School Days HQ Review
Well I
knew I’d be getting to this game eventually, and considering what this game is
perhaps known for the most Halloween makes for a very fitting time to review
it. I say perhaps because the other
aspect to this School Day’s fame is from its initial Japanese release by
Overflow on April 28, 2005 (since then it’s been ported to PS2 and PSP and
given an upgraded PC rerelease) it was advertised as a fully animated game
where you could make choices that could change the plot and take it in many
directions. When I first started hearing about this game was also about the
time I was getting into Bioware’s games (I still hope for another Jade Empire
game, someday…), so hearing that there existed an eroge with a similar sounding
concept definitely caught my interest. Of course when JAST announced they’d be
releasing the game (and to top it off it would be the upgraded version hence
the “HQ”)through cooperation with a fan translation group (turned legitimate
nowadays)called Sekai Project who’d been working on it prior to that I was very
excited to try School Days HQ out on its release date of June 28, 2012. Now
that I’ve played it I can say it’s a very interesting game with several things
to like, but…
Pros: Interesting core cast of characters, animation is good
where it counts, very good voice acting.
Cons: Too much plot diversity, game’s writing seems more
interested in rewarding one type of choice over the other, not as “fully
animated” as advertised, animation is not very good in some parts.
WTF?!: A movie adaptation of The Silmarillion exists in this
game’s universe?! I have so many questions as to how that’s possible. Even
aside from the legal issues from the Tolkien estate, I want to know how they go
it into one movie. I mean there’s so many time periods that book covers from
the creation and theft of the Silmarils (not to mention the very world’s
creation) to the War of Wrath, the fall of Numenor and Gondolin, not to
mention…*
*Our
apologies, but it’s been decided to cut off the author’s ramblings here as uncut
it goes on into triple digit page length. Please enjoy the rest of this review.
School
Days’ story begins with a student named Makoto Itou, who secretly admires a
girl named Kotonoha Katsura, who rides the same train as he does to their
school. In a twist of fate, one of his classmates, a girl named Sekai Saionji,
discovers his crush and decides to help get the two together. After a period of
time it seems Sekai’s matchmaking pays off, but while helping Makoto and
Kotonoha get together Sekai develops feelings for Makoto herself.
Okay, I
admit the story’s premise sounds like the most cliché plotline you’d get in a
tween romance story or soap opera, but I can say School Days does make a clear
effort to work with the tropes to craft something interesting from them. For
example the beginning does a good job introducing the core cast as we get a
good feel for their situation and develop an interest in what direction their
stories could go depending on your choices. This leads into the main strength
this game has in the writing category: its core cast of characters (click here for profiles).
Aside
from the beginning of the game doing a good job establishing Makoto, Kotonoha
and Sekai as characters, School Days writing strength for all three stems how
well it uses system of many choices and their subsequent branching paths to
show the multifaceted aspect of them and how well it’s integrated into the
game’s episodic structure. It really is interesting to see your choices bring
out the best and worst of these three (and some of the side characters) and
everything in between. It’s rare that you see an eroge take this route with its
characters, but this game pulls no punches in how your choices can result in
one of these characters getting pushed not only into acting downright
despicable, but also outright breaking them into murderous insanity. That’s not
a joke or exaggeration, with the right choices any of our three main characters
can end up on a path leading to a psychotic break down with differing but no
less disturbing results. While I admit this aspect has over time become a
little too gimmicky for this game over time (which we’ll get to later), these
aforementioned routes are presented well enough in terms of writing and visuals
to be the factor that earns School Days a spot in this year’s Halloween review
series.
That
isn’t to say the game is all dark and disturbing, as School Days does have its
share of light moments, though most of them are in the beginning, and as I said
before you do get to see the characters at their best. This ranges from good
character moments such as a scene between Sekai and her best friend Nanami near the end of one of Kotonoha's routes that does a good job showing the two as friends willing to support each other when things get bad to even subtle character development that can have you
considering the quality of the characters as people and how their redeemable
qualities stack up against their negative ones. For this reason I recommend not
using a walkthrough on your first playthrough; just pick whatever choices feel
natural or make sense and see which path you end up on. It’s a good way to gain
the right impression of the characters and from there you’ll better appreciate
the other routes, be the outcomes good or bad.
