Só para deixar claro, essa review é baseada nas rotas da Yuki e da Rina. Pretendo fazer as outras e caso eu não fique com preguiça, eu atualizo essa review falando delas mas eu duvido que eu tenha esse animo ent fds

White Album 1 é uma obra que tem bons picos, mas falha bastante em manter uma consistência por conta do seu sistema de dating sim, que parece mais encheção de linguiça do que realmente uma mecânica que serve para aprofundar seus personagens e às vezes até atrapalha na hora de transmitir um senso de urgência. Por exemplo, na rota da Yuki, fica muito difícil sentir a solidão e a impotência que ambos estão passando, porque em 70% do tempo eu tava pulando os dias para finalmente ter a oportunidade de avançar na história e ver esses conflitos sendo finalmente colocados na mesa "Ok, mas e quando esses conflitos finalmente são abordados, como é?" Vão de legal para muito bom as vezes muita coisa não tem o seu devido peso por conta dos problemas que eu pontuei ali, mas cara, tem umas cenas que realmente te fisgam e vc consegue sentir o peso que está sendo passado ali. O casal em si é bom, a jornada deles reencontrando aquele amor adolescente que parecia ter sido perdido, as necessidades e inseguranças sendo postas à mesa são o que fazem essa rota bem legal. Ah, e falando sobre a cena de sexo (só deixando claro que a cena não é explícita, a CG foca no rosto da personagem, mas obviamente dá para saber o que está acontecendo ali), ela funciona muito bem fiquei ate surpreso ainda mais vindo de vn

Agora, falando sobre a rota da Rina, ela sofre dos mesmos problemas da rota anterior, a diferença é que, caso você esteja fazendo ela depois da Yuki (que é o recomendado, btw), você tem a possibilidade de pular mais coisa, deixando o processo de chegar nos eventos importantes menos maçante. A rota da Rina tem uma abordagem bem legal. Ela é uma personagem que já está inserida no cenário de idols há mais tempo, então sua imagem já está construída, e essa figura é de uma pessoa perfeita, sendo assim Rina não pode demonstrar fraqueza de nenhuma maneira, por conta dessa sua figura idealizada. Acho muito foda como essa rota discute suas frustrações, ansiedades e anseio por coisas simples que estão sempre ao alcance de pessoas que não fazem parte dessa realidade. É uma rota que serve muito bem como contraste à rota da Yuki ent recomendo fazer ela dps de concluir a rota dela

Agora, falando sobre a parte NTR, ela foi responsável por proporcionar a melhor cena da obra para mim. Não vou entrar em detalhes, mas que cena pica do caralho, vale a pena ler só por ela. O sentimento de culpa que essa cena passa é incrível aqui os cara foram pica tenho que admitir

Sobre a produção, vou ser bem breve. Tem umas CGs lindíssimas, uma soundtrack que mesmo simples, é bem agradável de escutar, os sprites animados, eu não sou muito fã mas as vezes são bem utilizados, e os backgrounds variam bastante de ok para lindos.

No fim, White Album 1 foi uma experiência legal mas eu esperava um pouco mais, especialmente vendo o potencial que a obra demonstrou ter muitas vezes, mas infelizmente nunca alcançando totalmente. Não vou dizer que não valeu a pena, porque com certeza valeu apesar de sua mecânica de dating sim estragar muito o ritmo da obra, suas qualidades conseguem fazer ela sair com um saldo positivo

The 2010 visual novel White Album 2 (no relation to the famous Beetles record ;b) is one of my partner’s favorite games ever. However, it’s a sequel to a much, much earlier visual novel from the late 90’s (though it shares basically no key staff with that game). She’s been curious about what the original game that inspired her favorite one is like for ages, and she absolutely lit up at the announcement that the late 2000’s PS3 remake of the original White Album was getting an official English release on PC this summer. To have a bit of fun indulging in media as a couple, I decided to pick up that old PS3 remake of the game to play through alongside her, and that’s this version here. It took me about 18 hours to play through the main heroine Yuki’s route in Japanese on original hardware.

