Summer Daze: Tilly's Tale

I'll preface this by saying Quest for Glory is one of my favorite gaming series of all time (even my screen name is in part a nod to it). I also really loved Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption when that was released years ago and noted that I got that same feeling playing it as an adult as I got playing the original Quest for Glory series as a kid. I knew Summer Daze was completely different so I went into it with an open mind. Overall, well it was okay. I liked the narration and I enjoyed hearing everything through the Coles' voice (figuratively speaking). Overall though it seemed pretty half baked at times, kind of like an extra lite version of Rogue to Redemption. The gameplay completely revolves around making choices, but the choices are extremely limited and seem to have little impact on outcomes. As an example, your character can study/prepare for the two tests you take during the game, but it didn't seem to matter whether I did well or not. It would have been nice to have been able to take the test or do anything besides going to a limited number of screens and choosing from a very limited number of dialogue options. In the first half especially the plot got old quickly, as …

To begin with the positives, the voice acting and dialogue are fun, and the setting and the basic premise are enjoyable. However, the vagueness of the game's systems left it feeling deeply unsatisfying. I don't expect every decision a player makes in a choice-based VN to be a fully informed one (in fact, some of the things I most like about the genre are inferring the characters' personalities based on their responses and being surprised by the consequences of past choices way down the line), but there's a difference between making decisions based on limited information and trial-and-error gameplay. With no indication of where the characters are at any given time, their responses giving you very little to work with, and the days blending together into a series of brief conversations cut short, I really wonder if the player is meant to constantly save and reload to find the optimal paths. I don't expect visible stats in a VN (although a date indicator at least could have seriously helped considering the game's based on time management), but some more feedback and information would have been extremely helpful. Even the exam and festival prep (which follow the obvious logic of more =…

The reason I'm recommending this game is that it is a perfectly fine visual novel so far. I think there have been a large amount of negative reviews stemming from fans of the Coles' other works who don't understand that 'clicking through text' is an entire game genre that a very particular audience likes. I've played enough Visual Novels to see that this one is of a very high quality, especially in terms of the voice acting. At the same time, I can 100% see why many people would just... not like visual novels, period. I don't know what to say, they chose a very, very niche genre for a game, and their RPG fans didn't care for it. It's very normal, but it doesn't mean the game is bad for a VN audience.

This game came exactly as advertised. It's not QFG, nor is it Hero U. However, if my meagre contribution helps fund the next big Cole project then I'm happy to pay it and enjoy some gnome humor while waiting for Hero U2: 'Enry the 'Ermit Emerges* *working title, the Coles will come up with something better

Having played the original Quest for Glory series in the 1990s & Hero-U in more recent years, I was very much looking forward to playing another game in the same vein. But in every other dialogue between Tilly & another character, I get stuck on one line of text. If I then click on the Fast Forward button at top right, the game crashes. How can I play a game if it constantly crashes? Now I feel I've wasted good money.

This is a lighthearted story game with similar characters and story to Hero-U and Quest for Glory. There are few puzzles, a notable exception being the challenging (fortunately optional) La Boomba! card game. Instead, this is like reading and rereading a novel with some choice of Tilly's dialogue, and with different characters each playthrough. You can complete a single playthrough in under two hours. With the different characters and story paths, it takes 10-12 hours to experience most of them. ("Most" rather than "All" because it's hard to take every optional dialogue branch, but the ones you miss usually do not affect the story.)