![]() If you want to see it at its best, go read a few exchanges between the protagonist and the male sidekick character, Shuuji: the way these two guys trade insults is fantastic, and the magic of it is mostly coming from a very creative translation. You’d never guess given all the heat it takes, but ChronoClock’s translation is largely excellent, in my eyes. ![]() Fleshing out those essential characteristics, and serving to make those characters feel unique, are a few things: delightful voice acting, standard but nonetheless great art, and snappy writing courtesy of a translation that, despite some rough edges, is generally excellent. Every one is a breath of fresh air, and it makes them all feel much more real. Every last one of its heroines is unique, from the at-first-blush classic tsundere who almost immediately starts spending all her lines unabashedly proclaiming how crazy she is about the protagonist, to the demure blind little sister with a roaring libido who’s constantly trying to jump the protagonist’s bones. Most VNs I play feature a heroine or two who come fresh-pressed from a cookie cutter: excitable little sisters, head-over-heels childhood friends, energetic sporty girls, reliable older girls, calm girls who don’t say much, tsunderes who proclaim their undying hatred of the protagonist right up until the ending credit roll… They’re all charming in their way (they’ve earned their exalted trope status), but they get less so every time I see them around, and it seems like even the best VNs have at least one or two heroines who feel like they’re just stamped right out of one of those molds. All told, there’s really not much to the game plot-wise.įortunately, the characters themselves completely make up for that gap, largely because each one is both unique and likeable. Something of a MacGuffin, it becomes increasingly irrelevant as each route progresses, only figuring prominently in Makoto’s route, and even there it doesn’t really take center stage. Sounds like a good premise? Well, it is, but it’s actually a surprisingly small part of the plot, and not all that heavily used. The titular object is a magic pocket watch granting limited time traveling powers. They don’t add anything to plot or characterization but do feature quite a few fun moments for the characters, since they typically contain a decent amount of scene-setting dialogue. H scenes aren’t part of the normal flow of the game and instead are explicitly (heh) picked from the main menu. Predictably, working through said issue brings the couple closer together and helps them confirm their feelings for each other, leading to a trite but rewarding happy ending, and then, if you’re playing the 18+ version, two post-game H scenes per heroine. In all routes, it boils down to Rei first choosing a heroine (via extremely straightforward “pick a girl”-style choices), at which point it’s clear to both of them that they like each other, but some issue gets in the way preventing them from coming together, which they work through during the route. Let me start by addressing what plot there is: the plot of each route is basically independent. But ChronoClock is a bizarre exception, a VN that proves that when the characters are truly stellar, you can take a thin excuse for a plot and still make a great game out of it. ![]() Plot matters a lot to me: it’s probably the thing I get the most out of, when it comes to visual novels. If you’d told me that before I started playing it, I probably would’ve skipped it entirely, and that would’ve been a mistake. ChronoClock is an essentially plotless moege with solid production values, great dialogue, and fabulous characters.
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