What if Key decided to do a best of all their route ideas and writing stuff, and combined into a VN themed around summer and memories? That’s Summer Pockets. Reflection Blue adds like 4 routes to that, so it’s the best way to experience Key. In my opinion.

Some would say this is just a VN, but Key’s later stuff have a few too many game elements, optional though they may be, for me to just lump them with plain visual novels. Kinda like how Kara no Shoujo or Hollow Ataraxia got posts, so do the later Key stuff deserve full dedicated posts. But yeah, it is a VN.

Gameplay- No score for minigame collections

So to start, Summer Pockets uses my preferred method of content for a VN. A decent prologue followed by small common route sections mixed with choosing who you spend time with, making each run of the game far more unique for your chosen girl then a standard common route would have. Unlike most VN’s with this style though, there’s more to do in these choose your girl sections then just who to flirt with.

You can pursue the 200+ achievements the game has for instance. A lot of these are connected to the other minigames, but a fair share of them are just from doing silly choices or seeing consequences of earlier choices. These achievements(called medals in game) are what drive a player to search around through the game and find the truly silly small things. It gives meaning to the choices that aren’t the give your heroine more points for the ending by being part of a scavenger hunt.

Now for the minigames, there are 3 main ones. Shimamon is the main one, ping pong is introduced earlier and is the simplest of the games, and then you have Reflection Blues newest inclusion, Shimapon. None of these are required to read through the VN portion of the game(the Shima ones have to be actively searched for), and I believe all cgs can be gotten without playing them at all. So they exist either for 100%er’s like me or just for fun.

Shimamon’s biggest issue is it makes me think of all the other summer vacation games on this site with younger men and more adult girls engaging in more skinship focused activities. Why does almost every summer vacation story involve collecting bugs and such to fight? It’s weirdly common. So for Summer Pockets version, you collect bugs, birds, fish, and people to fight other people in a side ranking mode. Every night in game you can go out and set bait, which depending on where and what you use will gift you one of 100 Shimamon to fight with in a 3V3 auto match where your chosen warrior will attack and use skills until one side wins. Match ends when all of one side is defeated.

You don’t do much in the fights themselves. Generally you choose a team with all three types to cover and with your highest rarity Shima’s. The tricky thing is that playing Shimamon doesn’t actually get you more (much) bait or areas to lay it. Most of the areas are from clearing routes and x number of found Shima’s, while bait is found anywhere else in the game. From certain choices during events, to devotedly going to the shrine everyday, a lot of things give bait, which carry run to run. In fact the only thing that isn’t saved when you start up a new game is your current collection, all the areas, bait, and the Shimadex stay. This goes very well with the achievements above, where trying everything leads to getting more bait, which helps you find better Shima’s to win this silly minigame.

Ping pong/Table Tennis is kind of a rhythm game. You have three click spots, and Tenzen, the local maniac of Ping Pong, will hit a ball at one of the spots. Click the spot that the ball passes over to return it. Miss a few times and the game ends. That’s the basics. There’s also Tenzen mode, which is when the gauge on the left fills and you get two more hit circles. Tenzen speeds up and the circles can move around.

There are 3 modes of play that Tenzen offers up. This is using the fan translation names, so Directed mode, Endless mode , and Extreme mode. Directed mode is 10 balls you can return. Consider it a tutorial. Endless mode is what it says, you return balls until you run out of gauge on the left, which happens when you miss or get a good rating. Only Excellents gain gauge. The final mode is Extreme mode, where you play against Tenzen. This really just changes one small thing, but is the best mode for points.

Most of the rest of the mechanics are out of your control completely. As you use the same spot to return, it ranks up for more points. If in the mode where you are actually trying to beat Tenzen instead of just returning, the final level of the return spots will trigger a special move which can hit Tenzen for big points. He can return these making for an actual rally. There’s also 3 ultimate/special moves you can find in the common route to have activate in ping pong. There’s a lot of achievements hidden in playing with Tenzen.

Shimapong is just ping pong with more going on. It’s an island wide thing now, so everyone has special moves and their own zone stuff. Also you can drop your racket, which is just a why? As you beat people you can us them as a double’s partner in the actual tournament near the end of common. Double’s is actually kind of crazy since your partner actually does every other shot, which is how it works in real life but is anxiety inducing in a game. They seem pretty good though, and if they miss special shots you get a easy to recover shot to fix it. It’s probably the most fun mode of ping pong in the game. I do find it funny that instead of points, all the ping pong games use morale or damage to decide winners. You aren’t scoring points, you are literally hitting your opponent into giving up.

Ecchi-3

I kinda feel like the game lies about how pervy it’s going to be. So some of the earliest cgs you get are of a girl in a pool in her underwear, and another girl actively changing. These are in the first hour. There’s about 2 or 3 more lewd cgs in the rest of the game, but there’s the promise of more pretty often.

