Full video review: https://youtu.be/G4yuvzEmFVo
A story about finding love to overwrite feelings for the one you lost. UsoNatsu is a nice, short girls love visual novel that has gone oddly unnoticed.
Overview & Length
UsoNatsu is a kinetic novel. There are no choices and your only input is just advancing the lines. It’s also not too long - clocking in at somewhere between 10-15 hours, which honestly is not that bad for the type of story being told here.
Story
The story starts out slow, throwing you into these random slice of life scenes where not much happens. In a lot of visual novels like this, this kind of content can oftentimes become overbearing, but I did not really get that feeling here with UsoNatsu. The slice of life scenes are spread out well, are varied in their delivery, and don’t drag on too long. It’s genuinely fun to get to know these characters and the game does a great job advancing the overall story through these scenes.
The idea is to overwrite painful memories with happy ones, so oftentimes you’ll have these "fun" scenes and the characters may share just a bit of their past or otherwise have some sort of small development so it doesn’t feel like just slice of life filler. It’s a balancing act and UsoNatsu overall does a great job with it.
Pacing
The pacing is great until the last 20% of the game or so. Relationships changed too quickly and the entire love triangle that develops during the middle of the game just becomes cheesy at that point and I can’t say I cared too much for it. This makes the emotional beats that the finale was going for not quite land as hard as the writers probably aimed for. I mean, the ending itself is satisfying enough, it’s just everything immediately preceding it that felt like it could have been spaced out another chapter or two.
Characters
UsnoNatsu is a love drama, but it’s not overly dramatic. There is a love triangle, but it isn’t this super annoying thing. I really liked how the story felt grounded and realistic in a way. The characters actually act like humans and not some mess of anime tropes. The main character in particular, Kaoru Tachibana, has some genuinely interesting monologues that might just be the highlight of the story for me.
She’s grappling with the loss of this relationship she had with her teacher, who herself is probably my second favorite character in the story, while also managing these blossoming feelings for the second lead heroine, Shiori Minagi. Minagi has a really interesting backstory and I enjoyed getting to learn that, but I also can't deny that I felt like she came across as a bit shallow at times.
There’s also the friend character, the one that finds herself in a love triangle with the other two, and really, she was probably the least interesting of the bunch because she hardly had any time to get any real development and felt more so like she was inserted into the story to act as a driving force for what is obviously the main relationship here.
Overall though, I liked the characters. A couple of them may be lacking, but the main heroine is very well written and easily carried the experience when the others were lacking.
Flashbacks
For everything the game just did right spacing out the slice of life scenes and having some actually decent pacing, it kinda shoots itself in the foot with just how much it uses flashback scenes, even for events that happened not that long ago. It’s like yes, I remember that just happened 30 minutes ago or so, I don’t need to be reminded. That part felt like filler.
Art & Music
The art might just be the single best thing about the game. This is a visual novel with characters that have more than one outfit. They quite literally have a new one each time they go out. That kind of details seems small, but considering that most VNs hardly give you two outfits max, it’s nice to see the studio go the extra mile there. That and the models aren’t just some static thing. They are slightly animated and that was a nice touch too.
Backgrounds and the overall color choices and lighting and all of that were solid. It’s a very good looking visual novel and probably one of the best I’ve read in quite some time, at least in that department. The music too though. It’s not quite on the level that I would listen to outside of the game, but it is also not super grating or repetitive and it does its job well.
Settings
Settings-wise, the game has the basics and that’s pretty much it. Skip mode option, speed options, all the different audio sliders, and window options. That said, I do have to give credit to the fact that I think this is the first visual novel I have played that natively supports 4k resolution and even has an framerate option in the settings. The game looks great and runs well at 4k, 120 fps and I am glad that at least some devs are realizing that not all VNs need to be 720p or lower.
Overall
UsoNatsu is a short, yet sweet girls love drama that might just be the best-looking visual novel I have played in years. The art is gorgeous, the story is engaging, and the characters are fairly likable overall. It does have some issues with its finale and a couple of its characters, but I enjoyed my time with it and would recommend it to girls love fans.
