Title: ナツイロココロログ
Developer: Hearts
Release Date: 27th May 2016
Age Rating: 18+
Length: ~15 Hours
Links: Official Website, VNDB
One day at the start of summer, our protagonist Yoshito accepts a bet from the mysterious Nagi Kisara. She challenged him to a fighting game, and if he lost then he would have to join the cyber research club at the school. As a high-levelled player in this game, Yoshito accepts, only to find out that Kisara is actually one of the top-ranked players in the game going by the name of “Nagi”. He, unsurprisingly, is defeated and joins the club. His younger sister Rin, childhood friend Kuon & underclassman Kotone also end up joining to prevent the club disbanding due to lack of members.
A few weeks later, the teacher in charge of the club invites everyone to join in with a test of her latest virtual reality game. It turns out that this is a romance simulation involving AI avatars of the other members of the cyber research club. However, Yoshito then learns that the “AI” girls are in fact the real members of the club and asks him to keep his knowledge a secret in order for the girls to reveal their true feelings towards his “avatar” self. With the beginning of summer vacation looming, a heartful summer romance story now begins!
Characters
Ominae Yoshito
Yoshito is a second year student at Ashinomiya Academy and is the (reluctant) vice-president of the cyber research club. He’s a keen gamer and is particularly skilled at virtual reality fighting games. If it was up to him, he’d spend his entire summer vacation locked away in his room on his PC. Yoshito is your typical kind protagonist.
Tokiwa Kuon (CV Yomogi Kasumi)
Kuon is a second year student and vice-president of the student council. She is a childhood friend of Yoshito and the two used to often play together at her house but they haven’t really spent a lot of time together in more recent years. This leads to an awkward, slightly strained relationship between the pair. Kuon’s family are very wealthy and she has many of the typical ojou-sama traits. She actually really enjoys playing games (particularly puzzle games) but finds this embarassing so asks Yoshito not to tell anyone. Her online avatar is a softly spoken and gentle princess-like character.
Ominae Rin (CV Kano Manaka)
Rin is a first year student and is Yoshito’s younger sister. She cares deeply for her older brother and does all the cooking and cleaning for him at home. She worries about him spending summer cooped up in his room so is happy when he joins the cyber research club and ends up joining herself so the club can meet the school’s membership number requirements. Rin is a bright and cheerful girl. Her online avatar appears as a nurse and is very affectionate towards her older brother.
Nanakuni Kotone (CV Yahiro Mami)
Kotone is Rin’s friend and classmate. She’s a very nervous and shy girl, but is trying to become more outgoing and so joins the cyber research club. Her hobby is gardening and she can often be found tending to the flowerbeds around the school grounds. Unusually, she finds bugs and such to be quite cute. Her avatar, called “Lie”, is actually a famous idol in the virtual world, with her appearance and personality not being similar to Kotone’s usual self at all. Lie is bright, bubbly and flirtatious.
Nagi Kisara (CV Kawashima Rino)
Kisara is a third year student and the president of the cyber research club. She’s normally very cool, calm and collected. However, she can be a bit oblivious at times, such as when she stands in as a sparring partner for the school’s karate club wearing only her school uniform. In order to help with the development of the romance simulation, a patch is applied to her virtual avatar which somehow manages to give her a personality of her own. This avatar claims to be Yoshito’s maid and would do anything to serve her “master”.
Umemiya Kanae (CV Tachibana Mao)
Kanae is a teacher at the accademy and is the cyber research club’s advisor. She’s also a genuis programmer and is the creator behind the romance simulation software the group are currently testing. She’s incredibly hard-working but has a habit of losing track of time and staying up all night on projects she’s working on. Her younger brother, Shiina is also a member of the club.
Artwork
The character designs and artwork for this game were handled by Shiromochi Sakura, whom has worked on a handful of other titles, most recently with Whirlpool. The SD artwork is by Pero, whom has worked extensively with games under the Unisonshift brand and, more recently, the 9-nine- series.
Sound
Opening: Dive 2 World – Komatsu Rina
Ending: Seed of Happiness – MiU
The game’s BGM tracks were composed by the group Alvine, whom have worked on a couple of other games from the Unisonshift/Amuse Craft game brands.
System
Rorolog has a very simple system with few choices so a walkthrough probably isn’t needed.
My Thoughts
Coming from a company with a name like Hearts and the game itself having adorable artwork plus a catchy opening song, there’s absolutely no surprise that Natsuiro Kokoro Log (aka rorolog) was on my radar. Did it manage to deliver the light, summery romance story that was promised?
The premise seemed interesting to me at first, with the differences between the heroines in the real and virtual worlds a fun selling point. However, I found the fact that the protagonist knew the truth about the whole avatar situation and the heroines didn’t to be a bit off-putting. It just made the couple’s romantic interactions towards the start of the game feel kinda unbalanced and I think the game could’ve avoided this and still had pretty much the same story.
The common route of this game was pretty centred on the club aspect of the setting but had many of the typical galge events – beach trip & fireworks after a festival included. I liked this section of rorolog and found it to be a good introduction to the characters and story. The humour was decent but nothing special.
The heroines in this game are generally all pretty cute. Despite how much I like tsundere childhood friends with twintails, Kuon was not my favourite character in the game. Simply from her description, you can guess thet she has some repressed feelings for the protagonist and the pair do have some sweet interactions. Her route is less focused on the virtual world and instead focuses more on her family, which was okay. Overall, decent.
Rin is exactly what you would expect from a bracon imouto character and delivers her role well, especially in avatar form. She’s a sweet girl and her route (of course) has just that little twinge of secret/forbidden love aspect as you would expect. However, I found the last part of her route to be a little weird/out of place. She’s still a cutie though.
Next up is Kotone, the gentle and kind kouhai who is terribly shy but is always trying her best. I found plot revolving around her online avatar Lie to be one of the more interesting things about the game. A good girl.
Kisara is a character I didn’t expect myself to like at all but her route is easily the best in the game plot-wise. Her avatar is also hands-down the most entertaining of the four and is the exact opposite of her usual personality.
Finally we have Kanae. Teacher routes typically aren’t really one of my favourites but she’s actually a really likable character throughout the common route so I was happy to find that the game includes a bonus route for her. Unfortunately, this route is pretty much only included for fanservice with little other substance and I found the romance quite weak in this route.
As mentioned earlier, I’m a huge fan of the artstyle in this title – it’s just too cute! There was a good amount of CGs for each of the main four heroines, with Kanae’s route lacking a little but that’s probably because it was a “bonus”.
The BGM in the game was of a good standard, with nothing really standing out either way. I did enjoy the HeartfulDive track & the fact that in the BGM player there were comments from the composers. I’ve noticed this in unisonshift titles too so I’m not sure if it’s a common thing across Amuse Craft titles but it’s pretty neat. I also enjoyed the opening song.
Final Thoughts
My Score: 6.5/10
Despite my personal dislike of certain aspects regarding the story setup, rorolog is overall still a decent moege with cute characters and a fun concept. If any of the characters catch your eye then I’d recommend picking the game up.
I actually bought the fandisc on sale relatively recently so hope to get around to that at some point. I don’t expect much plot there but any more of this cute artwork is good enough for me.
Thanks for reading!
Zettai Renai! 