One of the many things that came out while I was away was a few english language visual novels for the iPhone and iPod Touch! Which is amazing for me, since I only just got myself an iPod Touch.
Two of these are Gift and Kira Kira, a game already released in english by Mangagamer. I bought both the moment I got home, curious about how this works out. So far I have only played a little of Gift, since I want to save Kira Kira for when I have better time – I hear really good things about that game, and I’m really happy to be able to play a non-h version of it.
But just to clarify some of the questions about these iPhone games, here is a run-down about what I know about the Gift game for now:
Gift is playable on both iPhone and iPod Touch. You can get it in both english and japanese versions, and there are also free “Lite” versions (demos) that you can get to try it out before buying.
I heard somewhere that it isn’t possible to save or load in Gift – this is not true! It is definitely possible to both save, load, skip text and so on. So don’t worry about missing out on these features if you consider buying the iPhone version. I don’t know if the people mentioning this were playing the Lite version, since I haven’t tried that. The Lite version may be missing these features, but the full version does not.
Then there is the translation… well, it’s not impressive. You’ll be able to know what is going on, but I personally can’t help but laugh out loud at the strange choice of words that appear from time to time. I mean, even I can do better than that…
Considering that this is an iPhone app, we can all hope that some sort of update for the translation will be released some day. But it’s still playable, I guess that works.
Art looks nice, although a little generic/boring to me. Story seems to be pretty ordinary too so far – the main character is reunited with his not-really-his-sister after several years, while also being courted by a shy, clumsy and very smitten friend. The setting is a city with a rainbow that never disappears, no matter the weather, and one of the heroines is researching this rare rainbow along with something called “Gift”.
I hope this answers some questions for people interested in getting this app. Maybe I’ll be able to do a better review if I finish Gift some day. Hopefully Kira Kira makes use of the Mangagamer translation which should be really good, because that would make me a happy bunny.
I kinda thought the Mangagamer translation for KiraKira was pretty bad. From what Sixten tells me of the game, apparently the English isn’t that great. If Gift’s translation is actually worse than Mangagamer, then I can only wonder how horrible it actually is…
It’s… bad 😛 Seriously, I can’t help but laugh out loud at the most ordinary sentences at times. My favourite was when the characters said “I’m home” – “Welcome home”. I can’t literally remember how they translated it, but it was incredibly stupid.
Hmmm too bad to hear that about Kira Kira though. I’ve only seen the first few screens of it so far, but a least it seemed at lot more like actual fiction to read than Gift did. I’ll have to wait and see.