Review: Kurenai no Tsuki

Kouya, a rookie detective, is walking deep inside the forest. It was two weeks ago. A hand of unidentified creature washed up on the shore of a river. Hard and thick skin. Bristle like an animal. Thick fingers and sharp nails. It was not a human's hand. Also, there was a jewel ring on the ring finger. This mysterious story was featured in a magazine and caught people's attention. Days later, the police found that it was a woman's hand, who had been missing for a month. She went missing when she played golf with her friends nearby. The police confirmed she was attacked by a stray dog, but couldn't explain why the hand looked so differently. They tried to close the case, but her husband wasn't convinced. He didn't want to believe his wife was a monster. He decided to ask a detective to investigate the case. That's why Kouya is now roaming around deep inside the forest. It is getting dark, but he doesn't know where he is now. Just when he feels dizzy, he hears someone's voice. Is that auditory hallucination? He hears a girl's voice this time. "I've been saved!" But he accidentally falls down a waterfall.... When he regains his consciousness, he finds himself lying in the bed. He looks around and finds three girls. "Are you alright?" "Well, did you save me?" "Yes, I and my older sister carried you all the way here." Their mother says to him, "I'm relieved to see you getting well. But you must marry either of my sisters, Sunao or Hiori." He doesn't know what she means.... A mysterious hand bitten off by someone. A small village deep inside the forest. Marriage to a miko. Kouya's fate is led to unexpected direction after he meets two girls....

~Summary taken from VNDB



Plot 8/10: This is the first mystery VN other than G-senjou no Maou (though, G-senjou no Maou isn't much of a mystery) that I've played since I began my eroge rampage six months ago, and it was an excellent choice overall, in my opinion. The protagonist in this story is a rare type, the kind of guy who is usually level-headed and thoughtful. As such, being behind his eyes was quite enjoyable, as he searches for clues to the mystery of the small village into which he stumbled. The heroines are all good, and for the most part I can't find a reason to complain... except that the epilogues for each arc are quite short... This is also one of the few games with a harem ending that is not in any way a nukige, which was interesting in and of itself. While this isn't really a comedy, it does have enough light moments to keep you from falling into gloom during the somewhat grim investigations. Because of this, I can definitely say that this VN's pacing is good, if not the best I've ever encountered.

Visuals 8/10: The CG's in this eroge really are beautiful... in particular, Sunao's CG's during the rituals are compelling, and the character models are attractive enough that the game is worth playing just to look at them. This game's atmosphere is as much dependent on its visual aspect as the plot.

Sound 7/10: Hrm... the music in this game is good but not particularly memorable. As generic as it gets, really. That isn't really a flaw though, since they use what they have correctly, which is the point of having music in games in the first place. The voice-acting is fairly good, and there were only a few times when a character's voice grated on me or felt like it didn't fit what was being said (maybe two or three times in the entire vn).

Overall 8/10: This is definitely a good mystery eroge, though from my brief attempt to conquer some more serious members of the genre, I know it is less in-depth than some. I can definitely recommend this to people who are into this type of eroge, and at the same time I can recommend it to those who are interested in the genre but don't want to go for heavy ones like Innocent Gray's games. At the same time, this is the first eroge I've played with a harem ending that actually has some meaning to it, which startled me a little bit. As such, simply for novelty's sake it is worth taking a look at.