Disclaimer: There is a free R18 patch available from NekoNyan's official website which adds cut content (mainly H-Scene related) back to the game. I can't speak for the cut version as I have only played the uncut one.

I'm going to keep this fairly short instead of doing a thorough review, but I've added some thoughts on various aspects of the game below if you want to dive deeper.

I've enjoyed Senren*Banka and highly recommend checking this one out. The overall focus of the game is the curse of the town Hori, with the protagonist being an outsider thrown in and the four main heroines being related to or influenced by the curse in one way or another.
While romance is a big focus in each of the four main heroine routes, all of them come with actual plot to explore (and extra "plot" if you have the patch installed). There are two additional routes (namely Koharu and Roka), but these are just an extra that do not tackle the core plot in any way.

All main heroines are very likable, some especially moreso once you enter their routes. Murasame is best girl tho.

I've clocked in about 50 hours at the time of writing, but considering AFK time, occasional skipping, etc I would guess the actual read time to be at around 40-45ish hours.

Without further ado here are some notes about the game:


Minor (marked) spoilers in this section!

While the overall route order is not enforced and up for the player to decide, in my opinion some routes are better played before others as you can see below.
Each route will have its main heroine as a romance focus but also some sort of sub-plot to deal with. Here are some notes about each route:

Yoshino's route explores the curse theme and the situation of the Tomotake family further. This one feels like a natural continuation of the common route, and should be played first.

Mako's route tackles the curse theme from a different perspective, with more details on it following in Lena's route (Although you shouldn't play Lena's route first, see Lena's section).
The focus of the route is Mako herself and the problem of falling in and experiencing love. Since the theme doesn't go far beyond romance (which the other routes also have), it's the weakest route in my personal opinion.
If you aren't playing Yoshino first, this one works as a first route too.

Lena's route answers a lot of questions that come up in both Mako's and Yoshino's route, while also resolving the curse problem in a manner that feels like a "true" ending to the curse itself. Whether this one or Murasame's is the actual "true" route is up for debate.
Since Yoshino, Mako and Lena routes focus heavily on the curse you should do this route after reading the other two.

Murasame's route shifts the focus from cleansing the curse to its aftermath instead, with Murasame herself now being simply a ghost without any duties and the town facing the economical impact of losing one of the main attrations for tourists.
Similar to Mako's route the focus here is on Murasame herself, with the main difference being Murasame's special circumstances (her being a spiritual being and the caretaker of Murasamemaru and all). This one can be played at any time, although playing it later will probably be more satisfying.
As I said before either this one or Lena's route can be considered the "true" route of the game.

Koharu/Roka duo-route is a bonus route that splits into two mini routes for each sub-heroine towards the end. Both routes are fairly unrelated to the initial common route plot and focus entirely on the cafe and the related girls.
You can play this route at any point (although you need to clear any main route first in order to unlock it), but if you aren't interested in either of them you can safely skip them.

As such my recommended play order would be Yoshino > Mako > Lena > Murasame, with Koharu and Roka tossed in anywhere inbetween.

The game features roughly 10 beautiful event CG with an additional 4 H-Scenes for each heroine. The count is a little on the low side, however there's lots of cute chibi SD art to make up for it.
The liberal use of character sprites during regular scenes also helps to alleviate this issue. It's impressive how lively a character can turn out if you let them change sprites even multiple times during the same voice line, even if there aren't all that many pose and face variants.

The soundtrack is great too, with a theme befitting the village Hori. Each heroine also has their own theme in both a normal and more intimate variation, as well as their own ED song. The regular songs while playing shine the most though.

Overall voice acting is great too with all non-protagonist voice lines fully voiced.
Some heroines like to get loud as they become flustered though, so an option to limit the discepancy between whispering and shouting would have been nice (to be fair, there is an integrated quick-access sound slider in the chat box to mitigate this). This is only a little gripe though.


As mentioned before this version is a porn-free release, with a free patch available from their official website. Installing the patch doesn't break anything on the steam-side of things, so big thumbs up here.
There are some scenes that will be foggy or censored in other ways to hide naked bodies, but it doesn't affect the overall experience of the core story. Whether you should use the patch or not is entirely up to personal preference.

The game runs in a native 1080p window, but scales just fine up to 1440p when applying fullscreen. The window can be freely resized (while still maintaining aspect ratio), but there is no easy way to reset it to its native 1080p resolution once you do so. Swapping between window mode and fullscreen can be done smoothly on the fly, and thanks to the "panic button" minimize feature you can easily mute and pop the game into the background while multitasking. (Even if the feature isn't quite intended that way)

The "Flowchart" feature, combined with a powerful backlog that allows jumping between scenes, voice-lines and even previewing backgrounds while browsing makes it especially easy to navigate to your next route or favourite scene. This is also very handy for completionists. It would be great if this became a standard for visual novels going forward.
There's also a voice-line bookmark feature. This is a niche feature but I found myself using it for funny moments, so I'm glad it was included, but I can't see many players using it.

There's also a lot of customizability in the game's settings menu that I would like to see in many visual novels going forward. Things like your typical text size, speed as well as background and read-text colors, but also other things like auto-skipping, BGM balance split for voice lines and mouse gestures.
Full customization of the chatbox bar and mouse gestures, as well as a touch-UI option for streaming to a phone makes for a very enjoyable reading experience.

In the game's "Extra" section (namely the Gallery) you'll find unlocked CG and music, as well as a Scene select for H-Scenes and a Sprite Mode. The Sprite Mode allows you to put characters in your preffered poses on the background of your choice. Nice feature to have, although I've personally only used it to review character outfits.

