Koisuru Natsu no Last Resort Review

Pulltop Latte is a sub-branch of Pulltop which focuses more on moege. Koisuru Natsu no Last Resort is one of Pulltop Latte’s title-a fairly fanservice-y visual novel but a surprisingly decent read overall.

This is how he got fired… Actually, nope.

Soutarou is a poor college student who gets by everyday by working various part-time jobs to pay for his daily expenses and school fees. Later on, he was fired from his latest part-time job after skipping his shift for helping Umi, his kouhai in college. Because she felt responsible, and seeing as how summer vacation was coming up, she invited Soutarou to a part-time job at a beach resort, although there’s a catch-they have to pretend they are lovers for the duration of the job… as that’s exactly what Umi told the manager.

I think it’s a fairly standard moege, only that it’s taking place at a beach resort rather than a school. It definitely had quite a few issues if I were to nitpick, but overall, it’s a pleasant, if not relaxing read with drama. One of it’s many problem is the “drama” part however, but I’ll get to it in a minute. But again, just like how the main character is retreating from the burdens of city life, the reader can also feel like as if they are on an escapade due to it’s relaxing atmosphere.

One problem I see in this visual novel is that the common route isn’t really good at hooking you into the individual routes. Aside from their initial quirks, the way the characters are written don’t really do a great job of making me interested in playing their routes. I mean, how the hell would I have known Shiori is actually a painter? These are the type of things which interest me, and should be placed in the common route instead of their individual routes.

This is so deep.

While I said this visual novel is a generally relaxing read, it still has drama. The entire concept is how the heroines are looking at the beach resort as an escapism from their dark pasts-facing their pasts, this visual novel definitely had some dramatic peaks. That being said, I do have mixed feelings about how some of the drama are handled-Umi’s route especially, despite being the main heroine of the story, by far feel the most lackluster. Her backstory feels too much of a stretch, if not, extremely vague; her drama, or the complete lack thereof, makes her route just feels like “super-dragged fluff”. Ironically, her entire character design is the total opposite of the visual novel’s theme of escapism. I’m not going to talk about the other routes much, as I would rather leave them to your own devices; but if you’re like me and think “canon route=best route”, just know that the other routes are actually by far more superior.

Backgrounds are excellent in Koisuru.

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that one of the major reasons you would be even mildly interested in this visual novel in the first place is the visuals. Characters are bright and colorful and they all have extremely distinguishable designs, but the main highlight of the visual is definitely the backgrounds. Befitting it’s theme, the backgrounds do a great job of bolstering the inviting atmosphere. They are all incredibly detailed, crisp and generally well-illustrate. The backgrounds also look busy, and sometimes feature different architectural designs in just one scene, paired up with superbly high resolution-and you have one of the best looking visual novel ever. In fact, the developers know this well too, and sometimes, pan the backgrounds a little bit and even zoomed in on one particular segment of a background (and still looks so great it can actually be cropped into a separate background). I think that’s the best thing about the visuals, you can crop the backgrounds in any way you want and they all still feel extremely photogenic. Additionally, not just backgrounds but there are also times when the panning and zooming are used on character sprites and CGs too to good effect.

Music is also actually excellent in this visual novel, something I don’t know I would like it as much as I had now. It’s definitely nothing revolutionary or anything, but the music has a sort of resort-y feel which does such a great job of winding you down and getting you into a relaxing mood. On that note, top class OP and ED as well.

You can “scene jump” back into any previous scenes as long as they are still within the backlog.

Being quite a new visual novel, the system is more than decent and I have no qualms in this department. One thing which I had never seen before is the “Scene Jump” feature, which aside from just an usual backlog, you can quite literally “jump” to an actual scene you read before to re-read everything again in full enjoyment, which is undoubtedly an incredibly useful feature as you can re-invest in the previous scenes with the same visuals, sprites and music.

Even for moege, Koisuru isn’t the best one I played-my main gripe with it is that it’s drama is poorly integrated, especially with the main heroine’s route. Nonetheless, it’s a relaxing read, with high-quality visuals and soothing music to help get you into the resort mood. Overall, Koisuru is still a decent read and it’s at least much better than a certain kusoge I played before.

…I guess if all else fails, there’s at least mizugi…… WHHAAAEHEEEEEHHHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Rating
Story: C+
Character: B
Visuals: A+
Sound: A+
System: A-

Final Score
6.5/10

Tags: beach, bikini, drama, escapism, Koisuru Natsu no Last Resort, Konami, kouhai, mizugi, moege, Nagisa, relaxing, resort, Riho, Sango, senpai, Shiori, Soutarou, swimsuit, twintails, Umi, Yuuhi

This entry was posted by Kai.

• January 26, 2016
• Review, Visual Novel
• 6 Comments