[PS Vita] Enkan no Memoria -Kakera Tomoshi- Review

Title: 円環のメモーリア-カケラ灯し-
Developers:  A’s Ring & DramaticCreate
Release Date: 29th March 2018
Length: ~14 Hours
Links: Official Site, VNDB

This game is set in the near future in a world where Gods abandoned humans years ago. However, humanity has managed to create a new form of deity known as “Artificial Gods” whom were created with the sole purpose of protecting and serving humans.

Katsuki Sayu is a girl who returns to her hometown of Shiraki along with her older brother Minato. Due to the trauma of losing her parents as a child, Sayu has no memories from the time she lived in Shiraki but feels a strange sense of nostalgia walking through its streets. She reunites with her childhood friend Eita and begins to attend her new high school. Shortly after her arrival there’s another transfer student Ren whom points out Sayu during his introduction to the class and rushes up to her claiming that he’s the Artificial God from Haruki Shrine and informs Sayu that she apparently was involved in the incident that lead to him losing half of his powers a number of years ago. With this revelation, Sayu’s search for the truth and her missing memories begins now…

Characters

Note: I’m just going to use the voice actors’ normal names rather than their aliases because I’m lazy orz

Katsuki Sayu

Despite the trauma of losing her childhood memories, Sayu has moved on and tends to optimistically think about the future. However, she sometimes worries that she’s changed into a completely different person to who she used to be. Sayu is a pretty average girl and likes to help around the house and cook for her brother. She ends up working part time as a miko at Haruki Shrine in order to gain some independence.

Katsuki Ren (CV Nakazawa Masatomo)

Ren is the Artificial God of Haruki Shrine and was originally a human before he had his memories wiped many years ago but he doesn’t let this bother him anymore. He tends to be pretty cheerful and affectionate towards Sayu, proclaiming that being close to her will help him get his powers back. Despite living for many years, he can be quite stupid at times and really struggles with schoolwork. He’s pretty fascinated with humans and wants to experience everything he can while he’s enrolled in Shiraki Academy.

Kunikata Eita (CV Okitsu Kazuyuki)

Eita is Sayu’s childhood friend and was with her when she lost her memories all those years ago. Due to the fact that he couldn’t protect her at that time he takes up kendo and is now the ace of the kendo club at Shiraki Academy. Eita has a very cheerful personality and gets on well with everyone. He’s delighted to be reunited with Sayu and decides to help her and Ren search for her memories to become close to her again. He also gets extra kendo training from Touma at Haruki Shrine.

Katsuki Minato (CV Yamanaka Masahiro)

Minato is Sayu’s older brother who has looked after her since their parent’s passing. He was actually adopted by the Katsuki family when he was very young and has no memories of his original parents but he has yet to tell Sayu this. Minato is a great cook and is especially talented at making desserts. He’s a huge siscon and prioritizes Sayu’s happiness above all else. He works as a researcher of Artifical Gods at a facility beneath Haruki Shrine.

Hayami Riku (CV Shirai Yuusuke)

Riku is Sayu’s homeroom teacher whom is popular with all of the students. He’s a very private person and likes to keep his personal life separate from work. He lives in the same apartment building as Sayu and quickly becomes friends with Minato. Riku has no memories of his childhood.

Katsuki Touma (CV Satou Takuya)

Touma is Sayu’s cousin and is in charge of looking after Ren at Haruki Shrine. He has a very strict personality but has a softer side and is more than happy to help Sayu with her part-time job. In contrast to his more mature side, he is an adrenaline junkie and rides a motorbike.

Artwork

Character design and artwork for this game was handled by Gogo-chan, whom has mostly done illustrations for various drama CD series, such as Love Tranquilizer and Sugary Time. The SD CGs in this game were done by Togata, a prolific SD artist who’s illustrations normally get used for keychains and other merchandise.

Sound

Opening: Spiral Memory – Nakazawa Masatomo

The game contains 13 BGM tracks.

