REVIEW | The Dynamic Chord Series Debuts with “reve parfait”

Genre: Visual Novel, Otome

Platform: PC

Release Date: January 29, 2016

Disclaimer: This is a review of the Append Disc, which contains extra content and a new route.

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Dynamic Chord feat. [reve parfait] is the first game in the Dynamic Chord series, published by Honeybee Black. Since Honeybee are the current owners of my soul, I’ll give them a proper introduction before beginning my review.

One fateful day, Honeybee –the company responsible for publishing the well-known Starry Sky series– decided to announce the creation of Honeybee Black. Honeybee Black is a variant of its main brand, meant to focus on publishing otome games with more mature themes. It seems Honeybee wanted to appeal to a wider audience, but decided to branch out so as to not affect the main company’s reputation for fluffier games.

Just like Honeybee has its characteristic Starry Sky, Honeybee Black developed its own series of sorts in the form of Dynamic Chord. In the Honeybee universe, Dynamic Chord is a music company that debuts famous music bands such as reve parfait, Liar-S, KYOHSO, and apple-polisher. Hence, there are four games, each starring the members of one of the bands as its main cast.

Feat. [reve parfait] has four romanceable guys: Kashii Reon, Momose Tsumugi, Tsukinohara Kuon, and Kashii Aki. The story’s protagonist is Atano Rio, a shy and studious girl living with her mother. Rio finds out that her friends are forming a band and becomes their temporary manager until their official debut. Since it’s Honeybee we’re talking about here, she’s childhood friends with 3 out of 4 of the dudes. Will their obsession with the childhood friend trope continue in Honeybee Black? I’ve already played Blackish House and it’s still prominent there, so it probably will. I high key dig it anyway.

Feat. reve parfait’s story is rather simple but each member’s personal struggle is interesting. What I first noticed was that the overarching plot is filled with high school clichés, however once you enter a route the band concept is thankfully left behind for the most part and the guy’s backstory becomes the focus. Another good aspect is that there’s not just drama in the narrative; the writers made sure to add fluff and relationship development to improve the chemistry between the protagonist and her crush.

Frankly, the “popular guy” trope is way too overplayed and it gets old pretty fast. In view of the fact that all of the guys are popular and constantly date random women just for… entertainment, as soon as they settle down with Rio all hell breaks loose. There’s always crazy jealous girls trying to get her to break up with the boys because “they’re too good for her”. Did this really have to be brought up in every single route? I was only safe from this tiring plot device in Aki’s route. Ever since I picked up the game I’ve been wondering why every cast member is popular; usually only one or two of them are as the writers like to play around with the different character tropes.

[spoiler=”Route summaries”]

During the common route, the relationship between the characters is revealed to be as pictured above. From the very beginning of the game it’s kind of obvious the writers desperately want you to like Reon – the entire common route focuses on him.

In the reve parfait band, Reon is the vocalist, Tsumugi is the bassist, Kuon is the guitarist, and Aki is the drummer.

As I previously mentioned, all of the boys are super popular, however Aki doesn’t have as many rabid fangirls as the other three for the reason that he always turns everyone down instead of getting their hopes up by dating them. Reon and Tsumugi like going out with women for pleasure/sex, and Kuon accepts everyone’s confessions simply because he can’t be bothered to console them after rejection.

As the common route ends, reve parfait gets to perform live in front of an agent of Dynamic Chord, which is an incredibly successful music company. The agent tells them that their performance as a band is good overall, yet he isn’t completely convinced: they need to prove themselves with a new song during a Christmas live show.

In the common route we also meet Narumi, who is Rio’s childhood friend and the vocalist of a band named apple-polisher. This dude (don’t get me wrong, he is super precious) is only relevant in Reon’s route since Honeybee digs those sweet love triangles.

The beginning of Reon’s route shows Rio and Reon growing close again; they even apologize to each other because of their breakup when they were younger. At some point Rio tells Reon that she’ll stop going to his house for the reason that he had a girlfriend and she would feel upset if she knew he was with another woman (Rio). Of course, Reon breaks up with his unimportant girlfriend to prevent making Rio uncomfortable.

The route progresses and Rio keeps being picked on by the other girls for not being worthy of Reon with her plain appearance. She decides that she wants to improve her looks to impress Reon, hence her friends give her a makeover. This makeover happens in every route anyway – Rio changes her glasses for contacts and learns to apply makeup.

