neko’s thinkbox

Some time in the past, I finished playing Tsukihime for the x-th time. My friend muz, a fellow T-M addict, suddenly started bothering me to play Planetarian. “Wut, not T-M? You must be sick.”, I said back then. But I paid no heed to playing it.
These days however, with my recent “efforts” to get closer to the popular VNs/Dating Sims/Eroges, I inevitably came across the Key label, with its notorious Kanon and CLANNAD titles (which I have yet to play in the future). Incidentally, they made that Planetarian game too. Since it seemed to be a short game, I finally went ahead and “played” it. muz, you can be happy now ;)

It was a new experience, this “kinetic novel”, this sort of Visual Novel where you cannot make any decisions, and get one and only one ending. Though, on second thought, I find coining a new term for a different way of presenting a novel with pictures and sound a bit extravagant. And considering the fact that you can leave it on Auto Mode from start until end, I’d be more inclined to call it a “static novel” (as in you don’t need to make any movements to progress) rather than a “kinetic” one. Then again they must have thought of it as a play of words, that it might “move” you emotionally…. Bah, I’m not here to nitpick about that. I bet I’d find a clue about it on Wikipedia or so, heh.

Ah, Planetarian. The story itself was nice. Such an utterly dystopian story is a nice contrast to all those happy-go-lucky, sugarcoated, utopian worlds. In that dark, hopeless post-apocalyptic world, the time spent with Reverie was like a ray of light, a refreshing breeze of fresh air. I liked her quite a lot, though I wish she would have told me more about herself. Damn, now I want such a robot too… next to my two Chobits. Riiiight.

The end was pretty devastating, obviously. However, as much as it was a mortifying and desperate story, I did not shed a tear (unlike many others who claimed to have wept and bawww’ed uncontrollably). On the one hand, the story was a little bit too short for me to be entirely attached to Reverie. On the other hand, I found the mood a bit too pushy, especially the music at the end - as if it was forcing me to feel emotional and start crying. Perhaps I would have, actually. The story alone could have done the trick. But… I already knew beforehand that something awful was going to happen. You know, a lot of people kept telling me about their bawww’ing beforehand… which rendered the tragic end of the story very predictable. It was quite predictable in the story itself, but with this excess knowledge, I was bracing for emotional impact. Crud, I should learn to ignore IRC once in a while.

That said, it ended perfectly from a structural point of view: it did not drag the sad ending ad nauseum, but stopped at the pinnacle of the story. This left quite a strong impression on me.
Besides, the few visuals as well as the calm background music really made it an enjoyable experience. Minimalistic, but this aspect is also one of the charms of this “game”.

On the whole, I spent a really nice moment with a great story. And, perfect English translation by Haeleth and insani.

The only drawback was the game mechanics. Sometimes, when there were multiple sentences between quotation marks, the text didn’t follow Reverie’s speech; only the first sentence was shown. Pretty confusing and annoying, if you ask me. Of course, clicking once to see the rest of the text makes her stop speaking immediately. And in auto mode, the rest of the text would only show up after she was finished talking. On top of that, there was no way to hear her previous sentences again, either (at least I couldn’t find a way to do it. That was so much easier to do in YMK…)
Also, there are no decisions to be taken, nor alternate routes to Planetarian, right? So why would I need five save slots? One quicksave would be sufficient already… I mean, when I read a book, I will use only one bookmark, right?

Bah, enough nitpicking. I should focus on getting my hands on such a robot now. Yumemi~~