White Album follows Touya, a university student in Tokyo in the late 90’s. He’s incredibly busy, but he manages to maintain a few friends he’s had since he was younger as well as work acquaintances. But there’s no one in his life more important to him than his girlfriend Yuki. Both socially awkward young people, they started dating in their last year of high school, but are both still quite bashful and awkward with one another. Near the start of university, Yuki’s aspirations as a young pop star became real as a talent agency picked her up and rose her to one of the biggest up and coming celebrities in the country… while Touya is still a struggling university student working any part time job he can find to make ends meet.

Unlike my partner who loves them, I don’t play many visual novels, so I wasn’t quite sure what to make of this game and its story at first. However, that didn’t stop me from completely falling in love with it by the end. The other people in Touya’s life help create a very fun and interesting tapestry of an insecure but kind young man, and he and Yuki’s love story is an incredibly sweet and heartfelt one. Their story of two people whose biggest obstacles to love are just respectively accepting that they’re actually worthy of one another’s affection really hit home for me in a big way, and both me and my partner just didn’t have the heart to try any other routes after that main one because the thought of breaking up Touya and Yuki was just too painful ^^;.

The gameplay is somewhat of a mix of a life sim and a more straightforward visual novel. After a brief prologue, you get to pick where Touya goes and, by extension, who he spends his time with that day. These interactions build up behind the scenes to lead you into later non-optional scenes later depending on whose route your choices have led you onto, but it’s something that’s very enhanced by just using a spoiler-free guide like my partner and I did to help you actually get the best experience centered around the person whose ending you want. It facilitates the gameplay very well, and it also helps create a sense of chaotic normalcy for Touya that these larger events in his life end up taking place in.

The presentation of the remake is gorgeous. Though this is of the style of visual novel where your main character almost never gets any screen time (as he’s kinda in that weird space between his own character and a player avatar), the art for all of the people and places in Touya’s life look excellent. The characters in particular have a good handful of outfits and expressions that are enhanced even more by the Live2D-like animation engine (as it apparently isn’t Live2D itself) they use for all of the characters, making them “breathe” and have a sort of idle animation as you talk to them. It looks a bit uncanny at first (especially if you’re familiar with VTubers or the like who use things like Live2D to animate themselves), but it was something I got used to pretty quick and really enjoyed. The voice work is excellent and so is the music, with the titular track White Album being one I really loved in particular~.

Verdict: Highly Recommended. It may be old, but it’s still a great story. While certain aspects of the gameplay loop make experiencing certain parts of the story a little more awkward than they perhaps need to be, that doesn’t take away from what a great story White Album 1 is. From what I’ve experienced from watching my partner play the English version, that translation is a very serviceable one, though not incredible, so if this is the sort of VN you enjoy, that version is totally worth picking up on PC~.

It has updated graphic, but it's still a dating sim from 1998. It came out at a time when visual novel was transitioning away from adventure game and stripping down the gameplay elements. You can see the visage of an old school dating sim in White Album when you have to choose where to go each day, but the outcome of the story is purely choice-based, you don't need to raise your charm point or study point like in Tokimemo.

Each character in this game is vulnerable and lonely, and they seek warmth from the protagonist one way or another. Some just want companionship, some want love, and some prefer something purely carnal. This is all standard dating sim stuff, but the late 90s Japan setting really adds to the atmosphere. The game captures an anxiety that permeated in the air, and imbues it into each character and makes them feel like real people living in that era, not just objects to obtain in a videogame.

I feel like a lot of the negative aspects in these reviews fail to understand the true appeal of what makes the first White Album so special. There seems to be a lot of comparisons to White Album 2 which seems like an unfair comparison despite literally being called WA2. While that is a 70+ hour romance drama with more than enough time to develop the main love interest/conflicts, this is essentially a dating sim-esque game with short scenarios on the side. I've only ever watched the WA2 anime, which in turn got me interested in playing through this game in the first place. That and the fact that this is developed by industry legend Leaf, who's only exposure I have is the ToHeart 1999 TV anime (incredible anime). I went in expecting a similar tone considering the original White Album was developed only a year after ToHeart, and I can thankfully say that I got what I wished for.

