I will do a review on the Norn9 mobile free version, since the full version is not available in my region.
Norn9 is an otome game that follows a bunch of teenagers with supernatural abilities as they journey across the globe in a mysterious flying ark in order to reach ‘The World’, a peacekeeping organization with unknown goals. The World’s existence is top secret, so naturally, these teenagers’ journey has to be strictly confidential… however, the crew soon realized they have two more people than they were supposed to be carrying (not including Sorata), and because of that, there may be enemies among their ranks.
Which one of them are actually fakes who snuck on board?
Back in 2016, I wrote a review for the Norn9 anime (which is this one). I think many of the comments I wrote there still holds for the game.
The free version of Norn9 mobile only offers the full prologue (which was narrated from Sorata’s perspective) and short snippets of every character routes available. Just from this, I think the full game looks promising, but I don’t like reading visual novel prose that much anymore (and I don’t like Kakeru enough to buy an entire game for his route) so I think I’ll pass.
For an older game, Norn9’s graphics look good. It’s not crisp clean, though. There are pixelated art here and there, and resolution didn’t look that good, but it’s understandable since this was originally made for a portable console.
Norn9 the ship
I had a bit of an issue with the sound. The sound effects were so loud to the point of being ear-grating. I know I could adjust the volume, but like… why did they make the sound effects so loud in the first place? Voice acting was of a quality expected from a visual novel. The voices suit the characters, and all minor characters are voiced, which is nice.
I loved the anime’s soundtrack. I later found out the anime and game’s soundtracks were composed by none other than Mr. Kevin Penkin, who wrote the music for Made in Abyss and Tower of God. The only track that stood out so far is Aion’s song in the prologue. There’s also another very unsettling track that made the scene it played in more tense than it should’ve been. Other than that, I think the game soundtrack was pretty good.
My favorite couple is still Koharu and Kakeru. I thought anime Koharu was very cute, but having seen a bit of her game version, I can totally see why people think she’s annoying. (She’s the type of person who doesn’t know anything and isn’t very helpful in figuring out what’s going on.) Game Koharu was really funny though, I’ll give her that. As for Kakeru, I haven’t seen enough of him to comment, but there’s this one scene where Koharu told others that she didn’t have a surname, so Kakeru offered to let her share his surname. Then others were like ‘Kakeru, that’s not an appropriate thing to say’ and Kakeru was like ‘whoopsie, I forgot’. That was funny. Also, in the snippet of Kakeru’s route, the game showed the scene where Kakeru was hugging Koharu and telling her that on this ship, she’s not alone anymore, so Koharu said ‘you’re right I have this strawberry that I planted’, and Kakeru was like ‘…well, I’m not referring to that but you’re not wrong…’ I legit laughed so hard at that scene lol. Koharu’s interactions with Masamune and Senri were pretty cute too.
Mikoto’s routes look good, but from the snippet, I think if I were to play the full game, I’ll only enjoy Itsuki’s route out of her three love interests. Not saying the other two are not good, but I really like Itsuki and Mikoto’s chemistry. Sakuya’s snippet was basically him complaining about the ‘promise’ (for a good reason), so I didn’t like that part too much. Natsuhiko’s was the scene where he had Mikoto pinned, but it was so short I couldn’t really take anything from it.
Nanami has the short end of the stick with Ron… man, I still hate that guy. Akito’s snippet was him trying to stop Nanami from committing suicide, so I don’t know how to feel about that… What was unexpected to me was that Heishi’s snippet was really cute (although I don’t understand 100% of what was being said). Heishi didn’t really have a presence in the anime, so I never knew he’s got a cute chemistry with Nanami.
There is another version of the game called Norn9 Social, but I couldn’t get to to run (did it stop service or something?) so I didn’t play it.
What I liked least from the mobile version is the controls. You basically control the entire game depending on how many fingers you touch the screen with. For example, one finger for going forward, two fingers for menu, three fingers for skip, and so on. I find it confusing. Moreover, I have an issue where I have to press on certain buttons a few times to get them to work, despite having no problems with my touch screen in other games. I have no idea what’s wrong.
Moreover, the text box looks really constricting… it’s like being in a cramped room, but that room is the screen. I think I’m just not used to having the name tab on the side, but in my opinion it makes the screen feel stuffy.
Overall, Norn9 mobile looks promising, but I can see that there are some contents of the game that I would not enjoy (*cough Ron’s route cough*). Controls are a bit clunky. So, will I go through VPN to download and play the full version? Most likely not.
bonutzuu 