came for the cats stayed for the plot

(• Played with R18 Patch)

Yes, this is 10 years old and I’m late on jumping on the train. But personally I still think it holds up quite well in most regards. If you want to start delving into JPVNs with romcom and SOL elements, and want to see what the fuss is all about, I’d say this is still a fine title to consider! Doubly so if you appreciate catgirls (you should, they’re cute) or maid uniforms!

I do feel like everything is pretty surface level in terms of how the relationship develops and how the story progresses, but from a technical perspective, this is a very well-polished game that focuses on having brilliant art and VA at the very least. The start can also feel a bit weird / wishy-washy, especially how cold and distant Kashou seems to the girls at times in the first few chapters, but I guess it’s there for the sake of character development.

It also felt somewhat formulaic, in the sense that MC ends up being nice a bit to a girl for a little sweet talk moment, then they go in heat and smell something sweet off MC as a sign.. Happens to Chocola, then soon after happens to Vanilla. Of course, there are other story beats outside of this, but these two being strung together back-to-back made it feel slightly repetitive, on top of the fact that “come on, anyone could literally say that”.

Of course, them being catgirls is the saving grace that might let me suspend my disbelief a little bit and assume they are clingy and easily attached by nature. And also maybe this obvious disbelief is why devs released Vol 0 AND Vol Extra; to give more substantial reasoning to the romance that unfolds here, since based on the synopsis of those, they felt like Chocola and Vanilla needed to be given more limelight.

The game also features Shigure, the somewhat lovestruck little sister/trainer/’other real owner’ of the catgirls. Her scenes are fun, but her existence makes me go “another one of these, huh”. Despite my limited knowledge in this sphere I know how notoriously somewhat-common it is to have a sister chara who crushes on MC. And I know some people would rather not deal with that stuff so I thought it’s worth mentioning. It is pretty fine here though, since everything is one-way and MC doesn’t indulge her too much. But looking the info about the upcoming game “After”, it is somewhat likely that she’ll be a slowburn, final LI.

The end scene is pretty heartfelt, although I notice some odd details in how the cop literally doesn’t care that there’s a very sick dude being out late at night and needing help.. They literally said “alright I’mma head out.” Literally tunnel-vision and doing the bare minimum, but I guess that’s par for the course for background characters.

The epilogue also very rightfully teases the fact that other catgirls are moving in too, so I’m looking forward to slowly trying the rest of the bundle!


(•)Playtime Total: 7h10m13s. I don’t cut VA and am generally not rushing. Took me 1h until intro video, 1:28:0 until Bath CG, and 3:14:29 until first H CG.

From my timings, the H scene accounts for 2 hours exactly. (35m for Chocola, probably also ~35 for Vanilla, and 50m for final scene)

(•)Kinetic Novel.

(•)A tinge of Yuri. Yes, they may be “indulgent, male-gaze-enabling” kissing art, but it’s technically there nonetheless. Although Chocola & Vanilla treat each other more like dependent twin sisters (as they are), they seem to really love each other.


(+) Writing (7/10). I mean it’s just slice of life so nothing mindblowing, but it was fun to read. There’s some okay worldbuilding too with laws, narration describing the population at large accepting catgirls as companions, etc. . At least it’s a bit more than the bare minimum.

(+) Godly tier art (9/10). People are here for the anime CGs, myself included, and it did not disappoint. Of course I’m partially swayed by the fact that lots of what I saw are H Scenes, but even if you’re playing without patch, there’s also some beautiful date CGs here or them very cutely eating cake. There’s also a lot of cut-in images that makes things decently expressive; more than I initially expected. I do wish we got a few more of the girls actually in the kitchen doing work, but it is what it is.

(+) Lovely girls (7.7/10). Chocola and Vanilla are very good girls. They’re very earnest, and the sense of distance Vanilla brings to the table actually intrigues me quite a bit. Of course, they’re also cute in their own ways. It does sometimes feel like they’re very simple mass-appeal charas though; but maybe simple truly is the best!

(+)Animated Sprites. Some of the pauses in movement can feel a bit awkward and dated, but the fact that it’s mostly animated is nice.

(+) Good Voice Acting (8/10). Yep. Not much to be said except nice production value. I don’t know much about who’s-in-what, but at least I noticed Coconut sharing VA with Ditzy Demons’ Miyabi (Tezuka Ryouko) and I really love her voice. Guess that’s why I gotta get in on the sequels. Chocola exudes real lovey-dovey sweetness. The whole cast is solid really.


(-) Still some typos. Yep. Even for something this popular and 10 years old, there’s still a couple of lines with missing words and wrong words. Although it’s rare enough that I feel like it’s better than some other newer titles, but it’s surprising that this is the case, considering the current landscape of other non-JPVN games being updated and fixed for typo issues. Maybe no one cares to report them for JPVNs and I won’t either, but I’ve done my part for some other titles at least. I’d figure this was popular enough that some would surely have already done it over time, but I guess not!

(-) Text Display jank. Sometimes text just shows a single word for me and the line stops loading entirely or advancing. Bringing up the backlog in these cases show the full line, but going back to the line shows the incomplete one. Dunno what is causing this on my end but it happens, in both cases of previous line being advanced via auto-play vs manual clicks.
I do often re-enable and disable it via the auto play button, and have different text speeds between manual clicks & auto play despite basically doing both depending on whether the current line is voiced or not, so maybe that causes issues, but it’s annoying how unpolished this feature seems to me.
I guess it was par for the 2014 time and my expectations are colored by more modern, newer-year releases feeling smoother in this regard. I expected something this beloved to differentiate between Auto mode Text Speed vs Auto Mode Wait Time (how long to advance once the line is fully outputted) too as an aside, but I guess back then no one realizes these two could be different sliders.

(-) Deleting save files just causes the game to crash. ??? “Invalid Value / Time & Date” prompt shows up before the game closes on me… my brother.. why is that even relevant. I have no idea.

(-) Steam Screenshots during the bath H-CG doesn’t show text even if you want it to.I guess some publishers do some special stuff during these to avoid getting into problem with steam formerly (fine); and hence do some kind of censoring in intent, but in implementation something ended up going wrong. The only thing that gets hidden is the actual textbox/backlog while fully showing the CG in full display.

Of course, the actual H scenes will result in pixellated screenshots and that’s pretty standard in my limited experience. But still an oddity how the bath CG differs.

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Spent the playtime feeling so gross, the art is gorgeous but it can't make up for a story that first tells me these girls are only 9 months old, then tells me by human standards they're intellectually handicapped, then that the main character sees them as daughters and then just be chill with him ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ them. To top it off the rest of the story is such a boring lackluster moege that there's genuinely nothing of interest that could possibly hint at why this series became such an empire. I truly just do not get it.

Nekopara is a nice, wholesome story about the relationship of a young man and his catgirls.

Also has catgirl sex if you're into that. Censored with mosaic tho.

Great visuel novel about cat girls and running a bakery. Very wholesome. Has nice hentai scenes for the dlc and the base game is just wholesome. Art is good and all is fully voiced acted.

It's so peak

The classic catgirl erogame VN. We already get to see every girl, but this volume focuses on Chocola and Vanilla.

Needs controller support, as there's no way to use the boob jiggle feature without pressing P on the keyboard, when playing with a controller.

Pretty decent technical and localisation quality for a VN, only noticed one typo and one achievement bug, no game script bugs or poor software, specially for a decade old game.

PLAY IT! PLAY IT NOW! CAT GIRLS ARE ADORABLE

Nya :3