Video Game Review: Aokana: Four Rhythms Across the Blue

Aokana: Four Rhythms Across the Blue

PQube

Visual Novel

Nintendo Switch

I thought I had heard the name ‘Aokana’ before, and after a little research confirmed the reason – whilst this is the game’s first venture onto the Nintendo Switch console, it was previously released on PC back in 2014 and has even received an anime adaptation from Gonzo (and can be seen on Crunchyroll now). The company who created the visual novel (Sprite), only created one other visual novel before closing and so it looks like this title was eventually revived by Pqube for a Steam, Nintendo Switch, and PS4 release. The series has also had a highly successful Kickstarter campaign to release physical versions of the game.

So, what is Aokana about? It’s a drama series about a group of high school students in a club – a club for a sport called Flying Circus. The members play the sport in the air with specially equipped ‘Grav Shoes’ which enable them to fly. The main protagonist who you play as is a former player of this sport, Masaya Hinata, who reluctantly returns to the sport – as a coach rather than a player. There he teaches the club’s three girls Asuka, Misaki, Mashiro, and the current club president (the only other male in the club) how best to take to the skies and win.

The visual novel gets off to a slow start with the common route before locking onto any one of the individual girl’s routes (four in total, with a fourth being for a freshman from another school who lives next door to Masaya) after the first ten hours or so. Compared to many other visual novels, the romance in this common route is very much secondary to that of the character interactions, the daily life of the characters, and of course, the sport of Flying Circus which takes centre stage. The matches themselves are exciting to watch unfold and surprisingly mostly described in great detail. It’s almost like you’re watching an anime, and indeed throughout the game itself, it very much comes across this way. Each arc in the game is split into episodes (12 in total). with each episode ending in a preview of the next very much like how an anime episode typically ends.

Visually, this game is probably one of the best looking visual novels I’ve seen so far on the Nintendo Switch – the opening video and general visuals are bright, colourful, and sharp. The character designs themselves are memorable and something worth noting is that even the backgrounds of static scenes have a surprising amount of life to them, featuring various regular people going about their daily lives. It shows an amazing amount of thought put in. The Flying Circus scenes are where the game shines, it’s music and visuals really making you feel like you’re part of the action – I often struggle to follow action scenes like sports matches in novels and manga with their static images but I didn’t have a problem with this game.

Weirdly enough for me at least, it was with the main cast that I struggled. It’s worth noting that each route in the game is about twenty hours long and for me, I found that this made getting to know the characters something of a slow burn. For me, I personally found the main cast fairly bland at the beginning and found the side characters more interesting. The further into the game you get, the more I began to understand them and like them more but it definitely took a bit of effort to do so. Asuka, the pink-haired prodigy and the new kid to town comes across as the default route option and she was the one who I went with for my playthrough – I found her to be easily the most likable with her kooky and optimistic attitude and love for fun. Misaki is something of a fan favourite I believe and whilst I initially liked her a lot, I quickly began to find her rather frustrating. Mashiro I liked quite a lot after her first arc but ultimately she feels to be mostly there for comic relief. Rika, I also found rather frustrating and I never really found her too interesting either though that might perhaps change in her actual route. Another thing I wasn’t so keen on was the game’s insistence on sexual comedy – often this didn’t really fit the tone of the stone and just felt out of place.

For a visual novel, this game often comes across more of a kinetic novel with surprisingly few choices scattered throughout the route. I actually didn’t mind this though as it felt like the story itself was strong enough that it didn’t need to split off into different directions as much. Overall though this game was a fun ride and one which excelled in the areas of showcasing the sport of Flying Circus and the slow development of its main cast.