Written by Soul Tsukino, edited by Otaku Apologist
ChronoClock, a visual novel developed by Purple Software, published by Denpasoft on February 2017. Download on Nutaku.net. uncensored genitals. Full Japanese voice acting.
Hey, I’m Soul Tsukino! I’ll be your guide through the story of Chronoclock. Note that I only played the first route, dipping just a bit into the other routes. So, don’t worry about spoilers!
STORY
Rei Sawatari is a second-year high school student. He is the heir to the wealthy Sawatari family. The family has gotten rich from investing into the town. Rei doesn’t like to bring up that fact. His father is moving boxes in a store room, when he finds an old stopwatch, that he gives to Rei. The clock used to belong to Rei’s grandfather. After the boy is almost killed, he finds that the watch, when smashed, can take him 5 minutes back in time. With a new reset button for life, he uses his power to make things better for other people, and have fun. With the clock, he also meets the goddess Chronus who appears only to the one who uses the watch.
One day he walks in on his friend Shuuji Ishida. He is talking to a nervous girl on the rooftop of the school. The girl is Miu Suzuki, she is a secret genius that’s also nervous around boys. She also suffers from severe bad luck. It’s only thanks to Sawatari’s time travelling powers, that she doesn’t fall to her death from the rooftop… more than once. You help the nervous Miu be more relaxed talking to boys over the course of a week, so that she can confess her feelings to Shuuji.
Along the way you are introduced to Rei’s sister Michiru, who is blind from an illness when she was younger. She has an incestous crush on her brother, and is really damn creepy about it. If you got a fetish for incestous relationships between sister-brother, or cousins, you’ll probably like Michiru.
You also get to meet Misaki, she’s Michiru and Miu’s friend who looks after her friends, but jumps to conclusions easily. Lastly, there is Makoto, a sweet girl that helps out in class. As you get to know her, you learn that she is actually the daughter of a Yakuza crime boss. Whoops!
During the week covered in the first route of the game, you spend a lot of time with Miu in building up her confidence. You end up taking her out on a date with Misaki, but things don’t go quite as planned. As Rei is doing this, he begins to have feelings for Miu as well and wonders that if things don’t go well if he will finally have the girlfriend he has wanted but never had. Eventually, you, Miu, Shuuji, and Michiru meet at your house at a feeble attempt to get some things straightened out.
When the week finally passes, you, Miu, and Shuuji meet on the roof again. Miu finally makes her confession, and it is not what anyone expected.
GRAPHICS
What I liked most about the art, is that the character sprites have a variety of expressions, and even alternates to their sprites. All the characters start the same, but beyond the eye colors, and hair styles, the expressions are where the differences are seen from one character to another. My favorite part was the moment where Makoto, the girl with a Yakuza father, suddenly flips the switch to become a badass. The look on her face when she goes Yakuza mode was worth a million bucks. The look of embarrassment on Miu’s face, when you ask her on a date, was also priceless.
On the topic of backgrounds, they are mostly static images, like in the case of your bedroom, the classroom, and the school’s roof, but occasionally you will get animated backgrounds. Meeting people at the beach is nice when you can see the tide going back and forth. That’s a nice touch, even if these effects are not present in every scene. It’s not nearly as artistically done as Karma Sutra’s painted backgrounds, which was a game I also loved for the art.
GAMEPLAY
Chronoclock is a visual novel. The gameplay is limited to clicking the story forward, from one slide to the next. You also make choices that make the story branch into different directions. The menu options include everything you need, right at the top of the screen, like big buttons for “Save”, “Load Data”, and stuff like that. Very easy to use.
You don’t get to pick when you use your time travelling powers. You also have to go through a lot of content before you are able to make decisions to branch the story. Sometimes it feels like the game is padding itself out. Sure, there are some great scenes that include lots of characters interacting, but the bulk of the time I played, the main character Rei Sawatari is by himself, talking about the most useless things that have nothing to do with anything. There are scenes where Rei is sitting on a beach, in the classroom, in the park, etc. just looking at the scenery. He has gripes about how the school staff (whom we never see) treat him because of his last name. It adds nothing to the plotline.
MUSIC
The music for this game is pretty generic. It doesn’t hurt the game, but doesn’t add anything to it either. The music tries to fit in the scene that you are currently in. Being on the beach has a soft piano style song, but with the sound of the waves over it. When things start getting kind of weird, and Miu is being a flustered weirdo, you get a comical, derpy song playing.
VOICE ACTING AND SOUND EFFECTS (SFX)
The sound effects aren’t bad, but they sound computer-generated. You hear the waves crash on the beach, the squealing of tires before a truck is about to hit you, the sound of a metal bucket hitting the floor after poor Miu gets doused. The sound that repeats the most is the shattering of the watch as you activate its powers.
The voice acting is above average. You get actual lines of dialog, including squeaks of embarrassment and surprise, that are abruptly interrupted if you skip to the next slide too fast. Momoi Icuigo voicing Miu is a highlight. Her stuttering soft-spoken voice is perfect for the role, and the sound she makes when you ask Miu on a date, was so funny I replayed the moment a second time. These voices would be just as comfortable if this was an anime series instead of a visual novel.
HENTAI
None. Despite what may be promised on the adult version of this game, you have to put in lots of time to get booty. Sure, there were a few panty flashes, and some cleavage shots from the blind twisted sister. Anything more hardcore than that requires much more of an investment of time. If you are getting this game with the idea of playing a character having sex with a bunch of high school girls, this isn’t that kind of game.
CONCLUDING WORDS
I wanted to like this game. But the lack of any kind of choice put me off. There’s a few too many moments where you are just watching Rei stare into nothingness, contemplating bullshit. It is a long story, and feels like it was padded out to justify a higher price tag per download.
You can download Chronoclock at Nutaku.net.
