Highway Blossoms

Very sweet game with some really great music and characters

If you let the (pretty excellent) voice acted lines play, this game'll take you 6-7 hours to see the story through, DLC not included. I really enjoyed my time with the main story, pecking away at this visual novel over a course of weeks, savoring it like I would good 'regular' novel. I'm definitely looking forward to starting the DLC next, and I liked the soundtrack enough that I actually *just* purchased a few minutes before writing this review -- juuust having completed the main game tonight. That aside, I'm really appreciating that the main characters are all college aged in this (kinda rare in this genre, in my experience), and their troubles and concerns feel well thought out.

I paid about 3 dollars and it was more than a good price. As a short visual novel, and Western-made at that, it's really good. Keep in mind that the game focuses on YURI (lesbian affair), though this version, of course, lacks any adult content. For that you have got to get it elsewhere. Story-wise it's fine, a romp through some American sites, all that desert gets you thirsty but eh. I wish more human beings like Marina existed but all I get are Ambers... that's what happens when you mix 2D with 3D. Marina is practically a saint...

I own this as a DRM-free download from another bundle. First things first: There is no "game" here. Not in a sense that it would allow you to make any decision or change what is going on. It is an anime style novel, with repetitive stills. There is no interaction other than hitting space bar to see the next line of text either. The dialog is voiced, the texts in between are not. The writing is on the weak side. I found myself skipping a lot of the text and eventually giving up--which is not what I normally do--as the story drudged on and on and on without any sense for proper pacing, build up of tension, or conflict. The characters are... what you might call "broken goods", with one of the two protagonists being on the naive side. Annoying even? One positive thing to say about it: The tiny bit of shy, innocent romance build up between the two protagonists has its moments that manage to shine. Sometimes awkward, often weird... and in rare moments, cute. The story itself pretends to focus on a treasure hunt, but only uses the latter as an excuse to introduce its readers to a string of American sights, from national parks to Las Vegas, presenting information and how they are worth a visit--with the romantic plot trying to be the salt in the fact-stew. The facts are interesting, if you know absolutely nothing about those places, but at times also make you wish that if "somebody", in secret, wanted to write a travel guide, then maybe they should have just done that. Either way, if facts about national parks in Nevada etc are your thing, and you like them presented with a tat of romance, then maybe give this a shot. Unfortunately though, the book, while trying to be all at once, remains stuck in the middle; Being neither a good treasure hunt adventure, nor a good guidebook, and unfortunately not often enough a good romance.

I thought I would like this visual novel. I spent some time in an RV with my grandpa in Arizona, and while he wasn't a hippie he was closer than anyone else in my family until me. Unfortunately, AlienWorks messed up pretty much everything, although as usual with RenPy games it seems to technically work as intended. The outline of the story seems to be a fairly stereotypical romantic comedy; a chance encounter, an overly dramatic situation near the end, and various obnoxious aspects of the story that I guess were intended to be amusing. There are additional aspects of the ending that I didn't like, although I can't think of a way to describe them without spoilers. In general, I didn't like the story or any of the characters. Almost nothing about the story is believable and not in a way that you could suspend disbelief about a few things and then enjoy the rest of the story. The voice acting is generally good but also has a few issues. The music is another very disappointing aspect. The story fundamentally involves music but the music supplied is completely generic and they don't even put that to as good of use as they could (the music doesn't really flow with the story most of the time). Most games suffer from this same problem but most don't rub your face in it, reminding you over and over how much better the story could be if it had some good music to go with it. The visual aspect is also fairly minimal. In several cases there are black screens when it would have been nice to show something and they didn't have all that many scene changes. None of the images are all that memorable. Overall I regret buying this visual novel and will avoid AlienWorks and Sekai Project in the future.