Guest Review by Patricia Baxter.

After spending two long years in prison for protecting her best friend, Juri Kido is at a loss of what to do next. Juri’s older sister, and only remaining family, has made it very clear that she wants nothing to do with her, and her worldly possessions only amount to the clothes on her back and a paltry assortment of personal items. There is only one thing that Juri is sure of, and that’s her best friend Chihiro “Ten” Tenma, the same friend she saved two years ago. Ten has a home in the Japanese coastal town of Akiyama, and has offered Juri a place to stay until she is able to get back up on her feet again. Juri is deeply grateful for her friend’s kindness, but is also understandably worried about her future prospects, as having a criminal record will no doubt make job hunting all the more difficult. But what Juri doesn’t know is that Akiyama is no ordinary town; this is the place where she will meet her soulmate. And in the midst of all of this is the love hotel that will turn Juri’s life around: Hotel Bakudan.

Renai Bakudan is the newest yuri visual novel developed by Noodletub Games, whose previous titles all focus on romantic relationships between sapphic women. It is also a sequel to Love Bakudan, which also takes place in Akiyama, but thankfully knowledge of the previous title is not necessary to play and understand Renai Bakudan. The game is a semi-kinetic visual novel in the sense that there is no way for the player to fail whichever route they choose to play, but there are four segments that are sprinkled throughout each route that allow for some player interactivity: two Hotel Bakudan work shifts and two “Explore Time” interludes. The two hotel shifts have Juri selecting a hotel room for the various quirky clients, and their even quirkier kinks, to best suit their needs, while Explore Time has her explore Akiyama and see how the rest of the cast is spending their free time away from the central narrative. If the player correctly navigates these four sections they will gain four original erotic stories that they can read in the “Extras” menu, and finding all four in the route will unlock a special erotic novel that focuses on different side characters, along with some extra scenes. That being said, you can intentionally fail or skip these sections if you have already gotten a novel or just want to progress, and the game will not punish you. Each romance route takes somewhere between three to four hours to read depending on your reading speed. The types of sexual activities the player can experience are clearly labeled on the game’s Steam and itch store pages, including highlighting which route engages in BDSM, Mirai Mishima’s route, so they can make an informed choice based on interest and comfort level.

Renai Bakudan is a game that was clearly made with a lot of love and passion by the developers, which is evident in the game’s visual presentation. One example of this is how the game displays each of its romance routes in the form of “Beanflix”, a Netflix-inspired “film” lineup where the player chooses their route based on a film poster and description, visual flourishes based on “film genre”, and an opening title sequence. Other notable instances include whenever Ten goes on a livestream a Twitch-inspired chat is visible in the upper corner, Juri’s character arc being bookend by imagery of the cityscape overlaid by VHS scan lines, and one really impressive use of the user interface to showcase a character’s name in one of the routes. While the character designs did not grab my attention as much as other visual novels, I did appreciate that the cast was clearly composed of adult women with visible signs of age on their bodies. Three of Juri’s love interests are women in their thirties or older, which is a nice change of pace for the dating sim genre where women are typically relegated to their teens, twenties, or immortal beings that conveniently look visibly youthful.

Another area the game excels at is the amount of effort given to its large ensemble of characters. The cast, including the non-romanceable secondary characters, are each written with care and feel like genuine friends to Juri in each story route. While I wouldn’t go as far as to say they feel like “real people”, as the character writing leans into tropes those familiar with Japanese media can identify, they certainly remind me of the chaotic shenanigans that friends can get into, and they clearly always have each other’s best interests at heart. There are a couple of really standout characters in the game, especially Hazuki Mishima, who were written with such an impressive amount of depth they felt like they could be the protagonist of their own game. Some of the game’s routes, specifically Ten and Natsuki’s, feel like a perfect blend of romance and character development, where the couple, and their developing relationship, feel perfectly in tandem with the story beats. After completing them I genuinely felt like Juri had undergone a fulfilling character arc and that her love interests were able to showcase their ambitions and skills.

However, despite Renai Bakudan’s many strengths there are a few noticeable stumbling blocks into making it one an exemplary visual novel, particularly in terms of accessibility. At various points in the game I encountered negative visual stimuli that cannot be toggled off, which made it difficult for me to look at the screen. Natsuki’s route has an incidental scene at a karaoke where a disco ball is shown glittering, and while it only lasted a few seconds, it was still so intense for me that I had to put a hand in front of my face while it occurred. Dao’s route also has two back-to-back instances of intense screenshake during the climactic scene at the docks, which was dizzying and unpleasant. Having the ability to toggle off flashing lights and reduce screenshake would have been really beneficial for me, and I highly recommend that Noodletub Games keep these elements in mind when they develop their next game.

Another unsatisfying part of the game is that while there are some character routes that feel like satisfying conclusions to Juri’s character arc, some of them give the impression that Juri is just an incidental character in the story. This is unfortunate, since Juri’s character introduction really makes you want to root for her to turn her life around, so seeing her pushed to the sidelines while her love interest is the only one with meaningful character development is rather disappointing. Additionally, the romance route with Mirai Mishima left a bad taste in my mouth, not because of her professional as a yakuza or her BDSM sex scenes, but because multiple routes, including her own, showcase how constantly abusive she’s been to her younger sister, Hazuki Mishima. While Hazuki is far from a perfect person, like Juri she is shown to be a woman who wants to change her life for the better, and while she is able to do so in some routes, it usually involves leaving behind the little support network she was able to make for herself in Akiyama.

Like many romance games, your enjoyment of certain character routes is highly dependent on your personal interests in your prospective partner, and if you are interested in specific kinks. It will also depend on your willingness to take the game’s hard and fast developments, both in terms of the narrative and the interpersonal relationship between Juri and her partner, in stride. The erotic novels that the character can collect are a mixed bag, with the stories focused on original characters being typically flat and trope-y, while the novels focused on Renai Bakudan’s ensemble can feature some of the best written erotica in the game. There is also a side novel, Tokugawa Blues, that can be unlocked after the player completes their first route, which features a more in-depth look into the backstories of many of the yakuza affiliated characters in the game. While it is extremely impressive to see so much work to turn a work that was originally written as prose into a visual novel engine, complete with visuals and audio, if you are not interested in learning more about the characters, and do not enjoy descriptions of intense violence, I would suggest skipping it. Also, I found it odd that in a game that is entirely composed of sapphic women in both the ensemble cast and erotic novels, that there wasn’t at least one confirmed transgender woman in the game. Including trans women in a narrative that is entirely focused on showcasing the diverse range of stories that queer women can inhabit would have been an extremely welcome addition, and help make Akiyama feel more like the sexually liberated paradise that Juri lovingly extols.

Overall, Renai Bakudan is an extremely ambitious yuri visual novel that, while enjoyable, feels as though it is missing something that could have made it really exemplary. Noodletub Games clearly has the skill to pull off well crafted erotic visual novels, and write some extremely likeable characters, but I feel they could be better executed if their resources were spread across fewer character routes and significantly less extra reading material. If you’re looking for an erotic game, exclusively focused on sapphic characters with a lot of different character dynamics, you most likely won’t be disappointed, but if you’re looking for a title with deeper character development, you will probably find this to be lacking.

Renai Bakudan is available for purchase on Steam and itch.io for $19.99 USD, which equates to $25.99 in CAD.

Overall: 7

Erica here: Thank you to Noodletub Games, for the review copy of Renai Bakudan. ^_^