Before
we get to the flaws, I guess I should address something that many consider a
flaw: our protagonist, Makoto Itou. Ever since School Days registered on the
eroge community’s radar, Makoto has been called (at least one of) the worst
and/or most despicable protagonists of all time. Having played the game…I have
to say that while I can understand why some may feel that way, I don’t. Part of
the reason is because I admit I kind of identified a little with him at the start.
I was socially awkward myself through most of high school so I could understand
why someone might act that way, especially taking into account that despite the
required characters’ age disclaimer in this game the characters in this are
written as teenagers and actually act like them. That isn’t to say I was 100%
okay with our much maligned protagonist as there are quite a few moments of his
that did make me shout “Really?!?!” at the game and some of these were when I
was trying for a “good” Makoto playthrough. Finally there’s the fact that
Makoto’s overall portrayal is dependent on the choices you make; he can be a decent guy if you make the right
decisions and an unlikable person if you make more irresponsible decision. I’m
almost tempted to say this would be like holding it against the MCs of the
Bioware games if you play Dark Side/Renegade/Way of the Closed Fist (I don’t
think Dragon Age has a choice label), but that’s not quite the best analogy
and why brings us to our next subject…
The
main flaw School Days has in the writing department is the fact that as
impressive as its many choices and subsequent plotlines are, they’re also a
double edged sword in how there’s simply too much of it. What we have here is a
problem that’s essentially the equivalent of a problem many open world games
suffer from: lack of focus on everything in between the beginning and end
portions of the game. This is a problem because while the many paths show us
different facets to the main characters and subsequently bring up interesting
plot points, we don’t get any more focus than the bare minimum on most of them,
which is really too bad because these plot points have so much story potential.
For example, in one of the harem routes one of the plot points that comes up fairly
often is how Sekai’s friends aren’t particularly fond of Kotonoha, and while
this does serve the purpose of showing how much one of these characters cares
about Sekai even to a fault the plot point is essentially dropped once she and
Kotonoha begin sharing Makoto, leaving the player wondering how this would
affect Sekai’s relationship with her friends since it’s obvious this would come
up eventually considering how the story goes.
One
more writing flaw also stems from the choice system and it’s also the reason
why the aforementioned Bioware analogy doesn’t fit: the game’s writing favors you making the more
“irresponsible” choices when it comes to Makoto’s actions. Basically more
interesting stuff happens storywise if you have Makoto do the more thoughtless
thing over what would be considered a “good” choice (though admittedly there
are still interesting plot points going that path, just not as many). Now I
know with that statement some of you are probably rolling your eyes, laughing
or about to point out my contradicting my earlier statement regarding Makoto as
a protagonist, but let me explain. My problem isn’t with the actions
themselves, my problem lies with the fact that one type of choice was given
more writing attention than the other. I admit this could be me being spoiled
by more modern games that use choice to determine character action, growth and
story progression and through that School Days may simply be showing its age,
but it’s still off putting all the same, especially taking into account this is
supposed to be the expanded version of the original release. Still, I don’t
even have to look to the aforementioned triple A titles for comparison, there
exists an eroge about the same age as SD that does a better job on the writing
front in regards to story for both sides of the moral choice system, and it’s
been updated about as much too. It’s called MinDead Blood.
Regarding
the system, the game does well in making the fact that it’s designed to be like
an interactive anime to be as user friendly as possible. You can pause almost wherever
you want (in some key scenes you can’t for a while) and you can also fast
forward at whatever speed you like (which does make for some amusing sounds
hearing scenes fast forwarded through) or skip scenes all together. Perhaps the
only real flaw here is you can’t pause during choices, but you are given enough
time to make a choice and sometimes not picking until the time runs out leads
to interesting results.
