Muv-Luv

Muv-Luv was one of my ventures into the Bishojo world, and while I completely played through all of it, I can’t say that it is my favorite. Not really due to the game’s quality which, if you take out all the fan service and fluff, still holds up with some remarkable story telling, romance and ending design in the ruins of an former eroge game that achieved true depth. Extra needs to be played first. MC is a student in the local school who gets pulled into a lot of school shenanigans when he finds a blue haired girl in his bed one morning. This may seem sort of mundane, but I can guarantee that everything in this story has a purpose as the progress leads to game 2, Unlimited, and is quite the necessary setup.

The sequel retains the romantic progress from the first, but now MC finds himself in a dystopian future, as part of a combat unit trying to defend the remaining population from alien invaders using mechas (and this is where my favoritism tapered, sci-fi is kinda an appreciated but not favorite genre). The story was pretty fantastic, however, and I like how it correlated to the original story. I was also surprised how much these characters had grown on me. The storylines are quite similar so not all need to be completed, and the endings are beautiful, in spite of how bittersweet. Alternative saves the best for last, and adds a new dramatic flair to this originally light story. It starts out with a purposefully slow recap and then raises the stakes immensely, transitioning into a thoughtful finale that retroactively not only improves its prequels, but crafts an intense, savage story that tore into me and the bond I had built with the characters.