[Nintendo Switch] Soi Kano ~Gyutto Dakishimete~ Review

Title: 添いカノ～ぎゅっと抱きしめて～
Developers:  Giga & Entergram (Port)
Release Date: 21st Feburary 2019
Age Rating: 15+
Length: ~8 Hours
Links: Official Site, VNDB

The game’s protagonist Kouhei has been having trouble sleeping lately due to having nightmares where he keeps falling through the sky. This has led to him becoming chronically exhausted and napping during the day. One afternoon at school, he’s looking for a nice place to nap when he stumbles accross the rooftop garden. He finds a good spot and drifts off to sleep but awakens to a strange girl cuddling into him. It turns out that she’s the “problem child” of his class and never attends any lessons but why?

Characters

Kozuya Kouhei

Kouhei is a second year student and has been having sleeping problems for a while but can’t remember what started them. He spends most of his school days either sleeping in class, or finding somewhere else to nap. When awake, he’s actually a pretty kind guy. He enjoys listening to music to help him sleep.

Kumakura Yoake (CV Kanako)

Yoake is the mysterious girl from Kouhei’s class that has never actually turned up for a lesson. She’s the school’s sole remaining member of the gardening club which explains why she has a key to the rooftop garden, which is where she can normally be found napping. Yoake likes to make jokes and try out all the new limited edition weirdly flavoured drinks. She is lazy though and dislikes any form of hard work. She’s also very clingy to Tsubame, often wanting cuddled or her head patted.

Katagiri Tsubame (CV Ayumi Sarah)

Tsubame is a thrid year student at the school and is the former student council president. However, she can normally be found these days dressed in a maid outfit pampering Yoake on the rooftop garden. She does this as she blames herself for disrupting Yoake’s sleep. Tsubame was previously the star of the school’s swimming team.

Chiyuki Touko (CV Tachibana Mao)

Touko is Kouhei’s classmate and one of his best friends. She’s a cheerful, talkative girl who gets on well with everyone. She often goes for a nap in the nurse’s office during class. Touko’s hobby is sketching/painting, particularly realism and she’s a member of the school’s art club.

Hanatsuka Aika (CV Mikoshiba Koyori)

Aika is Kouhei’s younger cousin whom actually lives with him in order to attend the same school. She’s a very shy but polite girl and is a honour student. She’s actually a closet Otaku but is too embarassed to admit this to anyone & loves drawing in her spare time.

Artwork

Each of the 4 heroines had a different artist work on their design & artwork – Hisama Kumako (Yoake), Kurasawa Moko (Tsubame), Hinata Momo (Chiyuki) & Ameto Yuki (Aika).

SD artwork was done by FFC, whom also worked on giga’s Kimi no Hitomi ni Hit Me!

Sound

Opening: Slow Starter – Uema Emi
Ending: Feather Song – Uema Emi

The BGM music for this game was composed by Ookawa Shigenobu, probably best known for his work on various Lump of Sugar titles.

System

The game’s system is pretty straight forward with few choices so no walkthrough needed. Finishing each heroine’s route unlocks her bonus episode & finishing all 4 heroine routes unlocks a bonus episode for Riku – Kouhei’s sister.

This game also has a little “mini-game” called the Soine Mode where the heroine is meant to be lying next to “you” in bed & you can prod her in various places to get differing reactions. It sounds more fun than it is, haha.

My Thoughts

Given my previous bad experience with Kimi no Hitomi no Hit Me, I’m not entirely sure what possessed me to rush out and pick this game up – maybe it was the cute artwork and character designs? Or more likely, the fact that it was on sale for a mere 3k yen.

All that aside, this is actually a fairly decent game in many regards – it’s super relaxing to play (which I’m assuming is the vibe the creators were going for). The common route in particular was a fun read with good character interactions. I genuinely don’t even have any complaints about the actual content of the routes themselves either – they were all super cute & sweet.

However, the game as a whole is just too short – I know my reading speed is probably slightly above average but I don’t think I’ve ever played a “full priced” game with under 10 hours of content. It’s pretty ridiculous really because I personally consider ~15 hours to be a fair amount for full price games, not 8. I have a feeling that this game suffered particularly badly from the content cut from the original version, as I believe the short additional stories are the only new content (& 2 of those were already some sort of shop/pre-order bonus with the original?). I was really disappointed that the game chose to give us the “Soine” mini-game, as opposed to actually integrating these scenes into the game as there were fewer than I was expecting for a game where sleep/napping is such a prominent theme.

As far as the characters go, they were all very cute and pretty likable. My personal favourite was Yoake because her lazy side was too relatable but Aika comes a close second for adorable-ness.

Given that it was one of the selling points of this version, I was expecting Kouhei’s younger sister to be given a mini-route. However, her additional story is literally about 10 minutes long and non-romantic which was a real shame because she was cute.

One thing that I will praise highly is the artwork which, despite having no less than 4 different artists, ended up being of very high quality. There was a decent amount of CGs, especially once the SD CGs were counted in and I appreciated that Kouhei had a face in more than one image. I’m personally a big fan of Ameto Yuki’s artstyle anyways but I thought all of the artists involved did a good job. The BG artwork was also of great quality & the rooftop garden in particular was very beautiful.

BGM and vocal songs both help accentuate the relaxing atmosphere of the game but aren’t particularly memorable to me. The voice acting was good though, with Kanako in particular doing a really good job!

The game’s system was pretty similar to entergram’s port of Kimi no Hitomi no Hit Me – it was clean and ran well. No complaints here.

Final Thoughts

My Score: 6/10

While I had no problems with the actual content of the game, it was just too short for me to give it a higher score. Thank goodness that I picked it up on sale – I would’ve been *really* mad if I had paid the original price for it!

Sorry but this is a short review for a short game, basically the heroines are all adorable with cute routes but this game is too short for me to recommend the console version unless it’s heavily discounted. Maybe the PC version is better but I’m not wasting spending my money to test that out.