A (probably) way too harsh critique of Highschool Romance

Ach ja, just recently, I finished playing Highschool Romance and with “playing” I mean recording it with my friend and having a ball of a time. Regardless of the quality of the game, this was a lot of fun, greatly enhanced by how seemingly not-at-all subtle the decision of who speaks what character was. I would and probably will do it again.

On the other hand, I am also a notorious critic for media no one really cares about and oh boy do I have some opinions to share. Some are aimed at the narrative structure of the visual novel, some are grounded in social and political discourse and some are simply emotionally charged rants. If the goal of art is to engage with you on an emotional level, Highschool Romance sure succeeded in that regard, but more on that later. Be noted that everything I say is based on a single playthrough (Hoshi’s route) and stuff I read online.

The plot of Highschool Romance is neither novel, not particularly well executed and also, in its own words, rather cliché and trope-y. The protagonist, Shoji, has to attend an all-girls school, despite being a boy himself, and pretend to be a girl, all while eventually courting one of three possible heroines. The main bulk is comprised of daily school activities and conversations with the girls, with Shoji keeping the fact that he is a boy a secret. Sprinkle some romance into the mix and this is mostly what you will get out of the game.

Now, on first glance, this might smell suspiciously of gender™. And I wouldn’t fault you. The game highlights Shoji’s aversion to the fact, that he has to pretend to be a girl, but also that he eventually gets used to it and it also talks about masculinity and femininity in broader terms on several occasions. I doubt I was the only one that thought, that this will eventually lead into a story about Shoji realizing that he is trans, or at the very least reconciling something about his own gender and how he sees the concept of man and women. Well, nothing like that happens.

I am not of the believe that any story has to comment on anything, no matter how seemingly obvious the story stands in relation to a certain topic, or that a story should rather go into a direction so that it can comment on it. However, the story still is and as such, comments on everything in one way or the other, no matter how small. You will probably have to dig pretty deep in Highschool Romance to find anything, really, but even if it is not primarily engaging with the topic of gender™, it sure has something to say about it.

“Well-intended, but narrow-minded” might be the best I can describe it. I initially thought some of the character’s, especially Shoji’s, remarks are there to set a baseline and a general mindset of the characters, that will then change over the course of the story. Things like the way they see gender differences, outward presentation and such. This change, however, never occurs. Shoji’s idea of “being a woman” essentially boils down to wearing a skirt, maybe make-up and speaking in a higher voice, Selina goes from “Are you a lesbian” to “Maybe you are trans” to eventually deducing, that Shoji has to be a boy and Hoshi only makes sense of her affection for Shoji by predisposing that he couldn’t possibly be a girl.

To its credit, nothing feels evil-spirited or mean about anything the game says or does. Engaging in stereotypes? Sure, but it is also no *insert random Harem Light Novel*, which I would describe as actively problematic. It is, however, a flavorless heteronormative cis pulp, which might be an even bigger crime in some people’s book. The premise is essentially just the backdrop for a run-of-the-mill highschool romance, with characters overcoming one additional small hurdle on their way, that means nothing to anyone, anyway. To get some metaphors going, I would say Highschool Romance shoot itself in the foot by creating something that some people might constitute as bait and, at worst, slightly backward thinking.

Though, I suppose you can still limp to the finish line on one leg, so Highschool Romance also had to shoot itself again, just to make sure it stays down in the mud. From a storytelling perspective, this game is a mess in more ways than one and it is here, where it mostly failed to grab my attention in any positive way. Like most visual novels, Highschool Romance has an array of choices the player can choose from and that change the outcome of the story. It doesn’t seem to be strictly “route”-based though, but rather works on an invisible system counting affection points for the different girls in the background. In itself, this is not an approach I find inferior to normal “routes”, but does the game have to accommodate a change in structure to make it effective.

Firstly, Highschool Romance is simply not complicated enough to give the player any kind of challenge or direct control. It absolutely doesn’t have to be a Fate, where you can run into a bad end, because a character doesn’t trust you enough, due to a decision you made three days ago, but it also has to be more than rather obvious references to a character’s traits. The choices do change the course of the plot, in the way that they open a certain route and with whom you spend more time with, but could these things just as well be triggered at random by how badly the choices are implemented, with the player choosing between either seemingly irrelevant or basically obvious options.

That is, of course, when the game even gives you a choice, or they even matter. The first one is simply a clumsy way of writing, where the game prompts you with a choice, only for Shoji to decide for you. Wanna play video games, instead of a board game and risk being found out as a guy? To bad, Scribble it is. The latter one is more weird, as it comes down to what is essentially just a different flavor text for your favorite girl with no impact on anything that follows. Hang out everyday of the school festival with one girl and it has literally zero effect on you ability to just choose the other heroine instead. Hell, even whom you choose to spend the break with, while being arguably the biggest deviation you can get between different girls, is meaningless, since the choice never mattered in the first place.