Reon decides to be a petty asshole, therefore he continuously calls Rio ugly post-makeover and ignores her altogether. Rio can’t find the right time to speak to him until he suddenly stops attending school. Aki convinces her to take care of Reon, who’s locked himself up in his apartment because he can’t come up with a new song for the Christmas live.

Apparently in the reve parfait universe it’s fine for Reon to keep skipping school, so Rio lets him be and makes sure to go to his flat every day to cook food for him and basically keep him alive. During this bonding experience, Reon apologizes to Rio for acting like a jerk – he explains that since he’s always seen Rio as cute, he felt annoyed at Rio becoming prettier, as it meant other people would suddenly start paying attention to her too.

Throughout the entirety of the route, Rio’s contact with Narumi is frequent and she really enjoys the time they spend together. Narumi eventually confesses to Rio, and although she clarifies that she only likes Reon, the latter – who had been watching this scene unfold from afar – gets triggered over Narumi confessing and swoops in to take her away.

It’s not a Honeybee game without at least a supremely stupid scene: one day Reon is annoyed at himself because no matter how much time passes, he’s unable to come up with a new song. He starts punching a wall until making his knuckles bleed, which in turn makes Rio try to hold him back to stop him from hurting himself. Somehow, this incites Reon to pin her against his bed and start trying to rape her to convince her of leaving him alone… Okay then.

Of course, at some point they had to come up with a dumb reason for dub-con scenes. Next.

At a later point in time, Rio runs into Reon’s ex-girlfriend when she tries to enter his house. His ex-girlfriend tells her that they made up and implies that they had sex, so Rio runs off crying. Reon comes out of the bath subsequent to this and kicks his ex-girlfriend out of his apartment for lying just to stir up drama – turns out Reon had only let her in because she faked being stalked.

Reon runs after Rio and explains himself, then they end up confessing and finally start dating. The Christmas live is successful since Reon’s love for Rio inspired him to come up with a new song, and they share their first kiss in years. They both are drama queens about it owing to the fact that the outcome of their previous kiss apparently traumatized them, however it’s a success and they live happily ever after.

Reon’s Encore route (the Encores are basically a long epilogue for every character) contains some cute scenarios like Saint Valentine’s Day and Rio finally giving Reon the V. Even though Reon used to be a fuckboy, he made sure to wait until Rio was ready to have sex. I guess this was pretty cute, yet I find it odd that throughout the entire game the characters act like men are brainless beasts that can’t control their dick.

Tsumugi’s route is arguably the one with the most fanservice. Reon’s route was full of fluffy moments since he and Rio were heads over heels for each other from day one, but Tsumugi’s is full of skinship.

The reason Tsumugi was convinced to join reve parfait in the first place was a kiss he stole from Rio during the common route. She caught his attention from the beginning because she was very different from all the other girls he had met.

The route starts off once the reve parfait members call Tsumugi out for never taking rehearsals seriously, hence an arrangement was made that involved Rio going to his house every other day to supervise his bass practice. They grow close over time and Tsumugi genuinely enjoys talking to Rio, as he had never been able to converse freely with the women around him –it was all about the sex, basically–.

Tsumugi lives with a bright and lively family – his sister-in-law, Yuri, and his nephew, Takuto. Tsumugi’s older brother died in a car crash years back and the bass he left behind is the one Tsumugi always plays.

Yuri and Takuto are extremely friendly to Rio, and their relationship was endearing to see. Even before Rio and Tsumugi officially start dating, she’s accepted as a part of the family and Rio herself admits that she looks forward to meeting Yuri and Takuto every day.

One day Tsumugi runs into his ex-best friend and gets super triggered. Subsequent to this encounter he stops attending rehearsals and starts playing around with women again. Although they’re getting avoided, the reve parfait members eventually find him on the streets, hanging out with one of his previous bands.

Tsumugi attempts to quit reve parfait right then, nonetheless Kuon refuses to accept his official withdrawal and tells him the group will be waiting for him to come back. This pisses off Tsumugi and he attempts to leave – attempts since Rio follows and forces him to talk to her anyway.

Rio and Tsumugi go to his house, where he confesses that he’s scared of trusting people again because of what had previously happened with his best friend.

Tsumugi and his friend were in a band together, and his friend had a girlfriend. The girlfriend tried to convince Tsumugi of hooking up with her, but as Tsumugi is a good bro he refused and told his friend about what happened. Unfortunately, his friend didn’t trust him and turned the rest of the band against him. Tsumugi was hurt deeply by this betrayal and began his carefree life, joining and quitting bands carelessly. This is also why he had no friends before reve parfait showed up.

