LyricaL! Review

Circle: 夢見奏 (Yumemisou) (Doujin)
Game site: りりかる！
Release date: August 14, 2010 (Comiket 78)
Links: DLsite, DiGiket.com, DMM, MelonBooks, Toranoana

Yumemisou’s latest title features a baby-faced boy who joins the light music club in order to become closer to the girl that he loves… except that he’s dressed as a girl! A short fully-voiced sweet story with pretty art and plenty of comedy and ecchi moments.

Opening Theme

For a doujin title, they sure made a great OP and even got Marie to sing it. The upbeat song is great for the band motif and the showcase of pretty graphics was one reason I was drawn to play this game.

Scenario

Uchida Makoto calls out a girl who he fell in love with, Kittaka Ayame, to the school rooftop and confesses his feelings to her. However, she bluntly rejects him and quickly walks away. As he’s lamenting his timidness and inability to convey his love properly to her, another girl shows up and says that she is a witch who will help him by using magic.

Actually, she is his senpai Tomomori Yuumi. She brings him to the gym storage room and gives him a bag. Inside are a wig, ribbons and girl’s seifuku and underwear. She gets him to reluctantly dress up as a girl and brings him to the light music club which Ayame and her are a part of. She introduces him as Mishiba Kotono, the new keyboardist for the club. Will this little bit of ‘magic’ help him get closer to Ayame? What happens if his cover is blown?

Lyrical! is composed of 2 routes (Ayame and Yuumi). You must play through Ayame’s route first before Yuumi’s route is unlocked. The game is pretty short and it’s possible to finish the entire game in a couple of hours. I’ve definitely spent more time writing this post than playing the game. The story was better than most other doujin titles, even though it was simplistic and some H scenes felt unnecessary. The crossdressing theme is also one that Yumemisou is familiar with from their previous title Futaba Channel 2. I also wished that Miyuki had a route of her own instead of only being a subcharacter.

Ayame’s route is the main one and the obstacle is how he can become closer to her (as friends or more) and still maintain that level of friendship after his real gender is revealed. Her difficulty in talking with guys is also a point that the story addresses. The story does a good job in showing how Makoto and Ayame are both feeling as their relationship progresses. I thought that Yuumi’s route could’ve been much better given her backstory. The length of the story limited the development, which caused me to feel like the happy end was a bit hollow since the underlying problem was never fully resolved. I guess that it’s more about the development of their relationship and him becoming more responsible and reliable.

Characters

L-R: Miyuki, Yuumi, Ayame, Kotono

Uchida Makoto / Mishiba Kotono

Makoto is a timid baby-faced guy who can be quite stubborn when he has decided to do something. He has played piano since he was a kid and becomes the keyboardist in the band. Thanks to Yuumi’s ‘magic’, he often appears as Kotono who is kind to everyone and acts very proper. All the girls admire Kotono like an onee-san. Due to his actual identity, Kotono takes great interest in girls’ clothing.

Kittaka Ayame

Ayame is the guitarist and vocalist of the band and the reason why he joined. She is cool and seems strong, but is actually bad at dealing with guys.

Tomomori Yuumi

Yuumi is the playful leader of the band who plays the drums. Always energetic and cheerful. Short in stature, but more than makes up for it elsewhere. She’s interested in both girls and boys, so long as they’re cute.

Yokozeki Miyuki

Miyuki is their kouhai who plays the bass guitar. Admires her ‘onee-sama’. Very observant and can provide helpful advice. However, she also has quite a perverted side.

Personally, I like Miyuki’s character a lot even though she does not have a route. Other sides of Ayame and Yuumi are shown in their respective routes, so I’d say that Ayame probably is my fav out of the girls. But Kotono is really adorable!!

Graphics

Yumemisou’s artwork by Sorimura Youji (そりむらようじ) is always topnotch. It’s not often that you find such great art in doujin titles. I wish that there were more normal CGs though since about half of them are ecchi. Backgrounds are pretty much standard school fare. Character designs are pretty good, even though some of the outfits in the live felt like K-ON knockoffs. I also wished that Yuumi’s chest wasn’t so huge. Each character had a few tachi-e variations. Mirino (みりの) did the SD cut-ins, which are cute, but I wish that they either covered or faded the tachi-e behind it so they didn’t get in the way.

System

The interface is a cheerful pink with stars and the menu buttons on a music score. There are 100 save slots, which I have no idea why you would need that many since there’s only two choices in the game. When you save the game, it stores a screenshot of the current scene, as well the most recent dialogue, so that you can easily tell which scene it is. There’s no quicksave function, but it’s not really needed.

Standard config settings where you can choose to mute individual voices if you want. The default window size is 1024 x 768 and the game looks nice in full screen. Backlog is easy to navigate with the past 4 dialogues shown and ability to replay voices.

Once you complete Ayame’s route, the CG gallery and Memorial (scene replay) will become available from the title screen. The OP and both EDs are also replayable. There’s no music mode.

Sound

There’s about a dozen BGMs by Sprite wing Team Black History and SENTIVE with decent variety. No complaints here. The game is fully voiced, including the protagonist Makoto. Character voices were done well considering the seiyuus are amateurs. I especially liked Miyuki (“Hai desu~”) and Kotono, who also voiced Makoto. Yuumi’s voice was a little high, but I liked that it was distinctive. Since this is a band eroge, I wish they had included a song for the live instead of using the OP song, “Treasure”. The ED lyrics that Kotono wrote were well thought out and I quite enjoyed the tune.

H Scenes

There are 4 CGs each for Ayame and Yuumi, and a Miyuki/Yuumi yuri extra. Artwork is high quality and zoom is used during the scenes. They seem to favour the doggy-style and 69 positions. Yuumi in particular is very ecchi, taking the initiative with both boys and girls. She practically raped him the first time he dressed up as Kotono since he was too cute and she couldn’t hold back. The H scene in the park washroom was also quite risque. Ayame’s seiyuu could’ve done a better job voicing these parts.

Overall

All of Micchi’s reviews will be rated by assigning scores out of 10 to each of the following categories: Scenario, characters, graphics, system, sound, and H scenes. Half marks may be given. The scoring is as follows:

• 10 – Absolutely satisfied
• 9 – Among the best, only minor improvements
• 8 – Good overall
• 7 – Average, a mix of good and bad
• 6 – Below average, slightly disappointing
• <5 – Very disappointed

The overall score is a weighted sum (3x Scenario + 2x Characters + 2x Graphics + 1x System + 1x Sound + 1x H scenes) for a total out of 100.

• Scenario: 7
• Characters: 8
• Graphics: 9
• System: 8
• Sound: 8
• H Scenes: 7
• Overall: 78

Great artwork and decent story from a doujin circle. Even with the heavily borrowed K-ON! band theme and crossdressing gimmick, LyricaL! is a good pick-up if you want a quick but enjoyable read.