Symphonic Rain reviews

Game could have used some heavy editing -- there are too many story days when almost nothing happens. Also, this being a VN, it is par for the course that there will be multiple routes and lots of repetition.                      My "first" main story was incredibly boring (your order might be different from mine), with a very unsatisfying conclusion. The other two stories (which seem to be "side stories" in a sense) are a lot more interesting and dramatic, with some surprisingly dark moments. After you finish 3 routes, you finally get access to a 4th route which repeats the story of the 1st route, but through a new perspective which makes it a lot more interesting. Once you finish that, it is possible to go through a 5th route, which was interesting and touching, but a bit contrived IMO.                          Graphics are so-so: characters are cute, but not very detailed, same with environments (though this seems to be a design choice, not an oversight). Voice acting is good. Music can be superb at times (let me praise the "incidental" music, which does not call attention to itself but it sets the mood well), but there were a few times where I thought the quality of the instruments could be a lot better (the church song, in particular, was a huge letdown, and did not correspond to the game description of "music being sung by a talented choir").                       Many sections include a rhythm game, with 3 difficulty levels. In principle, this is a great idea, to expand a bit on the gameplay, and these bits are fairly well designed and match the songs being played. Unhappily, some time calibration would be essential to make this work -- in my computer, there was a mismatch between the timing of the song and the timing the game expected you to press the correct keys. So I ended up skipping these games all together (kudos for the developers for adding this possibility with no penalties whatsoever).                 All that said, I must say I was really moved by some of the story beats, which is a testament to good character development. I just wished we got to such beats with a lot less downtime.