It's 0verflow's School Days HQ
The plot of School Days (and therefore School Days HQ, an updated version with two extra endings) is pretty much what the title is. It stars three central characters: Itou Makoto, Saionji Sekai and Katsura Kotonoha as they live out their days in school. The game's story begins on the train to school, as Makoto tells us that he is in love with a girl he sees every day on the train, who just so happens to be Katsura. He hears a rumour going around school that, if you take a picture of the person you like and set it as your phones wallpaper for three weeks and keep it secret, they'll end up loving you. Unfortunately for Makoto, he ends up revealing his wallpaper by accident to Sekai, who he sits beside in class. Sekai also has a crush on Makoto, but thanks to the phone incident, she decides to help Makoto out in trying to woo Katsura, which he does because - conveniently - Katsura likes Makoto. What follows is upto you, as the HQ version of the game has 23 possible endings for you to discover. Some of them could be you getting with one of the girls, both of the girls or Makoto getting his head chopped off by a Yandere and it being stuffed in a bag. While it all depends on the route you take, the basic plot to School Days is pretty much a typical anime story with everything thrown into the mix: love, sex, horror, gore, comedy, drama you name it. While the set up is generic, the execution is fantastic. For a personal recommendation, I recommend following the path which leads to the ending entitled "The Final Chapter: The Bloody Conclusion.", which is arguably the reason School Days is as popular as it is. If you're someone who's into Japanese gaming and you haven't seen The Bloody Conclusion, get yourself a copy of School Days and watch it. It's very damn good.
The gameplay is something of an oddity, as the gameplay to School Days and HQ is pretty much that of a Visual Novel. Other than making choices that may or may not influence the plot, you're pretty much a bystander to what's going on in the world of the game. However, something School Days has over other Visual Novels is the fact that, when a choice appears, you have a time limit to pick your choice. If you don't pick a choice, the game chooses a third hidden choice. This means that you can actually go through the entire game not doing a single damn thing. However, making random choices will probably lead you to a boring ending, so there is some strategy involved with the gameplay here. Sure it's basic, but it has 23 endings if you're playing the HQ version. And, since an average route takes about 4 hours to complete, including skipping things you've seen before, you'll be playing the game for around 92 hours, give or take 1 or 2 hours off of that..
Well Shit.
So while the game isn't exactly diverse in any way, it has a very sufficient length to make it worthwhile.
Graphically, School Days is without a doubt the best looking visual novel of all time, simply because it's actually an animated novel. OOOOOOOOH, FANCY. However, there are some problems with the animation. Now, I dunno if this is just a technical problem, an oversight from 0verflow or just plain laziness, but there are more than a few occasions where characters mouths were moving when they weren't speaking, or they weren't in time with the voice a all. In short, it's kinda all over the place. Don't get me wrong, it looks very pretty, especially for the standards of a Visual Novel, but I honestly feel as though 0verflow's Quality Assessment team put too much effort into the sex scenes and just kinda shrugged off the bugs on the other, more important ones.
Musically, the soundtrack is serviceable. I remembered a few tracks, especially the track entitled "Still, I Love You - Piano Version." However, a good few songs on the Soundtrack don't really stick out to me, the ending theme for all episodes included. The menu theme and the theme mentioned above are the two highlight tracks, and there are some other good ones, but something about the music in this feels really off for some reason.
Something that's always impressed me about School Days is that, even though it's not much of a game, it ended up being more replayable than Skyrim, Morrowind or even Final Fantasy VII. It's got graphical issues and it's got a somewhat dull soundtrack, but what it does right -story and gameplay - it does right well. It's one of the better Visual Novels I have played, and one that you cannot miss out on due to how infamous it is and fucked up it can be. School Days has been described as the "Ultimate Love Triangle" and in all fairness, it pretty much is.
Story: 10
Gameplay: 9
Graphics: 7.5
Sound: 6
Personal Enjoyment: 8
FINAL SCORE FOR SCHOOL DAYS: 8.1/10
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