If you like — or would like to like — Flowers -Le volume sur printemps– the newest Yuri Visual Novel from Japan available in English, you may wish to re-read the fantastic review of the Japanese language version by Jye N. Before play, I re-read it myself just to be prepared.
With that said, I began Flowers-Le volume sur printemps- with no expectations. It is available on Steam, directly on the JAST USA website, or as a physical edition on J-LIST.
Immediately I realized that I had been thrown into a tale that was being marketed completely, utterly wrong. It’s not a Yuri VN. It’s a lesbian VN – with a lesbian main character suffering from crippling social anxiety and PTSD from an abusive family situation, put into a world so strange and incoherent that it’s a bit like a nightmare scenario.
Suoh has, we learn very quickly, no social skills, because of circumstance, a painful past, a bad home life and plot needs. But it becomes immediately apparent that “poor social skills” is not nearly sufficient to describe the excruciating pain and suffering this girl goes through to eek out a “Good morning.”
I was prepared to not like Suoh, but, when a week into the story, she was making minor progress, I decided to keep at it a bit longer. I played her straight, that is to say, I chose paths that fit the character we were given as a written and thought I was doing well when the game came to an end. ??? So, I went back and made a different decision. And then another. All of them ended in one of two ways, either, I screwed up or ruined everything. So I backed up again, and serially replayed every possible combination of the two questions …and there was no way forward. At which I grew bored and stopped. I consider it the story’s job to compel me to continue. As I had yet to feel anything other than pity for Suoh, and mostly to very much disliked everyone else, I did not feel so compelled.
Apparently I needed to have backed up to an earlier decision and changed my methods, but my nature doesn’t allow me to play characters out of character. A girl with crippling social anxiety is not going to suddenly be rude or forward. It makes no sense, and if the game requires me to act out of character for the character to proceed, they did a crappy job of writing, I say. ^_^;
Jye wrote that the art is beautiful. It is – if blandly but prettily realized imaginary westernish Christianish schools and schoolgirls is your thing. It’s a reasonable assumption if you read my blog, you know that, for me, it is not, in fact, my thing. ^_^ Again, if St. Miator appealed to you in a way that Lillian did not, you’ll probably like the art here at Saint Angraecum.
Technically, the game was relatively simple. The window-size made it impossible for me to access the controls, but once I shifted my configuration to fullscreen, there was no further difficulties. Jye noted that choices were colored red or green to indicate suitability, but all I noticed was green – even when I hit my dead end oubliette. All the choices were green and they were all wrong. And the negative ending didn’t honestly make all that much sense. But oh well…
The voices are pleasant but, as so often with VNs, randomly distributed. Clearly I missed some important memo about having every fifth line voiced…and never particularly important ones, but always every “…” and “ah” and breath. I apologize if I sound peevish here. This makes no sense. At all. I expect the important things to be voiced. Not the unimportant ones.
Which leads me to the translation. It was pretty good. The dialogue is stilted, and the writer had an odd obsession with throwing in “current” movie titles, which will quickly date the game, but in most cases, I felt that the translation was decent. There was even a surprisingly interesting conversation about the sexism and Christian themes in C.S. Lewis’ Narnia series. I would have liked the story so much more if it had more of that, and less of the fetishized ballet lessons and stressing about being partnered with one or another character. The only problem with the translation was that there was something in the original that made the language puzzles make sense that were lost in translation – or, to be fair, I just completely missed them. But usually, I’m pretty good about that and the obvious connections did not work, so I don’t know, ultimately what I missed there. The kanji might have been more evocative than the English. (After research, I find that my initial choice was, in fact, correct. I have no idea why the game didn’t let me move forward.)
If you enjoy the stylized narrative of a impossible Christianish school in which girls act like no humans actually act and speak in mysterious ways, in order to pair them up as romantic and sexual partners, then Flowers is definitely for you. Not so much if, spoiled by the ridiculously well-written characters of Kindred Spirits, you were hoping for something similar.
In short, if Kindred Spirits is the Maria-sama ga Miteru of Yuri VNs, with compelling characters and decent dialogue, then Flowers is very much the Strawberry Panic! of Yuri VNs, with unreal, overblown dialogue, characters who function as types, rather than people, designed to be viewed with suspicion and distrust until proven loyal.
I want to come back to Suoh one more time before I wrap up. There is nothing at all that reads more like a character who is a closeted lesbian written by a guy than a hyper-oversensitivity to touch and sight of any portion of another girl. Suoh spends so much of her first week averting her eyes from even so much as glancing at a classmate in the changing room that I imagined her walking through her days, peering carefully through a hand over her eyes. Clearly, her painful past included a confession, although I never got that far.
Ratings:
Art – 7
Story: 6 I agree with Jye, it’s not very tight. It’s trying to be too many things at once.
Characters: 7
Service: I’m going to quote Jye here directly: “5 – I bought it as demonstrating the girls’ attraction to each other. Bump it up if you really like skinny sixteen year-olds?” I’d add sixteen year-olds with oversensitivity to being seen as lesbian.
Yuri: 5, as I couldn’t find the apparently appropriate route.
Overall: 6
None of this is to say it’s a bad VN. It’s targeted to a portion of the Yuri audience that does not include me. If you’re an avid VN reader, and like the challenge of bringing Suoh out of her shell and into the arms of a partner who will love her, you will probably enjoy Flowers-Le volume sur printemps- very much.
Many thanks to JAST USA for the review copy!
