![]() ![]() Melancholy Love is a sweet, sometimes melodramatic coming-of-age story. Qianxun and Mianxue are both interesting, multifaceted characters in their own right, and their chemistry together is the perfect blend of angst, yearning, and bittersweetness. The central romance, from both perspectives, is compelling enough to drive the story forward on its own, and non-conflict complications add an extra bit of interest at the right time without feeling shoehorned in. While it still has its slow moments, the characters are enjoyable to just sit with and listen to. The characters have such strong voices that the point of view shift injects some extra interest into what could have turned into a tedious extra-slow burn romance.īroadly, this game does what ostensibly amounts to slice of life extremely well. The switching between different characters’ perspectives, however, is a fun-to-read way of exploring the budding romance. There’s also some additional plot involving them in the background, but with the way it meanders through the main romance, it can sometimes get a little lost. ![]() ![]() It’s an interesting choice, but it sets up the expectation you’ll learn more about the relationship between these two characters (teacher Qingwei and headmaster Zihua), but it takes some time for them to even show back up again in a meaningful way. It starts off a bit strange, introducing the setting with two characters that end up being pushed back into secondary slots once the game gets going. The mutual pining between social opposites angle makes for compelling romantic storytelling, and the addition of a third character, Qianxun’s “sister”, thrown into the mix drives the slice-of-life story forward as you wait to see how it all unfolds. The central romance between the two leads, Qianxun and Mianxue, is very charming. The overall visual feel is well-constructed and pleasant to look at even if the aesthetics themselves aren’t particularly novel. The UI is applied with a light but well-structured touch. The backgrounds are soft and delicate while still being bright and colorful. These are all minor grievances that aren’t unique to this specific game but are present nonetheless. In favor of maintaining a cuter style, the teacher characters don’t look that much older than the students. Occasionally the clothing (especially prevalent in the blazers of the school uniform) conforms to some very strange rules of physics regarding their relationship to the wearers’ anatomy. The poses force the girls into occasionally backbreaking positions, and their expressions are a little bland when they do use them. That being said, the sprite design does fall into a lot of the usual traps of this style of art. When the girls can be out of uniform, their clothing choice has something of a street fashion flair that strikes me as very bold and shows off their out-of-school personalities. Play the demo today and wishlist Melancholy Love on Steam and itch.io today.The art is the quality and style to be expected from a mid-tier or larger commercial studio, clean and highly polished with generally well-thought-out character designs. The game is approximately 5-7 hours long and features three endings, an original soundtrack by Saul Robinson, full Mandarin voice acting, and CG artwork by whisky. Kikai Digital hopes to localize the other titles if Melancholy Love is well received. It is part of the Linghua Series, a total of four Yuri visual novels. Melancholy Love is inspired by Chinese tradition and other Yuri visual novel such as Innocent Grey’s Flowers (published in English by JAST USA). How will sparks fly between these two people from different worlds? Will their love overcome all obstacles or will their differences be too great and drive them apart? It’s a romantic journey that follows an elite student born to privilege and a delinquent who wishes to break free from the chains of the academy. Melancholy Love is a coming-of-age yuri visual novel set in a private girls’ academy. The full version of Melancholy Love is tentatively scheduled for PC and Mac release on January 29, 2021. The game is developed by White Dew Games and is, according to the publisher, one of the most influential Yuri visual novels from China in 2020. On Octovisual novel publisher Kikai Digital released the English demo for Yuri visual novel Melancholy Love.
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