Suki na Mono wa Suki Dakara Shouganai!! First Limit

warning: this review will mention sexual assault

Haha! Yikes.

I have this odd pension for punishing myself with visual novels ie "for the culture". Last year I worked through much of Key's library as well as some yuri (Heart of the Woods was such a welcome surprise), and now that is the year of our lord, 2022, I have come to the realization that I was not giving the lads any credit. I'm an open-minded guy, after all. I did what I had to get my grubby hands on this adorably crusty early-2000's moe abomination. Look at it. It's so uwu. It's, as my sister says, "mega moe-totes-adorbs". It's drenched in that tooth-rottingly kyute dojin look that drags me back to the good ol' days of liveblog and neocities... The one thing I can say about this game is that it's got plenty of art that is very cozy to look at.

It's funny how much art it has, actually, because it's an incredibly short game. A single route will run you under 2 hours and since you'll be using the skip function when exploring different roues, completing the other runs will be even shorter. This would be pretty refreshing if it weren't for the writing being. Something. Indescribably, ineffably, immensely incomprehensible.

You've gotta be generous here: The translation patch was cracked out in the early 2010's by a group of enthusiastic young people, they deserve all the praises for their hard work. There are whiffs of early weebdom translationisms that only serve to make me feel even cozier. However, you can feel it. The writing. You can feel that it sucks. Everything is bear-bones and confusing, with the poorly-defined characters running around from place to place for no clear reason and getting jumpscared by horny nonsense. I haven't explained the plot yet because I actually have very little clue how any of it connects. There's your tsundere room mate with DID, a whacky ghost kid who is unnervingly horny, a teacher who needs to be fired immediately and an empty chasm where my will to live once was. The player character is the worst offender, as his inconsistent reactions become necessary to facilitate the non-existant plot.

Visual Novels have an issue with sexual assault. And yaoi, as I've come to notice, takes that issue and magnifies it--

(EDIT: I have been thinking about this line endlessly and I've decided it's utter bullshit, BL and GL and HL all have pretty even amounts of assault in them which is not a GOOD thing but it would be disingenuous to pretend that stories about dudes goin' down on each other is the only one with this problem. Read most any shojo from the early 2000's or any shonen today and you will find that assault is just kind of something we as a society have normalized as "sexy". Actually, just watch any 2004 American romance movie you'll find some pretty whack shit being framed as romantic. Anyways.)

I'm definitely not in the demographic for this but no part of this felt quite right. Obviously there's a chemistry issue, with the protagonist being so poorly-defined that any relationship he enters feels like the author slamming two action figures together and telling them to kiss. The bigger issue would lay in how the saucier scenes come out of nowhere at the cost of the character's agency.

Moe ghost boy possesses your room mate's body and declares himself your lover, which I found delightfully goofy until you're doing the duty and somehow never bringing it up with your room mate, who has no clue his is happening. This is followed by several occasions where full-grown teacher lures you into his office to assault you-- These scenes don't add anything to the story. Visual novels tend to have these kinds of scenes for the sake of selling copies, with later version eliminating them completely. I'm no prude, but the teacher scenes being played off for laughs killed about all affection I could've had left for the game.

What else is there? The functionality is a bit terrible, although I'm willing to give it some leeway on account of being an old doujin game. There are some cute extras in the menus. The music is actually quite pleasant, as I found myself humming along with the school theme through playthroughs. I feel like I've written more than enough for this thing.

I made a vow to only give 1 star ratings to games I thought completely devoid of value-- That's a strong thing to say. Sukisho has the cutest artwork, a pretty soundrack and... And that's the thing. There's nothing else. The story is at it's best a vapid and at it's worst a vehicle for bad sex scenes. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone, not to the VN buffs or the BL fans. I was going to go completionist mode due to it's short runtime, but in the end, I couldn't muster up the energy to care.