Roommate Complete Box
releases on TBD
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The first review is a bit wordy, but since I decided to not finish 3, keeping it like this is best I think.
Roomate - Inoue Ryoko
Didn’t know much about this game when I picked it out to play, just had seen it on twitter and thought the usage of the Sega Saturn's real-time clock was interesting.. I forgot about it for a while but then finally remembered the name, and found a fan-site for it (link at the end.) After skimming that site for a bit I decided to finally take the plunge.
The setup of Roomate is you’re a young adult (age is selectable) who ends up living with a highschool girl by the name of Ryoko Inoue. Apparently she’s the daughter of some acquaintance of your father, and your father informs you of this in a letter, but you didn’t read it. Ryoko decided to stay back in Japan while the rest of her family moved to New York. I do wonder how sending her to the house of some stranger was the best solution there was for her, especially since we don't seem that responsible. Whatever, it seems like we’re not having to pay for her living expenses so might as well let her stay.
I only turned the game on in the morning once or twice on a weekend so I’m not sure how it works on a weekday, but for the most part the flow of events here is: say hi to Ryoko in the morning, tell her what you’ll be doing for the rest of the day and she’ll tell you when she’ll be back (presumably events can fire in the morning as well.) Then, you come back in the evening at the time she said and you’ll get an event after wandering around in the house a bit (which is 3d in the Saturn version,) or immediately upon starting up. The only characters in the story are the protagonist, Ryoko, and her friend Rie who occasionally comes over or calls. Ryoko’s parents also call but I don’t remember ever directly interacting with them.
These are varied and usually pretty light, personality tests from Ryoko, a discussion about Murakami’s South of the Border, West of the Sun, etc, but there’s some heavier ones as well although I mostly seemed to have missed them. I didn’t get many events about Ryoko getting rejected by someone she liked, and the game ended almost immediately after the call from her dad telling her that her mom had collapsed from, uhh, “autonomic ataxia.” There wasn’t much of a feeling of a dating sim here, but I think that’s entirely on me for not ever turning it on in the mornings and presumably missing out on a bunch of “intimacy points” or some such.
The writing and so on isn’t particularly amazing or interesting, neither are the graphics, but the voice acting was good enough I suppose. Since it ended up being an odd mish-mash of episodes which never dwelt or really went too deep into any of it, there was an odd sense of realism here, to the point I wonder if I would’ve liked this one less if I actually went through the storyline. The lack of any romance story in particular I found pretty funny, I guess Ryoko did blush a couple times but does that really count?
In the end Ryoko left me a letter which seemed to imply I didn’t know about her mom’s situation, which I did but I guess I didn’t complete the event chain, and telling me “she’ll tell me more later.” The credits roll with what I’m assuming is an instrumental version of the end theme, “See you next summer” I’m told. A bit confusing since Ryoko gave me no indication she was coming back, but well there’s two sequels so it’s no big surprise. Full playtime was somewhere around 4 hours, but I doubt I even spent that much time playing, probably half of that was the
game left open. Onwards, to Ryoko 2!
Roommate - Ryoko in Summer Vacation
Ryoko comes back from America to visit you again this time, but it’s only for a week! My sleep schedule was fucked this entire week I played this though so I didn’t see her very much. All real-time features are about the same here, but the feature to sync up when you both come back home from work/school. I imagine that might be for two reasons: one, it took about a week to sync up schedules, and two, because it’s summer vacation Ryoko doesn’t have a schedule. You can probably hang out with her in the middle of the day even, but I never did that because I had better things to do in the middle of the day (I imagine there can’t be too many since almost anyone who plays this is going to be the same.)
I like the new Ryoko design, probably more than the first game’s Ryoko. It’s a bit more of a traditional Bishojo game design though so your mileage may vary I suppose. Also liked that they removed the 3d wandering around for a 2d map this time. It saved me time and also just looks a bit nicer.
Can’t say much else unfortunately, I really barely talked to Ryoko, to the point she was rather upset in the letter she left me this time (yeah I got ghosted with a letter again,) saying that she was disappointed that I treated her final summer vacation as a simple living arrangement and we never went out to do anything (she wasn’t wrong.) I considered restarting from the beginning since it’s only a week, but a vocal track played during the credits this time so as far as I’m concerned this was a valid ending. Onwards, to Ryoko 3! Towards another dating sim where I sleep or work through all the dating!
Roommate 3 - Ryoko Kaze no Kagayaku Asa ni
Or so I would say, but the emulator was eating voice lines and softlocked on one of the first conversations, so I won’t be playing this one. The gimmick here is Ryoko is studying for her university examinations. It’s about a month long, starting on Februray 13th. Seems to have maybe the most content in the series? At least, you’re more likely to see most of it compared to the first where I believe they spread out events so you could play it anytime of the year. I’m somewhat tired of Ryoko and the gimmick of this series by now so I won’t be trying to fix this one, but this one is probably the best one if you went through the others.
As a whole not particularly exciting. The premise is kind of whatever to begin with and I never particularly liked Ryoko that much after I spent some more time with her. Maybe I didn’t get the most charming events, or maybe she’s just not that great. Real time gimmick is interesting, but it kind of gets boring after the first week or so. Roommate 3 seems to have included more stuff like taking a plant, and taking out the trash which is… exciting I suppose. About as exciting as that stuff is in real life. No rating because I didn’t finish it, and the ones I did finish I half-assed to the point I don’t really feel happy rating these. Maybe I really did just miss out on all the touching moments.
Try it out if you know Japanese, or maybe just read through the fansite since as far as I looked at it the owner has covered just about all there is to know about these games. I don’t think he’s covered the traditional visual novel ones that came out after like Roommates W, but I don’t think anyone really cares about those ones since the real time gimmick is gone.
