NSFW: [Escude] Akatoki! -Yume Koso Masare Koi no Mahou- Visual Novel Semi-Review

This visual novel I played recently, was called Akatoki! -Yume Koso Masare Koi no Mahou- by Escude. Or in the japanese, あかときっ！-夢こそまされ恋の魔砲. Unlike the previous reviews, I won't be giving a score because I could not completely absorb all the information given. Why? I played it in Japanese. For those who wants to hear my thoughts on the game and along with a brief introduction to the game, click after the link.

First the box art or the title page.. or atleast this is the first impression one would get from this visual novel.

Front Cover

I personally like the art. Probably one of the main reasons why made me play. Just like animes, if I don't like the art, it doesn't matter how good the story is. Because I can't make my eyes stare at something I don't like for long periods of time (hours). Call that prejudice if you want. But all reviews are going to be like that to some degree.

This game isn't just a normal adventure visual novel because all you do is not simply read dialogues and pick whichever choice you think gets you to the ending you desire. There is a little bit of more involved combat which I will mention in great detail later.

The characters... there are alot of them. Why? Because theres the good guys and the bad guys. I got the pictures off the getchu (NSFW) site, they were missing a few pictures, but thats fine. Most of the important people are included.

Main character, shujinkou in japanese. His name is Yano Mayuto. Uses composite (no element) magic.

First of your 2 childhood friends, Kamishiro Yuuji. Uses light magic.

Second of the 2 childhood friends, Tachibana Yumi. Uses darkness magic.

First of the 5 heroine which has a pursuit-able route. Her name is Agatsu Nayu. She is a shy girl who is easily blushes and fluster easily. Very cute. Her magic elemental is fire.

Second of the 5 heroines. Name is Mashiro Sayaka. She is the typical perfect class president. Highly capable and leader material. Infact, she is the leader for the group. She uses earth magic.

Third of the 5 heroines. Shes the typical tsundere, named Amata Maki. I start to think that whenever a girl is blonde and has twintails in an anime or visual novel, they are automatically tsundere. Lol... She uses sound magic... what? I might have interpreted it wrong, from the elemental circle (weakness and strengths), her magic is yellow. So maybe lightning or wind...?

Fourth heroine. A bit strange on how to describe this one, her name is Kurushima Ririi. Her route was actually the one I played. Not very often theres someone with heterchromia. But her personality is similar to that of a kid, even though she strongly disagrees. She is pretty rough around the edges if you really get to know her. But she hides that side by putting on an act around people. An act that resembles a typical ojou-sama. But she doesn't show off like one. Thank goodness... She is a ice magic user.

Fifth and final heroine. She is Marukawa Rinko. Shes... maso. Yeah... Notice the collar? You put that on her. I don't know much else about her. Anyway, darkness is her elemental attribute.

This little thing is cool. Its basically a generic enemy. However he somehow defected to your side. I don't know the details because I couldn't read japanese. Hes number 773 of the mass produced minions. So hes named Nanami by you and your two childhood friends. (7 = nana, so na for short, and 3 = mitsu, so mi for short. Combining 773 gives na na mi)

Generic bad guy. Theres black ones and white ones. Theres also more evil looking bad guys like wolves and birds which I don't have pictures of. Theres also evil marionettes.

The guardian for our group of 6 people. Her name is Ayasaki Nagare and acts as our intelligence personnel. She is often ridiculed by other people and acts as comedic relief.

The master of the enemy which assaults the main character's. I did not understand the reason. Perhaps it was mentioned but I must have missed it. All I know was they want to take over the world. And then that was how it all began, with massive numbers of those cute looking knights. Her name is Kukuriku.

Maid of Kukuriku. I don't know her background, but she serves Kukuriku basically whatever she needs, she does. Her name is Chikka.

The most annoying bad guy in my opinion. Hes a clown, so he speaks in a funny fashion. He is pretty involved in the story so you won't be getting rid of him easily. He calls himself Piero. He is supposed to be one of the three main bad guys who works under Kukuriku.

