The Fruit of Grisaia Review

The Fruit of Grisaia Review

Before actually doing the review, I want to make sure to mention that I tend not to to like largely Slice of Life / Drama VNs. That's not to say that I didn't enjoy Grisaia, I actually liked it a whole lot.
But, if you really, really like slice of life things, you'll probably *love* Grisaia and probably don't even need to read anymore!

Setting
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It's pretty much the real world with a few specific exceptions. The biggest exception is the company that Yuuji works for, which is mentioned a lot from his perspective, but you don't get a really clear picture for how they fit into the political and military structures of Japan. I'm guessing this will be a big focus of the sequels.

There was enough cool stuff to keep me interested, which was important.

Comedy
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The common route is pretty dang hilarious. I laughed lots. Upvote.

Drama
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I'll talk about more specifics in the mini-review of each route, but the drama was...mostly solid. There were some parts in each routes where it kind of went like bad-soap-opera tier and totally shattered my disbelief for a while, but pretty much every route had moments that made you actually care about the characters, which is a big success.

Length
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I love long VNs. This VN was 50 hours. You do the math! I got it on steam sale for like 25 bux or something, which is a pretty great value for the length.

Cars
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Never get in any motor vehicles in the Grisaia series. They are literal death traps.

Ok time to give some commentary on character routes! In order of my playing order...

Yumiko
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I liked Yumiko's character a lot, she was probably the most reliable character, even outside of her route. I enjoyed her role in Makina's route as somewhat of an informant.

Her route dragged a little at the beginning, the bodyguard and on-the-run parts went on a little too long for my liking. The flashback section was really good and the ending was quite good as well.

Also, she's like one of the only characters to have any sort of substantial 'bad end' alternative, which was pretty cute.

Sachi
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The obedient maid persona wasn't really doing it for me. She had some of the best gags, though, so points for making me laugh. Her 'real' self was quite a bit better. Like most of the flashbacks, Sachi's was good, the explanation for her problems made sense to me.

And then probably the worst part of the whole VN follows. Like at the 'dramatic conclusion' of the first half of her route, I just had to laugh, it was so absurd...even in the context of the universe.

However, it manages to recover for the back half of the route, which gave me them feels.

The bad ending was really dumb for Sachi's route, but it actually was a bad end, so no biggie.

Michiru
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I liked Michiru a lot. She made me laugh lots in the common route and in her route and I really enjoyed her presence in pretty much any scene she barged into. Her flashback made me real sad, poor Michiru.

Her route was definitely the most down-to-earth...err, besides one glaring oversight of reality totally not working that way.
Actually, instead of down-to-earth we'll just say no crazy action sequences.

I actually kind of appreciated a kind of lull, and it wouldn't have made sense for Michiru's backstory to have any sort of grand actiony stuff happening anyways. It was a more personal, smaller scale story. I liked it lots.

The bad end was similar to Sachi's, but a little less dumb.

Makina
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I didn't really like Makina's character, but she was really funny, at least. Even in her route, I kind of felt sorry for her, but I didn't really feel like she had the same sort of depth as the other girls. They probably should have just made the route non-romantic, because it felt kind of out of place, but that wasn't a huge deal.

The route was basically Yuuji: The Route. You get some hot lore about Yuuji's past and how broken he kind of is, in both senses of 'broken'.

Mostly due to the Yuuji components, the route was pretty good.

The bad end was actually like messed up, which made it a little fun.

Amane
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I liked Amane as a character alright, she served as a straight-man to other's jokes a lot of the time, probably since her issues were a lot less publicly visible than the others. However, her ridiculously overt solicitations got kind of annoying after a while. I'm glad they explained it in her route, but ehh.

Obviously, a big bulk of Amane's route was taken up by her extremely long and uncomfortable flashback. But uncomfortable in a good, interesting, intense way. It was awesome. Yuuji's sister was a cute and I'm guessing she's gonna be showing up in the sequels, definitely.

The back 20% of her route was dumb though. The situation they create is really, really contrived and the action scene didn't really serve any major purpose. The finale of it all was kind of cute, though.

I'm glad Amane's bad end revealed one of the mysteries left unresolved by the good end, so that was nice.

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So, to rank the routes...

Amane > Michiru = Makina > Yumiko > Sachi

To rank the grils

Michiru > Amane = Yumiko > Sachi > Makina

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tl;dr

It's really good. Probably amazing if you're a slice of life / drama fan. The amount of content is awesome.
I'm excited to read the sequels, will probably buy them both as soon as the 3rd is finished translation.