Here is a brief (translated) synopsis of the game which is important to get a gist of the critique that follows:
Overview
Somewhere in Japan is a small island known as “Yumegashima,” where a transfer student arrives to attend its only school, “Yumegashima High School,” on July 7, 20XX. The player will spend the next three months as a second year student at Yumegashima High School, before changing schools again. The gears of fate will begin to turn from the first day the player begins school, kicking off by meeting the over-familiar, but frivolous and helpful Shigeyuki Tsuzaki (Shige for short), and will go on to introduce 29 other classmates in Class B.
This includes an unexpected reunion with his now-grown childhood friend Megu Mikazuki. She takes him along somewhere, but… what’s this? Meg takes the player to the school’s journalism club, which is danger of bung dismantled, and forces him to join as the only boy in the club. So he becomes their cameraman. The rest of the club consists of four girls, who are cute, but come with their oddities. As for third years, there’s the blunt president Kaoruko Shoji and motivaed vice president Yayoi Ogami. As for the rest, there’s the first year hostile man-hater Tamaki Shimabukuro, and your second year childhood friend Megu.
On this island overflowing with wonderful scenery, and full of love, friends, scoops, and mysterious incidents, players can fully enjoy the freedom of a high school life. How the player decides to spend their summer school life is up to them. There are 300 people on the island of Yumegashima, and 150 quests for the player to carry out. You’ll deepen your relationship with the girls of the journalism club. Or, follow a story of friendship with your fellow classmates. After three months, it will be your time to leave, but what kind of ending will you receive?
The girls of Yumegashima High School’s journalism club
The activities of the journalism club include conveying a variety of news to everyone in Yumegashima and Yumegashima High School. However, it cannot deny that it’s fallen to a shortage of members, and if they don’t have a fifth member by July, it will no longer remain officially active. But the protagonist ensures their continued operation by joining. In September, the school will host a cultural festival involving a series of research presentations that each member participates in, with topics varying based on their own findings and research. But even though the player has ensured club operations continue, the other members remain on edge about their prospects and are hesitant to get too excited as the cultural festival approaches.
Megu Mikazuki (voice by Shiori Mikami) – The protagonist’s childhood friend, Megu and the protagonist used to play together every day from ages 3 to 5, until the latter had to move away with his sickly father who needed treatment. Though she’s naive and well regarded by boys and girls alike, amassing a large number of friends as a result, her overly helpful nature can, at times, be a hindrance. When her temper flares up, she has a tendency to stop paying attention to what’s around her and listening to what other people have to say, instead quick to jump to her own conclusions, but fundamentally, she’s a self aware person that people can count on. As such, she can be responsible to a fault, preferring to not burden others with problems and make do on her own however she can, although this obviously brings about its own share of issues at times.
Kaoruko Shoji (voiced by Rie Murakawa) – Kaoruko is the president of the journalism club and daughter of the corporate giant Shoji Group, which is run by her whole family. A serious, studious person with top grades and a strong sense of responsibility, she doesn’t like bringing up her worries with other people and prefers to not be the topic of conversation with others. She thusly maintains a certain level of distance with others, she prefers to remain professional in her conduct and get business done, rather than cozy up to people. Still, she’s fully aware that she can be a difficult person to approach and wants to change that aspect of herself. Perpetually unsatisfied with how things currently are, she’s always looking forward to the next big thing, but not to the extent that she’ll irrationally pursue things.
Yayoi Ogami (voiced by Juri Nagatsuma) – Yayoi is the journalism club’s vice president. Her life is in service of the island’s residents and is the first child and elder daughter descended from a family of priests and priestesses at Omiwa Jinja, making her highly respected and widely loved by her people. Though she can relate to others well and has a friendly disposition, her sensibilities can make her a bit dense and difficult to understand. Nevertheless, find something that interests her and she’ll talk endlessly about it. She can also be stubborn and direct on occasion as well. She refers to Tamaki as “Tamabukuro,” but bears no ill will towards her.
Tamaki Shimabukuro (voiced by Aya Suzaki) – Tamaki is the only first year student who’s a part of the journalism club. She’s shy around people and has a distaste for guys especially, due in large part to their insistence on calling her “Tamakin” over the years. She only opens up to those she feels really comfortable around, idolizing Megu in particular like an older sister. Perhaps due to her feeling uniquely close to Megu, she’s not particularly keen on the protagonist despite his and Megu’s relationship, often adopting a hostile stance towards him. While she’s seemingly spoiled on the outside, she prefers to not be indulged too much, feeling it can be manipulative. This makes her want to become an adult, although her idea of adulthood is to simply get married and have a family, leaving her with much to learn about life yet. For all her faults, people can’t help but like her. She’s long since gotten tired of Yayoi calling her “Tamabukuro,” though.
