This game wasn't very long, but there were so many other things going on that I was only able to finish it now. The best part of the game is Mare's route, and the second best is Yume's route, because Mare plays such a prominent role in it. In fact, Mare is still the best girl in Yume's route. That must be painful for the other heroine. ^^;.
Mare has such a beautiful voice (Mai Kadowaki) and speaking style, combined with her amazing purple and black outfit and scythe -- plus she's named Mare Ephemeral, which is the perfect description of her astral status, it all comes together. She has no competition.
The second best girl after Mare is Asuho. She also has a great voice and emotional speaking style that's so moving. She's very pretty and approachable, friendly to everyone but especially to you.
The third best girl is Chinami, also friendly to everyone with a great energetic speaking style. She's a runaway train that sweeps all before her, but is a little too dumb to take seriously.
Between these three there's always something worth reading on for. Ima's valiant attempt to kill everybody in town was also pretty cool, despite the long odds she faced. Fighting on with a single arrow as a handheld weapon against an entire organization is pretty amazing.
The opening theme to Hoshizora no Memoria, 'Eternal recurrence,' is good enough to reach my music hall of fame. All I have to do now is listen to it 100 times to get official permission for inclusion. The other music is good in that it's fitting to the visual novel experience, but not enough to enjoy independently. A shame, because I could use more good music.
A big problem I had with this game is that it's a sequel to the original Hoshizora visual novel, which I'd played so long ago that I'd virtually forgotten everything by the time I started playing this one. The parental circumstances of You and Chinami are so ridiculously complicated and impossible to keep track of.
Kasumi and Taiga had You, but for some reason got divorced. There was something supernatural involved and that's where the Ren fairy comes from, but by now I don't remember what happened.
Then Kasumi married another guy, I believe his name was Chihiro, and had Chinami with him. This makes You and Chinami half-siblings. Then something happened to Chihiro (he was a music composer and Chinami has a collection of his music she listens to every day), and either at the same time or much later Kasumi also died. (I forget why for both of them.)
At this point the two moved in with their mutual aunt, Kasumi's younger sister Shino. And that's when the story begins. Ren takes care of You and Chinami at Taiga's wish so they essentially have three parents.
Komomo and Kosame have an equally complicated back story which I've completely forgotten by now. And Aoi had some sort of complicated backstory which I've now forgotten. Asuho had a simpler backstory but I still managed to forget it too. Oh, and Mare and Yume also have a complicated backstory which I've forgotten.
The moral to this story is don't translate the sequel to a visual novel ten years after the first, especially when the visual novel specializes in ridiculously convoluted back stories. But you don't really need to remember the back stories. Just accept that everyone in the story gets along and all the girls in the story like You for some reason or other, and enjoy the results.
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