Rio comforts Tsumugi and promises that she and the reve parfait members will never betray him. Tsumugi embraces her and asks her for her virginity because he can’t believe her otherwise. Rio agrees and they have sex.

My dude is terrible dealing with a decent woman’s feelings, therefore he feels guilty about it and apologizes right after. An apology is obviously not what Rio wanted to hear, so she gets upset and leaves.

Tsumugi is dumb as hell so even after this he still doesn’t go back to reve parfait. Rio ends up burning a CD with all of the member’s wishes for him to join them again, and she leaves it in Tsumugi’s house for him to listen to. The CD incites him to go back to the band but he still doesn’t talk to Rio because his brain is just decoration.

One fateful day Rio gets a cold and skips school to rest at home. Once she wakes up from a nap, she sees Tsumugi sitting next to her bed, taking care of her. She questions why he’s there and he admits that although he didn’t want to go (for he still feels guilty), Reon punched the shit out of him and forced him to. Quick note: Reon is Rio’s official wingman in the routes that aren’t his own and it’s incredibly adorable. He loves her, however he just wants her to be happy.

Tsumugi pins Rio to her bed and intertwines their hands together and stuff. He confesses his love for her properly and apologizes for saying sorry instead of confessing after they had sex. Rio feels very relieved and wants to voice her feelings too but since she’s sick and weak she can’t muster up the right words, hence she starts crying. Tsumugi understands that they’re tears of relief and they kiss.

There’s a cute scenario set after the good ending in which she stays over at Tsumugi’s. He felt lonely so he managed to convince Rio to sleep with him, although he promises to not do anything +18. The cuddling was adorable, I give it a 9/10.

The Encore in this route was actually important development – the anniversary of his older brother’s death is near so Tsumugi gets extra clingy and starts getting depressed. He admits that he’s never visited his brother’s grave for the reason that he’s too scared to face him. Rio convinces him of going to his grave together, and extreme cuteness ensues when Tsumugi introduces Rio as his girlfriend.

The Encore was especially fluffy as Tsumugi and Rio kept talking about eventually having a family of their own. They were set on staying together forever. It was tooth-rotting fluff but I loved every second of it.

Kuon’s route has a lot of drama in it, nonetheless somehow even then Kuon doesn’t manage to show an ounce of personality in it.

Just like in every other route, Rio wants to become prettier to stop people from badmouthing her when she’s around reve parfait, so Kuon volunteers to give her a makeover. He also shares that he knows about makeup because he often watched his ex-girlfriend apply it.

From Kuon’s point of view it’s shown that Sana, his ex-girlfriend, still stayed in contact with him and was even allowed into his house often. Although it’s never explicitly stated, it can be assumed that they still engaged in sexy times with each other.

A turning point in the route appears when Aki begins overworking himself to come up with lyrics for the Christmas live’s song. Kuon and Rio take him to an amusement park so that he can enjoy himself and relax. Despite their best attempts to cheer Aki up, he looks gloomy throughout the day.

Once they’re on their way home Aki admits that he’s unable to write lyrics because his parents’ divorce made him lose faith in love. Aki also says he’s in love with someone he shouldn’t have fallen in love with, and who will surely hate him thanks to it (he implied that him having a crush on that person was something morally incorrect). Although he never explicitly states it’s Kuon he’s in love with, during the entirety of the route he made pained faces whenever Rio was with Kuon, and he was gloomy in the amusement park as he noticed how their relationship was developing into something more.

Kuon tells him if it’s someone Aki likes they’ll surely not be mad at him for it, and he’s allowed to fall in love with anyone. Rio and Kuon also remind him that love comes in many forms, and that what he feels for reve parfait counts as love. This pep talk inspires Aki and he seems to have accepted Kuon’s relationship with Rio in later scenes.

Rio eventually finds out about the backstory between Sana, Kuon and Aki – Kuon dated Sana but she cheated on him, which made him experience a fit of rage that almost led him to kill the guy Sana had slept with. Aki stopped him and convinced him to break up with Sana, which made Kuon feel extremely grateful to his best friend from then on.

The relationship between Kuon and Sana is extremely toxic: Sana is a crazy, manipulative bitch that wants Kuon all to herself and always guilt trips him into getting back together whenever he tries to break up with her. Even if Aki had convinced Kuon to let her go, Sana continuously lured him back into their toxic relationship, as she showed up with bandages covering her forearms and blamed him for her twisted personality.

