About two years after its release in the Rising Sun and only one from the western version on Steam, finally Song of Memories also sees the light on the flagship console of Sony. This peculiar Visual novel with 4 years of troubled development behind it, it was also planned for Switch, but the console port of Nintendo it was canceled in early January for technical problems.
Having said that, let's immediately see what it holds for us Song of Memories, if it is a product of valid quality and, above all, if the story it wants to tell us will be able to capture your curiosity.
A little corner of paradise in a world in chaos
The game is set in the unspecified near future, where a mysterious rabies-like virus it is indiscriminately affecting many countries of the globe, generating many problems and sowing terror among the population. At the time of launching the game, one of the few countries not yet affected by this mysterious virus will be their own Japan.
The protagonist of the Visual Novel is a second year Japanese high school boy, Minato Kamishiro, who lives her life day by day with her younger sister and childhood friends. Forced to live with the untimely death of his parents, two scientists who died in a plane crash, he has over time become "the man of the house" and has taken on a rather mature behavior for his age, which is reflected in his thoughts and monologues.
The other characters and probable love interests of Minato are precisely:
- Fuuka, her younger sister secretly adopted by her parents, with a lively, masculine and touchy character, but in reality mature and strong enough to live alone with her brother and help him with the housework;
- Great, a childhood friend sick from an early age who returns to her hometown early in the game after many years spent in America for special care, friendly and kind to everyone;
- Yuno, another childhood friend of Minato and Kanon, future champion of artistic gymnastics, idol of school boys and girls with contagious enthusiasm;
- Satsuki, a third year high school student apparently cold and detached, she religiously follows Yuno to make her respect her training and deeply hates any boy who comes near to admire the champion's prowess;
- Natsume, a very shy first year student with many relationship problems who begins to take an interest in Minato and his company, for no apparent reason;
- Makotoa petulant classmate of Minato, interested almost exclusively in ingratiating himself with the prosperous girls with poor results;
- Akira, a mysterious woman who claims to work for the city health service, but who according to Minato and others is hiding something;
The cast certainly does not shine for originality and depth of character, but it is there anyway a wise use of the typical stereotypes of drama and comedy seen in most modern anime, which entertain the player accustomed to this type of stoty telling on average without boring him too much.
With the succession of events and paying a fair amount of attention, there is instead an incentive to discover the background of all the characters, who strangely they are all well integrated into the story, with secrets and twists that are not always predictable.
The story, in fact, turns out to be the strongest point of the production: after about a month in-game of events and curtains typical of the most varied visual novels, the game will move on to the next phase, an intense dramatic part that will greatly upset the lives of all the characters, and will vary depending on the route linked to the chosen love interest, often with substantial differences.
Apart from some revelations that are a bit too "casual" and fanciful, most of the story is consistent with itself and is pleasant to follow.
Dungeon Crawling, Idol Giapponesi e Rhythm Game
The surprises did not end there, however. Shortly after the start of the game, in fact, a mysterious group of virtual Idols will be introduced, the Dream-4-You. Initially the five girls, each characterized by a particular color like real majocco, will offer nothing but extra conversations and more or less amusing curtains.
Their purpose will materialize with the appearance of mysterious monsters who will attack the group of boys after an evening spent together. These monsters, apparently indestructible, can only be stopped with the power of the Dream-4-You, emanating from their powerful healing melodies
Here lies the second gimmick of the title, that is a rudimentary RPG combat system based on a simplistic Rhythm Game. Each Idol will have an element on its side, and each monster will be more or less susceptible to our elemental attacks.
The Idol they will level up after each fight, and with it also the ability to perform powerful combined songs. With each song we will have to press the front keys of the pad following the musical rhythm, and depending on the level and power of the song the difficulty of the execution will also increase.
The fight will play an essential part also in the last parts of the adventure, where we will have to face numerous bosses much stronger than the normal mobs encountered previously.
Most of the time, in fact, we will be able to access the "Good Endings" only if we manage to defeat these bosses. The only way to do this, however, will be excessive grinding to level the Idols and their songs, so we might have a chance against the terrible final monsters.
Despite the superficiality of this combat system, the Rhythm RPG remains a pleasant diversion that breaks the general monotony by a lot of the long dialogues typical of a visual novel.
When the "Visual" part exceeds that of the "Novel"
Latest flagship of Song of Memories it is certainly the technical sector. Not only each type of dialogue is fully voiced from a decidedly good cast, but the whole experience is also animated and is therefore much closer to an interactive anime than to an old-fashioned Visual Novel.
Thanks to the new 2D animation tool "E-Mote" that animates the face and movements of almost all the characters in the title in real time, the development team Future Tech Lab in fact he managed to make reading / listening to the dialogues much more enjoyable, which remain anyway not particularly exciting in most cases.
There is also one gigantic amount of events, routes, cutscenes, dialogues and extra routes which in a first run will be irretrievably lost. Fortunately there is one Chart-Log, a sort of table that will take into account all our progress and any branching, and that we can use at any time to review and modify our choices, level with the Dream-4-You or simply get all the possible events to complete the routes and the game.
The character design of the characters, objectively well done, could be excessively "moe" for many, and often you feel the lack of some background or the creation of special scenes in some special events. During the run they also appeared a handful of bugs, like a badly synchronized lip sync and overlapping lyrics, but all very isolated and not particularly serious.
Undertone, on the other hand, is the music sector which, apart from two openings and the battle songs of Dream-4-You in J-Pop style, does not contain any other particularly memorable tracks.
In summary
The idea behind Song of Memories to mix different genres not only in terms of story telling, but also in terms of "gameplay" is definitely positive and his attempt deserves to be recognized. Unfortunately, the realization turns out to be too simplistic and rudimentary, especially if we analyze the superficiality of the combat system, but the general story is mostly interesting, a cast of characters that are not overly stereotyped and an incredible graphic sector that shows the future of the 2D animation in the Visual Novel genre are all points that raise the overall quality of the title. The purchase, although the current price of 35 euros is a bit excessive, is recommended for lovers of the genre who want to enjoy a not too demanding but interesting story, for those who appreciate an attempt at innovation of this kind and for those who are not only looking for eroge material in this type of securities.
