Ah, yes. Yu-No. it got a remake based on its 15+ PS2 port a while ago and I figured I’d add it to the ecchi game list. Honestly remakes are in a weird grey area when considering how to treat them, is it a censored porn game cause the original was? Or is it all ages since it was designed that way based on an already done all ages port? Meh, who honestly cares? Play your preferred version, it’s not like this and the original Yu-No are actually competing.

This isn’t going to be a standard review post. I’ll talk about my feelings of Yu-No based on my old memories, comment on this remake, then talk about dating sims, adventure games, and visual novels.

So Yu-No. I have a save for the old 18+ version in a mixed post from ages ago and I didn’t really go through how I felt about it. I think it’s cool as an idea, not a huge fan of it’s execution. Without really spoiling it, the game is split into it’s core game thing, and a true route that throws out most of the gameplay mechanics. I find the true route lacking in a lot of ways, but it’s supposed to be the reason you actually play Yu-No. It’s a case of liking the setup, but the actual execution of the point of the setup left me personally disappointed.

As for that setup, young man gets time travel kind of, and uses it to unravel some ancient ruins and a lot of double crossing and company espionage interacting with his home life due to his Dad’s research. It’s kind of since the only thing that travels is the things in his pockets. He rarely remembers anything from other timelines. It’s a gameplay mechanic for the flowchart you use to jump around and not really used much in the story.

I’m also not a fan of how the game deals with sentences, if that makes any sense. I don’t remember if the original game did this, but the Remake keeps its sentences very short. So like most of the textbox isn’t used. And it does this a bunch, making conversations flow terribly.

As for the Remake itself, it changes the setting of the game for some reason? I though we were past switching from Japan into the US as a location, but nope. Despite how obviously Japanese a lot of the game is, it pretends it’s set in the US now. Which is just weird. They also added a hint system and some other QOL stuff that probably makes the game less annoying to play. Still annoying honestly, this just isn’t my style of game, but easier.

Moving on, my actual point to this write up is to talk about the three most confused genres I’m involved with. Adventure game, dating sim, and visual novel. I have strong opinions about these three types of game that often just get lumped together completely by most players just because of how they use textboxes. Like I get why they get confused, if you aren’t active in their genre’s they look similar and present things the same way. But as games, as actual interactive media, they aren’t vaguely similar.

Let’s start with visual novel, you read, answer a small number of choices that add to some hidden point scores that then decide which events you see and eventually lead to a route you read. Read to the end and done, maybe make some good/bad end choices. Nothing complex, basically nothing is asked of the player. There are VN hybrid’s like Duel Savior where you have fighting game gameplay in the midst of the Vn bits, but the two are mostly separate outside of who you fight.

Next up is dating sim, which is not a game where you date despite that being how people use the term. It’s a life sim genre about spreadsheets and calendars. Raising sim might be a better name of it nowadays. Anyway, in dating sims you start with usually bad stats and need to hit metrics to trigger scenes and eventually hit your goal, the ending. You have x amount of days to do so and the need to have stats at certain amounts for things like Christmas lead to playing these like strategy games. I short hand the explanation to has a calendar, the calendar has events you need stats to do, you have social stats to raise, and there is a defined end point. Dating sims have a lot more freedom then visual novels in terms of player input and control, though also they repeat things a lot as you spend a majority of the time repeating training events. Life sims like Harvest Moon are similar, in a way Harvest Moon is to Tokimeki Memorial to what Kanon is to Detroit Become Human. Aka life sim and raising sim is similar to visual novel and walking sim, it just changes how you interact with the same core idea.

Adventure games on the other hand are usually point and click style games. You have interaction points on the screen and you use those interacts to find items to progress. Most mystery visual novels are actually adventure games. Phoenix Wright, Danganronpa, 999 and so on. Solving puzzles with items and thinking. Yu-No ends up here due to it’s odd style of having to hunt for the next story scene, which scenes you see deciding where you move on the flowchart, and pixel hunting for items. Basically more interactive visual novels.

Anyway, that’s that rant done. I just wanted to sort my thoughts on those three and explain why Yu-No isn’t in the VN page. Because I don’t think it is one.

Save for Yu-No Remake

Full cg gallery. I went through and put save rocks at the 3 unlocked endings, then forgot that Kanna’s good ending requires an item that would mean reading another whole route to get. I’m done. So Mio and Ayumi get their happy end saves.

Gameplay: 3/10 Eroticness: 5/10 Story: 7/10

Completion:

Using a guide, beat each route. Then go through half of Mio’s end again to get a cg, then beat 3 routes again to get their happy ends. It’s kind of annoying of a thing to do, locking the good ends behind replaying their entire stories.