Days after the Aki drama, Aki finds out that Kuon is in contact with Sana, thus the day after he punches him and walks to school without him. Kuon decides to skip school and goes to the beach to clear his mind – Rio follows him, of course.

Rio confesses to Kuon at the beach and they kiss, then he promises to finally put an end to any sort of contact with Sana since it’s unfair to Rio.

After Kuon officially calls it quits with Sana there’s another confrontation in front of the school’s gates because Sana is a crazy bitch who can’t seem to let go. I only feel the need to mention this for the reason that Aki went rogue as soon as Sana tried to hurt Rio.

Even though the route itself is terribly boring, Aki is AMAZING in it. Unfortunately Kuon comes to the rescue before Aki can truly snap at Sana.

In the ending, Rio panics because Kuon hasn’t had sex with her even though they have dated for a long time and he was a fuckboy before. Her friends motivate her to jump him, however as she does a pitiful attempt to engage in any kind of physical intimacy, Kuon explains that he will wait until she’s ready – apparently Rio still gets embarrassed over simple skinship, such as kissing.

A scenario post-end shows them taking refuge from the rain in Kuon’s house. Kuon gets horny after seeing Rio sleeping and looking defenseless, so he starts an intense make out session with her. Rio wakes up and gets horny too, hence they end up fucking.

Finally, concerning Aki’s route… he is literally the most adorable cinnamon roll. Aki is the mom of the group who looks out for everyone but himself. Since he’s so hard-working yet doesn’t take care of himself, Rio develops a thing for making him crouch slightly so that she can pet his head to praise him; this habit is honestly the cutest thing ever.

Aki also loves his younger brother to bits and wants him to find happiness with Rio (taking into account that Reon has liked her for a long time).

The drama starts when Aki skips school and stops showing up for rehearsals. Everyone in reve parfait is worried, thus Reon gives Rio the keys to Aki’s house. Rio checks on him and finds out that he was overworking himself trying to come up with lyrics for the band’s new song. She gives him a pep talk, telling him to rely on her more, and then they head to the rehearsals together.

Later on, Aki overworks himself again, so Rio borrows Reon’s keys and makes sure Aki doesn’t starve himself to death or something. She stays over at night to make sure that Aki actually sleeps properly. Thanks to Aki’s stubborness she sleeps on the bed and he sleeps on a futon next to it.

Aki has a nightmare in the middle of the night, which causes Rio to wake up and incites her to hold his hand. After Rio falls asleep again, we find out that Aki woke up when Rio did, but he pretended to be asleep so that she would hold his hand.

This is the only route that continues subsequent to the Christmas live. Reon confesses to Rio after the live, yet she rejects him because she likes Aki. Unfortunately, Aki witnessed Reon confessing and just walked away, assuming that Rio would reciprocate his feelings without a doubt.

Reon keeps shipping Aki and Rio, even going as far as basically becoming her wingman. I just suffered at the misunderstanding that was happening – Reon kept approaching Rio with good intentions to help her get closer to Aki; on the other hand Aki tried to keep his distance out of respect for Reon’s “relationship” with Rio. You idiot they’re trying to set her up with you why are you eternally selfless like this. 

Rio eventually realizes what Aki is thinking and clarifies that she rejected Reon because she likes someone else. Aki’s response of course is along the lines of omg you like someone else???

Someone save him.

One day Rio is out with her friends and they see Aki meeting his mother. Rio worries, for she knows Aki’s relationship with his mother isn’t good – ever since his parents divorced, he stayed with his father while his mother moved away with Reon. His mother was extremely severe with Aki, and Rio recalled witnessing how cruel she could be to him in the aftermath of a piano recital: she scolded him severely and called him a failure for freezing up in the middle of his performance.

Rio approaches him as he parts from his mother and they go to his house together. She admits that she saw him talking to his mother and would like to know what they were discussing. Aki attempts to dodge the subject but since Rio is tired of him keeping secrets all the time she confesses that she likes him and that’s why she wants to support him whenever he’s experiencing hardships. Although he tries to say that it’s better for them to remain friends, she tries to insist that her feelings are genuine and she wants to hear what he thinks.

