Hashihime of the old book town ~ overall thoughts

Developer: ADELTA 
Eng publisher: Mangagamer 
Available on Steam & mangagamer (eng) 

 

Hello for a long time! \ ( ' u ' )
This time I don't have otome game related post but BL (boys love) game. I haven't play any BL visual novels before bc there haven't been any localized bl games which I like or would be interest in. One day I saw my friend tweeting about Hashihime game. And I was surprised that this game was translated in english. I have followed Adelta's twitter for a long time and I have been interest in their games and of course Hashihime of the old book town game.  So I immediately went to steam and bought this game.

Summary from Steam:

Jinbochou, TokyoJune 1922, Taisho Era
The Rainy Season

Tamamori came to Tokyo with his sights set on getting accepted to the Imperial University. However, he doesn't pass the entrance exam, and is so undisciplined and wrapped up in endless fantasies that he's kicked out of his boarding house after only two years. Through a stroke of luck, Tamamori begins to live and work at Umebachidou, a used book store. There, he enjoys whiling away his time as a "student preparing for entrance exams" and taking advantage of friends who are also from his hometown. But one right after the other, mysterious deaths befall those friends and, realizing he's been repeating the same rainy three days over and over again, Tamamori finds himself racing throughout Jinbochou to save them.

In this pop-occult mystery that surrounds the deaths of his friends...
What is real, and what is a hallucination?

My overall thoughts

I was wondering how I should review this game or write my thoughts about it. Because I realized if I try wrote about every route it would be big spoiler for the game. And it would be probably very confusing when I try to write about the routes. So I decided to write my overall thought about the game and what kind of feeling it left for me. (This is probably going to be really short post)

SO like I said I haven't play any bl games before but I like to read bl manga and sometimes watch some bl animes. And playing this genres game wasn't difficult for me. And I knew there was going to be some sex scenes (bc r18 bl game). Some spice for the game lol. 8D 
 When I started playing this game I wasn't sure what was going to wait me. I really liked atmosphere which this game give for me. Also really liked the art style and taisho era theme in the game. Sometimes there were a lot humor moments and then suddenly you felt really depressed while playing or sad for the characters. BUT most of the time I felt really confused. Because you aren't sure if Tamamori was in reality/dream or hallucination. There were also some scary/horror type of moments too. Those raining background sound and good OST give right atmosphere in those moments. And talking about ost, I really liked all ost in this game and also op& end songs were a really good. 

characters from the game

First route which you can play or you have to play is Minakami. But after that you were able to make choices,which lead you to different routes. 
I really liked Minakami as character, his route was a really sad one and I just wanted to Minakami to be happy. I guess Minakami's route wasn't that confusing like the other routes. The end of the route I was really happy but sad at the same time, I cried like a little baby. After Minakami's route next one was Kawase. Kawase was this " I look at you like pile of trash" type of character. Which I kinda liked but sometimes I guess Kawase was also really annoying or hard to understand. All of the routes are a really dark and twisted. So I'm probably going to say a lot that "this route was really dark and it made me feel uncomfortable". After finishing Kawase's route my opinion about some characters changed a lot. One of those were Hanazawa whose route I played after Kawase. I really started disliking Hanazawa in Kawase's route and I didn't trust him at all. 

When I started playing his route I really hoped that my opinion about him would change. But oh how trustful I was. While I was playing this route I just waited when the shit storm was going to happen and when I felt more uncomfortable about this character and things what happened in this route. To be honest I just wanted to skip his route and just forget this character. But no,I had to suffer. And the ending was just big question mark for me.
Luckily after this route I was FINALLY able to play Hakase's route. Which I had waited after playing Minakami's route. When he first time appeared in the game I knew that I would like this character and his route. Hakase is at the same time very weird/mysterious character but also big pervert. I wonder why I always like this type of characters. This route was also very sad and I might have cried a little bit.

After playing all four "main boys" you were able to play "secret route". To be honest after playing this route I was even more confused what happened in the game. I wasn't even sure anymore what was dream or reality. But also the relationship with Tamamori and the secret character felt at some point really weird for me. I don't know why but secret route felt kinda unfinished for me or should I say it needed continuation for everything.

After playing all routes my fav characters ended up to be Minakami and Hakase. I also really liked Kawase. But if I have to put them in the order my favs are Hakase,Minakami,Kawase,secret character and then Hanazawa. 
This game gave so many different emotions while I played it. Sometimes I was laughing at humor moments and hoped that everyone can be happy. But then there was those moments when you started wondering about different things. About the loneliness which Tamamori experienced a lot of the time. Sometimes the story was interesting on a psychological level. There was one scene in Kawase's route which made me take a long break from the the game. Not sure if it was too much for me or what made me take very long break from the game. 
But I don't have anything bad to say about the game,I really enjoyed to play this and I hope mangagamer (or any publisher) would translate the second hashihime game too. Or maybe I need to buy it in japanese...