[Review] Kyoto Colorful Days - When Moe can only do so much

Written by: Jersie August 5, 2019

I'm sure you must be wondering why a straight 15-year old girl is playing this

I haven't played very many VNs (visual novels) but I've watched my fair share of anime. And going by similar standards, this game reeks of generic.

Ok, so for background, I bought this game when I recently learned about Steam Sales. Now little Jersie so far didn't bother that much with the rest of Steam, because she couldn't afford much, and was content with the 2 games in her library, Tomb Raider and The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth. But now....

While browsing Steam, I came across this game. I thought, "Oh wow, a $10 anime game is on sale for $1! May as well pick it up and add it to the other 40 games in my cart"

Now that I am serious about getting through my backlog, I finally got around to completing this game.

I will be going through the different aspects of the game, aka my 10 Game Commandments.

1. Gameplay

2. Story

3.Characters/World

4. Graphics

5. Sound

6. Optimization and bugs

7. Price Value

8. Replay value

9. Memorability

10. Of course, enjoyment and fun!

Gameplay, is basically reading. Very common among these types of games. VNs are known for their choice-based narrative, beautiful visuals, and compelling stories, at least, that's what the good VNs are known for. (There are also VNs primarily focused on....pleasurable interactions, and we are NOT talking about those here nonono...)

The story is realistically simple, man who cannot hold down a job in his country, travels to Japan to find new opportunities. Character interactions though? Very...polite. I haven't been to Japan myself, so maybe it really is that uppity over there, but their talking made me want to go to sleep.

Hueh I get it, our friends are super-nice, so we have to intreract with more super nice-ness.

Anywho there are two routes to choose. Akane, and Madoka. (Akane is the copper-haired girl, Madoka is the green-haired girl) Both girls have their own set of problems to deal with and I would say quite similar in personality. I would also like to give a warm shout out to Ken, (The old guy above) for being high-key the best character. His kindness will not go unnoticed.

This isn't exactly spoilers, but to sum up their routes, Akane has to try and save her restaurant, and Madoka has to deal with a stalker. They both have 3 endings as far as I know, A Good Ending, Normal Ending, and Bad Ending. It's a shame though that none of them go very in-depth, in fact, you can complete the game and get all the endings in around 3 hours, tragic if you paid the full $10 for this. I will give something to KCD though, it has nice art, even partially animated, fully-voiced, and with pleasant music. The different routes and endings also give lee-way for replayability (personally though I think all the endings except for the good ones are not worth replaying to get) I didn't encounter any bugs either, which if I did that would be weird.

But something funny did happen, I was playing this on my TV via HDMI cable, and I was using an xbox controller to play it (using Steam improvisions, it doesn't have on-board controller support) I accidentally mapped the screenshot button to my left joystick, so I ended up with 200+ screenshots. Lovely.

Not gonna lie this made me feel warm and fuzzy

So overall, I would say this game isn't really worth it, even on sale. Because sometimes, for us grown people, money isn't the problem, it's time. If you have a giant backlog like me, it's best to skip this one. As I said, the interactions are generic and dull, most of the fun I had was me monologue-ing while playing. But if you want to spend an evening with not-over-the-top kawaii anime girls, sure go ahead. For note, I prefer Madoka's route because it was more interesting/dramatic. I got the good end with Akane first try, I got the Normal and Bad before the good Madoka route. Thanks for reading!

GAME RATING: 6.5/10

Jersie

Always acquiring new games, backlog brawling has  been a constant struggle. But this cat-loving, (almost) any game playing girl always gets back on her feet. Armed with her lemon water, 3rd party Xbox controller, and desktop punching bag, this teenage girl will make sure to utterly destroy her foes with thorough reviews!