Secondly, while the choices may change some events, the core plot stays intact… which, of course it does, but becomes a problem, when some unchangeable events of the narrative actively go against the choices you made. Imagine doing everything in your power to go for the Hoshi route, only for Selina to take away an awful lot of spotlight and eventually forcing herself on Shoji and him enjoying it… yes, that is an event that happens in literally every possible route. Hope you like that aftertaste of NTR, when Hoshi decides to kiss Shoji and they become a couple. On the other hand, you can very easily dodge everything concerning Lea, making her a character that appears in the beginning, somewhere in the middle for a short line and then never again.

A game shouldn’t make you question, if your choices even matter, but this confusion seems to be built into the very structure of the game, where mandatory plot points clash with the interactive part of the story, resulting in nothing less than totally unwarranted confusion turned anger on my part. Again, imagine doing everything in your power to go for the Hoshi route and feeling like you have lost to Selina not even halfway through, even admitting defeat and asking your friends to choose Selina, just to end your suffering (They didn’t). It doesn’t matter what girl wins at the end of the day, as the player definitely loses (maybe a biased opinion here).

Let us come to the characters. As already mentioned, in our single playthrough of Highschool Romance, we have barely encountered Lea beyond the introductory bits, so here is what I know: She, for some reason, wears a crown and has the biggest breasts of all the girls. The End. Judging from the game’s CGs however, she might really be into the idea of force-feminizing Shoji, which is something I definitely wanted to see more than Hoshi getting sidetracked in her own route.

Speaking of Hoshi, she is by far my favorite character in the visual novel. After the rather lackluster beginning and dull conversation with Selina, her introduction was what finally got me interested in the game. To be fair, concerning my 2D preferences, I may tend to have a type¹. Purple hair, glasses, shy, “nerdy” hot and a knack for alcoholism? Let me tell you, that’s straight up Waifu material right there and easily best girl in the story… not that there is a lot of competition. I can genuinely enjoy just having conversations with characters I like, completely independent from the aspect of the main plot. Best example would be Yuri from Doki Doki Literature Club. Sure, DDLC is explicitly about the nature of dating sims, but I would be lying if I say I didn’t enjoy the more typical visual novel moments with her. This is also a big reason why I can often just ignore the framing and structure of plot and focus on individual aspects that make up the bread and butter for what I care about. In the case of Highschool Romance: Voicing best girl.

Is Hoshi especially well written or anything? No, but Highschool Romance knows how to indulge in the fantasy of her character type and delivers on most of the beats. What bothers me, however, is how easily the game could have given her way more depth, than with what she eventually ended up. Her romance with Shoji basically started, because he was the only one showing basic human decency towards her, and going through the basic motions of becoming friends and eventually lovers… which is fine, but so bare-bones, I could read 90% of other romance stories instead. Why not bond through some of the things we do know about Hoshi and Shoji, like both of them having little to no experience with friendship and eventually finding companionship in each others solitude? Why not work through Hoshi’s tendency to take up more work than she can do, or her desire for the class to succeed? I mean, what about the conversation about her losing all her friends due to a lack of time? There is enough in both characters to revolve the development about anything more than just the initial Boy (Girl)-meets-Girl setup.

And let’s not forget about her ending. I of course have no problem with her explicitly dating Shoji as a guy. There was, however, a line that really rubbed me the wrong way and that was her making sense of the fact, that she is in love with Shoji and thus Shoji had to be a boy in her mind and then acting on that very notion. Even ignoring the scene where Selina asks her if she “swings that way”, it would have been a really wholesome ending when the question concerning Shojis gender just wouldn’t matter. Shoji being “revealed” (or more so concluded) as a boy changes nothing about the times he spend with Hoshi pretending to be a girl, nor are they invalidated with him being a boy. As it stands now, her confession seems more like a product of Shoji being male, instead of loving Shoji as the person she got to know and taking the next step, which is just a shame, really, as this is what the confession should have been based on. Her assumption also only works, because it was written to be true. Let’s just hope there exists a parallel-universe, where Hoshi asks Shoji if they are a boy and turns our to be just wrong, but confesses anyway.

The last girl to talk about is Selina. Now, as we have been (technically) playing Hoshi’s route, our exposure to her was limited. She nonetheless spends every damn second proving that she is… questionable. Nothing I will say is necessarily to be taken as her being a badly written character, in fact the opposite is the case, but as me just noting all the things I noticed and want to talk about. Because there is a lot to talk about with Selina.

