Name: Aqua Blue (72.50% in 12 votes)
Type: ADV
Platform: WINDOWS
Company: Giga
Release date: 2002
Reviewed by: Yana
Lately, I've seen a lot of talk on Jp websites about Giga possibly being in financial trouble. After playing this game, I can kinda see why...
Premise: Every year there is a nationwide high school girl contest. The winner will have a chance to make an idol debut backed by the event's sponsor. However this year's contest has a new sponsor and things are slightly different this time around...
Gameplay/System: 1/5
The game system is typical adv. However the amount of interaction even for adv is very small. You pick one of six heroines and then for the rest of the game you only pick choices for the item hunting portion of the 1st two rounds and one for the final battle. You can finish the first play in about two hours and finish the rest of the game in one day's time. There's a skip function but no auto-read function. There's also the standard CG review and event review function although the event only shows the rape scenes. The rating may seem kind of harsh but I don't grade adv/digital novel types very high to begin with and this one is just plain jane with very little in choice making.
Art: 2/5
The character designs are fairly nice however the standing characters art only has variations in the facial expressions and the background art is recycled from Ripple (a previous Giga game). Also since the art is done by several different people, there's a gap between how some of the heroines look in the standing character art and how they look in the event CGs (this is especially noticable for Alisa).
Music: 2/5
Music is standard fare. Nothing special about it other than the fact that some of it is recycled from Ripple as well...
Story: 1/5
There's no plot other than what's going on in the contest. Intro, 1st round, 2nd round, final round, short epilogue, The End. We never do find out wtf is the deal with the sponsor (other than the blackmail/rape videos).
Ecchi: 1/5
Other than the service shots of when your chosen heroine's opponent get beaten, there's also rape scene for that opponent (the "true punishment game" :p) that happens after the official punishment game. However the rape scenes are rather on the soft side and will dissapoint those who look for those types of scenes not to mention the rape scenes really have no place in this game. A couple of the game over CGs suggest more hardcore rape scenes but we never see anything close to that in the actual game. The rape scenes are the same for each character regardless of which heroine you use so the total scenes are only six. IOW, be prepared to do some skipping from your 2nd play on (assuming you still interested in the game :p).
Personal Rating: 1/5
The only reason there's a 1 and not a 0 is because I enjoyed the heroines and their interaction with each other. Otherwise there's no positive at all for this game. Obviously the person in charge of making this game didn't have a clue. He threw in whatever sounds like a good idea and completely fails to follow up on it. The mysterious character hinted at both on Giga's website and the game OP turns out to only be a minor background character and we never do find out why she's hanging around the event grounds to begin with. And there's no plot involving the sponsor other than the rape/blackmail scenes.
Recommendation Rating: 1/5
Read above. The heroines have their very cute quirks and if they look like the type that appeals to you, by all means get it...that is, if you can borrow it from a friend or something. The game is definitley not worth the 5800 yen MSRP and there are plenty of cheaper doujin softs that are better than this.
The only real enjoyment in this game is following the heroine's antics and her interaction with the other characters. If you enjoy that stuff, this might make a half-decent time waster but otherwise, look elsewhere.
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