend and cousin Kusumi who also attends Etoile. With
this, Kousuke’s road to recovery may also become a road to romance too…
While
the story premise has been done before Prima Stella makes for a good
demonstration of how far you can take a concept that’s been done before with an
enjoyable cast of characters (click here for profiles). The heroines are introduced well with their
personality quirks helping to get us to know and like them quickly while at the
same time setting things up so that when we get a more in depth look at them as
characters we’ll care what happens during those story events. Of course it
helps that these quirks fit well into the many humorous scenes throughout the
game such as Shizuka and Kusumi’s rivalry over Kousuke, Yu as the straight man to Kusumi’s often silly
antics or Miyabi’s subtle teasing/flirting with Kousuke. As for our main
character, I’d say Kousuke is good enough in terms of writing; he has just
enough depth to be interesting when the story needs him to be but at the end
his main character trait is that he’s simply a nice guy. While that may sound
too basic, I can say the writers for Prima Stella are able to utilize this
trait to give us a main character that’s likable and interacts well with the
heroines.
Another
writing element of note would be how well the episodic aspect of the game works
for it. The story is divided into eight episodes; the first five make up the
common route and each heroine’s route consists of three. The first five are
constructed so as to give each main character the right amount of focus, the
first being to introduce everyone and the remaining four focusing on each of
our heroines, each of them getting a plot that at times takes a slightly
serious tone, but its resolution usually foreshadows some element of the plot
of her route. All in all this setup works because it gives the heroines the
right amount of spotlight throughout the common route and helps make the story
is easy to follow and remember, even if you should decide to take breaks in
between episodes.
Before
we get to the routes though, I feel that the two most significant writing flaws
should be discussed. The reason for this is the first one has to do with the common
route and the second one concerns a plot element the routes all share. The
thing is explaining it will involve some light spoilers so I’ll give you a
brief explanation before cordoning the spoilers off behind some appropriate
pictures. The first problem is basically during the common route some events
happen throughout it that seem a bit contrary to how one of the characters is
written and the second problem is when the common route ends an event happens
that kind of weakens things a little for the routes, some more than others.
Anyway, to those unfamiliar with how I handle spoilers, see the spoiler warning
pictures below? If you don’t want to be spoiler about anything in this game,
scroll past that first set and the text that follows until you reach the second
set which marks the end of the spoiler section. You can read without fear of
spoilers from there.
The
problem regarding the common route is each heroine has at least one ero scene
in it. This is a problem mainly because this kind of clashes with Kousuke’s
character even if the writing tries to justify this and even though you could
write off the heroines not having a problem with this happening as “hentai
logic” it still feels a little weird that even rival heroines Shizuka and
Kusumi pretty much shrug off. Not to mention there strangely isn’t a harem
route in this game, even as an unlockable, which could have made at least a
more passable justification. I can at least say thanks to this I may have
encountered my first case of the (rightfully) much maligned gaming term
“ludonarrative dissonance” in an eroge. Though that does open up another
question: do ero scenes count as gameplay?
Err…anyway,
the second problem is basically what starts off the routes: Kousuke’s time at
Etoile ends and he goes back home. Now don’t get the wrong idea, this isn’t
wholly a bad idea and it makes sense story-wise, but the problem lies in the
change of scenery itself. Basically when compared to Etoile the new setting is
a bit on the dull side and even ignoring that in some routes it means there’s
none of the more entertaining character interactions with the more colorful
cast aside from the heroine of the route. Like the previous case it’s not something that
ruins the game, but it’s still a flaw that would have been nice if in some way
fixed.
With
that out of the way, let’s get to the route rankings:
1)
Kusumi
2)
Miyabi
3)
Tie between Shizuka and Tomoe
4)
Miyuki
I have
to say I did not expect to like Kusumi’s route as much as I did. The main
reason for this is in my years of playing VNs I’ve found it to be a recurring
thing where the more comical heroines tend to have pretty underwhelming routes.
We have a rare exception with Kusumi partially because it kind of maintains its
humor for most of the plot, helped by the fact that Yu also features
prominently in the plot and subsequently the routine between her and Kusumi is
maintained (which also helps lessen the effect of the second writing problem). Even when it does take its dramatic turn, and
while I admit it does seem a tad forced at first it manages to turn that around
by resolving it in an over the top way that I’m not sure was meant to be
intentionally funny or not, but it does make for a good way to buck a tired
cliché.
