Aokana: Four Rhythms Across the Blue, developed by Sprite and published by PQube, is a visual novel released on Nintendo Switch. Unfortunately, Aokana works much better as an anime or manga than a video game, and disappointed me with its nonexistent gameplay and uninteresting story.
In Aokana: Four Rhythms Across the Blue, you play as a male high school student on a special island that uses anti-gravity shoes as transportation. Essentially, everyone on the island can fly because of new developments in shoe technology, and it’s a big deal.
Unfortunately for the protagonist, he has a tragic backstory. As a child, he loved flying, but, of course, something sad and terrible happened to him and now he despises it. When a new student moves to the island, however, he is enlisted as her coach because of his skills.
Throughout the game, the protagonist’s story is revealed and relationships formed as he befriends many other female high school students.
The story often felt stunted, though. The characters fell flat and all felt generic. In fact, I often had trouble figuring out who was speaking when there was more than one character in a scene.
The game doesn’t do a good job of making it clear who’s important visually and I struggled with the text, which would often use a character’s first name to signify they were speaking even though the other characters would always refer to them by their last name.
No one stood out as especially interesting, and the game tries to build up the protagonist’s mysterious past as the focal point of the story, but there’s no actual conflict for much of the narrative. The little conflict that exists is entirely generated in the protagonist’s mind, but since the game tries to keep his background a secret for suspenseful effect, it often feels like there’s nothing wrong to propel the characters forward.
Additionally, there’s not any gameplay. Occasionally, the game offers a dialog choice or two, but these didn’t seem to actually affect the story. Other than that, Aokana: Four Rhythms Across the Blue is just a novel, and not a great one at that. It’s hard to pay attention to what’s going on because the dialog and characters aren’t well-written and there’s nothing to do other than wade through the writing.
Overall, Aokana: Four Rhythms Across the Blue was a disappointment. The story wasn’t compelling, which, for a visual novel with few choices, is what the game really needed to stand out and feel worth my time.
Perhaps the manga or anime versions of Aokana are more interesting, but as far as the Nintendo Switch game goes, it’s not worth the time it takes to get through to the few interesting tidbits.
Review code provided by PQube. Game reviewed on a Nintendo Switch.
