Little Busters! English Edition Reviews

No one will ever know the true number of cats I have buried on the field to become the strongest.

Jun Maeda never disappoints. Refrain and Saya routes are masterpieces. 100% worth buying

Little Busters is good. Pretty darn good in fact. Its highs are pretty high, it's funny, it's got some emotional moments, the music is great, but it's also somewhat let down by some uneven routes and a true route I personally found a bit frustrating. The comraderie shown between the characters is pretty great, and that's something you don't see in the majority of visual novels. It truly feels like a gang of friends here rather than just people thrown together randomly. The characters feel like they were written with depth rather than a certain one solely existing to be comedic relief or the silly one or whatnot. The emotional highs of the story are definitely there, and I think different routes or story beats will hit very differently depending on the person you are or where your interests lie. For instance, Sasami's route hit me by far the hardest emotionally, but I know I'm in the minority there. Some of the routes though feel like they aren't quite as well written - Komari's in particular was a letdown for me, and Mio's felt a bit odd as well. By and large though the routes are written well and are a consistent quality throughout. Refrain (True Route): Overall I think it was written well, explaining things well and giving some great meaning to the whole experience, however [spoiler] due to the nature of its story being a repeating world going through the various routes with not much being remembered by Riki and Rin, I feel that it devalued the various heroine routes somewhat, since they "didn't happen", even if the characters progressed and learned things along the way. In fact it made me wonder what the "true version" of the first semester actually was, i.e. what - if any - of the various heroine route events occurred. This is partially answered in Kanata's route, as well as some of the heroine route variants you get post-Refrain, but it still made me curious. [/spoiler] Minigames: All minigames can be turned off with no detriment to the story itself, but you will lock yourself out of some achievements. I'd honestly recommend turning them off for the majority of your routes unless you really like them, they take up quite a bit of time. There's really only two mini-games that require any skill to them - baseball practice (available in all routes) and the shooting minigame (Saya's route). Neither are too terribly difficult, but the shooting minigame does feature an easy mode. Baseball I wouldn't bother with until after Refrain, as character stats go up with how many heroine routes you've completed, and you will be very unlikely to win the baseball game until you've beefed the stats up quite a bit. The Battle Ranking minigame is automated, but is also significantly easier to do later with increased stats. Battle Ranking is extremely easy to save scum your way through though if you're patient, [spoiler] as I managed to get first on my first playthrough and beat Mask the Saito with only one heroine route cleared [/spoiler]. Ultimately I'd recommend Little Busters! to any visual novel fan, especially any all-ages or Key fans out there. It's a solid read without too many glaring weaknesses, and honestly if it didn't hit upon a personal pet peeve of mine with a certain story type, it probably would've scored a bit higher.