After Vampires’ Melody

It had been a long time since I last played a galgame. I have not actually played that many, though saying that makes it sound as if I have.

The Game Experience

There is a branch map, so you can see which choices cause branches. The ending is linear, and most choices along the way lead to bad endings.

Only the final choice seems to lead to two endings.

So this was friendly to me. I do not really like many branching routes; I like this kind of work with a main line. One heroine is a plus: rather than spending effort shaping every character, it is better to write one character well all the way through. A lightly tsundere heroine is a plus too. Tsundere heroines have been out of fashion for many years, so I did not expect to meet one here.

There is also the issue of a Chinese game with Japanese voice acting. At first I felt that the voice work was not very professional; it sometimes sped up or slowed down, with pauses that were too long.

I am grateful to the developers for hiring Japanese voice actors even with a limited budget. Even if the Japanese voice acting is not natural, I do not feel embarrassed. But if it were Chinese voice acting, I would probably play with the sound off.

The choices and some of the atmosphere are thrilling. I do not read guides, so I often felt as if I were walking a tightrope. Sometimes it was even more immersive than a horror film.

I have to say: the character art for the male characters in this game is rather casual. Except for the protagonist.

Perhaps because of that sense of horror, some of the game’s flaws do not seem as obvious or exposed.

The Story

Romanticism at its most extreme: the Earth and Sky ending.

I went straight for the Earth and Sky ending, dying twice in the first two chapters along the way =-=.

Several choices made my heart pound. Playing this visual novel was more nerve-racking than Death Stranding.

After experiencing that ending, all I could feel was extreme romance.

I have heard that in other world lines, humanity launches a nuclear war. The rockets streaking across the sky in the background of my ending are weapons of war.

But from my perspective, apart from máoxuèwàng and the person in front of me, nothing mattered. The rockets were only background scenery. Romanticism at its most extreme.

P.S. There seems to be an epilogue, a story ten years later, but I skipped it. That only intensified the romance; I ignored the one remaining touch of reality.

Everything stopped abruptly at that miraculous moment.

Fanservice Screenshots

This seems to be the same CG as another ending, but I saw it earlier.

You have to consider that players may not know Natsume Soseki’s “the moon is beautiful” confession trope, or have watched the anime Tsuki ga Kirei.

But this scene is romantic to me too.

Epilogue

I will borrow a classmate’s post here.

A galgame player’s capacity for wishful thinking is like a vampire: the longer they live, the stronger it grows. Yet I still find that galgames are true love, even though I barely played any during summer vacation.

And following up on my previous answer, I wrote in We Who Have No Tomorrow Fell in Love Yesterday:

Something I wrote during the last winter break.

And summer break is almost here. Will people learn their lesson, or remain stubborn?

I really did remain stubborn. My original vision for summer vacation was big books + galgames + films.

But I did not read a single big book. I played only one galgame. I watched films only intermittently. Meanwhile, I did not skip a single day of online games. How is such a habit, regular to the extreme, established and sustained?