[i]Disclaimer: There is a free R18 patch available from NekoNyan's official website which adds cut content (mainly H-Scene related) back to the game. I can't speak for the cut version as I have only played the uncut one.[/i] I'm going to keep this fairly short instead of doing a thorough review, but I've added some thoughts on various aspects of the game below if you want to dive deeper. I've enjoyed Senren*Banka and highly recommend checking this one out. The overall focus of the game is the curse of the town Hori, with the protagonist being an outsider thrown in and the four main heroines being related to or influenced by the curse in one way or another. While romance is a big focus in each of the four main heroine routes, all of them come with actual plot to explore (and extra "plot" if you have the patch installed). There are two additional routes (namely Koharu and Roka), but these are just an extra that do not tackle the core plot in any way. All main heroines are very likable, some especially moreso once you enter their routes. Murasame is best girl tho. I've clocked in about 50 hours at the time of writing, but considering AFK time, occasional skipping, etc I would guess the actual read time to be at around 40-45ish hours. Without further ado here are some notes about the game: [h1]Story, Routes and Recommended Play Order[/h1] [b]Minor (marked) spoilers in this section![/b] While the overall route order is not enforced and up for the player to decide, in my opinion some routes are better played before others as you can see below. Each route will have its main heroine as a romance focus but also some sort of sub-plot to deal with. Here are some notes about each route: Yoshino's route explores the curse theme [spoiler]and the situation of the Tomotake family further. [/spoiler] This one feels like a natural continuation of the common route, and should be played first. Mako's route tackles the curse theme from a different perspective, with more details on it following in Lena's route (Although you shouldn't play Lena's route first, see Lena's section). The focus of the route is Mako herself and [spoiler] the problem of falling in and experiencing love. Since the theme doesn't go far beyond romance (which the other routes also have), it's the weakest route in my personal opinion. [/spoiler] If you aren't playing Yoshino first, this one works as a first route too. Lena's route answers a lot of questions that come up in both Mako's and Yoshino's route, [spoiler] while also resolving the curse problem in a manner that feels like a "true" ending to the curse itself. [/spoiler] Whether this one or Murasame's is the actual "true" route is up for debate. Since Yoshino, Mako and Lena routes focus heavily on the curse you should do this route after reading the other two. Murasame's route shifts the focus from cleansing the curse to its aftermath instead, [spoiler]with Murasame herself now being simply a ghost without any duties and the town facing the economical impact of losing one of the main attrations for tourists.[/spoiler] Similar to Mako's route the focus here is on Murasame herself, with the main difference being Murasame's special circumstances (her being a spiritual being and the caretaker of Murasamemaru and all). This one can be played at any time, although playing it later will probably be more satisfying. As I said before either this one or Lena's route can be considered the "true" route of the game. Koharu/Roka duo-route is a bonus route that splits into two mini routes for each sub-heroine towards the end. Both routes are fairly unrelated to the initial common route plot and focus entirely on [spoiler]the cafe and the related girls.[/spoiler] You can play this route at any point (although you need to clear any main route first in order to unlock it), but if you aren't interested in either of them you can safely skip them. As such my recommended play order would be Yoshino > Mako > Lena > Murasame, with Koharu and Roka tossed in anywhere inbetween. [h1] Art and Sound Impressions [/h1] The game features roughly 10 beautiful event CG with an additional 4 H-Scenes for each heroine. The count is a little on the low side, however there's lots of cute chibi SD art to make up for it. The liberal use of character sprites during regular scenes also helps to alleviate this issue. It's impressive how lively a character can turn out if you let them change sprites even multiple times during the same voice line, even if there aren't all that many pose and face variants. The soundtrack is great too, with a theme befitting the village Hori. Each heroine also has their own theme in both a normal and more intimate variation, as well as their own ED song. The regular songs while playing shine the most though. Overall voice acting is great too with all non-protagonist voice lines fully voiced. Some heroines like to get loud as they become flustered though, so an option to limit the discepancy between whispering and shouting would have been nice (to be fair, there is an integrated quick-access sound slider in the chat box to mitigate this). This is only a little gripe though. [h1] Technical Stuff [/h1] As mentioned before this version is a porn-free release, with a free patch available from their official website. Installing the patch doesn't break anything on the steam-side of things, so big thumbs up here. There are some scenes that will be foggy or censored in other ways to hide naked bodies, but it doesn't affect the overall experience of the core story. Whether you should use the patch or not is entirely up to personal preference. The game runs in a native 1080p window, but scales just fine up to 1440p when applying fullscreen. The window can be freely resized (while still maintaining aspect ratio), but there is no easy way to reset it to its native 1080p resolution once you do so. Swapping between window mode and fullscreen can be done smoothly on the fly, and thanks to the "panic button" minimize feature you can easily mute and pop the game into the background while multitasking. (Even if the feature isn't quite intended that way) The "Flowchart" feature, combined with a powerful backlog that allows jumping between scenes, voice-lines and even previewing backgrounds while browsing makes it especially easy to navigate to your next route or favourite scene. This is also very handy for completionists. It would be great if this became a standard for visual novels going forward. There's also a voice-line bookmark feature. This is a niche feature but I found myself using it for funny moments, so I'm glad it was included, but I can't see many players using it. There's also a lot of customizability in the game's settings menu that I would like to see in many visual novels going forward. Things like your typical text size, speed as well as background and read-text colors, but also other things like auto-skipping, BGM balance split for voice lines and mouse gestures. Full customization of the chatbox bar and mouse gestures, as well as a touch-UI option for streaming to a phone makes for a very enjoyable reading experience. In the game's "Extra" section (namely the Gallery) you'll find unlocked CG and music, as well as a Scene select for H-Scenes and a Sprite Mode. The Sprite Mode allows you to put characters in your preffered poses on the background of your choice. Nice feature to have, although I've personally only used it to review character outfits.