Fan page
>> http://homepage2-s-kitagawa.la.coocan.jp/ <<
Roomate - Inoue Ryoko
Didn’t know much about this game when I picked it out to play, just had seen it on twitter and thought the usage of the Sega Saturn's real-time clock was interesting.. I forgot about it for a while but then finally remembered the name, and found a fan-site for it (link at the end.) After skimming that site for a bit I decided to finally take the plunge.
The setup of Roomate is you’re a young adult (age is selectable) who ends up living with a highschool girl by the name of Ryoko Inoue. Apparently she’s the daughter of some acquaintance of your father, and your father informs you of this in a letter, but you didn’t read it. Ryoko decided to stay back in Japan while the rest of her family moved to New York. I do wonder how sending her to the house of some stranger was the best solution there was for her, especially since we don't seem that responsible. Whatever, it seems like we’re not having to pay for her living expenses so might as well let her stay.
I only turned the game on in the morning once or twice on a weekend so I’m not sure how it works on a weekday, but for the most part the flow of events here is: say hi to Ryoko in the morning, tell her what you’ll be doing for the rest of the day and she’ll tell you when she’ll be back (presumably events can fire in the morning as well.) Then, you come back in the evening at the time she said and you’ll get an event after wandering around in the house a bit (which is 3d in the Saturn version,) or immediately upon starting up. The only characters in the story are the protagonist, Ryoko, and her friend Rie who occasionally comes over or calls. Ryoko’s parents also call but I don’t remember ever directly interacting with them.
These are varied and usually pretty light, personality tests from Ryoko, a discussion about Murakami’s South of the Border, West of the Sun, etc, but there’s some heavier ones as well although I mostly seemed to have missed them. I didn’t get many events about Ryoko getting rejected by someone she liked, and the game ended almost immediately after the call from her dad telling her that her mom had collapsed from, uhh, “autonomic ataxia.” There wasn’t much of a feeling of a dating sim here, but I think that’s entirely on me for not ever turning it on in the mornings and presumably missing out on a bunch of “intimacy points” or some such.
The writing and so on isn’t particularly amazing or interesting, neither are the graphics, but the voice acting was good enough I suppose. Since it ended up being an odd mish-mash of episodes which never dwelt or really went too deep into any of it, there was an odd sense of realism here, to the point I wonder if I would’ve liked this one less if I actually went through the storyline. The lack of any romance story in particular I found pretty funny, I guess Ryoko did blush a couple times but does that really count?
In the end Ryoko left me a letter which seemed to imply I didn’t know about her mom’s situation, which I did but I guess I didn’t complete the event chain, and telling me “she’ll tell me more later.” The credits roll with what I’m assuming is an instrumental version of the end theme, “See you next summer” I’m told. A bit confusing since Ryoko gave me no indication she was coming back, but well there’s two sequels so it’s no big surprise. Full playtime was somewhere around 4 hours, but I doubt I even spent that much time playing, probably half of that was the
game left open. Onwards, to Ryoko 2!
Roommate - Ryoko in Summer Vacation
Ryoko comes back from America to visit you again this time, but it’s only for a week! My sleep schedule was fucked this entire week I played this though so I didn’t see her very much. All real-time features are about the same here, but the feature to sync up when you both come back home from work/school. I imagine that might be for two reasons: one, it took about a week to sync up schedules, and two, because it’s summer vacation Ryoko doesn’t have a schedule. You can probably hang out with her in the middle of the day even, but I never did that because I had better things to do in the middle of the day (I imagine there can’t be too many since almost anyone who plays this is going to be the same.)
I like the new Ryoko design, probably more than the first game’s Ryoko. It’s a bit more of a traditional Bishojo game design though so your mileage may vary I suppose. Also liked that they removed the 3d wandering around for a 2d map this time. It saved me time and also just looks a bit nicer.
Can’t say much else unfortunately, I really barely talked to Ryoko, to the point she was rather upset in the letter she left me this time (yeah I got ghosted with a letter again,) saying that she was disappointed that I treated her final summer vacation as a simple living arrangement and we never went out to do anything (she wasn’t wrong.) I considered restarting from the beginning since it’s only a week, but a vocal track played during the credits this time so as far as I’m concerned this was a valid ending. Onwards, to Ryoko 3! Towards another dating sim where I sleep or work through all the dating!
Roommate 3 - Ryoko Kaze no Kagayaku Asa ni
Or so I would say, but the emulator was eating voice lines and softlocked on one of the first conversations, so I won’t be playing this one. The gimmick here is Ryoko is studying for her university examinations. It’s about a month long, starting on Februray 13th. Seems to have maybe the most content in the series? At least, you’re more likely to see most of it compared to the first where I believe they spread out events so you could play it anytime of the year. I’m somewhat tired of Ryoko and the gimmick of this series by now so I won’t be trying to fix this one, but this one is probably the best one if you went through the others.
As a whole not particularly exciting. The premise is kind of whatever to begin with and I never particularly liked Ryoko that much after I spent some more time with her. Maybe I didn’t get the most charming events, or maybe she’s just not that great. Real time gimmick is interesting, but it kind of gets boring after the first week or so. Roommate 3 seems to have included more stuff like taking a plant, and taking out the trash which is… exciting I suppose. About as exciting as that stuff is in real life. No rating because I didn’t finish it, and the ones I did finish I half-assed to the point I don’t really feel happy rating these. Maybe I really did just miss out on all the touching moments.
Try it out if you know Japanese, or maybe just read through the fansite since as far as I looked at it the owner has covered just about all there is to know about these games. I don’t think he’s covered the traditional visual novel ones that came out after like Roommates W, but I don’t think anyone really cares about those ones since the real time gimmick is gone.
Fan page
>> http://homepage2-s-kitagawa.la.coocan.jp/ <<