Love At First Sight

ESRB Rating: N/A

Platform:PC

Steam Store Page: http://store.steampowered.com/app/353330

A review copy was not provided by Sekai Project

Love at First Sight is a very interesting visual novel. Most Visual Novels I play allow me become immersed into the role of the character I am playing as because I get to make choices based on how I think the character would respond to a situation. The story normally becomes your own story as well as the main character’s. However, Love at First Sight takes a much different approach. You are more or less just in for the ride in this story, you have no real input on how the characters react to a situation. You are just there, a bystander if you will, and you know what? The game pulls it off in such a way that even though I was just a mere bystander to the events unfolding, it still managed to get me emotionally involved in what was going on. The games story managed to hook me in and made me wonder how I would react in the situation provided to me.  However, let me get more into this game’s overall presentation first.

You take the role of a second year student who just recently transferred schools after his parents find work elsewhere. While attending the school you easily befriend a local odd couple Tomoyori, a student who tries to keep to himself, and Akemi the local class celebrity.

Things immediately go well for you as you start out, I mean you transferred to a school two months ago and you make two good friends right off the bat. One day Akemi asks you to do her a favor and deliver something to a third year student, without much of a choice you go along and do so. However, when you get to the third year floor, everyone seems to be gone and you hear the sound of a person crying. When you investigate the source of the crying you come to find a girl alone, her uniform is tattered up and she looks like she’s been through a lot of pain. But there is something more troubling about her appearance…She only has one eye. No not like one eye like a pirate, she has one giant eye in the center of her face, like a cyclops. You check up on her to make sure she is alright, help clean her up, and then you get the heck out of there.

However, after seeing her your character begins to wonder about her, and you soon begin to resolve that you are going to become friends with her. And the story goes on from there. If I were to explain anything in more detail it would probably ruin the story. This game takes you on an adventure that leads you to get to know this one eyed girl named Sachi.

In my humble opinion, the story was just one big, emotional ride from start to finish. There was never a real dull point across this game’s seven acts. The characters in this story also give it a nice charm. However, it’s a bit troubling that we couldn’t see more of a background story behind Tomoyori and Akemi outside of the fact that they have been friends since they were younger, or as Tomoyori puts it she has been following him around since they first met. They feel like genuine friends to the protagonist, I could see myself being friends with these people in school. The interactions with Sachi are also downright adorable as she slowly begins to open up to you… and has some weird… kinks.

The story also flowed very well, and it never really felt too rushed. There were also quite a few surprises in this story that really caught me off guard and made me appreciate it even more.Unlike some visual novels, this story is very linear. There are no options to make different dialogue choices, and there is only one ending. While the lack of different endings do not bother me, I feel like this game could have benefitted from a dialogue tree to give the player something to return to after clearing the game. The ending feels a bit out of place, however, when you clear the game you unlock some interesting stuff that clears up any unanswered questions about the game. The game’s music is also an interesting thing to note. While the different tracks in this game do manage to fit the moods they are used in, they can get a bit repetitive. Thankfully, you progress to a new scene that uses a different track before it gets too annoying.

Some scenes get special art like this which is really heartwarming, however there are other instances where I wished there was some art for it.

Another issue I had with this game is that you can clearly tell there were some scenes that were written to have artwork, but they never came to be. This was probably due to the game’s development time being only two months. However, it is still a bit of an issue that can take you out of the overall experience that the story tries to set up for you.

This game normally retails for $9.99, and as much as I love the game I really couldn’t justify the game at that price to purchase. As this game can easily be cleared in about 2-3 hours and has virtually no replay value. However, I got this game during the Winter sale for $4.99, and at that price the game is extremely worth it. It was the best $5 I have spent in a long time. So, if you’re reading this before the sale ends and you want a story to just sit down and relax to, go out and get this game. It was worth it. I can easily see myself coming back to this game again several months later just to re-experience the entire story again.

Score: 8.5/10

+Heartwarming story

+Well written characters

+Good art style

-No replay value

-Music can get a bit repetitive