Take on quests and help the people
There are more than 150 people on the island of Yumegashima who need your help. Every one of them is troubled with something and will request you help them with a special job. Talk to everyone to pinpoint these quest holders. After receiving a quest, you can check it at any time on the Quest List.
Don’t miss your shutter chance
As a cameraman for the journalism club, you should not let your shutter chance escape as a photograph subject could appear at any time. The first step as a socially aware photographer is to take pictures of the lives of the island’s people, however, you should do it without being a nuisance. But if you’re aiming for that panty shot, crawling along the floors of the town, police notification is inevitable.
The following are the official trailers for the game prior to its release.
The initial debut trailer of course garnered all kinds of reactions due to the low angle/upskirt photography aspect part of the game that was quickly shown. But it immediately struck a chord with the target audience of the game (D3 Publishing has many games with a hentai angle to it). And when you watch through each progression of the promotional trailers unveiling more of the game, this new franchise looked like it had potential considering its open world angle.
Gematsu has articles covering the official informational releases. All of this sets the stage for the following critique of the game now that it has been officially released.
To keep this short, open world games themselves tend to lack linearity and allows the player the freedom to explore and discover the game world, and then complete quests and events without following any particular order. When executed properly, the game play can be especially fun. When executed poorly, it can lead to player frustration.
Tamsoft Corporation is the actual developer that designs and programs the game. They’ve had their hands in many successful franchises including Battle Arena Toshinden, Dream C Club, Onechanbara, and Senran Kagura. This game however is one of their first attempts at an actual open world adventure game and this lack of experience clearly shows in the released product where the reality does not match the hype.
While many initially jumped on the novelty factor with the low angle photography by their protagonist character, that novelty wears off rather quickly when over done. Considering the open world angle along with over 300 NPC’s that can offer 150 quests and events, the game play in theory sounded like it had the potential to downplay the hentai aspect of the game. It even has day through night cycles (no actual weather changes though).
The game itself tends to make fun of some of the usual stereotypes to the point where the protagonist is doing all of his creeping out in full plain view. There’s even clever word play (like Tamakin when reversing the “Tama” and “Kin” part into Kintama which is the Japanese word related to the male scrotum). Basically, the game doesn’t try to take itself seriously anyway. And that would’ve made this game really incredible had the actual open world elements been implemented and executed much better.
The problems with the game become immediately known right off the bat though. There is nearly 20+ minutes of backstory and introductory dialogue that attempts to set the stage for the rest of the game. The problem though is that this is unnecessarily long since it is filled with banter that attempts to disguise itself as content. I suppose this isn’t unique to this game since it’s a rather common aspect of many Japanese games. In an open world game though, it is the player that should guide their character to interact with the games NPC’s to discover and learn more about them (not a forced and overtly long synopsis at the very start of the game when players want to generally jump into the actual game play).
And once the initial “pleasantries” are over, the game play itself reveals the game designers lack of experience with creating an open world style adventure game. One of the biggest issues with Natsuiro High School is the lack of proper and/or consistent conveyance. Yes, at the start, many NPC’s have a bubble over their head (either a golden exclamation mark or blue circle with 3 white dots to convey an interaction is needed).
But once a quest is initiated, the player soon discovers a frustrating trend of having to run all over the place to find the next objective within that quest. While there is a quest log that one can refer to, the game’s interface does not properly convey a specific destination and/or person. The games map overview shows the islands various locations, but offers up no on-map ping/markers for these specific objectives. So the player often times is running around from one general location to another and then having to initiate dialog with various NPC’s. Sometimes, it requires saving and loading games, and hopping around different game days to get an event to trigger. Some events are also time based on the in-game clock (which is not real time and can advance based on actions that you perform; like peeing in the urinal causes 10 minutes to go each time). What’s worse is the game does not offer an onscreen clock (there are some rooms in the school that have a clock on the wall which can be used or one can look at their game saves to see what the time is). Basically, the game play is at times, an exercise of continuous tedium and frustration.