In the
area of presentation, School Days HQ is kind of a mixed bag and nowhere is this
more apparent than in the visual department. While there a good number of
scenes that are very well animated (which thankfully apply to major story
scenes)there are also a number of cases where the animation just isn’t very
good. This ranges from cases where the studio obviously recycled character animations
for the character’s more day to day conversations, to many awkward pauses in
conversation which I’m not sure are intentional or the game trying to remember
where in the story branch tree it’s at to what are essentially flick flubs where
you briefly see characters in scenes who aren’t supposed to be there like the
far end side of their character portrait. This brings us to another visual flaw
in that this game isn’t as “fully animated” as advertised.
Aside
from the aforementioned recycling of character animation for conversations,
School Days HQ has a far more noticeable break in its “full animation”: the use
of still images during some conversations. Now I get animating a game like this
is expensive and of course cuts need to happen to stay within budget, but
seriously, I think they could have done better than what we have pictured above
which looks like a screenshot from an early PS2 game and barely looks like it
fits in this game. Even taking into account these stills are supposed to be for
background purposes, it seems strange that Overflow wouldn’t draw still images
that would better match with the game and just use some visual tricks to make
it less noticeable as a still image like having the camera pan to the left or
right as the characters’ conversation moves along. I know this may seem like
nitpicking to some, but bear in mind advertising aside this is supposed to be
the upgraded version. Kind of makes you wonder what the old version looked
like…
In the
sound department, School Days HQ fares much better. Everyone in the game is
voiced and their VAs turn in pretty good performances. The music’s pretty good
too, though I admit I can't name any tunes since for some reason this game lacks a music gallery.
As for
the ero scenes, they’re overall just okay and the reason is only some of them
are well animated. The ones that aren’t have a noticeably cheap and rushed look
to them that kind of make you miss the animated ero scenes featured in games
from studios like ZyX and even softhouse seal since those may have just been
looped images but they still looked good. Plus there are cases where the
character voices and their lip movements match up about as well as a Godzilla
dub.
Still,
so as not to end the presentation on bad note and since it’s in the spirit of
Halloween, there is one scene category that School Days HQ does not mess up on:
the bad ending death scenes. Like I said before, the right route can lead to a
character’s psychotic break and from there the game is not shy at showing the
(literal) bloody culmination of it all. Let me leave you with a little sample
image below and I promise there’s more where that came from…
In Conclusion:
School
Days HQ is an overall decent game with its good points showing just how much
ambition was behind it in its creation. Sadly as impressive as its plot with
multiple branches is, its noticeable lack of writing to support such a level of
plot diversity leaves its story stretched thin. In the end I’d say it’s worth playing but it’s
still a bit disappointing in getting only a decent story when you can clearly
see the potential for a much greater story there but not taken advantage of.
Final Score: 6/10 Above Average
Author Recommendation: Try it Out.
As for
the anime (talking about the show as I haven't seen the OVAs)…it’s okay. Admittedly it’s one of those love it or hate it kinds of
shows and while I kind of lean towards the latter I can understand why the
former appreciate it, usually as a deconstruction of harem style anime as one
could easily make that argument about the game being that way with similar
tropes in many VNs. My reason for not being all that fond of it kind of has to
do with its being an adaptation of the bad end routes, not because of that
though, the reason being the entire purpose of the adaptation just seems to be
so it can lead into an all new death scene that was created for the anime. This
is where we get to that bit I mentioned before, while I get that the death
scenes are more or less what made School Days famous I think the creators may
have let it become too much of a gimmick and let that get the focus for the
anime and thanks to that the look at the characters is more on their negative
aspects over the positive ones. To be fair though, the manga adaptation also
has some of that too but manages to pull it off better from a writing
perspective. While I recommend the manga over the anime when it comes to
adaptations I will say one point in the anime’s favor is how interesting the
story of its death scene’s censorship inspired a certain meme concerning boats.
Aside from the fact that said meme makes a nice shirt (no pun intended) I won’t
say anymore and suggest googling it if you don’t know what I’m talking about as
it’s something has to be believed.
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