[PS Vita] Gakuen Club ~Himitsu no Nightclub~ Mini Review

Title: 学園CLUB～ヒミツのナイトクラブ～
Developers:  Operahouse & Dramatic Create (port)
Release Date: 30th November 2017
Length: ~10 Hours
Links: Official Site, VNDB

During spring break before she starts her second year of high school, the protagonist Koizumi Akane’s father suddenly gets a promotion so she must transfer into the esteemed Kirika Private Academy. Akane is really excited to start life at her new school but stumbles across the existence of a secret “nightclub” operating after school and ends up working there doing odd chores. While working there, she gradually grows closer to the other staff and learns of their pasts and secrets. Over time, these complicated relationships get even more tangled but begin to blossom into love…

(wow wasn’t it handy that I’d already written an intro/summary for this game back when I still did monthly release posts)

Okay, time to spill some tea about the cost of this game. For reference, I’m going to compare download prices since only the PS Vita version has a hardcopy.

Mobile (no mini games): 3200 yen
Mobile (with mini-games): 4600 yen
Steam (PC): 2760 yen
Switch: 2980 yen
PS Vita: 5900 yen

Wow, what a price difference. Considering that the PS Vita version of the game does NOT contain the mini-games present in the mobile release it’s very unfair that we have to pay a minimum of 80% markup! Now, the PS Vita does contain a couple of extra scenes per character, some new CGs, voice touch in the CG gallery and new op/ed songs but is this really worth paying double? The answer is no. I’m not as mad as I could be simply because I bought my physical copy for like 70% off so I wasn’t scammed like the poor people who paid full price for the vita edition.

Well I suppose I should talk about the actual game but I’m afraid it doesn’t really get much better. To put it bluntly, this game is downright dull. The story and characters are trope-ridden with much of the plot in each of the routes being the typical “rich people problems” often seen. The routes are also fairly formulaic so you can tell that they probably didn’t expect people to pay for all of the routes in the original mobile version, haha. There’s also a complete lack of cute/fluffy scenes too!

I know I complained about the vita markup but I did like the new content – the opening song is really great (although I wish they’d release the full version already!) and the new CGs are pretty cute (despite the colouring looking completely different to the rest of the CGs but I’m pretty sure that they are drawn by Melo so that’s always a good sign). I also really liked the little epilogues; I totally didn’t realise that they weren’t in the other versions until reading the game site since the game must’ve ended pretty abruptly without them?

I don’t have a lot to say about the characters – Akane was pretty dull, even by typical otoge heroine standards. I wasn’t a particular fan of either Yuuya or Renji. Asahi was cute but boring. Toumai wasn’t my usual type but he grew on me. Wataru was adorable but mostly because I like his character type anyways. Saku ended up being my favourite character but that’s not saying much. Generally if you like the character type of that guy then you’ll probably like them since they don’t really undergo any character development during the course of their route.

On the bright side, the voice acting was really good and they managed to get some pretty well known voice actors for this game. Why do I always get reeled in by the voice cast? This was the first time I’ve ever heard of Ishii Mark but I thought he did a good job.
Melo’s artwork was also adorable as always. There’s plenty of CGs given how ridiculously short this is.

Final Thoughts

My Score: 3/10

While this game isn’t the worst I’ve ever played, it was just very disappointing. The PS Vita version in particular is ridiculously over-priced compared to the other editions and the additional content, while nice, just doesn’t justify pricing this game at “full price” when you could go and buy other games with more than double the content for that cost. It definitely feels like typical “mobile game” quality.

If you really simply must play this game then do so because one (or more) of the characters really appeal to you and wait for it to go on sale for at least 50% off. I’d recommend either the switch or steam versions since they’re the cheapest and have multi-language options which is pretty cool.

Sorry for the short review but this game didn’t really deserve anything more + I’m feeling lazy! My next review will be of Moujuutsukai to Ouji-sama ~Flower & Snow~. I feel like I’m finally making some progress on clearing my review backlog, yay!

Thanks for reading!