„I bet in a few moths time, just hearing the soundtrack will make me cry”
Setting
The story is set in a fantasy universe, on an island with a strict colour hierarchy. The most precious colour is white, and that’s coincidentally the colour of our MC/ Olympia, followed by the primary colours red, white and blue. All secondary colours are considered sub standard. And some of the most ugly mixed colours are, similar to criminals, banned from the surface and sent to the underground Yomi, where there is no sun. Our MC is for some reason the only white person left, but this colour hierarchy is not completely for no reason, the important colours have certain duties to fulfil in order for the world to work. And it’s the responsibility of the white coloured people to make the sun shine. That means, when they go extinct, the world will be engulfed in darkness. You see the stakes are high and our MC has a heavy responsibility to shoulder. That is why she is required starting from her 18th birthday to look fa a husband within one year’s time and continue the white lineage, to save the world.
The common route took me 10-12 hours, like each character route. If you read in your mother tongue it could be more around 5-7 hours.
The story told with many flashbacks, so it’s easy to catch up, even if you missed something (sometimes even too many flashbacks: “不気味なbukiminaa”) and told in many smaller chapters, each one day, which makes for a nice flow of a story .
Main Character
Olympia/ Byakuya lost her parents at the age of 5, when all the other white women vanished and was brought to the yellow head’s estate and was raised secluded from the world. So she knows not much about the system of the world, nor does she have friends. That’s why she starts her journey of discovering the world and finding a husband fairly inexperienced. At the start she is shy, insecure, doesn’t know how to react in certain situations, self-conscious about forming her own opinion But over time, she becomes more aware of her surroundings, understands the rules of the world and starts sating her opinion frankly. She even turns out to be rather stubborn, headstrong, knows what she wants and does everything she can to achieve her goals and pursue her values
In this regard her story feels like a coming of age story of a girl, discovering the world, herself, and love; finding out, what she wants from life, which values she wants to protect and how far she is willing to go to achiever her dreams.
I think she is a great character and it’s exciting to watch her grow!
LIs
In the recommended order: (you can only play Himuka after Riku, Tokisada, Kuroba and Yosuga, and Akaza only last)
Riku
He’s a blue soldier, very stern, earnest, and a strict supporter of the colour hierarchy. As he’s a tsundere , he takes long until he opens up. But still his story has nice pacing of romance, though it is a bit more about getting to know sub characters (due to the slow love development) and him challenging his world view.
He has a good voice actor Shimazaki Nobunaga島﨑 信長, who sounds strong and cold, but shines in romance scenes!
Tokisada
He’s of the colour, green and sweet, bright, but childish (both in how he approaches conflict, but also naïve and open). He’s also stubborn and takes what he wants. As the love development is initiated by Tokisada, the route is well paced and sweet to see, how he woes her.
And uff, I went in without having much expectations for him, because he appeared to be so childish, BUT I was so WRONG! Remember, that he takes what he wants? Yes, he does, in a sweet way, but he does. Some romance scenes completely took my breath and I didn’t believe what was just happening. Is it just me, or is it getting hot I here!?
The story is partly about him and island lore, and his route was when I first realized, the story can make you laugh and cry within minutes.
In general he has a sweet voice (Uemura Yuuto上村 祐翔) , but could also change to a more deep manly voice.
Kuroba
He’s a black doctor, and thus being of the lowest colour this is predestined for story conflicts. He’s extremely intelligent, flirtatious and funny. He often teases the MC and is seldomly earnest. The bright doctor is self-confident and has a relaxed attitude. That is why I didn’t like him as much as I would like to, as he is too funny for me. And I feel like the route had some pacing issues, but that might as well be caused by me not vibing too much with him and a bit of a clichéd conflict. In general the romance story was enjoyable, even if a bit slow, and the story also had a few revelations.
Hic voice(Sugita Tomokazu杉田 智和: Shion in Klap!) was like his character: a bit too flirty, and relaxed, what made me miss a bit of sorrow and vexation.
Yosuga
I the purple bathhouse keeper in the yomi, who looks like the lady-killer, but is actually unbelievably sensitive, kind, gentle and attentive. Mysterious He teases the MC as well, but in a more charming way than Kuroba does (very subjective perception). And combined with his mysterious nature, revelations about his past, in a story full of plot twists and secrets, and a very natural love development, he quickly became my favourite character.
His voice (Uchida Yuuma内田 雄馬: Vilio in Radiant Tale) might be the best part of this character, it sounds like being wrapped up in a pillow!
Himuka
He’s the grey undertaker for funerals and the incorporation SHY. He’s so sweet, he made me go aww the most! On top of that he’s suuuuper insecure and self-conscious- His character design on the cover is very girlish, but luckily the in-game sprite is not as girlish, though he still is of course a very soft and feminine character. But nevertheless he’s interesting to get to know, though his romance could sometimes be quite weird, but had still a fair share of the story.
But he’s locked, as his story contains many revelations about the lore of the island.
His voice (Horie Shun堀江 瞬) was fitting to the character: neither too girly, nor too manly.
Akaza
Akaza is the poster boy. He’s the red head of an important ministry, very stern and stoic and even called “iron mask” by the heroine! But actually he’s strong, reliable and honest, following his own set of values. He’s also quite self-confident about his convictions and would be willing to make sacrifices in order to achieve his dreams.