Ao, the pervy blue haired one, has this feel of getting sexy shots but really only gets that early changing cg. She’s the only girl with a confirmed third base achieved status in the game(other then true end stuff), but you only get to see her and MC make out before it cuts. That ones fine, it’s the other potential sex scene that bothers me since instead of a cg you get the girl’s model with a blanket covering some of it. That felt almost insulting to the setup.

Then there’s the fact it’s a game about summer on an island, yet only 1 girl has a swimsuit that’s not school issue. Boob girl Shizuku. She has 1 cleavage cg in her swimsuit, as a background girl in someone else’s route. Her own route gets a swimsuit apron cg and done. Her and Ao felt like the biggest lie. They remind me of that girl from Utaware 3, the basically designed for fanservice girl who’s never used for such outside of the group hot spring.

We even have peeping scenes in this game. Every time a girl enters the bathroom, it’s fog time. The MC even see’s them, but the player doesn’t. It’s frustrating in a way. The game has the most promise of fun sex stuff of any Key work, and does show that in the start. Then forgets about it entirely.

Story-8

I hate true ends. I think I always will. They make the rest of the story feel less important, since only 1 path makes everyone happy. It’s frustrating.

Anyway, this is likely my favorite of Key’s works. A funny MC with enough of an issue to have a story, a fun cast of supporting characters, the supernatural elements work and don’t overshadow the girl’s drama’s. I do find the hardcore nakige(crying game) thing a bit of a pain though, if I know every route is going to do a giant upswing at the last second to be happy it makes the overwhelming sad stuff lose impact. I still cried once or twice so at least it works.

The game’s theme is summer vacation(or memories…), which means every route is about summer stuff like adventures or temporary friends or big events. The romance usually gets going around the first third or half of the route for a majority of them.

So the story is that Takahara Hairi is running from his life problems by going to his recently deceased grandma’s home to help sort out her stuff for summer vacation. He meets his aunt there and is never let to actually doing any of the sorting, instead just kind of wandering the island and making friends and likely, a girlfriend to make his summer shine and get over his issue with water and maybe start to fix his life.

For the curious, the route order should be Ao-Anyone Else- Shiroha-True. Ao is just way to important in learning the basics of the supernatural stuff to not be one of the first girls. There’s a lot of stuff with memories and butterflies and everything else makes way more sense if you’ve done Ao. Literally. The rest of the order isn’t that big of a deal, though Shizuku and Tsumugi should probably be done back to back for maximum emotions.

Overall it was fun. I like it more then Key’s other works. It basically takes the atmosphere of Little Busters and the older fun protags and put them together. Though there’s a bit more to it. In a lot of ways I see Summer Pockets as a kind of best of Key work. There’s a rant at the bottom of the post where I will list everything I felt was just a reference or direct pull from the rest of their library.

Final Thoughts

PC save for Summer Pockets ~Reflection Blue~

Save to each route and some extra stuff. Do to the way the game actually works, there’s a lot more ways to get to different content that affects lines and events slightly. Way to many really. Saves really just cover major stuff. Also all cgs and medals gotten.

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Gameplay: (Minigame collections don’t get scores)/10 Eroticness: 3/10 Story: 8/10

Completion:

Get all cgs and medals/achievements. The process is a bit hard to go through, but basically do a bunch of small hidden things in the minigames, full clear them, and choose a bunch of weird options and find the payoff.

Rant Time(or massive spoilers for all of Key’s stuff)

Shiroha is just Tenchi from Angel Beats. Both kuuderes that never go full dere and are themed around the color white with powers. Have no friends. Both are the main heroines even. They both die even.

Umi just has Ushio’s background. Neglectful ex sports Dad with a Mom that died at childbirth. It even takes a miracle to fix the family for everyone, using shiny lights(butterflies here, shiny orbs in Clannad)

Hairi is just Tomoya with less edge. Screwed up his sport, went delinquent. Got a bit better but still estranged from direct family and can’t do sport. Hairi’s a mental block unlike Tomoya, but surface level it’s the damn same.

Tsumigi is a teddy bear. Makoto is a fox. They both lose the ability to talk during their routes because they are regressing to their original selves.

Kamome is in a coma for poor health but her wishes give her an astral real body in the story location. Just like Fuka and her wish to see her sister get married.

Shiroha’s family has an ancient power that curses them. Just like Air’s main heroine. It even requires time travel shenanigans to fix the issue, though no crow this time. If I remember right(which I probably don’t, I never actually read Air) seeing the future was one of Air’s girls things.

Ryousuke and Tenzen are just remakes of Masaya and Kengo, except kind of reversed? Tenzen is an idiot obsessed with one thing, so he’s Masaya(ping pong instead of muscles). Ryousuke is silly but has serious moments.(“nudity” versus Kengo playing baseball with a kendo sword). I guess Nomiki beating Ryousuke is like Rin beating Masaya, but I really feel that Tenzen is more Masaya then Ryousuke is. Really the whole friend group feels very Little Busters, energy wise. Though they lack a real Kyousuke, I guess Ao is suppose to fit that role?