SINce Memories: Off the Starry Sky [Review]
SINce Memories: Off the Starry Sky is reminiscent of the type of dating sims that were popular in the mid to late 2000s. For the clueless, these were enormous, often over thirty hour long visual novels that could be regarded as the slowest of slow burns. Often these stories were coming of age sagas which prioritized character development rather than being plot heavy. While romance (and scenes of characters being intimate) were still important, these stories served as complicated character studies first and foremost.
Now, I haven’t been keeping up with the latest in the visual novels, and I am unaware how the gaming landscape has changed for them since the 2000s. Personally, I just kind of stopped keeping tabs as the demands of the real world took over. Picking up this game has been a blast from the past for me.
Series: Memories Off
Developer: MAGES
Genres: Adventure game, romance video game, Action game, Casual game, Adventure
Platforms: Nintendo Switch [REVIEWED], PlayStation 4, Microsoft Windows
Publisher: PQube
Before playing SINce Memories: Off the Starry Sky, I’d never heard of Memories: Off, and it turns out that’s perfectly understandable. The series is relatively unknown over here because the games have never been officially brought over until this new release. There’s no fan translations for them either. Quick searches on the internet didn't tell me much about what type of visual novels they were. What I was able to find out was that Memories: Off is a long-running series in Japan, with the first entry releasing in 1999. I'm guessing the rest of them are very much the type of game I described in the first paragraph, but I’m not entirely sure.
With that said, this game is a strange entry in the Memories: Off series. It was supposed to be a soft reboot after the series took a long break, but from what research told me, the developer has walked that back and decided just to continue the series normally for now. Which then leads to the next question if this is an appropriate starting point for the series.
Can you play it without awareness of the previous games? My answer is "Yes but..." There are some cameos and shout-outs from the main series, but it doesn't seem essential to recognize them. This entry also contains spoilers to the previous games. However, I personally didn’t find that a dealbreaker considering I don’t see the earlier games ever being released in English.
Sadly, the history of is far more interesting than the game itself. This is without question going to be a niche visual novel that probably won’t bring in any new fans to the genre.
The story follows university student Junya Mizumoto a year out from his brother's tragic death in a traffic accident. He's living his day to day, interacting with his friends and doing tasks for the family business. However, the appearance of a mysterious young girl helps him remember his brother was working on a secret task right before his death. Dark secrets come to light as he investigates what happened that day. This is a story of grief, love, and loss. There's a common route, and five separate heroine routes over which the tale unfolds.
First off, it’s worth noting that this is a very slowly paced visual novel. The first several hours are all introductions and setting the scene. It’s, at times, a little dull. I love these languid slice-of-life stories, and personally don’t mind sinking my time into it. That said, given the fast pace of the video game world and high turnover of games, I don’t see many people signing on to what is a slow build-up that leads into a decent but not great pay-off.
That is the core problem with SINce Memories: Off the Starry Sky. It’s essentially a B- grade visual novel that in the end is profoundly held back by its glacial pacing. If it’s a B- visual novel, but lasts, say, a few hours, I’m willing to rank it much more favorably. However, if a game is going to demand so much of my time, when there are so many other things to play, the pay-off has to be worth it.
Where it falls apart ultimately is with the main characters. Jun is an okay protagonist, but is annoyingly very meek and passive. The characters which have routes with Jun are all okay characters, but they all range from bland to mildly infuriating. Furthermore, they tend to either mistreat or take advantage of the main protagonist. I ended up feeling like they weren’t good choices for friends or partners. Even more so, I have no interest in investing time to know them and watch them grow, which is very much a problem considering that is the point of a visual novel.
All the good things about this game are kind of irrelevant given the content just isn’t compelling. The game is gorgeous, has fantastic voice acting, a decent translation and a top-notch soundtrack. If only all this had been put toward a better game. All in all, I just cannot recommend this visual novel, which breaks my heart a little. I was really excited about it and wanted to like it. It just fell short of what I was hoping for.
SCORE: 6/10
