Norn9: Var Commons

While on a school field trip, child prodigy Sorata Suzuhara wanders off after hearing a mysterious song and blacks out. When he comes to, he finds himself in unfamiliar place, and soon encounters a girl who informs him that hes currently in turn of the century Japan! In order to help him get home, Sorata follows her to a ship that shes waiting for but when it appears it is not a wooden sailing ship, but a round aircraft that flies using technology that is beyond Soratas imagination. Even stranger, he discovers that the other 12 passengers 3 young women and 9 men are all supposedly espers with special powers, and are on some kind of journey at the behest of a multinational entity only known as The World.

What is the purpose of their journey? What is their destination? Who is The World? Before Sorata can even begin to take stock of his situation, the ship is attacked, and the mystery surrounding the ship only deepens. Delve into the story of the ship and its occupants through the point of views of each of the three girls, and unravel the mysteries trapped within.

From GameFAQS

I’ll preface this by saying I’ve heard a lot about this game, specially the bad localisation and issues, but that I chose to ignore 90% of them unless they were too obvious, in order to enjoy the game. I’m the type that if I start criticizing then I won’t be able to stop/overlook the smallest of things, so I prefer to focus on the positive/good side, of which this game has a lot.I’ll start this by saying I got lent this by Lilli, which I’m very thankful for her letting me use her PSN account in order for me to be able to play it, so shout outs to her! (σ≧∀≦)σ

That is not to say that this game doesn’t have some issues, but I won’t be touching upon them, personally (*´ω｀*)ノ

If you want a good account of the issues you can read Krystallina’s, that explains all the issues in detail~

Also SPOILERS ABOUND SPOIIILERS 

 

As usual I have the power of my first playthroughs through routes being the bad ones, and it’s exactly what happened with this game too ༼ ༎ຶ ෴ ༎ຶ༽

I went into this game thinking the characters I’d love the most would be Kakeru, who is voiced by Kaji Yuki (VA’s Kanato from DiaLov, Rikka from StormLover, Mei from Daiya), White Horse aka Sakuya and Akito.

That is not what happened. Well, at least not specifically all. Akito is indeed one of the characters I loved the most, and made me cry, but so did Senri, who I didn’t expect anything from, but touched me deeply. The other that really surprised me was Slutty Purple Ends aka Itsuki, who’s route was real great and made me cry too!

The big disappointments were definitely Sakuya, who is an obsessive type of “brother” who rips Mikoto’s clothes in a fit of jealousy, Heishi, who likes to choke Nanami, Ron, who treats Nanami like a doll/toy to sell.

Kakeru, Natsuhiko and Masamune were nice, but didn’t wow me away. Well, Masamune actually made me all choked up over my girl Koharu, who I love.

I love all my girls <333 Mikoto, Nanami and Koharu are such precious buns and I just wanted to protect them so bad, specially when Nanami only had ONE DECENT ROUTE jeesus!

There were also some routes that didn’t bring anything to the table in terms of no relevancy to the plot/main problems, and didn’t even get to see any explanation about Norn or the Reset. Heishi’s route is one of them.

I followed UnluckyHero’s route order and guide, tho I think you could swap some dudes around. If you want to get the bad dudes out of the way then definitely do Heishi, Sakuya and Ron first, because playing them in the middle really dampened my enthusiasm for the game :”’C

The plot was definitely interesting, and I liked how the girls interacted together and the boys too. The one thing I liked the most was that routes were happening in parallel and it really helped with making the big picture for those.

For example: Masamune’s route happens in Sakuya’s tragic ending, so we get to see what happens to Mikoto and the rest of them after we reach that ending (since we don’t get to see anything after his death). That really impressed me and made me really appreciate they did that, instead of making their routes in their own pocket of time/universe and not connected.

If I have some criticisms to do, and no it’s not about the typos/translation, it’s that I felt there were a lot of guys. Some were just fodder or just to have one of each type to satisfy all tastes, but that really turned me off, a la the trio I keep mentioning.

Now the most important question: did I find it worth buying in the future? Yes! I do want to buy it in the future, tho at a discount because I am not a blind person when it comes to the issues presented in it.

Tears were had, feelings got choked, love happened, to me while playing and so I really treasure this experience.

As you may all know, or not, I am actually pretty new to otoges. The only ones I’ve played are Sweet Fuse, Yo-Jin-Bo, Amnesia Memories, Starry Sky in Spring, one route of Hakuoki (I do plan to play it all from scratch) and now Norn9. Why am I talking about this? Because maybe it’s good for me who hasn’t played many, while for others it’ll be just whatever/boring/meh :’D

Have you heard about this game before? Have you played it? If so, I’d love to know what you think of it! ｡^‿^｡