A port of Hana Awase: Mizuchi
Port of Hana Awase: Mizuchi for the Switch, simultaneously released in Japanese, Chinese, and English.
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i absolutely loved this game. ended up falling in love with the artwork, the hanafuda mini game and the writing. i liked that this had a little bite to it and was more mature than the otome titles i usually play. i recommend and really wanna play the Iroha version now. i love u mizuchi.
Hana Awase -Mizuchi Volume- is comprised of approximately 40% suffering, 25% characters being disgustingly horny for the protagonist, 15% card battles, 15% romance, and 5% school drama. Sound good? Keep reading~
It's worth noting that, although this is a full-length VN, it is barely a complete story. It definitely is meant to be followed by the subsequent volumes. I would say that the full price is quite high for that.
I love the artwork — sharp and stylish, and mostly consistent, with fairly plentiful CGs and lots of different expressions for the character portraits. The music is fantastic. I liked the traditional Japanese aesthetic, the poems, the vibes of the setting, and the presentation.
I came into this experience expecting the hana utsushi card battles to be the biggest hurdle in my enjoyment. At first I didn't like them, but after a while they were a little relaxing, even. There is a notable amount of grinding required, though.
The translation is mostly good, but there was the occasional questionable choice of totally altered meaning for no reason, and the typos or words missing here and there were not hard to come by (and sometimes cheapened an emotional moment in the story haha). It was still comprehendible.
Maybe I didn't play in the most efficient way, but I had to do a lot of skipping through the same previously read portions of the game a lot of times in order to reach all of the endings. There is a "skip to next choice or chapter" function, but having tested it a lot, I can say that it's kind of broken. It very rarely took me as far as the next choice or chapter, and sometimes even took me a bit backwards!
The LIs are all pretty different in personality, but... this first volume didn't give me reason to like two of the four presented here. I was not neutral on those two. I actively disliked them. A lot. Wow. Is it just me? Or did the game want me to dislike them? Unknown.
If you're someone who enjoys extensive "bad endings", you might really like this! Excluding the route for the main love interest of this volume, the routes are all basically relatively well developed, lengthy bad endings.
I have to say that it's really pretty grim, though. There is a lot of physical violence and death. The protagonist gets assaulted a lot, and experiences many threats of sexual violence and otherwise unwanted advances.
There are some flaws I wasn't able to overlook. The emphasis on roles based on sex, the unchecked misogyny of some of the characters, the hetero-normativity... The fact that I couldn't romance Momotose!!!
There is a bizarre significance placed on the concept of virginity (why?), specifically for characters bearing vaginas (a very strict double standard). The protagonist's psychic powers will deteriorated if they lose these mystical "qualifications"! The attitude toward this felt very victim-blaming, which was... disturbing.
Someone reviewed this game in the comments section of a YouTube video. They claimed that "guys thirst after u while are encouraged to f u in the same time u have to remain virgin". I thought they were exaggerating, but it is, sadly, true. The demo cuts off immediately before all the weird horny behavior starts. Who knew!? LOL
In the end, I did this for Momotose. And for Momotose, I will do it again.
It's worth noting that, although this is a full-length VN, it is barely a complete story. It definitely is meant to be followed by the subsequent volumes. I would say that the full price is quite high for that.
I love the artwork — sharp and stylish, and mostly consistent, with fairly plentiful CGs and lots of different expressions for the character portraits. The music is fantastic. I liked the traditional Japanese aesthetic, the poems, the vibes of the setting, and the presentation.
I came into this experience expecting the hana utsushi card battles to be the biggest hurdle in my enjoyment. At first I didn't like them, but after a while they were a little relaxing, even. There is a notable amount of grinding required, though.
The translation is mostly good, but there was the occasional questionable choice of totally altered meaning for no reason, and the typos or words missing here and there were not hard to come by (and sometimes cheapened an emotional moment in the story haha). It was still comprehendible.
Maybe I didn't play in the most efficient way, but I had to do a lot of skipping through the same previously read portions of the game a lot of times in order to reach all of the endings. There is a "skip to next choice or chapter" function, but having tested it a lot, I can say that it's kind of broken. It very rarely took me as far as the next choice or chapter, and sometimes even took me a bit backwards!
The LIs are all pretty different in personality, but... this first volume didn't give me reason to like two of the four presented here. I was not neutral on those two. I actively disliked them. A lot. Wow. Is it just me? Or did the game want me to dislike them? Unknown.
If you're someone who enjoys extensive "bad endings", you might really like this! Excluding the route for the main love interest of this volume, the routes are all basically relatively well developed, lengthy bad endings.
I have to say that it's really pretty grim, though. There is a lot of physical violence and death. The protagonist gets assaulted a lot, and experiences many threats of sexual violence and otherwise unwanted advances.
There are some flaws I wasn't able to overlook. The emphasis on roles based on sex, the unchecked misogyny of some of the characters, the hetero-normativity... The fact that I couldn't romance Momotose!!!
There is a bizarre significance placed on the concept of virginity (why?), specifically for characters bearing vaginas (a very strict double standard). The protagonist's psychic powers will deteriorated if they lose these mystical "qualifications"! The attitude toward this felt very victim-blaming, which was... disturbing.
Someone reviewed this game in the comments section of a YouTube video. They claimed that "guys thirst after u while are encouraged to f u in the same time u have to remain virgin". I thought they were exaggerating, but it is, sadly, true. The demo cuts off immediately before all the weird horny behavior starts. Who knew!? LOL
In the end, I did this for Momotose. And for Momotose, I will do it again.