Name: For Season (70.00% in 1 votes)
Type: STG
Platform: WINDOWS
Company: TGL - Japanese
Release date: 1998
Reviewed by: Lamuness
Giga is a subbranch of TGL responsible for Hgames. They have created really nice games in the past such as Brigandy, Steam Hearts, Harlem Blade and the V.G. Series. Their latest release, For Season, is their first game in win9x platform.
The story is pretty simple. You are hired as a family tutor, and you pick three girls of your choice (from five) as your students. In six months time (July to January), you are to assist these three girls in getting into University. To do so you have to plan what subjects each girl should study each week.
The game has 2 parts, one the bring-up simulation part (you being a tutor), and two the AVG part, where you roam around the town and have events happen. The tutor part has very nice game designs. Each girl has different attributes in English, Japanese, and Math, as well as other stats such as notetaking skills. You have to boost these stats by giving them books, study guides etc to study from. Basically each girl has a study table and you can "fill" the desk with books, study items and personal items. These personal items vary from girl to girl, and you can accumulate MBR points each day from each item (each item has diff MBR pt gain), and if you have enough MBR pts, you can "exchange" them with various study items ranging from pencil sharpeners to highlighters to dictionaries to desktop computers. These study items will further boost the girl's academic stats. In addition, you can put posters and other things on walls. At the beginning of each week you have to plan what to "place" on the 3 girls' desks, and during the week they will study, fall asleep, daydream etc, depending on how you do your planning.
As each of the girls know you more, events start to happen such as taking coffee breaks, going out for a date during weekends, and this is where the AVG part comes in. During Sundays and holidays you are given 2 opportunities to roam around the town and you may be able to encounter people and events. Sometimes you go out for trips and you have to make choices of responses when people pose you with questions, just like a standard AVG. Although there is textskip function in the game, I highly recommend that you DO NOT use it unless you know what you are doing, because even the smallest and most minor conversations can hold important data, such as time and place for dates.
The visuals are done pretty nicely. The CGs are pretty nice, and there are a lot of little moving animations everywhere on the screen which makes the game more vivid than most standard AVG games. My only small complaint is that is the game is done in a Hi-color mode it will be much better. The music and sound effects are done nicely too, but if voices are added it will better (hey, they have voices in Advanced V.G so why don't they do it in For Season as well?). The replay value is high because you can choose different girls to teach at the beginning, and you can only have one ending with one girl. This means you have to play the game at least 5 times to completely finish the game, but don't forget your sister too, so make that 6 times.
Overall, being Giga's first win9x platform game, For Season is a pretty nice game. Although there are a few small areas needed for improvement, the game excels in game design, visual effects and replay value which makes the game fun to play.
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