Kirakira, Take 2

I picked up the all-age, physical copy of Kirakira over the con season last year; it isn’t until the holiday break that I had made some real progress on the game. And considering it has been an iOS game since late 2009 and available legit on PC even earlier than that, I’m really behind the ball here. I’ve played a couple hours here and there before then, but the going was slow and while it was interesting it wasn’t very engaging as well. It’s like reading a book; it’s a good way to kill an hour before hitting the sack after a long day.

For a relatively new operation like MangaGamer I think Kirakira is the right kind of title to push. It’s got a layer of meta that will appeal to people who are familiar with rock music. Kind of like Japanese guys in their 30s or 40s? What’s more that layer of meta is appreciated but not necessary to enjoy the game. Like its pretentious namesake and title graphics, it’s about the sort of serious retrospection about a youth you probably have never had, a story pieced together as artifact trying to appear as natural.

I suppose this is why This Is Spinal Tap exists. That said, I enjoyed Kirakira (how do you properly spell it anyways?) pretty much the whole way, although I’m not at 100% yet, still only 70% or so done with the whole game. But once you get one of the proper ending, you probably aren’t missing too much. A large portion of the game was spent in the first chapter, which is almost the same for any route you will take. And the first chapter was probably already enough of a story to be standalone.

On a related note, Carpe Fulgar announces that they steamrolled Recettear over 100,000 (or over 9,000 if you wish) and considering only the best “indie” games move that many units in Japan (albeit at much higher MSRP), I think this is pretty awesome. Look at how much Recettear moved over at one of the more popular Japanese download store: ~1400 units seems actually a good number (for over the course of a year, and that’s a year after it was first released), considering the size of Japanese gamers that do DDL games are pretty niche. But still, I’d be surprised if total Recettear Japanese language version moved over 10,000 units counting event sales, mail order and digital… It’s good news for ECS, who most probably made more money through that than its Japanese market on the title. The rest is hunting the sweet spot on supply and demand…

This is suppose to be a mini-review on Kirakira, so I’ll just end with this (not counting route-specifics):

1. Mika
2. Tomo
3. Sarina
4. That guy (post-op)
5. Chie
6. Yuko (Maybe I’ll play Curtain Call afterwards)
7. Kirari
8. Mai & Miyuki
9. Everybody else, and even Shikako-chan, lols.