GINKA Reviews

Peak, no comments. Please give it a try if you are up for Visual Novels!!!

Pouting has never been this cute before. Poi!! Ginka is a visual novel developed by Frontwing, with heavy focus on character and worldbuilding. This story was written by the same team behind ATRI, but the question is: does Ginka live up to the same high standards as Atri? Let's find out. The positives of this game are fairly obvious. This game is an audiovisual treat, with extremely gorgeous and detailed art direction and character artstyle, and some background CG are downright otherworldly, like the night sky and God's Island. The music wasn't just consistent with the tone and the setting. It was beautifully orrchestrated also. This game has some of the best soundtrack I've ever listened to on any visual novel, period. The voice acting is par excellence, with surgical deliveries at all times, and the UI is well structured, with an option to auto-hide it to make it cleaner. The player can switch between Japanese, Simplified Chinese and English text at the stroke of a button, and has plenty of customization options. The player can even save the voice lines they liked the most. I think you know what's coming, right? The lenghtiest part of this review, which is the writing. The writing of this game, for the most part, is good, because there are issues, some of them very significant. Let's start with the well written elements. The characters experienced an improvement over Atri. I don't know why several Frontwing main characters have some kind of disability. In Corona Blossom, Keiji was allergic to metal. In Atri, Natsuki has a missing leg. Here, Ryusei has a heart condition. But that's just me nitpicking. What's important is that Ryusei having a weak heart is a core element of his character development, and it was superbly done. Having to pay a heavy price for his one wish is a sign of strong writing, with many worldbuilding and plot elements helping to foreshadow this outcome. His motivations are selfish at first, but in the end, he must learn to let go. Ginka acted as both a love interest and an obstacle for Ryusei to overcome, because she is the reason why Ryusei is so reluctant to let go, and there is enough history between the two to explain his investment in her. Even secondary characters have some sort of development, and they all have some contribution to the story... That was until the devs decided to have their cake and eat it too with the "Next" storyline. This storyline ruined all the emotional gravitasse of the ending of the main story, because, apparently the devs didn't want Ryusei to be miserable. The only reason for the "Next" storyline to exist is to build up towards a literal Deus Ex Machina to make everyone happy, which destroyed any dramatic tension the story had until that point. The "Next" storyline represents all the badly written elements of this game. It was horribly paced, with many scenes overstaying their welcome, and this is especially notorious towards the end. It was even frustrating to read because everytime I though the story would end, there was always a new scene to pad it out, scenes that added nothing to the story, characters bump up on each other through sheer luck, and sometimes this happened in plot-critical scenes, and the worldbuilding is mostly explained rather than showed. Even the characters were damaged, because remember, Ryusei had a heavy price to pay for his wish, and he learns from the pain it caused him, but not anymore, since every wish was granted with virtually no consequences for anyone. Having consequences in a story, and making the characters pay the price for it is a fertile ground for character exploration and development, but, apparenty, that's too much to ask nowadays. The only good thing about this storyline is that the only choice available has a causal relation with its consequences. I mention this, because, in the main story, the choices I made and their consequences don't seem to be related by a causal chain of events, which makes the choice system in this game rather counterintuitive, relying on trial and error to not get a bad ending. In conclusion, Ginka failed to live up to the standards set by Atri, but that doesn't mean it's a bad game, because it's by no means a bad game. I've said time and time again, that I can ignore plot and worldbuilding issues, if the characters delivered, and Ginka did really well in that regard. Add to the good characters the absolue audiovisual feast that is this game, and you get a good but flawed visual novel. If you completely ignore the "Next" storyline, you'll probably enjoy reading it. If you absolutely don't mind poor writing, then you can ignore my warnings. As for me, I decided to recommend this game, because there are plenty of elements to like about this.