Cherry Tree High I! My! Girls! – Review
In the more recent years, Visual Novels that have been very popular in Japan for quite some time now, have been getting more attention on the Western markets of gaming. This started probably around the time that a free VN called Katawa Shoujo (Crippled Girls) was getting more attention for its uniqueness. Since then we have been getting more and more VN to play, and right now we have the pleasure to play the game called Cherry Tree High I!My!Girls that is for sale on Steam. The game is a direct sequel to Cherry Tree High Comedy Club and follows up its story on reviving the comedy club.
Story
In the previous game, Cherry Tree High Comedy Club, you played as the character Miley Verisse (now known as Mairu, as they changed the names of the characters to the original Japanese ones) in her attempt to recreate the comedy club in the Cherry Tree High School. She wanted to do this as she was a huge fan of comedy and has the talent for it. She tried to recruit all kinds of members for her club, which made her get acquainted to new friends and rivals. She was often in conflict with the Student Councils president Octavia Richmond (now known as Chitoge) in her attempt to stop the forming of the club due to trivial rivalries between her and Mairu, although she used to be a childhood friend of her.
Now in the sequel to its predecessor, Cherry Tree High I!My!Girls!, you carry on your quest to completely revive the club thanks to getting a personal club room and supervisor. Mairu, as captain of the club, is finally able to start her activities together with her friends under supervision of Katakura, a teacher who was well known for her acting skills in melodrama. You are also able to recruit a new member while following through the story. She is called Ai Fujino and is a super popular pop idol that secretly loves comedy and practices it in her free time. She is the newest main character where the story will focus on this time around.
Ai Fujino has decided to move to the city in order to join the comedy club at Cherry Tree High School. She is a pretty ditzy character that doesn’t really have a good sense of direction, nor does she have the talent to make up her own comical sketches. After a lot of venturing through the city, and on the way meeting up with the various known characters of the game, she finally finds her way to the school. She immediately makes her entry to the club, while still trying to conceal her true identity of being the famous pop idol Ai Towano. Eventually she becomes a member of the club, and forms a comedy duo together with Mairu under the name of “I!My!Girls!”.
We also get introduced to a couple of other new characters that are not part of the comedy club, such as the earlier mentioned teacher Utena Katakura. She once performed in a theater group and was friends with the original comedy club founders called the Grinmeisters. Finally we have another friend/rival of Mairu called Imari Kobayashi. She started in the same year as Mairu and was promised that they would join the comedy club together, which didn’t happen because Mairu never joined the club. Since Mairu revived the older comedy club, she often gets in a rivalry with Imari but always seem to get along just fine. They still compete against each other to see which one is the better comedy club.
The game consists of a total of 12 main story chapters divided in 7 main stories and 5 sub-stories. These sub-stories don’t really have much important links with the main chapters, but do offer some extra content for you to enjoy. They tend to be about simpler stuff, like love and misunderstanding.
Graphics
Graphics-wise the game is done in a typical anime style of design, which is often common in visual novels (probably because they originate from Japan). The designs of each character are very unique, and are really made with care. The personalities are often already visible on the kind of design each character has, modeled according to most Japanese animation stereotypes.
Unlike the usual dialogues accompanied with backgrounds and character portraits that are usually present in VN, you’ll see that this games has made an addition of including sprites on the background. These sprites give a little more information on how the situation in the game is being visualized. You’ll see what direction they are looking, whether they are standing next to each other or on a distance. This used to be something that you had to visualize yourself in most VN games, but here they’ll make it a little easier for you to imagine.
Sound
The game owns a couple of catchy tunes that will probably be stuck in your head for some time, going along well with the situations that the girls are in. Sadly, the amount of tracks available aren’t much, so you’ll probably be hearing the same song over and over again.
Another thing that was missing (and this was also true in its prequel), waree the voice-acting of the characters. Voice-acting would have improved the amusement you could have with the game, as well as improving the comedy that is present in the game, so it is pretty sad it isn’t there.
Gameplay
Unlike in the prequel, Cherry Tree High I!My!Girls! offers a very linear visual novel style gameplay. In the previous game, you could do simple task like improving friendship relationships or completing your homework, but now you have almost no control about what is happening. In most VN game, you are able to make decisions that affect the story, but in this one you only press a button to go through tons of text and dialogues without having to do anything. This makes it so that there isn’t much value to completing the game. The only value you will have, would be following the story from start to finish and enjoying the various conversations and comedy that are present in the game.
Conclusion
While the game does not offer any form of gameplay unlike its predecessor, you can see that the game was made with care. It offers various dialogues and comedy for you to enjoy reading, and the characters are all very interesting and unique. If you do not like stories that much, then this type of game is not something for you to look out for, but if you do not mind only having to read text, then you might want to check this one and its prequel out.
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