Crystal Winter Reviews

Very nice novel. I went to play it and immediately there was a sense of Christmas. I liked it.

good game, i like visual novel is a good game like everlasting summer

Very atmospheric game, excellent style, I felt the spirit of the holiday and imbued with the story, I advise this game, I liked it

feels off, why is everyone so fixated on body shape as a value of feelings lol

A light winter story will bring positive emotions in these cold days.

I don't know how to play short stories, but I buy them for some reason. I feel bad. I need a doctor. Help...

The writing is so bizarrely bad that this might be an AI generated kinetic novel. [h1]Pros[/h1] + Animated sprites + Nice background art [h1]Cons[/h1] - Annoying music - Poor translation - Incoherent, unlikable story [b]Final verdict:[/b] ☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆★★ 2/10 - Awful Short and rather strange story set during the Christmas season. The premise sounded sweet enough and the beginning was promising, I was immediately impressed when I noticed that the VN was utilized animated sprites. While the animation is bit awkward, it still gives considerable amount of life to the kinetic novel and despite overall viewing Crystal Winter negatively, I would count this sprite usage as its strongest point that other visual novels would do well to follow. It's worth noting that this animated sprite use is the main reason why I decided to give this two stars instead of the lowest possible score. The CGs in general were passable, with the background arts looking quite lovely and inviting with their use of color. Character art was a bit poorer, the proportions were off to a point it was distracting to look at yet they were also given nice, solid coloring work. Certainly not hideous to look at and I wouldn't have been too bothered by the proportions problem if I had been enjoying the story. The music immediately caught me off guard because it was rather unfitting for what was happening on-screen and it quickly became only an annoyance, making me decide to mute it. My optimism about Crystal Winter disappeared soon after the beginning as the story begun to unfold. The events immediately seem off, and they only get stranger as the story progresses. I'm not entirely convinced that this wouldn't have been generated by an AI rather than written by an actual person – it seems so baffling that a real person would've thought this story to make any sense. The main character, Naoki, is confusingly juvenile and unlikable man. I find it impossible to describe the stupidity of the character and the plot itself without going into spoilers, so I will be going into detail in the next paragraph about those. But before that I want to take a moment to mention that it certainly does not help the story one bit that the translation is very low quality, and at places it is incredibly obvious that no real translator worked on it. Context for word choices and phrasing simply aren't natural, which just strengthens my worry that the entire visual novel is the work of a machine. Now on to story details, [b]SPOILERS INCOMING:[/b] In the beginning Naoki is hurt by his long-time girlfriend, Miyuki, cheating on him but it turns out that he had simply seen her posing with a mannequin for a photoshoot at her work. He is genuinely so dumb that he didn't notice. Even if it hadn't been a mannequinn, Naoki's reaction to Miyuki posing with another man is still out of proportion. He doesn't confront her or talk to her about it all, he simply storms off and proceeds to spend the night in the company of someone else. This other person is Yume, a mere teenager, and Naoki (closer to 25 in age) soon has his nose in this girl's thighs. Every decision Naoki makes during the first half of the story reeks of something you might see in a clumsy harem comedy, not something you'd want to see in supposedly heartwarming story of a young adult dealing with an issue. The two female leads are both superficial and their personalities are robotic, neither of them raise any conflict toward Naoki for anything. Miyuki doesn't mind her boyfriend essentially sniffing at a teenager's bare thighs under the table (and neither do Yume's parents), and she's only apologetic that a misunderstanding had formed. Their reactions are so disingenuous that both girls give off Stepford Wives vibes, giving the whole moronic story an unplanned horror undertone. It's made worse by the fact that both girls, for some reason, are perfectly fine with discussing the other's breast size with Naoki. There is even a scene where Naoki and Miyuki lie in bed and their conversation briefly steers into talking about a teenage girl's breasts. Even at such short length, I was already growing rapidly tired of reading this stupidity unfold and it felt like it had been dragged out for no reason. If it had been any longer, I think I would've genuinely just dropped it.

This is a nice little visual novel with the story that perfectly captures the spirit of the holidays (spending time surrounded with your loved ones - in this case Christmas and New Year) accompanied with beautiful CG art and slow mellow music. The story is entertaining to read with a couple of laughs here and there. The only nitpick I have is that there is no gallery option on the main menu for you to view all the wonderful CG art after completing the game. Final verdict: Relax, grab yourself a seat and some tea and sweets, and just treat this "game" like a good book. Thumbs up!

So, I bought it to read at Christmas eve since my partner was not able to spend it with me, however, I`ve managed to read it a while later. It is quite simple but nice kinetic VN and it took me 3.2 hours to lazy read it. sprites are ok, little bit messed time to time, but don`t get me wrong, the style of the VN is decent and pretty nice. The story itself is warm and calm and a little bit longer than I expected, which was a pleasant surprise. It sure worth its money. I am for sure will be waiting for the next projects. Котаны, новелла приятная, милая и немного неуклюжая, но если хочется уюта, весьма хороша. Перевод на английский норм, русского нет. Спрайты ок, персонажи логичные. особых плоттвистов нет. Я ожидал что все закончится намного раньше, но в итоге не пожалел что история продолжилась.

Crystal Winter is a kinetic visual novel that takes place in Japan. We follow the main character through the different dramas that occur throughout this short visual novel. To start off, there are definitely some things I need to give props to the developer for. The art is absolute incredible and I completely fell in love with it. It's the main reason why I bought this game in the first place and its amazing. The main plot isn't bad, but it isn't good either. It's quite mediocre but definitely not a reason to not recommend the game. The reason why I absolutely cannot recommend this game stems from two major reasons: Poor writing & bad translations. The writing in this game is absolutely atrocious. There are so many things in this game that make absolutely no sense and would not even remotely happen in any realistic setting. The reactions of the characters are super unrealistic and they honestly don't act like humans. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if this was written by an AI, because it feels so out of touch with reality and lacks any realism. The translations are more of a minor issue, as I have played through many games with poor translations, and I am usually able to deal with them. Nonetheless, it is still a very prevalent issue and a lot of it could be fixed if they hired a proper translator. Additionally, the game is advertised as being a 3-4 hour length game, but there is no way anyone could reasonable spend more than 2 hours playing this game. It took me only an hour to completely finish this game, and for the price tag of $3.49 CDN that I paid, I do not feel as though I got my money's worth. I did pay for this game with the assumption of it being 3-4 hours in length. Overall, the game isn't horrible. It's definitely playable and has it's ups and it's downs. While I don't recommend the game, it's possible that some people can find this game enjoyable, and I think this game could be good if rewritten and added proper translations. 5/10