ef - the first tale. (All Ages)

-Highly advice to get the patch from mangagamer to play this VN- Fantastic love drama VN, highly enjoyed it. First things first, the production value is phemonenal. In 3 hours of this VN theres been more CGs than and entire duration of others, plus the art is quite beautiful. On top of that there lip synching and and gorgeous opening movie (that for some reason they decided to put at the end) The story is very good, really liked the characters. Its not as emotionally charged as something from a Key VN but it still really good and interesting. The whole runtime is about 14 hours and the story is paced perfectly, didnt felt like it was either too long or too short. Negatives? I would say its mostly the game native resolution being 800x600 which is a shame because the CGs and art in general are very pretty. Some few scene transitions are also almost like from a powerpoint presentation (thankfully its very few of them) Lastly, the game has borderless fullscreen which is not on the options menu, but you right click on the game screen and choose the "fullscreen" option. I would highly recommend getting this VN if you are into romance drama stories, tough probably on a sale since i…

For some, this is a perfectly serviceable, maybe even good slice of life older art style VN. Somewhere nearing the end of the game, I just got tired of the main male character Hiro’s personality. He’s constantly complaining about his struggles which he chose for himself and puts down everyone around him at every meeting. It goes beyond the fact he’s a high school (or college) student. I would say college bc the school is Ottawa college or something, but he acts like a high school student and nobody acts like an adult. To have two popular and sought-after girls want him at the same time despite his eternal victim mentality and rude attitude towards them, they still want some Hiro. The English translation is rough more than it should be as well.. I’m prob done with it before seeing pt 1’s completion.

For this review, I will be speaking on both games of the ef duology, the first tale and the latter tale, as if they were only one full visual novel. For how the story is structured, there isn't a good reason to call these separate arcs. Rather, they are both halves of a singular story that cannot properly be experienced separately. To begin with, I have mostly positive things to say about the ef duology. Minori is an interesting developer to talk about because of their fairly unique way of structuring their works and the flowery way that they construct their prose. When their style works, they create characters with rich inner voices that come to life with seemingly no effort. When their style doesn't work, they create a word salad of thoughts that sounds much deeper than it actually is. Ef is filled with examples of both of these, and it's difficult to speak on anything outside of this point because of how central to the entire story it is that this aspect specifically is done correctly. For the most part, the scales balance positively. Every chapter's romance appears organically, each roadbump comes naturally, and the outcome at the end of each chapter feels earned. All five ch…

[i]"I didn't care if the story was trite or cliche." "I just wanted to render everyday situations using meticulously planned art."[/i] an author recognises their intention, and works hard to make their dream come true. their aim was made obvious early and succinctly, so it's hard to hold them against things such as Too Basic! Typical! Pusillanimous! however, unlike a true fairy tale, Ef chooses to press further. what follows a delicately nurtured love, the sorts of tensions and mistakes? whereto do the people left behind go, the ones on the sidelines? wherefore has that girl intervened so many times? Yuuko Amamiya, who are you? these are questions that it, rather reassuringly, guarantees an answer to. as an aside, you have no reason to explore branching paths. the bad endings are clumsy cutoffs from the main story, and the dialogue choice mechanic is a polite afterthought. they missed an opportunity to elucidate a world where Yuuko had no hand in their relationships, no doubt a much lonelier world than the one we saw but alas, the past is the past and cannot be changed..

the game suddenly closes itself without warning a lot of times but it has autosave feature every checkpoint so it's pretty playable. So far it's a 90s/00s relaxing classic, i mean maybe there'll be sad stuff down the line but yea, it's a classic Edit: Nah, I've changed my mind. This game pretends to give you options but then railroads you. Maybe this is common in vn? idk. I wish it doesn't give me the choice at all if that's the case.

There's not much to be said that hasn't already been said about ef. It's a classic and it's a shame minori is no longer around.