Back in college I went through a pretty major identity crisis revolving around my ADHD. I quit my meds due to depression, but as my grades slipped I realized medication had filled many cracks in my life. How much of my academic success was me? Was I doing well, or was "I" just my medication the whole time? Did people prefer me more like that? Did I? Should I sacrifice some happiness just to get by?

My personal life events have absolutely nothing to do with Little Busters itself, but it sure as hell has something to do with my reflections on it. We sometimes miss acknowledging the force of timing in our observation of texts; certainly in this site's attempt to catalogue our perspectives, there's at least one game you hold dear to your heart because it reached you at an impressionable time over a describable objective quality, no? Our opinions can be more reflections our personal biases than a work itself, as much as we strive to find agreement or objectivity.

Don't worry, I don't think that's necessarily wrong. When we do acknowledge that we may be fond of works due to our vulnerability or relative youth, we don't need to concede that work to nostalgia. Something like Little Busters or Clannad may not have the greatest or most unique writing, translation, or prose; they're often limited by the crack fan squads trying to bring these translations over to us without the budget and rigor of a full localization team. But I think we should still vaunt a work's capability of affecting us in the right way at the right time. Mio's route shot through walls I put up for myself, and Refrain helped me clean up the rubble - that's it, and I loved it. I can't thank Maeda and company enough for reaching me and getting me through a really rough time in my life. Maybe it was because I was young that it affected me. But maybe when we're young we need a special kind of story to talk to us.

I find Little Busters to be stellar YA. If you're not going through that period of your life, then Little Busters is still warm, funny, and genuine; it has a fantastic soundtrack, a wonderful cast, an addicting minigame to shake up the common route, a sense of humor that bridges the language barrier, and a giant heart holding it all together at the center. For those who going through something rough or vulnerable, though, this may be just the little extra you need. Even when it's goofy or melodramatic - like everything by key - I can promise that it'll do its best to give you a hug, a pat on the head, and a nudge off to where you ought to be.

Pros:
- Like the rest of Key’s VNs, the music’s lovely and easily the most noteworthy thing about it. Plenty of great and nostalgic sounding piano and vocal tracks
- The baseball and fighting minigames were cute (if repetitive)

Cons:
- Apart from the last route Refrain (of which I was still underwhelmed honestly), this wasn’t for me. It’s a largely mundane slice of life VN that felt like a slog to get through and rarely had any of its humor land. Wasn’t affected much by its more emotional moments either cause it was just hard to care about by the end
- I found Riki to be a dull character and thought his drawn out dialogue was very boring to follow. And the rest of the cast try to be endearing but I just thought they were obnoxious
- Didn’t like the romance portions of the heroine routes at all

Put this down as one I've got to sit with in order to give stronger, more detailed thoughts on. In the same way that revisiting CLANNAD was important as a piece of self-reflection and an analysis on my own growth and changes over the decade-plus since I'd first played it, Little Busters! served to embolden my understanding of how important my friend group has been every step of the way through those changes. One of the most tightly-organized Key games, with every route offering something to the grander narrative, and while After Story from CLANNAD remains the personal peak of their output for me, you'd be hard-pressed to find a true ending route with the sheer payoff and emotional conviction of Refrain elsewhere in the medium.

I'm going to take a break from finishing the Ecstasy routes, having completed Saya's, and go back for Kud Wafter in the same stretch of time. I'd like to let the original game sit a little longer, Refrain given time to wash over me a little more, and hell - maybe I'll even watch the anime, because I really do love this cast and their stories. The Little Busters are eternal, forever and ever.

I think it is impossible to discuss the value of Little Busters! without focusing on how it achieves to be a successful emotional ride. Did I cry or was I moved? Yeah, I did, something like seven years ago when I first read it. This time around, after the Steam release, I found myself much less impressed by some portions of drama which, admittedly, oftentimes feel just thrown around for the sake of exasperating the melodrama. Also, the plot is mostly goofy and juvenile, some nice spins are given here and there, while the prose does its job it is largely mediocre, and if you won’t find the humour and the chemistry between the characters compelling you’re in for a tour de force rather than a pleasant tale about friendships.

However, the thing about the power of Little Busters! is how being aware of all of its shortcomings doesn’t affect my appreciation of the work Visual Art’s did here, at all. Maybe Little Busters! wouldn’t work magnificently as a story, but it sure is impressive as a visual novel: whilst many similar works would limit themselves to introduce characters and let you focus on a fixated path following which one interested you the most, Little Busters! add far more branch and choices, sometimes seemingly pointless, to let the player experience a bountiful of side contents, comedic or lore-related vignettes, and secrets hidden all over the place that just ask to be found. There’s also the gameplay, in the form of several quick mini-games which range from baseball practice to a fighting tournament, from hunting down mysterious creatures (which give a pretty hilarious insight on the character of Kyousuke) to serving in a cafeteria. And the impressive thing is how all of these are plot related, not because how the gameplay fits into the story but how because how much they reciprocally influence each other. I can’t emphasize enough how I adore the way this novel build around its theme by slightly changing, after each playthrough, some minor bits of it to give a more concrete idea of the characters changing and developing after major events, and the more obvious way to notice this would be, in fact, to check the protagonists’ stats at the beginning of each tournament.

As the story is in its surface state, I wouldn’t think much of it beside it being a heart-warming bildungsroman focused on friendship, but the care put into its every detail, from the immense content hidden in it to the game direction heavily helping the narrative with a pretty fitting musical score and spot-on CG events, raised it to being of my favourite product of its medium.