He is the third of the strong bosses of Kukuriku. His name is G-Fender. There is a second boss who has a clock for head but his picture was not on getchu. So I'll leave him out. He looks cute. Doesn't he? Looks like lego too. Haha. I love lego.

Next, I'll mention the battle system which drawn me to the game. Every now and then, you'll reach an event where you either meet a boss or minions. Those are all pre-written in the program so you will do it every time you reach those triggers. The battles takes place in a turn-based fashion. Your characters versus whatever the enemy has.

Each character has the following actions,
1. Attack (Consumes Mana) single target
- There are 3 attacks per person, weak, medium, strong
- Each attack has their amount of knockback in the ordering or turns
- So you can make someone never have a turn
2. Change Formations
- Attacker gains attack and speed, but most probable to attack
- Wingman gets nothing and loses nothing
- Defender gets more defence at a cost of attack
3. Rest (Regenerate Mana)
4. Use spell (Different per person) on all characters
- Mayuto boosts attack
- Nayu boosts speed
- Maki boosts shield
- Ririi dispells negative effects
- Sayaka heals
- Rinko puts enemies to sleep with a certain percentage
5. Uses special (Requires Heatgage at 100%) Note: Heatgage probably means Heat Gauge. Oh well.
- Its an attack that hits all enemies
- Becareful because some enemies have it too

There are also chain attacks and append attacks which helps add damage to your comboes.

Oh yes, the elemental wheel.
Water -> Fire -> Nature -> Earth -> Wind/Lightning/Sound(?) -> Water
and
Darkness <-> Light

So basically strategically outsmart your enemy using all the information given. Sounds fun! And alot like other rpg games.

The objectives are of course, to KO all the enemies before you do. At the end of every battle, you are given stars, those stars are used to improve the stats of your characters. If a character is KO'ed in battle, then at the end of that battle, that character gets 1 less star than what you would get if he had survived. So try to keep everyone alive.

Oh... since one more thing. Have you ever heard of Queensblade Spiral Chaos? This game is similar. Your character has one unique feature different from all the other games I've played.
Look below.

You start out like this.

As battle goes on...

That happens...

Keep going and...

Ta da! Btw, it doesn't stop there. You can imagine.

It applies to pretty much all of the heroines and some of the enemies.

Its considered a KO if you become exposed. Don't worry though, that is hardly possible in the two play throughs I've done. You ALWAYS get HP KO'ed before that happens. Or maybe I'm playing it wrong... Hahaha...

I'll mention what I thought of the story, atleast what I found from it. The stories were not as deep as the previous I played. But nevertheless it was quite enjoyable. For one, I felt like my japanese was on an adequate level to follow what was going on. The story didn't have too many twists and was straight forward. Ririi's arc left more on an impression on me than Nayu's arc. But that might be different from person to person. I might also be missing fine details due me not being fluent in japanese. That also said, because of that, I am unqualified to give a proper review. But I would say, I enjoyed it. The stories.

Synopsis:
An evil group of people calling themselves Kurayami attacked the world in an attempt to take over. Their army consist of cute looking things such as those knights which rendered conventional military confused and inefficient. That was when magic came into existence. Main character and your two childhood friends went out to be magicians to combat this threat. You go to the school to learn and that is where you become familiar and eventually pursue one of the 5 main heroines of this game. The game involves a generic arc that covers about 50% of the game. After which depending on the choices you've made, you follow the character specific arc for 5 alternate endings.

Lastly, the CG and music wasn't that great for me. There weren't many CGs at all. But now that I think about it, the length was not that long either. There were 2 H-events for each character except Rinko. Several tracks in the music consisted of something similar to what we hear in Canada and America. It just sounded different. I'm not used to hearing fluent english words in a japanese game. Sorry.

Well, that concludes what I had to say. Its been so long since I actually posted something relevant to Japan. So I thought I'd write this up since it was something I played. Proud of it? Kinda yeah. One step closer to playing raw visual novels and watching raw anime. Because you know, every little step helps!

Game Opening Video:

Official Website: Here.