A story about finding love to overwrite feelings for the one you lost. UsoNatsu is a nice, short girls love visual novel that has gone oddly unnoticed.
Overview & Length
UsoNatsu is a kinetic novel. There are no choices and your only input is just advancing the lines. It’s also not too long - clocking in at somewhere between 10-15 hours, which honestly is not that bad for the type of story being told here.
Story
The story starts out slow, throwing you into these random slice of life scenes where not much happens. In a lot of visual novels like this, this kind of content can oftentimes become overbearing, but I did not really get that feeling here with UsoNatsu. The slice of life scenes are spread out well, are varied in their delivery, and don’t drag on too long. It’s genuinely fun to get to know these characters and the game does a great job advancing the overall story through these scenes.
The idea is to overwrite painful memories with happy ones, so oftentimes you’ll have these "fun" scenes and the characters may share just a bit of their past or otherwise have some sort of small development so it doesn’t feel like just slice of life filler. It’s a balancing act and UsoNatsu overall does a great job with it.
Pacing
The pacing is great until the last 20% of the game or so. Relationships changed too quickly and the entire love triangle that develops during the middle of the game just becomes cheesy at that point and I can’t say I cared too much for it. This makes the emotional beats that the finale was going for not quite land as hard as the writers probably aimed for. I mean, the ending itself is satisfying enough, it’s just everything immediately preceding it that felt like it could have been spaced out another chapter or two.
Characters
UsnoNatsu is a love drama, but it’s not overly dramatic. There is a love triangle, but it isn’t this super annoying thing. I really liked how the story felt grounded and realistic in a way. The characters actually act like humans and not some mess of anime tropes. The main character in particular, Kaoru Tachibana, has some genuinely interesting monologues that might just be the highlight of the story for me.
She’s grappling with the loss of this relationship she had with her teacher, who herself is probably my second favorite character in the story, while also managing these blossoming feelings for the second lead heroine, Shiori Minagi. Minagi has a really interesting backstory and I enjoyed getting to learn that, but I also can't deny that I felt like she came across as a bit shallow at times.
There’s also the friend character, the one that finds herself in a love triangle with the other two, and really, she was probably the least interesting of the bunch because she hardly had any time to get any real development and felt more so like she was inserted into the story to act as a driving force for what is obviously the main relationship here.
Overall though, I liked the characters. A couple of them may be lacking, but the main heroine is very well written and easily carried the experience when the others were lacking.
Flashbacks
For everything the game just did right spacing out the slice of life scenes and having some actually decent pacing, it kinda shoots itself in the foot with just how much it uses flashback scenes, even for events that happened not that long ago. It’s like yes, I remember that just happened 30 minutes ago or so, I don’t need to be reminded. That part felt like filler.
Art & Music
The art might just be the single best thing about the game. This is a visual novel with characters that have more than one outfit. They quite literally have a new one each time they go out. That kind of details seems small, but considering that most VNs hardly give you two outfits max, it’s nice to see the studio go the extra mile there. That and the models aren’t just some static thing. They are slightly animated and that was a nice touch too.
Backgrounds and the overall color choices and lighting and all of that were solid. It’s a very good looking visual novel and probably one of the best I’ve read in quite some time, at least in that department. The music too though. It’s not quite on the level that I would listen to outside of the game, but it is also not super grating or repetitive and it does its job well.
Settings
Settings-wise, the game has the basics and that’s pretty much it. Skip mode option, speed options, all the different audio sliders, and window options. That said, I do have to give credit to the fact that I think this is the first visual novel I have played that natively supports 4k resolution and even has an framerate option in the settings. The game looks great and runs well at 4k, 120 fps and I am glad that at least some devs are realizing that not all VNs need to be 720p or lower.
Overall
UsoNatsu is a short, yet sweet girls love drama that might just be the best-looking visual novel I have played in years. The art is gorgeous, the story is engaging, and the characters are fairly likable overall. It does have some issues with its finale and a couple of its characters, but I enjoyed my time with it and would recommend it to girls love fans.