Rio’s confession and stubbornness prompts Aki to have a breakdown. He screams at her desperately and begs her to give up on liking him because he’s not worthy of love. Aki also describes his feelings for everyone close to him: he’s always acted like Reon’s caring older brother and made sure to protect him from anything that could hurt him, nevertheless the truth is that it all started for the reason that he wanted to feel needed by someone. Seeing Reon be happy made him happy, thus he wanted to attain happiness through Reon’s own happiness thanks to his requited love for Rio.

Aki later grew obsessed with Kuon, he adored him and wanted him to be his, yet Sana claimed Kuon and broke his heart. Aki convinced Kuon to break up with Sana because she kept hurting him, but in truth, he did it for himself as he suffered by watching Kuon suffer.

Following his confessions, Aki continued on to say he didn’t deserve to live and it would’ve been better if he had never been born – in fact, his mother herself had told him that her life was miserable as a consequence of his birth.

Aki’s self-hatred makes Rio burst into tears. She slaps Aki and tells him that he’s an extremely important person to her and hearing him say all those bad things about himself broke her heart. Subsequently, she leaves the house overwhelmed by her emotions.

The following days Aki goes back to treating her as a friend, however they stop walking home together and he avoids any sort of direct contact with her.

Succeeding Kuon’s and Aki’s graduation ceremony, Rio confesses again. This time instead of getting friend zoned she gets SISTER ZONED. Aki lies and tells her he sees her as his imouto so he can’t accept her confession.

Kuon does something praise-worthy for once in his life and confronts Aki after Rio runs away crying. Kuon tells Aki he’ll stop being his best friend if his ass doesn’t run after Rio, because she is his happiness and he won’t stand in the sidelines and watch his best friend cockblock himself from being happy. What a slay. 

Reon is supposed to be the poster guy, but honestly, Aki’s route is so well-written and long that it seemed like the writers favored him. As he makes his way to the rooftop – where Rio is – he runs into one of the band members in each floor (Kuon outside the school, Tsumugi in the first floor, Reon in the rooftop’s entrance). This is such a last boss/last stage scene that it felt very… definite/canon.

Every reve parfait member cheers him on, and tells him to grow a pair to get his shit together. Reon and Aki confess their brotherly love for each other, then Aki gets to the rooftop and backhugs Rio. He breaks down into tears while apologizing to her and confessing that he loves her, yet he isn’t worthy of her kind self.

The ending is super adorable with both of them just crying and confessing. As a pairing they’re literally just two cinnamon rolls put together; it’s incredibly innocent and fluffy.

In an epilogue post-ending it’s mentioned that they’ve dated for months but haven’t even shared their first kiss together. They’re so precious what even. Rio discusses this with Aki and they both just turn into a blushing mess as Aki confesses he just didn’t have enough courage to kiss her. He promises to get his shit together and kiss her as soon as possible ( ಥ益ಥ).

I’m deceased they didn’t even kiss they just promised to. This entire route is so adorable ( ಥ益ಥ).

The next epilogue shows them having a date in the amusement park and finally kissing while riding the Ferris wheel.

Aki’s Encore has the best outcome for the Kashii and Atano families. It tied up all loose ends and offered a good outcome for everyone.

Rio’s mom, Mao, is revealed to be dating Aki’s and Reon’s dad, Akiha. Their relationship has been going for two years and they announce that they plan to remarry. Rio’s mom was a widow since her husband died from an illness, and Akiha went through dramatic divorce with his ex-wife.

Both Rio and Aki are happy for their parents, however they also take the opportunity to announce that they’re dating each other, as it had been stated that both families would move in together after the marriage. Their parents are extremely happy about their children’s relationship and they make sure to research whether Aki and Rio will have any problems marrying later on once the households merge (turns out they won’t, it’s all good).

The rest of the Encore is full of family moments. Reon, Aki, and Rio bond together as a trio like they did back when they were children, and the Kashii and Atano households will eventually move in together and become one big beautiful family. Despite the fact that he lived with his mother, Reon also moves in with the rest of the family.

This epilogue is just so great and fulfilling that I wouldn’t dare consider changing anything. The trio bonding moments were especially endearing, and it seemed like all the drama surrounding the Kashii family was finally left behind.

