Visual Novels #2

Sakura Swim Club (2015)
By: Winged Cloud Genre: Visual Novel Players: 1 Difficulty: N/A
Featured Version: PC
Also Available For: Nothing

It was a cold, stormy night, many moons past. Panic-stricken beetles scurried to take refuge beneath errant leaves, themselves being battered by the large globules of clear water that plummeted from the hazy sky. Observing this chaos safely from within the confines of a nearby residential structure was a portly oaf named RetroKingSimon who had just unexpectedly taken advantage of the latest splendid deal offered by Humble Bundle which was themed around visual novels. For eons did these novels lay dormant in the darkest corners of his computer's storage device. And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost. History became legend, legend became myth. And for two and a half thousand years, the novels passed out of all knowledge.

But then, only two weeks past, did I remember two things: firstly, the aforementioned portly oaf was me, and that meant that, secondly, I had loads of visual novels on my laptop that I hadn't played/read yet (I can never work out which word is more appropriate). The first one I 'plumped' for was Sakura Swim Club which, I imagined, would have a reasonable mix of ecchi (i.e. saucy stuff) and story. I've found out since playing through it, however, that it's part of a larger 'Sakura' series, all of which have a much stronger emphasis on the ecchi part than the story - something that was readily apparent soon after starting it. I guess that shouldn't have been too much of a surprise though - based on my experience, pervy stuff seems to be the whole point of visual novels!

Shockingly, the 'player' takes on the role of a teenage male student known as Kaede who is described in the game's blurb as 'just your average high school guy', but he really isn't. He's the son of a well known and successful businessman who has high expectations of his son. Kaede, however, consistently receives poor grades and has been moved from school to school, over and over accordingly, in the hopes of finding a 'better fit' for him. We join him just as he's starting at his latest school which initially seems much like the previous ones, but when he's encouraged to join a school club, he's naturally drawn towards the one everyone warns him to steer clear of - the swimming club - which currently only has two members - Mieko and Hiromi - who just happen to be a couple of hotties.

Despite being best friends, the two girls are of course very different to each other too. The black-haired Meiko is insecure but also a tsundere so she doesn't take compliments well, or indeed anything to start with, and needs little excuse to harshly berate Kaede. Hiromi, on the other hand, is much more laid back, but both girls are masking the pain of a traumatic event in the past and/or present. Since they are the only members of the Swim Club, however, and therefore the people with whom Kaede most frequently interacts, they eventually soften and become friends. Perhaps more surprisingly, they are also the only characters in the entire game besides Kaede himself. I haven't played that many visual novels yet, admittedly, but surely VN's are meant to have a few more?

All the examples I've played so far have featured several additional characters, at least, so I found it a bit strange playing one with so few, and there isn't really much of anything else here either. There aren't many locations and none show anyone in the background, not even Kaede's classroom which just has rows of empty desks during class. There also aren't many narrative choices, but it doesn't look like it would matter too much if there were as there don't seem to be different routes through the game anyway. You can usually tell this by how many of the CG's (images, usually pervy ones) you've unlocked, but I've played through the game once and I've unlocked every single one of them already, so any replay value the game might've had is non-existent!

All of this might be forgiveable if what was here was good, but the characters are cliched, they receive little development, the story is predictable, and even much of the dialogue is poor (due, most likely, to the translation). On the plus side, the artwork is pretty decent and the voice acting is good, but that's about it - it's hardly worth playing through just for them. So once again with a visual novel, I find myself saying - if you like the look of the girlies here and want to see them naked and/or doing sex stuff, go to Steam and lay down the appropriate payment (and then look for the relevant patch to uncensor it!). For everyone else, I would recommend steering clear of this. Most VN's, or indeed games generally, would be far more worthy of your time.

RKS Score: 3/10