Title: ソラコイ
Developer: Chelsea Soft
Release Date: 18th December 2015
Age Rating: 18+
Length: ~10 Hours
Links: VNDB
Sorakoi tells the story of Takuto – a second year student at Hinomori Academy with a particular interest in film making. As part of the school’s movie club, he works towards achieving his dream of becoming a film director. Always by his side is his loyal childhood friend Hikari – the pair were literally born on the same day in the same hospital and have been friends ever since.
One day whilst reviewing footage at school, a girl appears beside Takuto claiming to be Hikari. However, Hikari is also in the room too so this girl’s sudden appearance confuses the club memebers. The mysterious girl, later named Sora, proclaims herself to be Takuto’s true childhood friend and a competition ensues between Hikari and Sora to find out just who’s feelings towards Takuto are true. But what is the truth behind Sora’s sudden arrival?
This is actually a really difficult game to review, primarily because my opinion on this game is super polarised. To put it simply, one route in this game (Sora’s) is actually pretty good – it’s emotive and is a fitting conclusion to the game. However, the rest of Sorakoi is underwhelming at best.
Starting with the common route and it’s a pretty standard affair – a good mix of comedy and character introductions that gently lead you into the game. The Hikari v Sora battle of the childhood friends was fairly amusing and took up most of the time but the two other heroines – movie club members Airi & Nami also got some time to shine.
The problems begin to arise for this game when you get into the heroine routes – in general they’re incredibly short and just not very good. The routes for afformentioned heroines Airi and Nami simply feel like hasty add-ons only there to fulfil a quota. This was a shame because they weren’t bad as characters.
Hikari’s route is a weird one, because on its own it is of similar quality to the two other heroine routes, however, when viewed in conjunction with Sora’s route it becomes slightly better. I really wish this game only had routes for Hikari/Sora and devloped them more, because this game could’ve easily been so much better.
Finally we have Sora’s route. It was not where I expected the story to go but was the heart-wrenching route one would expect from a nakige (which I didn’t realise this game was when I bought it, haha). My only complaint would be that fact that this route essentially makes the rest of the heroine routes seem like a waste of time, yet, this route isn’t locked which I found super weird. Maybe they knew that people wouldn’t have the patience to read the entire game but reading Sora’s route early will completely ruin any joy people might’ve found in the other routes.
Moving on from the routes, the artwork in this game is certainly another talking point. The adorable artwork provided by the Miyasaka sisters is clearly a selling point – it’s just so cute! Nami’s artwork was provided by newcommer Olive who I thought did a decent job, although I think the two artstyles clash slightly.
Oddly, the area where this game probably best excels is in its vocal songs, with both the opening and ending songs being absolutely top-tier.
Final Thoughts
My Score: 6/10
Typically I wouldn’t recommend games that I give such low scores to, however, if you buy Sorakoi on sale for 500 yen and only go into it for Sora’s route then it’s actually worth your time. The other routes are not, which is a shame because this game had a lot of potential but seemed to suffer from mismanaged budgeting and rushed production. It seems like Chelsea Soft is no longer operating, which is a bit of a shame. Hopefully the staff manage to find work at another game studio.
Thanks for reading.
Zettai Renai! 