Aki and Rio were seriously so cute that I continuously wanted to implode. They had a lot of chemistry together and their interactions throughout the route were super adorable – I had a permanent smile on my face while playing it. Rio teaching Aki to love himself was everything.[/spoiler]

Reve parfait’s narrative in its entirety is a combination of numerous clichés seen before in other games or anime. Taking into account the fact that I’m a sucker for good drama, I really liked its execution. The experience is like watching a soap opera minus the extremely frustrating and annoying moments – there were situations where I thought one of the classic shoujo misunderstandings could happen, yet the heroine quickly stated that she trusted her friends and refused to give up on them. Actually, I was pretty immersed in the story’s development, thus for the most part whenever the protagonist got upset I agreed with her and related to her reactions. The writers thankfully didn’t come up with extremely stupid reasons to upset Rio, she gets sad at times the conflicts genuinely become overwhelming.

Although Rio doesn’t stand out much as a heroine and she’s defenseless when others bully her, I appreciate that she doesn’t get sad over every little unreasonable thing and often holds her ground instead of running away from her problems.

The guys are all likeable to an extent, even if some (Kuon) bored me to bits. My personal favorite is Aki, followed by Reon, nonetheless Tsumugi could be pretty cute a lot of the time too. To be fair, I only didn’t care about Kuon. A rock has more personality than him.

Kuon is basically a Gary Stu, something like a Kirito – he is nice and a hit among women, that aside his reactions are basically non-existent. He acts like the perfect prince charming, yet he doesn’t have a personality that sets him apart as an individual. Aki? Cute, selfless, extremely adorable and caring, a total mom. Reon? A bratty tsundere, he likes teasing Rio a lot and also shows a childish and spoiled side around her. Tsumugi? Blunt and honest, can’t trust people easily but wears his heart on his sleeve. Kuon? Uh… Gentlemanly, perhaps? He literally just treats Rio like his “princess”, he doesn’t show a personality of his own. I guess I’m just glad none of the boys is a yandere – funny fact, at first I thought Aki would be one. Oh how wrong I was.

Fujiwara Ryou is in charge of the designs and illustrations in the game. Reve parfait’s art is pretty, yet nothing really stands out. The quality of the character sprites is good and the art style itself is nice, nonetheless the illustrations are very inconsistent and it seems like the artist had problems drawing different angles and poses. It wouldn’t be much of a problem if only a few of the CGs were awkward-looking, however many of them are odd; I even dare to say that at least half of the images look okay at best.

Despite the fact that Honeybee really tried to push the VN’s music –there are even actual albums being sold with reve parfait’s band tracks–, the music is very forgettable and repetitive. Soundtracks are always a weak point in otome games, so I’m not really surprised, but I did hope the music would be better as the story is centered on it. The group’s tracks are messy and the BGM of the VN gets old really fast, thus I don’t have anything good to say about this aspect.

The voice acting is nothing impressive. It’s good overall, nevertheless there’s nothing special in there. I was excited going into the game because I saw that Toriumi Kousuke is Kuon’s voice, yet he unfortunately voices the most boring and inexpressive character. This wasn’t Toriumi’s best work, although to be fair, he didn’t have much to work with. The highlight of the voice acting department is actually Hirose Yuuya, whose voice I’ve liked ever since I played Blackish House. His voice color is very pleasing to listen to and he did a fantastic job during the emotional scenes.

Dynamic Chord feat. [reve parfait] isn’t a masterpiece per se, however I personally enjoyed it a lot and it’s greatly entertaining. I think I wouldn’t have liked the original reve parfait as much as I liked this Append Disc, seeing that the original didn’t contain neither Aki’s route nor the fluffy 2-3 hour long epilogues for each guy.

The plot is fairly light-hearted and all of the guys have their cute blushing moments, so every player will get at least something good out of reve parfait. The epilogues have a lot of fanservice too, which will quickly make up for any mess seen throughout each dude’s route.

I recommend giving reve parfait a try to those who are fans of Honeybee or like dramatic plots such as the ones seen in Mystic Messenger. In case you’re considering picking this up but you haven’t played much of Honeybee’s content before:

Honeybee’s games definitely aren’t everyone’s cup of tea. Many gamers find the high school concept tiring, and they often reuse the writing from their previous visual novels. Besides, all of Honeybee’s games are pretty dramatic, which doesn’t appeal to all of its target demographic. Still, there’s something that keeps pulling me back and forcing me to play all the material they have to offer, and sometimes stories are just so bad that they’re good.

If you’ve read my previous reviews and agreed with my opinions, just trust me and give the game a try. I’ll definitely review the rest of the Dynamic Chord series soon, although I might skip KYOHSO thanks to what I’ve read about the game online. It definitely doesn’t sound appealing.