#Aquadine visual novel Pc#

For me, it just fell kind of flat to see two people claim undying love for each other when they’ve interacted a total of five times. The romantic development between characters also suffers because of the shortness of the routes. To be fair, most of the game’s more pressing issues are thoroughly addressed, but there is never a real conclusion to some other ones which is kind of frustrating. However, at times, this shortness did cause me to feel like the story wasn’t doing all it could to go deeper into the themes it was trying to explore.įor example, during certain moments that are meant to be emotionally hard-hitting, the issues are given no time to be impactful as they usually tend to be resolved at breakneck speed due to the time constraint. To me, this was both a good and bad thing, as on the one hand, it never felt like it was dragging on for too long. Now, I do feel the need to point out that Aquadine is a relatively short game. You get a lot of information about your surroundings before it moves on to focus on the other aspects typically found in visual novels (i.e. These two premises are treated with equal importance and become especially intertwined during specific character routes, but regardless of who you choose, Softcolors does a really nice job of world-building before the routes diverge. In short, the town use to be inhibited by mermaids after it was saved by a sea god named Levios (this story’s version of Poseidon) but after some human discrimination, the mermaids fled to their own kingdom and ceased to exist. He is living a double life in order to help pay for his mother’s hospital bills.Īlong with Ciel’s personal story, Aquadine also focuses on the lore surrounding the town which the game pulls its title from. Ciel, whose real name is Robin, is a student by day and a gondolier (a person who gives tours on a boat) by night. If I had to describe Aquadine’s story in one word, I would say that it’s wholesome. The Switch version was played for this review.

#Aquadine visual novel Pc#

Given that I haven’t visited the genre in some time, I think the experience provided by Softcolors’ Aquadine was a good reintroduction.Īquadine launched on August 26th, 2022 for the PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch and was previously released for the PC last year. There is something kind of nice about a title that has its own story to tell and just wants to do that, with the only deviation being who you want the story to focus on specifically. By that, I mean a game that’s entirely text-based with no choices to make. It’s been a while since I’ve played a true visual novel.