Genre: Casual action-adventure visual novel
Developer: MAGES. Inc.
Publisher: PQube
Release Date: October 23rd, 2024
Edited by DarkLunarDude
SINce Memories: Off The Starry Sky is the latest installment of the Memories Off series. Developed by MAGES. Inc. and published by PQube. Unfortunately, I have never played any of the previous entries in the series, but I have played plenty of visual novels, not to mention all the anime I watch. The game is set ten years after the original series and in a modern setting. For me, PQube has published some banger visual novels in the past. When I received the key to write this review, I was very hopeful about heading into it.
Upon opening the game, you are greeted with an opening video worthy of a great anime. The song matches the accompanying video perfectly. Afterward, you’re greeted by a crisp menu where you get the options to start a new game, continue a save, view memories, change settings, and, oddly enough, change languages, which is using an option in the settings. The memories section has the CGs and music you come across in the game and the clear list, which lets you know what you still need to uncover.
The settings section has your standard visual novel settings, and interestingly enough, you can manually set the level of sound for all the voice characters individually. I don’t remember any other visual novel I played with that setting. The only settings you don’t see is the control scheme for the game. Anyway, once in the game, you’re greeted with a minimalistic UI with only the text bubble and skip, auto-scroll, and read buttons. This approach gives less distraction to the fantastic art and dialog the game offers.
Speaking of the art, the characters are well-drawn. They fit well into the background scenes and don’t feel out of place at all. Even the way the mouth moves when they speak feels well done. Their overall design and voice fit with their personalities well. Speaking of voices, every character I came across while playing the game for review was fully voiced. As I said, the voices match the characters to a T. There have been a lot of visual novels I played where the voices don’t fit the characters well or are not even voiced at all.
Now, as far as the story goes for the game, I will give you the bare-bones recap to avoid spoilers for you. The story revolves around Junya, a year after his brother’s tragic death. He is a kind soul who is still reeling from his brother’s death and goes out of his way to help others. His family runs a general store and does various handyman jobs around the town. You follow him dealing with his grief as he helps rebuild his childhood friend’s old family manor, solves the mystery of what job his brother was working on when he died, and more as the story goes on.
I thoroughly enjoyed the game as a whole and can highly recommend it to anyone who loves visual novels. Mages and PQUBE knocked another one out of the park, and it should find its home easily in anyone’s Steam Library. It is worth the $40 price tag and has a launch sale price of 10% off right now on Steam. So grab it and add it to your library like now.
Pros:
- Great Story
- Great Art
- Interesting characters
- Fully voiced
- The music fits well with the scenes
- Clean UI
Cons:
- No Controler Scheme in game
BoxCatHero gives SINce Memories: Off The Starry Sky a Drastik Measure of 9.0 out of 10.0 (90)