The other very glaring issue is this huge island more often than not, is devoid of other NPC’s to interact with. You can run or bike through the main city, the beach, the other areas of the island, and encounter only a handful of those 300+ NPC’s. And when these NPC’s are around and/or do spawn in an area, your dialog with them often leads to no further engagement beyond a brief greeting or “what it it?” (some cannot even be interacted with at all). Thus what is supposed to be an open world experience with a lot of things to do, feels more devoid of any progressive game play besides running around to find your next quest and/or the objective you are working on. The game play trailers condense many of these interactions to look like those are common throughout the game, but the reality is far from that .
Interaction with the environment is also minimal. I mean, you can probably tip a cow if you try (since this is supposed to be one of those side activities you can engage in) but there are many other parts of the game world that are just there for decoration. Like there is a pail and shovel in a small sandbox in a park but you can’t do anything with them. And there are beach chairs for example which cannot be moved or interacted with in anyway. For what purpose you might ask? This is more to make a point of the amount of potential the designers missed in making this open game world really feel like one. But I chalk this up to Tamsoft’s lack of experience in actually having designed these type of games where far more attention to detail is needed. It was probably way too an ambitious a goal considering the game play systems they are more familiar with in the franchises they’ve had a hand in designing tend to be turned based dialogues that are decision tree based (i.e. the usual JRPG style) or combat/fighting games.
Even the decision tree aspect of games like Dream C Club tend to be overtly complex (since events need to be triggered very specifically in order to branch off to a particular route/outcome) as a means to extend the game play where the dialog choices aren’t usually related to something more intuitive (it’s usually an effort in trial and error and often times requires wiki’s/guides created by those who put in the time to document those choices).
I’m not going to say that this is bad game design. What I am going to say it that it is an outdated one in JRPG’s and one that is present in Natsuiro High School when it comes to its dialog/multiple ending scenario part of the game. The impression I get is that Tamsoft just took their experience with turn based dialog trees, and added the “open world” parts where there would usually just be a loading screen. Basically, they didn’t design the game with the open world aspects as first priority; most of the games “action” takes place in these dialog filled moments.
This is 2015 though and there really isn’t that much of an excuse to not take advantage of current generation hardware capabilities. The other thing is that the Japanese tend to be meticulous and detail oriented (sometimes to a fault) in engineering but not in the area of software design (and by extension, in gaming). And that aspect is far too apparent in this game.
I basically watched a Japanese streamer on day 2 quickly running through various dialogues to get certain events to trigger and also trying to get an alternate game ending. His last few VOD’s from his last stream of the game (coming up on day 3 since release) did not even total an hour long. Thus anyone who is just generally watching the game being streamed (or video on demand playbacks) will see what seems to be a running or bike riding simulation.
The games graphics and textures are ok but not what you would also call incredibly detailed. They seemed to go for a very specific style for their characters. But it also does not even come close to tapping the power of the PS4 (makes sense in the context that the game was also released on the PS3 but even these graphics aren’t going to tax that system).
The game is also plagued by various graphical issues that seriously should have never cleared quality assurance testing (assuming any was done) as detailed by one player in the following humorous video (or if one searches on YouTube for 夏色ハイスクル バグ, there are several videos that show a variety of anomalies). I would actually say that coming across these visual issues and playing around with them are more fun than the actual game play itself (the head in the urinal at 3m34s had me rolling).
The graphical issues can be easily fixed but most of the game play related ones are systemic and would require more design work and recoding to bring the many lacking areas of the game detailed above, to a higher quality level.
Many agree the game has potential but the reputation of a title is usually cemented within the first few days of its release. The fact that many Japanese gamers who were originally intrigued with the game, have expressed frustration with the open world play so soon after release, is not the kind of reception the developers (Tamsoft) and the publisher (D3 Publishing) should feel happy about. I’d be actually surprised if they tried to patch these game play issues.
Unfortunately for me, I bought this game (I just haven’t received it yet since it is in transit) hoping that the open world adventure part would offset the novelty aspect of the perverted part of the game. But I didn’t expect it to be this bad (my expectations weren’t generally high to begin with since I knew this was Tamsoft’s first stab at an open world adventure but I thought it would be a bit more polished than this). And this isn’t going to be one of those times where it will take me actually playing it to say the above isn’t anywhere close to the mark at all just from watching live streams and/or VOD’s of the game play.
Does any of this change my criticisms that I’ve levied at Blizzard with regards to Diablo 3’s various design issues? Not really. I’ve always said their graphical aesthetics are top notched (the same applies to conveyance when it comes to objectives and events). The underlying game and system design issues and implementation are a different matter. They have the resources and actual technical experience to draw upon, yet they cannot even get the linear design within an open waypoint system to be a frustration free experience.
June 14th Update: Initial Game Play Thoughts + Revised Observations