Miyabi’s
route comes in at a very close second for a few reasons. First, she and Kousuke
have good chemistry as can be seen in quite a few of their interactions in the
common route and second, when things get to her route there’s actually writing
good enough that you barely notice the aforementioned second writing problem.
The third reason would be a really good performance from her VA: Maki Izumi,
who many of you would recognize as the voice of Akane in the Da Capo 2 games, Chihiro
from ef, and Tatsuko from the Majikoi games. While the other actresses turn in
a very good performance too, this case is a bit more notable in that she
manages to bring the character to life and do a voice different enough from
what you usually hear that it may take you a while to recognize it. What keeps
this route from tying with Kusumi’s is the dramatic part of her route is pretty
par for the course; you’ll know what’s going to happen the moment the
foreshadowing starts.
What
makes Shizuka and Tomoe’s routes tie for third place is they both have the
problem of having just okay later parts of their route. In Shizuka’s case it’s
basically because while the dramatic portion isn’t really bad from a writing
perspective as it has to do with Shizuka’s own insecurities and low self-esteem
it has the problem of feeling a little too slow. In Tomoe’s case it’s that
while her story is fairly light hearted with the drama part being really short
it has the problem of being really cliché, and is in fact very similar to a
route I just recently finished playing in Da Capo 2: Plus Communication. I
should point out though that neither route is bad as they both have really good
things going for them. Shizuka has the advantage of being pretty well built up
from the beginning of the story, her interactions with Kousuke are pretty cute
and we have some good slice of life scenes before the drama of the route kicks
in. For Tomoe we have, as noted before, the advantage of a route that doesn’t
let itself be bogged down with drama and she makes for a likable and funny heroine
throughout the game.
Now as
for Miyuki’s route…what’s that? Some of you have taken a look at a walkthrough
and seen she doesn’t have a route listed? Well, it turns out she does have a
route…of sorts. You see, PS has another extras section where you can view extra
ero scenes that aren’t in any of the routes which you unlock through
progressing through the game. Among them is a string of scenes that make up
what amounts to Miyuki’s route. I have a theory that the creators had a full
route planned, but ran out of time and only had time to write her ero scenes and
a rough draft of what the route’s plot. So they went ahead and recorded for
those scenes, made the CG and wrote summaries of the plot to give context for
why these scenes are strung together. While this means we essentially have the
bare bones skeleton of route, I can say they’re worth looking at as aside from
the (good) ero scenes, it is interesting to read hints of what we could have
gotten.
Sadly our
Lunamaria Hawke look alike, Yu, does not receive even that and joins the ever
growing roster of unwinnable heroines. It’s a shame since she does feature
prominently in the game’s story and has good interactions with Kousuke. As indicated
above, she does have a couple ero scenes, one of them probably written based on
the premise for what her route could be. It is a shame the second one couldn’t
have been incorporated into Kusumi’s route though…
In the area of presentation, Prima Stella does
really well. The artwork is really good, the music is nice and the voice acting
is excellent. The aforementioned Maki Izumi aside, we also have great
performances from Miru, Shizuka’s VA, Tomoe’s VA Yasura Chatani who some of you
may recognize as Yoruko from Comyu or Cat Sidhe Nekoko from Yume Miru Kusuri,
and Kaoru Momozono gets to be in a good game this time thanks to her role as
Miyuki. Should also mention there’s a couple male VAs in this too and they turn
in good performances, one more than the other who manages to do an entertaining
over the top performance but considering the gravelly voice he had to do I
wonder how many throat lozenges he had to take afterwards…
As for
the ero scenes, they’re all really good. Atelier Kaguya once again maintains
its quality in the H department at least as well as it does in the area of
writing.
In Conclusion:
Prima ☆ Stella is an enjoyable game with its
charming cast of characters, very good performances from their VAs and good artwork.
While it does have some writing flaws, they’re not too big a subtraction from
the enjoyment factor. If you want another example of the quality you should
expect from good old Atelier Kaguya, then this is certainly worth a look.
Final Score: 7/10
Great
Author
Recommendation: Buy it now.
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