I find it weird to have one of the main heroines to be so central to the plot, that it can basically overwrite the choices one made. She is the girl to find out first that Shoji is a boy and later declares herself a rival to Hoshi, despite potentially not being involved at all from a player perspective and while I do find it cute to force Hoshi into a competition for Shoji’s affection, especially since her reactions are completely tone deaf, it should just be accepted as a foregone conclusion, who Shoji end up with at this point… it is apparently not, but I already talked about it a few paragraphs before.

Then, there are Selina’s actual characteristics… being a full-fleshed sociopath. But let’s not get ahead of ourself. She is the more upbeat genki type of girl, contrasting with Hoshi’s more reserved demeanor. I am surprisingly fine with it, though my money is still on Hoshi, obviously, though what really drives the character is what lies behind the surface. She approaches Shoji more directly, which makes her feel like she is actively contributing to forming a relationship with Shoji, unlike with Hoshi for a example. Her way approaching, however, is kinda messed up. Not sure if I am reading a bit too much into what may as well just be clumsily written prose, but Selina manipulated Shoji almost every step of the way: Falling down mid-race to see if he would help her up, praising him to join the track club and pretending to be on par ability-wise, despite being way faster, and last but not least, even risking to physically hurt him to create a chance where he confesses being a boy.

I am definitely up for a story exploring the more ugly sides of characters experiencing romantic feelings, but this seems out of place for a story like this. Also, think again about the parallel-universe, where Shoji is not a boy… yeah, not so cute a moment anymore, is it? Also, consent is optional in her mind and the scene where she forces herself on Shoji low-key brands he as a chaser, which… yikes. There is definitely an audience for characters like Selina, but I don’t belong to it. Nonetheless won’t I think that her character is in any shape or form bad per se, just not what I would like to have seen from a story such as Highschool Romance.

Lastly, there is the protagonist, Shoji, himself. He is surprisingly… introspective? This guy has opinions, even if they suck, which makes him a 100-times better protagonist than Aoi from If my Heart had Wings (I will always bring up IMHHW slander, if possible). Too bad that most of the plot doesn’t happen because of him, but rather to him. Hoshi and Selina practically drag him through the days, with Shoji or the player only choosing who exactly does the dragging. His reactions are also not interesting enough to carry his character. Even if I may not like it, he is arguably at his best complaining and speaking his mind about dressing as a girl. Again, he does have opinions… though, they are bad opinions.

His passiveness also lowers the impact of the romantic bits. What would have happened if Hoshi didn’t confess to him or if Hoshi is interested in another person? Sure, Shoji may like her, but does the story not earn the notion that he loves Hoshi. We also never see him do anything outside the interactions with Hoshi and Selina. He has no life on his own, we basically just explore him through the lense of the interaction with the other girls, meaning that he can barely stand alone as a character. This may be the biggest detriment of Highschool Romance not being at least a tiny bit more aware about itself in any way. Imagine Shoji reflecting on the entire experience — his relationship with Hoshi and Selina and living as a girl for almost a year — and then him acting out on what he learned about himself. I realize, that Highschool Romance is simply not that story I want it to be, but it hurts either way, that I can see how it could have been.

All in all, everything I mentioned make the entire experience kind of hollow and impactless. I may have a good time, while the interactions with one of the heroines last, but after everything is said and done, there is not a lot to remember or think back to, at least not in a positive way… which is sad, because there was a good amount of stuff I enjoyed, that was just unfortunately ruined at a later time.

Beyond that, there a couple more minor things I have thoughts about. The art-style, while not necessarily well drawn all the time (Do not focus on the knees), is appealing and I like both Hoshi’s and Selina’s designs. However, I do think they could have gone with more conventional anime-style faces, as the head-shape, noses and heavy blush just scream 15-year old Tumblr and DeviantArt user to me… which doesn’t mean it’s bad, but just brings me out of the experience when Highschool Romance does its best to portray itself as an otherwise japanese visual novel.

Also, while I have nothing to base this on, it feels like the game was written by someone whose first language is not english. Ignoring some errors that could have been caught by additional quality control or editing, more than just a couple sentences read themselves rather clumsy or just plain weird, especially compared to something like Sakura Sadist, which is by no means anywhere near high art in its prose. If I were the writer of Highschool Romance, I would have rewritten a good chunk of the sentences, just so I wouldn’t have to double-take every other sentence.

And that’s about it. Anyway, I guess my thoughts can be succinctly summed up by a single meme. Please have a better day than me.

Highschool Romance is available on Steam.