Ao No Kanata No Four Rhythm Visual Novel Review

I would ordinarily put a short blurb here about how I plant this game and why I was interested, only quite honestly, it was all take a chance. I happened upon the opening song on Osu! 1 day while waiting for some other VN to come out and picked myself up a copy and then I would have something to practice in the concurrently. I didn't even carp to look up what information technology was about, I just kind of got it and started playing. Unbeknownst to me at the fourth dimension, withal, I had just picked up what was probably the best VN to come out that whole year.

Summary:About of the story is built off of 2 concepts: Anti Gravity Shoes and Flying Circus. Anti Gravity Shoes is a simple enough concept: depression level, they basically just allow you wing; loftier level there are all sorts of different brands and tweaks and whatnot that you tin can do to get exactly the experience you want with them. Flight Circus, or FC for short, is quite a bit more complicated and is basically the whole reason I'm doing this style of summary, since basically goose egg would make sense unless you empathize how information technology works.

Long story curt, there are 4 floating buoys placed 300m apart from each other in a square. In that location are 2 ways to score points; the offset is finer a race: whoever gets to the next beacon before the other is awarded with a point. The other way to earn points is more than like a dogfight; if y'all are able to touch your competitor's back and so you are awarded with a signal and they receive a flake of recoil. If y'all're good enough y'all tin can chain a few of these together before they have time to react. At the stop of 10 minutes whoever has the most points wins. Sounds unproblematic enough, right? well there's a lot more than. Adjacent level upward, each competitor is placed into one of iii roles based on how they play: Speeder, Fighter, and All-Rounder.

Speeders are extremely fast, but are really only effective in a straight line. Their goal is to get points from buoys and to avoid dogfights as much as possible, since they are the to the lowest degree agile. Considering the antigravity forces in their shoes repel the antigravity forces keeping the buoys in place, they tin effectively "jump" off of the terminal beacon and conserve momentum every bit they start toward the next one.

Fighters may be slow in a straight line race, simply their dispatch and control are unparalleled past the other classes. They use this to help them score points by dogfighting, but since they are the slowest they will unremarkably try to avert touching buoys. When paired up with a faster opponent, the fighter will usually ignore the first beacon and cut the corner in order to get alee of their opponent; thus blocking their path and trying to force them into a dogfight.

All-Rounders are just like they audio: a balance between the other two. Not quite every bit fast as Speeders or every bit agile as Fighters, but they are able to utilize both styles adequately strongly. This allows them to react their strategy based on how the opponent is playing. All-Rounders are some of the well-nigh interesting players to sentinel, since they e'er keep you guessing as to what they'll practice next. I'll likewise add parenthetically that since this course allows for the most multifariousness in how they play, most(not all) of the top players are All-Rounders.

The players aren't the merely part of FC though; each actor is outfitted with a mini headset which allows them to communicate with their coaches in real time. This is a lot of what keeps matches competitive; as a coach will straight their player on what maneuvers to do and when, as well equally the location of their opponent and various other footling tips throughout the duration of the lucifer. This is actually where the protagonist comes in, non as a player but every bit a coach. Due to various circumstances in his past he does not compete in FC himself anymore, only that doesn't stop him from helping others get ameliorate at it!

General Thoughts:AoKana manages to continue a near perfect residual between existence interesting, fun, and inspirational. Literally every unmarried friction match of FC shown had me on the edge of my seat craving the next line. In some cases I even caught myself cheering for my favorite characters, which is something I almost never do, even when watching actual sports. The world the authors created hither is amazingly easy to get lost in, but at the aforementioned time but being there is enough to brand yous smile and experience content. If I had to pick a single best attribute about the game, I would probably have to become with the pacing. There's a lot here that probably goes unnoticed by virtually people, but put simply each "action period" should be followed by a sizable "rest period" that allows readers to recover their emotions before the next action scene, and AoKana hit that nail correct on the head. The biggest problem I have with the game is that they haven't released the official soundtrack still. Seriously. I desire that soundtrack.