Everyone wants to disregard the conversational aspects of the game when that happens to be mostly what the game has going for it. My first playthrough of this was an ethereal experience. You read through the prologue to get a glimpse at the cast you're about to spend maybe 6 hours interacting with and every day is spent talking and chatting. It's always the most mundane shit like "nice weather huh" and it's the most pleasant feeling in the world. The MC, Fuiji, is the most generic self-insert character that it's both pretty bad and also funny at the same time. A lot of events will go like "You read any books lately?" to where the other person will list like 6 authors and Fuiji will say something like "Who????" With these events, you get a feel for the characters you love and those you don't. I for one hated Mana's annoying little sister archetype so I stopped talking to her on my first playthrough and talked more to Akira. One of my friends really loves Mana so I guess who you like is all a matter of personal preference.

The combination of day-to-day convos and those highly animated sprites and the fantastic music and the late 90s setting sets for one of the comfiest experiences reading through a VN. I love the soundtrack so much, especially the original songs like "Sound of Destiny" and the aforementioned "White Album". The first time I hit christmas eve and you stand next to Yuki staring at a sakura tree with snow falling and the “Seiya” track plays really emits that ethereal tone that I mentioned before. There's a lot of moments similar to that completely absorb you into this snowy Japanese urban landscape.

Rina's route was the first character route I aimed towards, being the poster child next to the childhood friend Yuki. Her scenario shares a lot of the same pros and cons that other routes face. I really loved her as a character and she exemplifies a lot of what makes these scenarios great. Adult themes, selfish desires, and imperfect personalities which lead to a sense of dread considering our MC has been in a relationship with Yuki for years. Every route centers around a developing romance with Yuki at the center point. Yuki's route in particular is very interesting as there are many attempts of characters unintentionally trying to separate you from Yuki. A lot of cool themes are introduced, but unfortunately every route ends very prematurely. I mean it when I say that these routes are short. Skipping all the conversations leads to a route being completed in maybe less than 2 hours. Characters do not really develop much in these scenarios. I went into Misaki's route expecting my opinion of her to change, but she ended up still being a rather boring heroine (although the end of it was pretty cool).

Which leads to the second main flaw in that after maybe 2 playthroughs, you can probably see about 90% of the conversations in the game. I originally wanted to get the steam achievements to read all the conversation events, but it soon becomes clear that it's a tedious task. The normal player isn't intended to read every conversation event because there are so many events that are only available after a certain other event. For instance, after a random conversation with Rina about hang-gliding, you can mention it to Mana, who's a huge fan, and she becomes astonished. There's so many random topics and events to encounter that I entered an event with Yuki relating to a book by complete accident. After reading most events, all that's left is reading scenarios, so in turn there becomes a lot of text to skip. A lot of what makes the game magical is skipped because there's and urge to read the other heroine's routes to the end. This isn't a game that should be played through multiple times as nothing ever really compares to the first playthrough.

Sayako as a character gains a lot of praise for having the best scenario. Being the newly introduced character for the remake version of the game, a lot more time is focused on her events in the game rather than her conversation events. While others can give nothing but praise, I found her route to be completely out of place compared to the rest of the game. It focuses on her departure from an idol group and learning to cope with her own problems. It seemed like an extended therapy session with Sayako, which could have been great, if it didn't try so hard to depart from the romance aspects built into the game's core. Every route has the same story beats and events involved with Yuki since she is the central figure in this game. Sayako holds somewhat of a grudge against her for seemingly no reason which leads to Yuki not being present in the scenario. All the little beats you expect are just nonexistent. Other characters really don't exist in Sayako's route. A romance between Sayako and Fuiji is implied, but never really shown. The scenario itself reminded me a lot of Oshi no Ko, and I fucking hate Oshi no Ko. It was a drag to read through, although others definitely love it a lot, so I may have just missed the point.

I loved my experience reading through White Album. It was a very relaxing game with a lot of interesting themes going for it, but every route ultimately ended too soon for anything drastic to develop. I read somewhere that the scenario writer for WA2 loved this game and wanted to explore the themes more which is very apparent from my little exposure to WA2. It's nothing to write home about in terms of writing, but the essence of the game itself is something magical. It's worth playing through at least once to experience the wonder of White Album, and then maybe playing it a few more times to read through the scenarios of characters you may like. I really loved Rina, Yuki, and Haruka's routes while the others were just fine. Treating this game as a full narrative experience, I'm sure a lot of people were disappointed reading through this for the first time, but I thought it was pretty neat.