That is a shame, I hoped it would be better. I may try it anyway as it is not expensive on steam and there is not much to choose from for GL VN. Usually there is a very male reason why something that could easily be good or great is not and here it sounds as if there are many such reasons.
In any event thank you for the review.
I can totally seeing other people liking it more than I did. Hopefully folks who play it will write in and let us know what they think!
One of the things you’ll particularly miss with the translated version is going to be the kanji practice, Flowers loves its obscure and pretty kanji :)
I haven’t reviewed the second one, but I expect Erica might get on with it a little better thanks to Erika being a more interesting main character; it does suffer from the same languid pace, lack of focus and obsession with in-character movies references. It also remains an impossible place written by men probably largely for men (though for what little it’s worth the surprisingly large number of doujin artists selling Flowers works I saw last year were women); it’s hard not to second guess your experience of the work with that disconnect.
I would probably suggest that those who can stick with the 日本語 version; if nothing else the art and music helps you get through a fairly thorough reading exercise :)
I did think the kanji would have lead to more satisfying conversations with Erika (which *was* the name I chose initially for her, but the game insisted I was wrong. As a result of it being my name an all, I know what it means. Interestingly it means the same thing in Japanese as it does in English.
I… I don’t really know how to start this comment, because it’s going to be very awkward anyway.
I wrote a huge text in response to your review. So huge, in fact, that the website’s reply form will probably kick me in the butt if I’ll try to post this text via it. So I will link it via Pastebin:
https://pastebin.com/0zrTFDmk
I understand that it’s practically necroposting and I absolutely don’t expect you to answer me in any detail. But, nevertheless, thank you in advance.
Hello and thank you for your comments. I can’t answer any of your questions as I have completely forgotten all by one thing about this VN, which is that the Latin name for Heather is Erica and, so I knew the girl’s name…and it still told me I was wrong, because I had apparently made a mistaken choice previously and I am not going to waste my time with any narrative that doesn’t want to just be told. ^_^
Obviously your experience is different, as is Jye’s. I’m glad about that. As I say, I am just not the audience for VNs.
Thank you for reading my response.
Ah, the infamous flower language puzzle. Yes, unfortunately, it was a mistranslation. It’s basically impossible to get through this particular section without a guide or playing a guessing game. And I won’t really blame the translator for that mistake, because it was a based on a rather obscure wordplay that wouldn’t be immediately obvious even for a native Japanese person, at least not to a majority. What can I say, Innocent Grey really loves to put adult-oriented detective narratives even in an all-age visual novel.
Obviously, your experience and opinion are as valid as anyone else’s. I just want to try and violently persuade as many people, that were left with a lukewarm feeling after finishing Printemps, to give the 2nd and 3rd translated volumes in the series a fair chance, simply because of how much taller they stand narratively in comparison to the first one, especially the masterwork that is the 3rd volume. But, of course, it’s not really worth it without completing the true route of Printemps, because of spoiler reasons.
Oh, well. ╮(╯ _╰ )╭
No, sorry you misunderstand, I tried all of the answers in that puzzle and NONE of them worked, because I had apparently made the wrong mistake two or three decisions earlier that meant no matter what I chose, it would not work. That is an incredibly annoying way to build gameplay.
I knew the answer of the puzzle. It’s not complicated, my name is Erica and I knew that it’s the Latin name for heather. The fact that I had to have chose only one specific thing three choices ago for that to be meaningful is madness.
I’m more confused now than previously. Do you mean that you apparently had made a mistake before the puzzle? Or within it? Choices made outside of puzzle sections do not affect them whatsoever. It’s a completely different gameplay mechanic. The only way to reach a bad ending is to ans
In the puzzle section there are three questions that go in direct succession. The first one (‘Why did Erika put books on Rikka’s bed?’) affects Rikka’s emotional reaction and response during the reveal. If Suoh will try and present any other explanation for why Erika did that, beyond the most harmless and unassuming (“It was the only bed she could reach, I mean, look at her condition”), Rikka will assume that Erika’s actions were malicious, which in turn will completely ruin her mood and attitude. And, more importantly, it will put a wall between her and Erika, which contradicts the story’s canon. Hence you get that bad ending.
The next two questions are about her name (“What book has the key for her name” and “What is her name”). If you fail to correctly answer even one of them, then of course you will fail the puzzle. The whole premise of these two questions is that Erika is trying to find out if Suoh found her and knows her name by a stroke of luck (and guessing her name purely via that wordplay is closer to being lucky) or through an actual deduction. Suoh has to explicitly point out that Erika had concealed her name in ‘Wuthering Heights’, not just reveal it through wordplay. If you fail to do that, then Erika will rudely point out that Suoh’s deduction was insufficient, which could be interpreted as a reason why Rikka will be mad and angry at her again. Again, bad ending.
What I’m trying to say is that I don’t find that annoying. It’s pretty logical, if you ask me. But what I actually do find annoying about that puzzle is that it’s constructed around the pre-existing knowledge that absolutely does not manifest inside the narrative of the novel. It’s not that hard to imagine that the main heroine has that knowledge, because she is presented as an erudite. But it’s COMPLETELY unreasonable to expect every reader to also have that knowledge. And, unfortunately, other puzzles in the first volume are also designed partially in this manner.
Luckily, Ete and Automne are infinitely better in the puzzle department, because there all deductions are based around reasonable assumptions and subtle clues hidden within seemingly unassuming dialogues and scenes.
I don’t really have energy to explain this again. You will have to accept that – even with the right answer (any of the answers, really) – the game failed to let me progress and I became bored.