Rewrite

As you may Know or not, Key released the long awaited Rewrite, Its a trial version in which comes with the other Visual novel Kud Wafter. I don’t feel so bad paying for it now. That was really good and now I can’t wait for the full version. This demo is really long. The estimates seem to be about 3 hours for a fluent reader, so for anyone relying on a dictionary it’s going to take even longer. I think the OP sort of gives it away already, but the plot really doesn’t feel very ‘typical Key’, where everything focuses on the heroines. Ryuukishi‘s influence is definitely there, especially in a few certain scenes. I’m not sure who actually wrote what, but it’s all good.

Yet another fantastic OP looks like Key are about to strike again! I simply cant get over this, love the intro with the guitar, the vocals suits extremely well into the video and it makes you want to know more. I do hope that this will be out as a single cause its worth getting.

First, the story. Probably the most un-Key-like aspect of the whole thing, they really went all out with the supernatural elements, starting with the night events around Kotarou (in his bedroom and the silk curtain outside), then with him turning out to have full out ESP abilities, and then on with the 11eyes-style empty alternate dimension scenes in the city and school building. The demo revealed a lot about the story but naturally left more questions than answers, in which is not suprising considering its only a demo! The Full release will most likely tell us more about the background information. As far as favourite scenes go… there were just too many I was laughing a whole lot while reading most of the school scenes, there weren’t many boring bits and on the whole the writing was pretty good stuff.

Secondly, the characters. I ended up really liking them. Kotori is pretty unique for a Key heroine -- although I found it interesting that other than the whole herbs-with-magical-properties thing she didn’t seem to have anything particularly unusual about her in relation to the story. Seems a little odd, considering the game’s tagline leads you to assume it’s her fate that’s being rewritten. Perhaps everyone but her has supernatural powers and has to help change the innocent girl’s fate? Perhaps.

Chihaya is… interesting? I wasn’t sure about her initially because she seemed like a typical tsundere, but then a few later she gradually started softening up a bit and by the ends seems to be the token idiot of the cast I still found myself liking her though, even if so far she isn’t exactly a complex character.

Shizuru is moe incarnate. I have no idea how much more there’ll be to her than that, but I don’t really care if there’s nothing more. She’s just adorable.

Akane is perhaps the most interesting character in the cast to me. The revelation that she doesn’t support magic at all, she’s just completely manipulative and has connections everywhere that can make things happen was just… As was her being a total FPS nut. Assuming standard character routes I think she may well be my first in the full game.

Lucia is the only heroine I don’t like very much. She seems a lot more tolerable later, judging by the sample you get of club activities later in the game, but initially she just seems like a annoying violent character obsessed with uncleanliness. Not particularly interesting, but considering it seems like Ryuukishi will be writing her route, hopefully she’ll get better.As far as route writing goes, I’m not sure how they’re going to divide them. Lucia is almost definitely Ryuukishi considering the writing style, and I would be surprised if he wasn’t doing Akane as well with all the witchiness and the magic vs tricks stuff -- seems like it’d be completely his style. Shizuru is bound to be Tonogawa. Kotori most likely Romeo. As for Chihaya, I don’t know. Apparently the scene with Kotarou activating his powers read exactly like something Romeo would write -- if it wasn’t for that I’d be assuming he’d do most of the main branch of the story. As it is perhaps they’ll divide that up another way. Really can’t comment on the whole supernatural powers/alternate world stuff yet. I just hope the main routes will be just as entertaining as the characters are charismatic.The new engine is great, having widescreen is a long overdue step up that I’m grateful Key are finally taking, while I still can’t bring myself to say Itaru’s art is *good*, it’s at least improving, and some of the special effects were pretty fancy -- especially the aurora at the start and the effects during the fake ‘fight’ between Kotarou and Yoshino. The music was all great too, the soundtrack is miles better than Little Busters’ and I’m really glad Maeda and Orito decided to take a seemingly more active role in the music this time. The other composers they got to help with Little Busters’ music just aren’t in the same league. Favourite tracks were BGM11 (the empty city/camera buying scene music), BGM05 (the title screen music), BGM14 (Music when Kotarou first activates his powers), and BGM90 (The fake fight theme?). So mostly Orito. Honourable mentions go to BGM12 for being creepy, BGM36 for making me think Beatrice was going to appear any minute, and BGM34 Yoshino’s theme for suiting him oh so well.