YouTube Dating 101
(This review contains
spoilers!)
I have little to no experience with
visual novels. The only one I’ve played is the first Ace Attorney game, and
even then that can be argued as more of a point and click adventure game. I’ve
watched a few on YouTube before, laughing at the silliness of games like
Hatoful Boyfriend and Jurassic Heart. Asagao Academy was my first step into
this weird world.
The premise of Asagao is that you’re a
young pink-haired girl by the name of Hana, who has come from a
poverty-stricken beginning to the titular prestigious school. At the school,
she meets Mai, her excitable best friend, as well as the Normal Boots club,
which is where the true appeal of the game lies.
See, the Normal Boots club (as well as
their rivals, the Hidden Block club) is made up of completely real YouTube
personalities specializing in videos based on games. Their personalities are
very much embellished for the sake of the game, but it’s still clear that they’re
the people you recognize from their respective channels.
From the get-go, it’s clear that every
single aspect of this game is put together with nothing but the most love and
affection a game can have. The first-time developers at Illus Seed have really
given it their all in crafting this game, and it shows. The sprite and
background art is simply phenomenal, and the writing is beyond brilliant. It’s
at the same time both hilarious and heartfelt, and it leaves you really feeling
for the characters. It did have me wringing my hands in frustration at some
points, however, as it seemed that Murphy’s Law was really in affect for this
poor main character. No matter what happened, no matter how hard I tried,
something bad would always happen to
her. This grew incredibly frustrating, as there came a time when I had to sit
back and think “If I continue, will the ending leave me feeling satisfied?”
I especially liked all the small
references to the real-life shows created by the datable NPCs, such as
PeanutButterGamer’s Minecraft Hardcore series, ProJared’s Nuzlocke runs, and
even some very obscure ones, such as Balrog’s old Nintendo 101 series. It’s
little touches like these that really add to the experience, and show how much
these developers cared about everything.
As for the gameplay, it’s everything I
assume to be in your average visual novel. Lots and lots of text, with you
making decisions every now and again to change how the plot furthers. This may
just be my opinion, but I found it extremely difficult to predict what each
decision would lead to, and when dealing with the consequences of my actions, I
often grew frustrated as I found it extremely hard to pinpoint exactly where I
went wrong.
To give you an example about how my
various playthroughs went, I’ll explain. I decided to go through 4 different
storylines before writing this review: PeanutButterGamer, Jirard the
Completionist, JonTron, and finally ProJared. Here are my experiences with
each.
I found PeanutButterGamer the easiest
datable bachelor, requiring the least decisions. While I really enjoyed the
storyline, I couldn’t help but feel that the game was playing itself at times,
and that it really didn’t need me to move along. Needless to say, I wound up
getting the Best Ending without feeling like I really earned it. But still, the
writing was excellent, and this remains my favourite of the storylines I
played.
Next up was Jirard, and I’m not sure
what happened, but I completely bombed this one. The overall theme of the story
was that Jirard, being the completionist that he is, was looking for an
incredibly rare kitten figurine. So, naturally, my character goes looking for
it, hoping to win his love. Upon finding it, she is presented with a choice. Either
take the kitten and leave the Normal Boots club, or don’t. I paused and thought
about which would be better for the goal I was trying to reach, and decided I
wasn’t going to do it.
The game, however, had other ideas. I
had no choice but to take the kitten, which then proceeded to break no less
than 5 minutes later. After that, I was on a one way train to the Worst Ending,
having no idea how I arrived there or how to prevent it.
So I shook this failure off and moved
onto Jon’s playthrough. Unfortunately, this ended up being the same old story.
I tried my hardest to make the best decisions, but the game took over at the
most inopportune times, and I wound up once again leaving with nothing but a Bad
Ending and complete frustration. I had no idea what I did wrong or how I could’ve
fixed it, and I still don’t.
But I was determined. The final
playthrough on my quest was ProJared’s, and I needed to see that Best Ending one more time to feel like I’d
accomplished anything. I took every precaution necessary, creating a save file
at every single decision. I thought about each and every moment before clicking
on anything. This was the most careful I’d been playing a game since playing
Undertale. How’d it turn out?
For a moment, it seemed like
everything was going swell. I had won the competition and joined the Normal
Boots club, just as I had done in the Best Ending for PBG’s playthrough. However,
Jared’s has an extra little part towards the end you have to get through that I
won’t spoil. Once we reached that point, for reasons I couldn’t figure out,
everything came crashing down around me and I was left once again with a Bad
Ending.
No problem, I thought to myself. I’ll
just use one of my save files and use a different decision. I went back and
tried again, but somehow with a click of a button I wound up with the same
story. I tried again. This time I had an even WORSE ending.
Finally, I fixed a choice that ended
up with me losing the tournament, but I wound up with a Good Ending. I still
had one more save file I could try to see if that led to the Best Ending, but
in my haste to get to it I accidentally saved over it with the Good Ending, so
that was the end of that. I won’t go over what the decision that did me in was,
but I can tell you that nothing in it had any indication that it would lead up
to the very end. For all I know, it didn’t and I’d messed up far prior.
So that’s Asagao Academy. A gorgeously
put together game with amazing writing and art, but a frustrating difficulty
curve with no real way of figuring out what you did wrong. Still, I enjoyed my
time with the game, and I may go back and try some other runs some time. If you
like visual novels or the YouTubers this game is based off of, I’d say it’s
absolutely worth a look.
FINAL SCORE
7/10
Good
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