The romance in Akaza’s route is surprisingly slow paced, especially because MC was quite reluctant and a little tsundere herself (what felt a bit strange, as in the other routes she took the initiative, except for Tokisada’s). But that also made the route feel distinct from other routes and also naturally paced. But when romance finally came, it came thoroughly!
His story again had many revelations and could be considered the true route. And after some pacing issues, it finally became overwhelmingly emotional! That might be due to the story, but also the incredibly good music, I totally came to love by then and already had emotional associations with, from the previous routes. I thought this would only be happening after I finished the game, but at this point my emotions were already tightly linked to the gripping music and it sill makes me cry just hearing that music.
I don’t know what it is about his voice (Matsuoka Yoshitsugu松岡 禎丞: Nicole in My next life as Villainess, Kou in Tlicolity Eyes), but to me it sounds sexy in itself, best suited for romance scenes!
All in all: all characters unbelievably nice, easy to be with, no bad boy?!Coming from Piofiore that quite surprised me: “is this even allowed? No abuse relationship insight? No?”
Every route had heavy romance aspects, you could truly understand why they fell in love, and in general it doesn’t feel forced or sudden, in spite of some pacing issues. The other big part of the route is taken by revelations about the world and lore. And every LI has his own secrets to unravel and goals to fight for, that move the story forward. Each route faces with different problems to solve in 3 distinctions: romance – personal history – what they want to achieve in the future (future goals). Some conflicts are great, others can be a bit stereotypical and almost annoying. Also sometimes the villains seemed a bit one-dimensional (like: oh, he killed her out of jealousy…). Overall though I found the story to be very enticing.
Endings
There are three different endings: 1 good, 2 bad ones and each comes with a CG. But due to the love capture system – that be turned on or off- the endings are easy to achieve.
But all endings feel kind of open ended, meaning that it’s not totally clear what the future holds and the future is left to the player’s imagination. Not saying the good ending isn’t happy, it’s just more about a hopeful future.
The bad endings on the other hand felt sudden and short, meaning they took me less than half an hour – and that’s without understanding the language! That’s why they felt slapped on, because the story doesn’t branch out much. It was just another ending sequence, that therefore couldn’t really convey feelings of desperation and sorrow in this short time and didn’t add much to the story an characters (I already know, they love each other deeply and would do anything for each other, you don’t need to show this in the bad ending) Some bad endings even are a bit weird, but not as deliciously disturbing as in Piofiore for example (due to being too short and sudden, and not carefully built up).
After two endings (the good and one bad), there are short spoken sections of the LI’s with thoughts after credits of ending, what I thought was a very nice touch!
Art
I seldomly talk about background art, but these backgrounds are no mere backgrounds! They are way too pretty, with so much detail and convey the Asian setting.
The CGs were not regularly spread throughout the route, but more randomly dispersed, where some part of the routes didn’t have any CGS and then suddenly in romance scenes there were 4 CGs within a few minutes. Not saying I don’t like romantic CGs – they are the air I breath- but I would have liked them to appear a bit more regularly. But the CGS are very pretty, like acrylic paintings, or drawn with watercolours (by Satoi). But still I feel like they could have been more detailed or made more use of the colour theme.
The music – again: its no background music at all! It’s full fledged rpg music, that deserves to be the center of the attention! I can see myself roaming the wilds while listening to this music in an adventure game. This game has one of the best soundtracks I’ve ever listened to, I still hear it in my head from time to time or hum these lovely tunes.
Tone
The game has a pretty uncomfortable setting, I wouldn’t want to live there at all. One needs to stomach some lore and tragic backstories, horrible fates, like rape, execution and discrimination, especially not only against colours but also heavily against women. But overall art style colourful. That’s why I’m reluctant to say it’s a dark game…The topic is tragic, but in the main story and good ending, the MC or the LIs are not really in danger. I would rather describe it as emotional and tragic or dramatic, but not necessarily utterly dark.
What is really worth mentioning, it that the game is heavily lore focused! The writers created a living and breathing world, so much that I even feel like a have a sense of direction on this island, despite it being a visual novel, where you don’t move yourself and only have 2D backgrounds! So they very much succeeded in the world building, I shall say.
Extras
There are extremely lovely short stories!!!! Oh my god, I didn’t expect that. There is one epilogue like episode, with a cute couple scene – like really really cute- and a self-introduction with some really interesting questions!: I now know Tokisada has the same birthday like me. And a memo, with their thought about events, reminiscing over what happened. Also side characters share their thought in these very interesting memos! They give even more insight in the characters thoughts and backstory. I might have enjoyed this sections as much as I enjoyed the whole game.
And of course the game has, what I like to name a “talking menu” with the characters voices saying sweet lines whenever you are in the menu.
Learn Japanese?
I wouldn’t recommend Olympia Soirée to learn Japanese, as it’s kind of in a historical, with high fantasy and many made up words, difficult names and concepts.
All that is left to say, that as much as I was happy I captured all the love interests and enjoyed all the additional content, I was also wistful to leave this colourful yet tragic world behind me.
“That was a helpful review!
To show my appreciation I’m gonna purchase it via Lin’s amazon link to support her!”