涼宮ハルヒの誘悦

Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuetsu is a 18-kin doujin AVG that was sold during Comiket 70 for 1000 yen. You can find it in shops like Toranoana for 1200 yen. 誘悦 (yuuetsu) is a wordplay of 愉悦 (yuetsu), or “joy”, by replacing 愉 (“happiness”) with 誘 (”temptation”). I’ll leave the rest to your imagination…

I wasn’t expecting much from a doujin game, but Yuuetsu has surprisingly high production value. The game is fully-voiced and the art, especially the background art, approaches commercial level (then again, most commercial AVGs aren’t that high quality either).

The game is very short, but you can tell that quite a lot of thought has been put into the script. Most of the dialogues are very appropriate and feel like they could have come from the novel itself. The grammatical quirks that each character has are all preserved faithfully and it really helps to make the game feel like the original.

Basically the story is about Haruhi winning free onsen tickets in a lucky draw and the whole SOS-dan going on an onsen trip. I think you can imagine the rest…

Personally I quite like the in-game art, especially event CGs for Mikuru and Haruhi such as the two below. Well there are plenty of ero-scenes too but they seem to be of a lower quality than the non-ero CGs. Maybe it’s just that the flaws in the art are amplified when you remove the clothes, or maybe the artist just can’t draw H.

Voice-acting is really, really good for a doujin game. I can’t stress this enough. Although I won’t say that they sound just like the original cast, the seiyuu do a superb job of imitating the style of each character according to the anime adaptation. The only problem I have with the voice-acting is that the seiyuu for Tsuruya sounds like she’s trying too hard…

…and Itsuki is gay. Gay as in not happy or lame, but homosexual. I’m pretty sure there’s yaoi somewhere but I shall not confirm that.

Music-wise, the game consists mostly of remixed tracks from the TV series. They could have been better but they do the job so I’m not complaining.

The ending was kind of abrupt but Haruhi’s tsundere-ness towards the end was the win. ^_^ Taken from the manual that came with the game:

Ｑ　なんかハルヒがただのツンデレキャラなんですが。
Q. Why does Haruhi seem just like a generic tsundere character?

Ａ　作者の妄想です。お察しください。
A. Please respect the author’s fantasies.

Oh oh oh! Here’s another funny one:

Ｑ　俺のみくるんは、あんな積極的な子じゃない！！１１！
Q. My precious Mikuru isn’t that kind of girl!!11!

Ａ　俺のみくるんは誘い受けだと言ってるじゃないですか！！！
A. Didn’t I say that my Mikuru is a sasoi-uke!!!

For those of you who do not know what’s a sasoi-uke, maybe it’s for the best…

I end this review here with screenshots from the ending sequence.