System

The game’s system is pretty standard. After a short prologue, you need to pick one of the two common routes:

The choices are fairly simple and the game has a cute SD image of which character you’ve raised affection for:

However, this game has a bunch of random/bad endings so it’s probably worth using a guide to make sure you get them all, especially as some are fairly long and/or worth reading.

My Thoughts

Despite being so hyped for this game that I pre-ordered the animate set, I just can’t help but be a little more than disappointed by this…

First of all, the story is just straight up weird. The set-up sounds pretty interesting but the “truth” behind how Sayu lost her memories is so odd that I could barely believe what I was reading! I don’t want to spoil the story for anyone brave enough to slog through this game but prepare to be weirded/grossed out.

It also doesn’t really help that the writing itself is pretty long-winded which makes reading the common route pretty dull. This is a pretty short game but almost feels double the length due to the writing style. There’s also very little humor and a lot of the jokes really fall flat.

This is the “all-ages” version of the game but there’s still quite a lot of unsavory content – there’s more than one rape scene (one of which is unavoidable) and, as I mentioned earlier, some scenes are quite gross to read. The game does keep in a lot of “heavily implied” ero scenes but many of these are pretty dull to be honest… There are some 3P/4P endings though for those of you interested in that – half of them are good but the rest aren’t.

At the very least, most of the main characters are okay. Sayu, on the other hand, seems to lack a lot of personality in a lot of the routes and is pretty boring overall.
Ren and Eita are both super adorable and they probably have the better common route overall. Minato is a complete enigma to me – I hate his route but he has some cute points that stop me hating him completely, which is annoying. Touma’s route is a complete disgrace due to the fact it branches off from late on in Ren’s route and the romance feels really rushed and out of place. He could’ve had an interesting route but they just ignored a lot of stuff and gave him a really short epilogue thingy.

It needs to be said though that nii-chan/Minato pretty much single-handedly saves the game from mediocrity. His hilarious siscon moments in the common route contrast wonderfully with the careful way the romance is handled in his own route and his ending is the most adorably sweet thing ever! He’s such a good boy that I wish he was in a better game – he deserves so much more!

It was Gogo-chan’s adorable artwork that first drew me to the game but I was really disappointed due to the fact that the CGs are very inconsistent, with some of the characters looking like completely different people in certain CGs. There’s also some inconsistencies with the CG colouring which is pretty jarring, especially when you see all the CGs together in the viewing gallery. Each character also only has one sprite (although they have quite a few different facial expressions) which is a real shame.
On the other hand, Togata’s SD CGs are all utterly adorable and I almost wish each character had more than 2. Absolutely no complaints here.

Who are you and what have you done with Ren??

As much as I like the opening song, the lack of an ending song was pretty disappointing and having only 13 BGM tracks for a game of this length is a bit of a let-down. It definitely feels like you’re listening to the same few tracks on repeat. The voice acting was generally pretty good although they don’t say Sayu’s name which was a bit of a shock for such a modern game.

The special effect tracks are really, really horrendous though. This becomes especially apparent during the “implied” ero scenes with really bad kissing noises and the occasional screeching bed creak in the background, which just really killed the mood imo. I wonder if anyone managed to make it through the original version of the game without having to turn these off?

Final Thoughts

My Score: 4/10

The first thing that comes to mind when I think about this game is that it has super low production values. With inconsistent artwork, lack of BGM tracks and poor writing this game becomes quite a chore to play through with the overall story just not being worth it given that this is a “full price” game. This is opposed to something like Ephemeral which was marketed at “mid price” and has a similar amount of content.

I honestly wouldn’t recommend this game unless you’re able to get it for a fairly hefty discount. Even then, Minato and his route are the only things that are very good so if you want an incredibly sweet older-brother route then he’s one of the best that I’ve encountered so far.

Oh well, I’m currently trying to finish off Clover Day’s – it’s a fairly long game but I’m over halfway through and am hoping to finish it off before I start CollarxMalice Unlimited next week~

Thanks for reading!