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~.
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~.