Story: The story is gear up in an episodic structure, with a preview for the adjacent episode at the cease of the last. While I'm not commonly a fan of this style in VNs, it's used extremely well here, so I think it was overall a skillful pick. The main focus of the story is FC and how the sport changes over the course of the game, but in that location's also a lot of interesting content with the protagonist'due south history with the sport. It does tend to get a niggling cheesy at times and in some cases was even pretty predictable, only that didn't make it any less fun to read. At that place was a lot of cool stuff that was washed with the sport in relation to the story and every bit a whole information technology was pretty good, and so no real complaints here.

Characters:The cast does everything that should be washed by a proficient fix of characters and so some. All of the primary characters are well thought out and unique, while each of the secondary characters does a great job of filling any gaps that the chief cast doesn't quite fit into. They even went then far as to requite all of the tertiary characters sprites and voices, which really adds to the immersion factor. Even in some of the scenes that might ordinarily exist considered ho-hum or boring, just watching the interactions between all of the characters would make information technology pretty fun.

Fine art:The art feels a flake sketchy up close, merely since it's consistent it works perfectly fine. All of the sprites are really animated(in the sense that they show emotions actually well) and the color palette they used adds a ton of life to both the characters and the background. Ane of the small things washed with the art that I really liked was the inclusion of unnamed characters in the background of well-nigh every scene; it did wonders to brand the world feel more populated. I know a lot of people consider the fine art one of the selling points for this game, and I tin can't really find much of a reason to disagree.

Music:I already mentioned that I want the soundtrack for this game, so it goes without proverb that I think it was good. I personally think the music played a huge factor in making the game flow so well. A lot of the songs did such a not bad job of setting the temper that the instant information technology switched I would perk up in involvement and be that much more attentive to what's going on. Normal day to day songs are both at-home and/or fitting, full general flying songs are inspiring and motivational, and then competition songs range from fast but friendly all the way to mind blowing levels of intensity(I'yard non joking here; some of these songs are certain to give you an adrenaline rush).

Arrangement:Unfortunately, I would consider the organization to exist one of the weaker points in AoKana. Information technology does what needs to be done, albeit at a bare minimum level, but at that place are so many cases where they could take been much more efficient if they had put more piece of work into the system. A lot of the competition scenes are stored as backgrounds, rather than CGs, which isn't much of a problem until yous consider that yous can't await at backgrounds with the actress menu, and then for a lot of scenes you might want to have another wait at you would have to keep a save at that place. Also on that notation, there is no music area either; you have to continue a salvage if yous want to go listen to ane particular vocal too(I have a whole page of saves dedicated to this). Honestly, this is one of the only areas that could probably utilize some improvement, but it'south not and so bad as to bring the game downward.

Concluding Thoughts:If you took the fourth dimension to look at my VNDB listing at some indicate, you may have noticed that I rated it as a 10/10, and I do not give that rating lightly. Almost every day I played AoKana I would wake up a couple hours early just so I would accept time to read a flake earlier my usual 24-hour interval started; and not once during that whole time did I ever offset a day off in a poor mood. Changing my sleeping schedule and mood was just the start though; largely because of 1 item scene, AoKana completely changed the way I view competition and the competitive environment. That may not seem like a lot to everyone, merely I spend a skilful portion of my spare time in a competitive or semi-competitive surround, and for one single game to brand ALL of that time both more fun and more than positive is a nothing short of a colossal achievement.

While it'due south probably not on a life changing level to most people, AoKana is nevertheless an admittedly amazing game that I could recommend to simply about anyone. It's likewise worth noting that an anime accommodation was announced before the game was even released, so if you can't feel the VN for whatever reason that will be an option once it comes out.

Bonus CG:

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Source: https://vnmusings.wordpress.com/2015/03/14/ao-no-kanata-no-four-rhythm-review/

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