Genre: Adventure
Developer: InterOne Inc.
Publisher: Dogenzaka Lab
Release Date: Jun 15, 2016
Edited by KnightAvenger

Kyoto Colorful Days is a visual novel about a university graduate going to Kyoto to try finding a job since he cannot find one back home. He ends up meeting two girls who help him out and guide him around Kyoto as a tourist. It is somewhat reminiscent of Go! Go! Nippon in that the main character is a tourist in Japan, but there are big differences. Question is, how good is it?

It’s not bad but it could definitely be much better, mostly in how it is structured. But before I talk about that, I should mention that there is some story to this beyond just the basic excuse for the dude to come to Japan. Since it’s a pretty short VN, there isn’t a lot and it basically boils down to a couple major events with either of the girls and an ending based on your decisions. There are bad endings, but due to the length of the game, getting them is not a big deal. I managed to finish the game in 2-3 hours despite my first ending being a bad one.

The protagonist can be named at the beginning of the game and after getting to Tokyo, there is a very short common route to make your character acquainted with the two girls, but where it is different from Go! Go! Nippon in a bad way is the fact that there is no way of explicitly deciding where to go in Kyoto as a tourist. That is decided based on your choice of which girl to hang out with, and, since the game is very short, that means that each girl only has one scene at some tourist attraction and they are always the same. A map on which you click on where you want to go would have been much better. I also think that a VN of this type suffers greatly from being so short since it basically forces it to be limiting in options of where to visit.

Aside from that, it’s a pretty good VN, for example, when it comes to visuals. The characters are all well designed and the backgrounds are good. The sprites are also animated such that when the character is speaking, their mouth moves and they also blink. The problem, however, is the syncing. The mouths are made to open and close in specific ways and specific intervals that often end up not matching well with the speaking voice. It’s a good thing they tried to have that stuff, but, at the same time, it can end up being kinda awkward at times.

Speaking of the voices, they are all mostly well done. Nothing spectacular but there was also nothing to cringe at or want to skip through just to not have to hear it. Although…since they’re not great performances, I found myself cutting the dialogue off, a lot. Music is not bad but it’s pretty limited in the amount of it, but that is kinda mitigated by the fact that the game is rather short, so there is, mostly, not enough time to start getting annoyed with it.

All in all, if you’re interested in Kyoto specifically, you might get some enjoyment out of this game that you couldn’t get from something like Go! Go! Nippon but, otherwise, I don’t see too much of a reason to recommend it to many people, especially not at the regular price of $9.99 (USD) on Steam. If it is on a sale or you are specifically looking for a short VN, then you should get it; otherwise, I wouldn’t really bother.

Pros:

• Looks pretty nice
• There is some story to it although not that much
• Voice acting is okay

Cons:

• It’s pretty short, which actively harms the kind of game it’s trying to be
• The mouth movement/sync is not that great
• Music is pretty basic

Faris gives Kyoto Colorful Days a score of 5.0 out of 10 (50) Moé Blobs.